AWhen I went into my office and checked my client list for the day, I was surprised to see a name appear that had not been there for a while. It was Kareem, a young father of two who had recently arrived in Australia from war-torn Iraq. During our session he said that he thought his complaints were under control and that he was recovering well. But suddenly he was taken back to the blast that left him with a traumatic brain injury and months of rehabilitation. “What was it that brought you there?” I asked him. He said he “heard a song,” the same song that was playing in his car just before the explosion.
In my work with war survivors, it has become clear that an individual’s sense of safety after trauma seems particularly difficult to maintain when the trauma occurred during the most mundane of tasks. This could be things like going to college before a siege occurred, or driving home from work before getting stuck in a blockade with rapid fire ahead.
Kareem was an ordinary person, just like you and me, doing ordinary things before being struck by the most extraordinary circumstances.
Trauma is defined as a distressing event, experienced or perceived, that can overwhelm an individual’s ability to cope. These stressors can lead to symptoms such as anxiety, sleep disturbances, flashbacks, mood swings, isolation and withdrawal from things they used to enjoy. When these symptoms come together, it can lead to the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
But it’s not just individuals with firsthand trauma experience, like Kareem, who may be susceptible to this emergency response. It could also be us. When we witness the trauma of others, we may experience secondary or vicarious trauma.
Currently, some of us are experiencing this trauma as a result of seeing and hearing the ongoing hardships of others, whether it is the global warming crisis or the atrocities taking place in many parts of the world, including Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan. Exposure to the constant stream of disturbing images, videos, and first-hand accounts from survivors can result in symptoms of vicarious trauma that range from mild agitation to symptoms similar to PTSD.
We are drawn to feeling the pain of others, but identifying with these stories can be a double-edged sword: the more we identify with the people experiencing the trauma, the more likely we are to become traumatized ourselves.
How can we start healing?
Some of us are experiencing collective trauma, and to heal collectively we must begin by acknowledging the human experience behind the flood of horrific images we consume every day. This experience should be central to our common humanity, not because we share the same color, gender, or belief. From there, we must engage in the struggle to reconcile the irreconcilable, as these traumatic events could clash with our worldview, such as our understanding of justice, equality or human rights.
The greater the gap between our values and the distressing events, the greater the vicarious trauma. We can begin to bridge this gap by either adjusting our worldview, for example by reassessing how we feel about what we see, or by integrating the trauma into our current beliefs and attitudes, by aligning it with our current views on human rights.
If we successfully bridge this gap, post-traumatic growth (PTG) can occur. PTG is a process in which a seismic shift occurs in an individual’s psyche, worldview, and sense of meaning as a result of exposure to a traumatic event. PTG does not mean that the pain has gone away – it means that our perspective on the pain and ourselves has changed after the trauma. There are things that can support our transition to growth, including sharing our difficulties with others, practicing positive coping strategies such as self-care, deriving meaning from spirituality, and reflecting on our shared resilience and common humanity.
When I speak with Kareem and other clients who have experienced varying degrees of trauma, I encourage them to view trauma as a wound. You can hide it and pretend it’s not there. You can keep tinkering with it and thinking about each image. Or you can let it breathe, find air. It’s still there, but slowly it’s getting a chance to heal.
This is a difficult process. We lose hope and retreat. We find the strength to speak before we become exhausted. Our common humanity makes us cry for others, connected in this moment of global grief, but realizing that we must also pay attention to our daily existence.
It’s an exhausting cycle and sometimes it may seem like our only solution is to break free. But feeling the vibration is a start, reconnecting with the stories is a start, and breathing deeply has a whole new meaning as we air our wounds together.
*Kareem is a fictional amalgam of customers
Sara Mussa is a psychologist based in Melbourne