How important is the story of your trauma?
We all have a story
A story helps us make sense of things. When we meet someone, we first get their name and ask what they do. That helps us form a story about who they are, and place this person in a context. It’s just how our brain functions.
It’s the same with our life story. It’s usually made up of smaller stories, each one connected to a stage in our life, or an event that marked us. Lewis Mehl-Madrona says that
Stories contain our answers. They impose order onto the chaos of our experience. They help us organize our experience in time. They provide a beginning, middle, and ending. They locate our experience within cultural contexts and geographies. They tell us who we are, where we are, and what we are.
Mehl-Madrona, L. (2005). Coyote wisdom: The power of story in healing. Inner Traditions/Bear & Co.
In the context of trauma, however, most times, we don’t have a coherent story. Trauma survivors might remember parts of what happened, or sometimes nothing at all. When attempting to present a story, they often times have a hard time doing so. Why?
Broca’s Area
Broca’s Area is a part of the brain that controls our ability to speak. Brain scans have shown that when trauma happens and when a flashback occurs, this part of the brain goes offline. There is no activity.
This explains why trauma survivors may recall sensory information (smells, sounds etc) and yet they are not necessarily able to associate that with a specific event. Or they are not able to present a story.
A few years ago, there was a high-profile, televised hearing where a woman was deposed in relation to sexual assault accusations. She was asked about details of what happened and she had a hard time giving specifics. Many people said then that she was lying. That’s possible. And at the same time, it’s possible that she was telling the truth, but was unable to recall the specifics she was asked about, due to Broca’s area going offline due to the overwhelming experience of the event.
A story to be told
The role of a story is to help us understand what happened. It is also important that we tell our stories so that we regain our sense of agency and power. Stories inspire others to take action. They can also provide an identity and a course of action.
Many trauma survivors become activists and that is an important process in trauma recovery. The ability to tell your own story is what the Native American tradition calls “stealing fire”. It’s about “stealing” back one’s power, identity, or health.
This step occurs when we’ve had enough of the old paradigm. When the victim becomes the survivor and then moves beyond it, to thrive, and to write their own story.
Out with the old, in with the new
An old story limits us. Just like we outgrow coping mechanisms that have kept us safe up to a point but then begin to hinder our progress, the story of our trauma might start to hold us back at some point.
Consider the story of a label or diagnosis. The medical world uses diagnoses in order to create a treatment plan. This is what is necessary to receive the care that one might need. At the same time, the diagnosis creates a label and now we “are [the label]”, which often times triggers a change in behavior. We act differently because of what we have, or are.
In the Body Keeps the Score, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk says that
a diagnostic label is likely to attach to people for the rest of their lives and have a profound influence on how they define themselves. I have met countless patients who told me that they “are” bipolar or borderline or that they “have” PTSD, as if they had been sentenced to remain in an underground dungeon for the rest of their lives…
Van der Kolk, Bessel A. “The body keeps the score : brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma.” New York, New York : Viking, 2014
In this case, the story is limiting. Telling the same story of the trauma over and over again is causing us to still identify with it, and allows it to still have power over us. Consider this instead.
Who can you be beyond the story?
When I stopped identifying myself as having had PTSD, hypervigilence, or as a trauma survivor, etc, I started seeing glimpses of new possibilities in my life. It was scary to take the first step, it’s like retiring after a life spent in the same job. Who am I without it? What is my identity now?
While this may be an emotional step, it’s also been the most liberating one. Stepping beyond the story, I could be someone new that lived her life beyond the constraints of my trauma. I had to ask myself: Who am I now? What have I learned? Who do I want to be?
Even though our safety mechanism wants us to stay in the comfort zone, stepping outside of this zone, allows us to create a new life and for a new story to emerge.
Recently, many of us have heard the news of Tina Turner’s passing and immediately lots of stories came out about her overcoming her abusive past. She could have stayed in that relationship the same way she had done for 16 years before. But she chose to steal her fire and write her own story as the Queen of Rock’n Roll, an inspiration for all.
So, who were you born to be? And who are you, without the story of your trauma?