Fable

Trauma Split Experience:

Shallow Comfort and Hidden Distress

Each time I re-experience the car slamming into my dog, the event proceeds from the beginning - .

I follow my process until I hit the trauma-object - - which stops my process every time. It is a moment of pain great enough to freeze my body. I am unable to let what needs to happen, happen.

If a Fury is the traumatic consequence of a crisis, what is a crisis? What is trauma?¹

To start, consider this thought experiment:²

I remember the death of my last dog, Dickens. I unclasp his leash. He runs at the dog across the street. He screams when he is hit by a car. He flies and skips twenty yards down gravely pavement.

In the past, I had let Dickens off the leash with no consequence. He behaved and had no impulse to run into traffic.

He yelps as I pick up his bloody body. He whimpers as I speed to the vet and cry off and on for several days. I soon become busy, too preoccupied with other commitments. I can’t think about Dickens. I conflate my love with grief and sadness and regret. It is my fault. All these feelings feed on themselves, terrifying and overwhelming me.

Whenever anyone asks, “How am I doing?” I say, “It’s sad what happened. But I’m OK.” My statement is perfunctory, true to only the superficial facts. If I let the silence become awkward, the topic of conversation changes. I manage my own painful thoughts in a similar manner.

After several months, I cannot hide my desire to adopt another dog. Before I can, I need to reconcile with Dickens. I believe he despises me.

I relearn the future isn’t predictable. Careful choices and careless choices have consequences which often are dramatically different than the quality of the choice. I have done other stupid things in the past and will do stupid things in the future. I recognize that I learn from my mistakes, rarely repeat them, and believe I grow wiser for the experience.

I cry as I spend hours looking through pictures. When I had suppressed thoughts about Dickens, I cut off this pleasure, too. The more I could remember his whole life rather than only the moment of his death, the more peace I had.

My dog ran off, creating an event. I could have resolved it by yelling, “Front!” He would have turned and run back. This simple story is a metaphor for our system of experience - the primal first sentence - body-as-it-was, running-dog, body-yelling, ▲▼▲.

(My essay, ▲▼▲ Perspective: Objectify Yourself, Witness Life, discusses the primal first sentence and our system of experience in detail.)

I represent the primal first sentence as ▲▼▲ - body-as-it-was, object, body-as-it-is: body, thirst, drinking-body; I drank water to quench my thirst. ▲▼▲ shows three equal sized triangles. Implicit in the diagram is the equivalence of ▲ and ▼. In other words, the body object can immediately process the ephemeral object. The event - ▲▼ - is resolvable in the moment.

When Dickens ran off, nothing about the event was resolvable in the moment. That event was “bigger,” quite dramatically so. In other words, the experience required several steps before the event is complete. A more accurate diagram might look like: ▲▼

The story of the event might look like: , then done. A four part story, a three part story, a two part story, the final sentence, done.

A crisis is any event requiring more than one step. It is possible the crisis resolution happens so quickly, it occurs without conscious thought. A “9 triangle” crisis: . This composite of ephemeral objects displays both the sense of more size and time.

A car struck my dog. The event was an overwhelming crisis and required my complete engagement for a long time.

During the crisis, I couldn’t be lost in my own emotional pain at the expense of my dog’s grave injuries. I had to get him into the car, drive, and get the vet’s help. Finally, I had to put him down.

I responded to the contingencies of the crisis, not to my own reactions. This behavior was a form of denial. It was highly function and allowed me to do the best I could. I had to isolate and repress my own pain.

After I put my dog down, I didn’t have the capacity to process the event. Instead, I left it unexamined. I couldn’t address my own hurt. The crisis left me with trauma, and I suffered.

Even this delay can be healthy. It is reasonable to re-live an experience in smaller pieces. We can only process what we have the capacity to process. Upsetting events take time to integrate. It’s why ruminating is often a natural part of grieving.

To set the stage for delayed, multi-step processing, we maintain the event’s split - the story we can tell and the experience we have to relive. We wait for a time free of demands and distractions to resolve this split.

To process and integrate an event is to literally re-pair these two parts. We pair the explanation with the emotional story, re-living the event free of the requirements to act. We are no longer distracted by what we must do. We sit with the deep sense of emotions, feelings and thought. We experience the full affect of the event.

In this sense, our body responses become different and more feelings laden. We don’t stifle our fear, for example, but rather tremble with fright. We give the body time to let happen what needs to happen.

After processing all the story segments, we can tell the complete narrative, including how we were affected. When we recall the event, we re-use the resolution we created to first process the complete event. Our memories become easier to live with. We can abstract lessons from a crisis and integrate them into autobiography.

Many crises cause wounds. My dog’s death sure did. In the end, because the consequences were so severe, I couldn’t re-pair my split and care for my own wounds. The split became my defense.

Any memory of my dog triggered a nightmare - an intense emotional event I strove to repress. I avoided the pain and kept to the appearance of normalcy. The story I told others - It’s sad what happened. But I’m OK. - was wishful thinking.

The crisis of my dog’s death transformed into personal trauma. A trauma object might look like: , , or - undigestable remnants of the original crisis object.

We are unable to process these pieces, yet they live on as part of our repressed memory of the event. They form the emotional core of our isolated, unre-paired experience, giving rise to a Fury.

This delay-stress-until-later behavior becomes maladaptive if we neglect the integration process. The event's core elements remain apart - the Fury and the Faerie Tale. These parts are likely associated with different neuronal systems and domains in the brain, and the dissociation can become more rigid in time.³

We defend against the Fury and identify with the simple account. The process of identification transforms the prefunctory statement into a Faerie Tale. Originally, our body responded to the contingencies of the crisis, and now we won’t let it respond to the crisis-proper. We fear the re-living of the event. The unresolved experience becomes a traumatic nightmare.⁴

The organizing force of our Faerie Tales is not our life experience, or the wisdom gained, but rather the neglected pain - our Furies. If we accumulate Faerie Tales, we develop an increasingly detailed apparently-normal-self, the part unafflicted by the wounds, fears or humiliations.

This self mythology become part of our autobiography. If the Furies break down our defenses, this mythic self is shattered. We are threatened with overwhelming despair for the loss of these comforting myths.

I was helpless when Dickens ran off. I could not call him back, or stop the speeding car or heal his injuries. I could not stop him from dying.

After the crisis, I believed I wasn’t worthy of my dog’s love. I could not understand how a great dog deserved such horrid fate. I could not manage my own feelings or stop the memories. I efforted defense rather than enable resolution.

Trauma is helplessness: I wasn’t able to, I wasn’t worthy enough, I didn’t know better. I failed to accomplish, to bond, or to understand. Event remnants embody these archetypal failures. The pain animates these incarnations, giving heart to our Furies.

Each time I re-experience the car slamming into my dog, the event proceeds from the beginning - .

I follow my process until I hit the trauma-object - - which stops my process every time. It is a moment of pain great enough to freeze my body. I am unable to let what needs to happen, happen.

As I learn I will get stuck, I begin to shut down the process at the brutal beginning - . I deny the recurring crunch-of-bone Fury. I become more vigilant and anxious to a capricious world, never understanding why.

Before adopting a new dog, I opened up to this Fury. I accepted I had no control over the event, forgave myself, and learned again how random life can be.

As I worked through this process, the memory of Dickens grew as a source of joy. The moment of his death remained painful and sad. After honoring his memory and accepting the sadness, I had peace.

In other words, I can tell the complete narrative of the accident - how it changed my life and made me wiser. As I recall the event, my body no longer gets stuck on the trauma-object but rather processes the recalled event to completion. It becomes a practiced response which eases the memories.

After the resolution, the significant of the event may well be reduced. Instead of starting at the brutal beginning - , I naturally flow through a story of my own creation - .

How great was the big red dragon?” My son asked his girlfriend over the phone.

They had discussed Avatar for the past ten minutes. I imagined my son was relieved to have a topic for conversation.

“I liked how the Na’Vi looked,” she said. “They were naked, you know.”

“Umm...” My son started to pace with deliberate steps.

“We should see the movie together.”

“OK.” He said.

“How about Friday?” She asked.

“OK...” He pumped his fist. If he was near a friend, he might have even tried a high-five. “... but I need to talk to my dad first.”

My son’s phone call is over, a distinct event no doubt, filled with the lurking terror of rejection from a girlfriend he hasn’t yet dated.

My still son needs my acquiescence - my money, my time and willingness to drive. He will also need to answer my unnerving questions. What is her name? How long has she been your girlfriend? How can you have a girlfriend if you haven’t gone on a date?

He will hate answering. And because I’ll feel better, I’ll give advice. He will hate that too.

For my son, to plan his first date is a daunting task even with a helpful girlfriend and an easy-going father. He will have overcome some admixture of shame, fear of my judgment, nosy questions, and lame advice. I will ask him to behave responsibility. He’ll probably get more chores too.

What if instead, he believed I would disapprove for no particular reason?

“Dad...” My son said. I had just sat down after a long day, looking forward to a glass of wine, a moment of quiet and a chance to ignore the chaos.

“You need to take me to the movies on Friday,” he said.

“I need to?” I said. “Are you telling me what to do?”

“No. I didn’t mean it that way.”

I drank my wine.

“What I wanted to know,” my son said. “Was could you take me to the movies.”

“I just sat,” I said. “I’m going to drink my wine. I’ll figure this out later.”

“You’ll just say no.”


“I said later.”

“You always say no!”

In this scenario, I wasn’t a saint, to be sure. My son reacted to my responsiveness with the belief, “You always say no.”

His banal Faerie Tale would be, “Dad is such an asshole!” His Fury would be the caricature me as his tormentor. His rage would fuel this Fury.

My son’s defensiveness also made his suffering worse. He tried to tell me what to do. He then preempted my delayed response by declaring, “You always say no.”

First he tried to control the interaction then he defended his belief. His defensive behaviors practically assured the final answer would be “no.”

Sometimes trauma is the consequence of one event - Dicken’s death. Other times, trauma is the accumulation of undigestible remnants. As these collections grow, our defenses become more elaborate, such as my son’s belief, “You always say no.”

Consider some other banal Faerie Tales:

Belief: Men are assholes.

Outcome: You will always date an asshole.

You will be anxious, worrying your date is indeed an asshole. You will scan for character deficits - He looks at the bar TV during a date. He looks at other women! After enough proof - poof! - you are dating an asshole. You created a tautology, then made it worse. Your produced an outcome which reinforces the belief.

Belief: Girlfriends break hearts.

Outcome: You love the growing relationship, but start to create some emotional distance to protect yourself. Your girlfriend decides you have become distant, no longer interested in the relationship. She leaves you, breaking your heart again.

It’s as if Furies pervert defenses, as if only more trauma will get us to heal our wounds. How true. It’s one of the greatest threats to well being.

Belief: “But I’m OK...”

Outcome: ???

I have discussed how to address Furies in earlier essays. See:

Open Up, Confront The Fury
Clean Up, Feel Better
Mindfulness: We Hardly Know You

Leave a comment if you want to add other examples of faulty-beliefs and self-fulfilling-outcomes.