I saw this today and felt like it was speaking straight to me. I know there are many out there who unfortunately can say the same.
In the past 17 years I've been to many, many group meetings at a variety of places. Some were focus groups, or women's shelters, or one-on-one counseling, drop in support groups, all sorts of groups in all sorts of places with all sorts of people. For the most part they are helpful, very helpful, because (ideally) you get a chance to open up in a safe environment and air some things that you normally have to keep to yourself. You can get information, or opinions, other resources that may be helpful to you in your situation.
Sometimes, though, they're not all that helpful for me because they can also be very triggering. I know that's not just my own perspective, most groups will state right at the start of the meeting that you may feel triggered and that it's important to do your own self care to make sure you're okay. Nobody's going to hold you down and make you listen to something that is setting off all the alarms in your head and making you feel worse than you did when you got there.
One incident that stands out to me was my first meeting ever to a group. There were probably 8 women in the group, from all different backgrounds and histories, we were all there for our own reasons. I was the only new person to the group, the others had known each other for some time. I'll freely admit I was terrified to even just be there. It's always scary going to a new group. You don't know these people, they don't know you, you don't know how it will go, what the normal flow of conversation is like, there are a lot of unknowns and possibilities, but you have to start somewhere.
It turned out that all of the women in this particular group had been emotionally/mentally/psychologically abused. I won't say this is all they had experienced, as in an "is that it?" kinda way, I just mean they had not been abused in other ways. I had experienced all of that too, but I was the only one who had also been physically and sexually abused. I was the only one that had been raped. I was the only one who had been punched. I was the only one who had experienced someone trying to kill me. We did our check-in and as the new person I was encouraged to tell a little bit about myself, only what I was comfortable with. I didn't say much, as it was my first time there and I didn't know these people. I was pretty quiet for most of the meeting, as I am for my first time at pretty much every meeting I go to of this type. I have to get the feel of it before I'll speak up. It doesn't take long, but I'm definitely not going to spill my guts at my first visit.
It was a 2-hour meeting, and about halfway through, just before we were about to take a little break, one woman stated that emotional abuse is by far worse than physical abuse. As I've said, she'd never experienced anything else, none of them had, and all of them agreed with her. They went on to talk about how physical wounds heal but emotional/mental ones are with you forever. The facilitator didn't comment, just said it was time for a break. I left and did not return.
They had a point in one way, that emotional/mental/psychological wounds DO stay with you forever. You can't just turn off the memories, the feelings, the nightmares ... they affect what you do, how you conduct yourself, how you react to situations, literally everything. But they are not worse than any other kind of abuse. No abuse is better or worse than another. The woman that said that couldn't see the gigantic bruise on the back of my shoulder. She didn't know that I couldn't use my right arm for 3 days. She didn't know I'd had to have jaw surgery and have my mouth wired shut for a month because of damage done to my face. She hadn't seen me crying as I got an x-ray on my chest to check for a cracked sternum.
Many people who don't experience physical trauma don't realize that it in itself causes mental trauma. The fear of it happening again, the crack it makes in your self, the way it makes you brace yourself every time you're near someone just in case you get hit again.
I sincerely hope she never does experience any of those things, that none of those women do, but I also hope that at some point they see or are told exactly what the above quote stresses ... that ALL trauma is valid. Whether you experience one thing only one time, or many things many times, it is a trauma and it is valid and should be acknowledged as such.
Trauma isn't just abuse either. It can be anything that you experience that affects you negatively, like a death in the family, or a car accident, or a natural disaster, there are so many things that can cause us pain and stay with us for a long time, whether we realize it at the time or not.
Often you hear someone say people are too sensitive and need to "grow a pair", walk it off, rub some dirt on it ... I'm guilty of this myself in some situations, though usually just in jest. But when it comes to mental health I think that is the one time we need to be sensitive to what other people have gone through, whether we know the details or not, whether we know anything at all about it or not, just for the simple fact that we are all human, and all trauma is valid.
No comments:
Post a Comment