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First Posted 2011
2011 is well and truly begun and what a beginning- with floods in my home state of Victoria that followed the Queensland floods and the horrendous catastrophe in Christchurch New Zealand our part of the world is seeming much less safe for us. And even the summer in Victoria has not seemed like a summer at all- after only about two days of 40 degrees we are into Autumn.
It seems to me that difficult times brings out the best and worst in us or in different people. Some find strengths they never knew they had, while for others it is the last straw and they can never again function as they had before. There is a wonderful book that myself and lots of my colleagues read last year called “Wounded by Reality- Understanding and Treating Adult Onset Trauma”. It is written by Ghislaine Boulanger who is a clinical psychologist in New York City and a member of the supervisory and teaching faculty in the Clinical Psychology Program at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Ghislaine writes of the differences between the effects on people who have suffered long term childhood developmental and attachment trauma and those who have been leading perfectly ordinary lives with ordinary coping skills and then been involved in a totally unforeseen and unexpected catastrophe- as for example the twin towers catastrophe in her home town. Ghislaine was very involved in the follow up of such people. I have had her thoughts much in mind when thinking of the help that many people in Christchurch and in the Queensland Lockyer Valley will need in the years to come.
No-one comes through such catastrophes without being a changed person. And it is to be hoped that the rescue workers also are able to get all the help they will need to cope with all that they have seen and heard.
The day to day work of a psychotherapist has similarities even though it is rarely as intense, urgent or confronting in the immediate moment. But many of the people who come to our doorstep have suffered such trauma. Most commonly, psychotherapists are likely to see them some years after the event or events. They have often needed to “just get on with life” after perhaps some initial counselling or debriefing or sharing with fellow sufferers. And for some that will be enough.
However, for others something lingers on and they feel like they are “stuck” or have “never gotten over it” and fortunately some of them come to understand that maybe a psychotherapist could help.
Our job does involve a capacity to sit with the pain of others- we cannot take it away but we can be there to be, at the very least, a witness to what they have been through. Many in the community- friends and family alike- frequently want them to have got “over it”- to “move on” but they can’t. It is understandable that friends and family want that because there is only so much friends and family can do. They are frequently barely holding their own lives together or needing comfort for themselves. On top of all that, constantly dealing with another whose pain is overwhelming is more than they can bear.
To greater or lesser degrees or intensity this is the work of a psychotherapist whether the source is from adult onset trauma or the long term childhood relational trauma.