The Trauma and the Peer Movement Page
What Is Trauma?
Trauma shapes and informs our interactions with ourselves and others. It has a profound impact on our body, mind and spirit, often resulting in isolation, disconnection, learned
helplessness, shame, guilt, rage, self-loathing and adverse physical conditions, including chronic pain and addiction. Traumatic events
can be shocking and terrifying. These can include violence between people, abuse of any kind, neglect, institutionalization, disasters or
war. Trauma often includes betrayal by a trusted person or institution.
With Ourselves
Sometimes, the hardest thing for many trauma survivors to do is to establish a trusting relationship with self. External safety is equally important but sometimes easier than establishing internal safety.
How Prevalent Is Trauma?
Up to 81% of people in psychiatric institutions have experienced trauma, either as children, adults or both (American Journal of Psychiatry 144, 908-913).
RELATIONSHIPS:
What is most damaged by trauma is our capacity to have trusting relationships, with ourselves or with others.
How Can It Help Us to Understand It?
Regardless of whether we have trauma in our lives, many of our peers do. It can only be to our advantage to have some basic knowledge, so that we can be better friends to ourselves and others and be happier at home, in our communities and at work.
Three Suggested Guidelines to Successful Recovery:
- Healthy relationships ONLY. (Unhealthy relationships trigger our trauma over and over.)
- Dreams and Goals for our future.
- Crisis plans for when we need them.
With Others
We need safe, healthy connected relationships with people, including but not limited to our therapists and treaters. Non-therapeutic relationships with other survivors, recovering people or spiritual contacts are essential to the healing process.
Is There a Best Way to Heal from Trauma?
There are many ways to heal from trauma. There is talk therapy, somatic (or body) based therapy. There is deep memory work, DBT, and many other methods. Different methods work for different people. If one method doesn’t work, you may want to try something else. It is very important to not underestimate our own ability to heal ourselves. Thinking that a therapist or medications on their own will heal us is a mistake.
Does Spirituality Play a Role in Healing?
For many survivors, although certainly not all, spirituality is a rich source of strength and hope. There are as many, many forms of spirituality and no one way will work for all. For some survivors for whom substances became a problem, the 12 step programs work well. For others, it may be Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, spiritualism: the choices are many. The most important question is:
Does it give you hope?
Maintaining Hope is the Most Important Part of Healing from Trauma
Often times, the survivor will be exhausted, frightened, and feeling like this recovery will never change. This is when any source of hope is absolutely essential, along with keeping dreams and goals alive, no matter how distant and unattainable they seem. Just don’t ever, ever give up, because it WILL change, often when you least expect it. Recovery from trauma is hard, hard work.
Adult Traumas and Psychiatric Trauma
Recovering from trauma such as restraint and seclusion is also very possible, and survivors can use the same therapeutic options as survivors of childhood trauma. Often, what happens in the mental health system reinforces childhood traumas as well as creating new, adult traumas. These traumas can be healed as well.