On Traumatic Experiences at the Nonverbal Level

What do I mean by that?  The ‘Nonverbal Level.’  What I mean is traumatic experiences that occur before the development of language, or around the time when language is just developing.  People who experience these early traumas, often times medical experiences, tend to develop a wide range of difficulties.  Most notably, difficulty with self-expression.

I’ve talked a little about early traumatic experiences before.  In some ways a person’s emotional development becomes “fixed” or “fixated” at the age at which the trauma occurred.  In may other ways they may fully develop (intellectually, physically, etc…).

I met a fellow professional at a conference a few years ago who shared that she had developed an intense aversion to all kinds of fruits and vegetables after an extrended hospital stay at the age of 2.  There was no conscious memory of this experience.  But her mother told her that she loved fruit and vegetables before going into the hospital, and after being in the hospital would never touch them again.  Now, when I met her, she was 40 years old!  She had never eaten any fruit or vegetables since that time.  And could not do so.  She would immediately gag.

She told me a little about her early medical experiences that she learned from her parents.  I made a slightly unprofessional comment, “I bet you are extremely ‘gaggy.’”  In other words, she has a hypersensitive gag reflex.  She said, “Yes, I always have been.  I can’t eat any fruit or vegetables without gagging.  It’s the texture.”  Now, this was related to the fact of being in the hospital for many months, and having tubes down her throat at this very early age.

Now, many people who have very early traumas (traumatic births, early medical traumas in the first couple years of life, etc…) have extreme difficulty in expressing themselves.  It may be just talking at all that’s a problem.  It may be specific to emotional expression.  Regardless, there is almost always a problem in this area.

So, if you have a child who has to be in the hospital at a very young age, the best I can tell you is be there for them as much as you possibly can.  Provide a great deal of reassurance and physical comfort (hugs, kisses, touch, etc…).  Talk to them.  Be soothing.  You cannot completely erase the traumatic nature of the experience, but you will reduce it draumatically.

Hindsight is 20-20 and Guilt

I’ll start out with combat veterans to illustrate a point.  Some combat veterans will come to feel intense feelings of guilt about something that they did or didn’t do while in combat conditions. 

“My buddy was about a foot away from me when he was shot.  I should have done something.”

“There was shooting all over.  A guy was running towards us.  I yelled for him to stop, but he kept running toward us.  I shot him.  I later went out and looked and it was a 12-year-old boy who was unarmed.”

“I commanded my men to go on patrol that day.  Half of them got killed.  I should have known better.  It’s all my fault.  People died because of my mistakes.”

Research shows that people generally make the best decisions they can at the time with the information that they have.  After the outcome is seen, people will often come to believe that they should have forseen the negative outcome.  They look back and judge themselves based on what they know NOW, not based on what they knew THEN.  Most of the time, intense feelings of guilt involve a distortion of responsibility.  It fails to take into account actions of others and unpredictable occurences.  So, the reality is that a person often bears some degree of responsibility, but they take 100% responsibility.  Their actual degree of responsibility may be more like 30%, or some other percentage, but it is rarely truly 100%.

I’m all for taking responsibility, but this intense guilt involving a distortion serves no useful purpose for a person.  If you’re a Christian, you ask for God’s forgiveness.  The hardest part for folks is often forgiving themselves.  If you’re a Christian, you have no right to judge yourself.  That’s God’s job.  Ask for forgiveness, and trust.  It’s really…really…hard sometimes I know.  But that’s the place you want to get to with your guilt.

So, when thinking about guilt you want to truly consider what you knew THEN, not NOW.  The fact that you feel intensely guilty implies that you learned something after the fact that you did not know at the time.  So, it’s good that you know that now.  All you can do is take what you have learned and go forward.  Learn from what happened.  That serves a purpose.  Intense guilt does not…