“Victims are members of society whose problems represent the memory of suffering, rage, and pain in a world that longs to forget.”
Bessel A. Van der Kolk
I just watched a television series set in England called The Village. At times I found it so painful to watch that I needed to fast forward the scenes which showed the suffering of a young man returned from the frontline in the first few years of the First World War. He was diagnosed with Shell Shock which was the original term given to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. His suffering was not understood. He was accused of being a coward, diagnosed by a so called doctor as being from feeble genetic stock.
The twisting affect of the trauma on his system made it nearly impossible for him to walk. He actually collapsed in the middle of a field on the way back after leave and then was accused of desertion and eventually shot while his mother and father looked on.
Watching this made me feel nauseous and VERY VERY ANGRY. I know that they did not have understanding in those days but it angers me that they were so ignorant and due to this a whole family suffered and the suffering would have been passed down generations. It may have just been a dramatic representation but the truth is this really happened to thousands of young men.
Can any of us really understand the trauma and pain of war, most especially of a war fought in muddy trenches where your companions were being blown to smithereens day after day, where dysentery was rife, where bodies were covered in maggots and then to be shot for desertion?
I do understand the twisting up of PTSD. I have suffered from difficulty getting out of bed over ten years since two major accidents occurred on the anniversary of my husband walking out as he did not want to have to deal with a wife who was in recovery and opening up to her grief. I don’t really blame him for leaving but I do feel angry when a lack of empathy and understanding leaves those who are victims of PTSD suffering more.
I guess the anger I felt in watching The Village occurred partly because it triggered things for me, but it wasn’t only that. It was horror in seeing how people could be so shut off to other’s suffering, judging them and passing down sentence on their life when they had no idea of what that person suffered through no fault of their own. These men went to fight for their country in a war that didn’t really fully concern them. There have been countless wars as we all know.
My mother’s father Bluey Brander fought in the First World War. He died as a result of war injuries when my mother was 7. My mother never really knew what it was to have the protection and love of a father. From what her own mother told her, her husband most probably had addiction problems as a result of what he endured in Turkey and on the Western Front.
The absence of the masculine is a theme that has played with all three of my mother’s daughters. I feel it has complex roots in the past.
Today I just feel the need to give voice to some of this loss that has dogged us. My hope is that as we grow in awareness as a collective we no longer send those who suffer in this way into a further hell by being so ignorant and terrified that we look the other way. We need to embrace those who have endured and are enduring the ongoing very real effects of trauma and let them know they have been victims. Their suffering is real, its not just “all in their heads”, trauma is actually stored as vibration in the cells and needs to be released by professional help. Unresolved trauma leads to all kinds of other accidents and diseases
It is only through this process of educating and understanding that we can at least put some kind of salve on a complex wound with extremely deep roots in our collective.
Emerging From The Dark Night 