The savagery and futility of the wars in Gaza and Ukraine break my heart. It is hard to erase the images of children drinking from mud puddles, of starving and maimed people, and of those wracked with preventable diseases. While researching The Water Factor and Over The Peanut Fence, I was exposed to traumas that incapacitate their victims. On foreign soil and at home, rape, domestic violence, poverty, gun violence, and starvation are at the top of the list. Having resided in a safe, loving home all my life, it is difficult to imagine being forced to leave my country when no one would welcome you.
I often ask myself, what type of person perpetuates such unsettling crimes against humanity? Terrorists fighting for religious or political dominance? Profiteers selling weapons to warring factions? Oil, gas, and coal companies who knowingly pollute the atmosphere and raise global temperatures? or the public who buys their products?
I wonder if politicians who won’t compromise consider the victims of their decisions. Do they think of the raped woman forced to give birth to an unwanted child, leaving two traumatized individuals in its wake? Will society lend them a helping hand? Who will quiet the nightmares of the families waiting at closed borders? Can veterans or anyone living with PTSD get over their trauma? I’ll never forget Warsaw’s city museum, where visitors were greeted by the sound of warplanes closing in and dropping bombs that overwhelmed my senses. What if it were real, and I had to live through that? What would my future be like?
Millions upon millions face experience trauma from war, gun violence, an accident, rape, domestic violence, or weather-induced disaster. Thousands of victims worldwide need psychological and physical care to be made whole again. If we don’t want a depressed nation where more people self-medicate with alcohol and street drugs, though it is costly, we have to provide resources to help them. Every time there is a school shooting, a person loses their home, or a child drinks polluted water, the effect on the national economy escalates.
The emotions, smells, and sounds during a traumatic event get embedded in the individual’s muscles, gut, and brain. Some manage by compartmentalizing the experience by burying the event. Part of them becomes internally frozen, cut off from emotions and sensations. Thousands of vets who won’t speak of their wartime experience also don’t admit their anger, alcoholism, depression, frustrations, and perpetual agitation have to do with trauma. A deep fear of getting hurt, betrayed, and abandoned keeps them from having close relationships, loving sexual partners, and participating in communal activities–the things that might help them heal.
My master’s degree program introduced me to behavior modification, though Carl Rogers and talk therapy were the rage. In the clinical setting, I quickly realized that talking about the event wasn’t enough to help traumatized victims. However, it was usually the first step to getting them to say what happened and to label their internal struggles. I realized then that the healing process has a mind-body connection. While counseling a group of 300 to 400 hundred-pound women who had to lose weight for health reasons, we talked about their childhood and adult experiences for weeks. Quite a few said that their husband liked them fat, and they were afraid of what would happen if they lost weight. Nothing they or I said made a difference to them shedding a pound. It wasn’t until I taught them to meditate that they began to deal with family and personal issues. They overcame the agitation that led them to overeat by calming their minds. Most of the women saw lower numbers on their scales.
Mindfulness, meditation, communal chanting, art, massage, and dance are among the treatments psychologists proscribe to make people feel safe, connected, and willing to engage in meaningful relationships. These activities help victims relax so they can recognize their sensations and emotions so they are not frightened when touched, hugged, or rocked, the ways most of us are aided when emotionally vulnerable.
Doctors are quick to prescribe medications for stress, but these are only blockers that eliminate the sensory world. They may push horrific thoughts away for a few hours, but not for good. It’s the reason many people become addicted to them or other self-prescribed drugs.
Letting go of the past isn’t easy. To become well takes a certain amount of strength and the will to do so.
Brain imaging and research into mind-altering drugs have led to alternative therapies that appear to work when desensitization, bio-feedback, cognitive behavioral therapy, stress-reducing drugs, and talk therapy don’t. Improvements in electrical mapping of the brain have great promise in isolating the part of the brain that won’t let stress go. The newer therapies aim to rewire the fear-driven forces with Brain/computer interface technology or with psychedelics. Psilocybin, Ketamine, cannabis, and MDMA (ecstasy) have been shown to decrease amygdala activation in trauma victims during emotional processing. These methods try to sift the person’s mindset so they can think or behave differently. People become more suggestible with psychedelics. In the hands of a qualified therapist, the person becomes more responsive to positive suggestions.
You might ask what this has to do with water, which is the subject of my latest book. The answer is everything. Human beings can’t survive without access to clean water. They can’t grow crops, have carbon-cleaning forests, or in-home air conditioners to stave off heat strokes. Communities experiencing water scarcity are traumatized. Since humans seem unable to stop creating havoc, we must be prepared for the consequences of our actions. Trauma victims will become more commonplace in the future if we don’t get our act together.
The Water Factor will be available for presale online by the end of the month. Stay posted and help make its launch a grand success. The story is an eco-thriller about a naive high school graduate who learns that the company he works for is pilfering water to sell to marijuana farmers from his grandfather’s reservation in the high desert. His adventures on the way to maturity make the book a page-turner. Though set in the future, the story is based on actual events.
- Do you know someone who had a traumatic experience? Did they have a difficult time dealing with its after effects? I look forward to reading your comments.
- Calming Chaos is an acrylic painting available for $ 495. Shipping is included in the continental U.S. For information, contact marilynne@eichingerfineart.com
References:
Tupper, KW. (2015)Psychedelic medicine: a re-emerging therapeutic paradigm. National Institutes of Health. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4592297/
Website (2021) Psychedelic Therapy: Uses, How It’s Done, Risks, and More. Healthline. Retrieved from https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/psychedelic-therapy
Website. What to Know About Psychedelic Therapy. Medical News Today. retrieved from https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/psychedelic-therapy#how-does-it-work
Van Der kolk,B. M.D. (2014) The Body Keeps The Score. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-670-78592-3.