Trauma Is Like A Wounded Tree

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

I grew up near one of the oldest cemeteries in Kiev. The places were neglected, ancient maples and ash trees sprouted through graves and fences without any system. Centuries-old trees sprouted through the fences. The flesh of the tree merged with the iron of the fence.

Little I watched for years how at first the tree rested on the metal of the fence and then, swaying in the wind and expanding from the growth, the wood "rubbed", the wound of the tree either opened or spilled sap. Metal rusted, bent. But the tree had nowhere to go, and over time, the fence seemed to be inside the tree. The tree ached, the trunk was building up protective layers of bark around it. It was very difficult to further separate the wood from the metal. The tree grew twisted around the wound, did not develop as it could if the metal did not prevent it from growing.

A very similar process takes place with people who have experienced long-term psychological trauma. Such an injury does not happen in one day, the child seems to grow up as usual, indistinguishable from others, and then gradually begins to hurt and suffers from psychological trauma that gnaws at him drop by drop and does not allow him to grow.

In long-term trauma therapy, it takes a long time before a person begins to understand where this soul-rubbing pin of the wound is. The man himself was overgrown with these defenses, like a tree was growing bark around an injury. These psychological defenses once gave a person the ability to survive. In critical situations, they turn into a useful tool. And it happens that it takes months or years for a person to realize that these critical situations are no longer in his life. And after a while, a person seems to learn to walk anew - learns to live in a new way. It is difficult and unusual how to take a step after a fracture.

In cases where children grew up with despotic and hot-tempered parents, when the child knew that at any moment he could be shouted at and morally humiliated, grown children get used to freezing. Such people complain about problems with the body, are afraid and do not know how to dance. In situations where they are afraid, they do not defend themselves, but helplessly freeze and wait. Wait out their protection, make themselves invisible. It takes a long time before they start trying to escape or defend themselves aggressively.

Hence the inability to defend their borders. Borders are defended by building complex combinations, leaving others to answer for them. (Which, by the way, attracts narcissists to them, who aggressively defend the boundaries of the victim-prey and it is pleasant and binds the victim to them).

If a person who has survived a long-term trauma cannot defend his boundaries, then falling into the trauma funnel he is sad and endures, somatizes his injuries, that is, he gets sick and hurts his own body with new and new diseases.

Such people come to therapy when they feel really bad inside. They hardly make contact, cold and oppressive parents violated their ability to intimacy, and if the people who were supposed to be the closest were cruel, then the rest of the world seems hostile and cold to them. The therapist is very likely to appear cold and hostile too. And gradually thawing occurs during therapy - people begin to see themselves and see others, the world seems not so hostile, but neutral, kind, wide, unfair, beautiful, wide …

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