4. Helplessness
The article’s fourth misconception is not taking into account how helpless the traumatic event makes a person feel. What is more traumatizing, successfully defending yourself against two knife-wielding attackers but getting slashed across your face as you frighten them away, or two knife-wielding attackers holding you down and cutting your face as you remain completely helpless to stop them? Even though the physical outcome—a permanent scar on your face—is the same in both scenarios, the feeling of being empowered to protect yourself is far more desirable than the feeling of being completely helpless.
There are also varying degrees of helplessness. If a man’s wife is raped and murdered while he is not at home, that can certainly be traumatic for him. But if the man is tied up and forced to watch someone rape and murder his wife while he remains completely helpless to protect her, he would probably experience more severe trauma. In war zones there have been instances where parents were forced to watch soldiers rape their children, and children were forced to watch soldiers rape their parents.
Jocelyn Kelly, director of the Women in War program at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, describes the trauma caused by the ongoing war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo:
Perhaps nowhere in the world is rape as public as it is in DRC [Democratic Republic of the Congo]. In many cases, family members are forced to watch, and sometimes forced to participate in, the rape of a wife, sister or mother. Other times, rapes are carried out in public areas where neighbors and community leaders can see. This creates family- and community-wide trauma, just as it is intended to do. Husbands feel helpless as they are unable to stop the attack and children see that their parents are powerless to protect them …
Couples that do stay together [after the rape] still face deep-seated trauma and cycles of blame and shame within the home. Some men may use drugs and alcohol or perpetrate physical violence against family members as [a] result of their own trauma … In eastern DRC, children are often the first to suffer the effects of war. Not only are children the direct victims of sexual violence, but they are also often forced to witness horrific acts of violence against family members. Cycles of violence emerge as children who have been deeply traumatized by violence join armed groups, street gangs or live on the street because their family networks cannot support them.8
Human beings do not like feeling completely helpless, preferring to have some control over their lives. When children are physically or sexually abused by an adult, the feeling of being a helpless child who is too weak to resist the adult can have negative psychological consequences that last for a long time. Helplessness by itself is often an uncomfortable experience, and when a high degree of helplessness is combined with a traumatic human attack, it can cause psychological wounds that do not heal easily.
5. Unpredictability and Period of Time
The article’s fifth misconception is not taking into account the kinds of trauma that occur unpredictably over a long period of time. I know some people who were spanked a few times by a parent, yet they do not show obvious signs of trauma. The way my father attacked me was far different from spanking. An army psychiatrist told me that in addition to sexual abuse, the most traumatic experience a parent can inflict on children is to “subject them to violent and out of control attacks in an unpredictable way over a long period of time.” According to this army psychiatrist, children who grow up in an unpredictably violent household have symptoms similar to traumatized war veterans.
Unlike a controlled spanking, when my father attacked me he would become so enraged that he seemed completely out of control. He would sometimes threaten to kill me, and during the worst beatings my mother had to restrain him to stop his assault. I remember my mother yelling at him, “If you keep hitting him in the head, you are going to give him brain damage!” When my father beat me to the point where I feared for my life, the size difference between me and him was truly terrifying. Imagine being beaten up by a man who is ten feet tall. That is how I felt as a child when my six-foot-tall father was stomping on me.
Although my father often made me fear for my life, this terror was magnified by the unpredictable nature of his attacks. Sometimes I would make a serious mistake (such as getting in trouble at school for having behavioral problems) and he would not punish me. On other occasions he would attack me for making a very small mistake or when I did not make a mistake. Sometimes he would assault me in the middle of the night when I was sleeping. When these unpredictable attacks occur over a long period of time throughout most of someone’s childhood, it can rewire the brain in dangerous ways that I will discuss throughout this book.
According to psychiatrist Daniel Siegel, “When an attachment figure [such as a parent] is the source of terror, the child’s brain has two processes going on at once. One is the inborn attachment system which says, ‘I am in a state of alarm. I need to go to my attachment figure for soothing.’ But if that attachment figure is the source of the distress, and I don’t just mean being upset and you don’t get ice-cream before dinner, I mean terror, then what happens is … another track in the child’s brain will state, ‘Do not go to that figure. That is the cause of your distress.’”9
What happens when a child’s brain experiences the confusion described by Dr. Siegel? When the people who are supposed to protect us make us fear for our lives, it can rupture our ability to trust not only them, but all human beings.
6. Rupturing of Trust
The article’s sixth misconception is not taking into account the forms of trauma that rupture our trust in human beings. A traumatic event that damages our ability to trust human beings will increase the severity of our trauma, because we all want to be around people we can trust. Even Adolf Hitler wanted to be around people he could trust. Nobody ever says, “One quality I value in a friend, spouse, boss, coworker, or employee is betrayal. I love being around people I can’t trust.” One of the most painful events we can experience in our fragile human existence is betrayal.
Why can betrayal be so devastating to our psychological well-being? Human beings are social creatures who rely on cooperation to survive, but true cooperation cannot exist without trust. When we lose our ability to trust human beings, we can feel like we are going insane. Paranoia is often associated with insanity, but what does it mean to be paranoid? Psychiatrist Jonathan Shay, the author of Achilles in Vietnam, says paranoia can be best understood as “the inability to trust human beings.”10
The ability to trust human beings is crucial to both our psychological health and survival as a species. Zebras don’t trust lions who hunt them, but imagine what would happen if zebras lost the ability to trust other zebras. Bees don’t trust bears who want their honey, but imagine what would happen if bees perceived every other bee in their hive as a threat. What would happen if wolves lost the ability to trust the members of their own pack, and elephants could no longer trust the members of their own herd?
Countless species must deal with their fear of predators, but human beings are the only species that contend with predators in their homes, in the form of family members who are supposed to protect us but instead make us fear for our lives. Nadine Burke Harris, founder and CEO of Center for Youth Wellness, described how this contributes to behavioral problems in school when Ira Glass interviewed her on National Public Radio:
If you look on the molecular level, you’re walking through the forest and you see a bear, right? So you can either fight the bear or run from the bear. That’s kind of your fight or flight system … And that’s really good if you’re in a forest and there’s a bear. The problem is when that bear comes home from the bar every night. Right? And for a lot of these kids, what