Some powerful quotes from the book, “The Body Keeps The Score”:
“…our capacity to destroy one another is matched by our capacity to heal one another.”
“As we now know, war is not the only calamity that leaves human lives in ruins…Each year about three million children in the United States are reported as victims of child abuse and neglect. One million of these cases are serious and credible enough to force local child protective services or the courts to take action. In other words, for every soldier who serves in a war zone abroad, there are ten children who are endangered in their own homes…It is very difficult for growing children to recover when the source of terror pain is not enemy combatants but their own caretakers.”
And, in referencing the Rorschach tests which were performed on several groups of traumatized peoples, it was discovered that trauma affects one’s ability to use imagination.
“ Imagination is absolutely critical to the quality of our lives. Our imagination enables us to leave our routine every day existence by fantasizing about travel, sex, falling in love, or having the last word - all the things that make life interesting.  Imagination gives us the opportunity to envision new possibilities - It is an essential launchpad for making our hopes come true. It fires our creativity, relieves our boredom, alleviates our pain, enhances our pleasure, and enriches our most intimate relationships…Without imagination there is no hope, no chance to envision a better future, no place to go, no goal to reach.”
In layman’s words, one cannot begin to think of what they WANT, (vs. NEED), because they are either still stuck in their past traumas, or they are CURRENTLY, STILL living in an unsafe environment that deprives them of the safety that is needed PRIOR to BEGINNING to heal their trauma.
When you are stuck in trauma/traumatizing situations, your brain literally is UNABLE to utilize imagination, to hope, to dream. How can anyone accomplish such a feat when they are hyper-focused on just getting their basic human needs met, or even trying to merely stay alive. It’s actually quite a simple and utterly non-complex notion.
PTSD is a physical wound. The brain is literally broken. It’s not just “poor mental health.” Only ignorant people are so blasé about the seriousness of the condition. And, from my experience anyways, the twisted fact is that it is CHOSEN ignorance. Usually because it is beneficial to them to dismiss it. But that’s another topic entirely.
The very sad truth is, oftentimes, one person is unable to hope or want simply because another person has forced their own WANTS to superimpose the other’s NEEDS. Hardly seems fair, right?
One way I have personally tried to describe the quoted paragraph above, (granted, this was prior to reading this book, so now it makes all the more sense to me), is this:
I am treading water. I’ve been treading water. For years. During storms, in the face of tidal waves, even in the short-lived periods of calm in between, I am always treading water. Trying to keep my head above the water. Trying to survive. I rarely found the time, let alone energy, to consider, “Which direction would I swim in if i was gifted with a long-enough duration of calm? Where would I even go? And what if I go in the wrong direction?” And even then, as I type this out for the first time, I recognize that my brain was still locked in survival mode, when I would try to see past the idea of endless treading. “What if I don’t go in the right direction” really meant “What if I use my last ounces of remaining stamina to head SOMEWHERE, and then I never find a shoreline? Then I’m dead anyways.”
There were never thoughts of, “when I get to shore…”
There were never thoughts like, “I can’t wait to finally reach my island destination and lay out in the sun.”
When people tell me I should start thinking about what I want to do next, now that I’ve “escaped”, my brain feels like it’s hitting a cement wall. What do you mean, what I want? I still don’t have enough money for food, I’m still waiting on disability, and even once I get it, it’s less than minimum wage, and I still have all these medical bills.”
Escaping life or death is often just a “leveling” up of sorts, and then it’s on to the next “level”, progressively getting harder, just like any video game, but also with a steady progression of growing fatigue and waning hope. And there are no magical Stamina potions here.
