![]() We believe we’re lazy and unmotivated rather than stuck in the ‘freeze’ response of the red zone. We believe we’re just ‘one of those wired kind of people who doesn’t need much sleep’ rather than stuck in the hyperarousal of the ‘flight’ response. In not understanding trauma, we believe we have a random ‘anger issue’ rather than that we’re stuck in the ‘fight’ response of trauma. It certainly feels like that when the symptoms are so numerous and the hope so sparse.īut there’s a flip-side to symptom-lists too: they can help us see when our behaviours originate in trauma, rather than as a shameful character defect. Surely we’re a write-off, aren’t we? With so many defects, surely it will take forever and a day to make us roadworthy, won’t it? When they have no core organising principle – nothing to explain why – do they engender understanding and hope? Or do they instead convince us that we are too broken to repair? After all, look at how many things are wrong with us. Our minuscule hope for recovery is annihilated by the enormity of the problem.ĭo lists of symptoms actually help us to recover? I wondered. Trauma affects us in multiple ways, and delineating its ‘signs and symptoms’ like this can be utterly devastating. In short, I didn’t want to admit that I was quite as much a loser as this list implied. I didn’t want to admit to anyone that I had flashbacks, that I was constantly hyperaroused and hyper-vigilant, that I had problems sleeping, that I felt perpetually depressed or agitated, that I had ‘labile affect’ (whatever that was), that I had low self-esteem, that I had amnesia, that I had difficulties in relationships, that I had struggled to maintain a ‘sense of self’. The more items I ticked, the more it screamed: ‘Bigger loser!’ Forty items – tick, tick, tick: ‘Biggest loser in the world!’ And so shame sat like a heavy puddle of tar in my stomach. So this was me, then: a tick-box list of symptoms demonstrating how screwed up I was. ![]() More worrying was that I identified with so many of the items on it. This was an impressive, and somewhat intimidating list. Many of them were cross-referenced – meticulously, helpfully, well-meaningly – to the diagnostic criteria for PTSD in the psychiatric ‘bibles’ of mental disorders, the DSM-5 and the ICD-11. ![]() ‘Signs you’ve been traumatised’ promised the infographic. It was long, and overwhelming, and ran to more than two pages. ![]()
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