My main idea in this post: one reason the symptoms of trauma persist is because people become attached to their traumas. Symptoms serve as a locus of attachment in a world in which each and every attachment can vanish in a moment. It’s kind of like a small child clinging to an abusive parent.
Tom, a Vietnam veteran, went to see Bessel van der Kolk about his PTSD. Among his most disturbing symptoms were nightmares. Van der Kolk prescribed a drug that had been shown to be effective in reducing the incidence and severity of nightmares. Returning two weeks later, Tom said the medicine didn’t work because he wasn’t taking it. Why?
I realized that if I take the pills and the nightmares go away . . . I will have abandoned my friends, and their deaths will have been in vain. I need to be a living memorial to my friends who died in Vietnam. (p. 10)
Van der Kolk writes that Tom’s answer led him to realize he would probably be spending the rest of his life trying to learn the answers to the mysteries of trauma. I’m not sure van der Kolk learned the right lesson.
For van der Kolk, trauma is a disorder in the brain that is expressed in and through the body. Thus, the title of his recent book, The Body Keeps the Score. However, if we take Tom’s answer seriously, it seems as if it is the meaning of the story that is important. It is the meaning of Tom’s trauma that keeps him locked in the past.
Trauma is attachment to our traumas
If we think about Tom’s trauma in this way, then his nightmares and other traumatic symptoms keep him attached to the only place that really counts in his life. The past is the most meaningful place he knows, as it is for many traumatized soldiers who fail to distinguish their attachment to their buddies from attachment to their trauma. If this were so, it would help to explain why traumatized people get stuck in the past. Considering the alternatives, it’s where they most want to be, or at least where they most need to be.
