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Last Tuesday I did a post about trauma. When I got to the coffee shop that morning, two of my friends from church were discussing the post, and one said it was probably his favourite I’ve ever done. Then I get home and see push back in the comments. And so it goes!
The comment pointed out that the folks who lived through The Great Depression didn’t whine about it. This is true. However, The Great Depression resulted in the highest suicide rate this country has ever seen. They didn’t talk about it because doing so was far more likely to result in scorn and separation than empathy or help. So they held their tongues. And if they couldn’t cope, they killed themselves.
My mother lived through The Great Depression. Her family did better than some, but even as a child she felt it. Her father, and his father who lived with them, were German, and you didn’t discuss your troubles. Mom bottled is all up and lived with it the rest of her life. I can see how it limited her. It held her back, caused fear, and hurt her and her family. I can easily see how my sister and I were hurt by her unresolved trauma. After my folks were both gone, I came across my father’s journals. There weren’t a lot of details, but it was clear my mother’s unresolved issues hurt him, and limited their sex life.
The subtitle of the book I’ve been suggesting is “How Past Suffering Reveals Our True Calling”. When we deal with our past, we are finally free to be who God made us, who He called us to be.
Suppressing trauma doesn’t usually end in suicide. But it always limits life. And not just the life of the one suppressing. It limits and hurts those close to that person too. If you won’t deal with your trauma for yourself, do it for your wife and kids.
Image Credit: © Karen Struthers | stock.adobe.com
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I think there’s a difference between dealing with trauma and becoming IDENTIFIED with your trauma. There are certainly ways to deal with it: my father, for example, sought out veterans of his age with whom he could work out issues while they went fishing, for example, but he was not DEFINED by the things he saw and did in World War II, or the difficulties he faced growing up in the Dust Bowl. He would speak of the positive things, like how his family was united by poverty, and how creative all the kids were with whom he grew up because they had to invent their own fun. He never FOCUSED ON THE TRAUMA; he quietly coped with it. As to your comments about the suicide rates: they peaked in 1932, which was hardly the end of the Depression. The Dust Bowl hadn’t even begun by 1932. And now we see the suicide rates climbing again, during a time when we are obsessed with trauma and mental health. We even had a special phone number to call if you want to talk about your traumas. I don’t dismiss it, I just feel that when you obsess about something, you create more of it in people around you, the same way Reader’s Digest would flood doctors’ offices with a certain disease after writing an article about it.
@Gary Giessmann – I agree. We identity it, we deal with it, and we leave it behind. Talking with others who have the same things in their past is great way to deal with it.
On the other hand, when we try to hide from it, we do become defined by it. Like my mother. Dozens of things in her life screamed “.I lived through The Great Depression, and I’m still scared”.
Are those who will ride anything to get attention? Of course there are. But denying those really hurting help because of that seems unkind and wrong to me.
Suicide rates only started to climb because of Trauma.