HAVE YOU SEEN SOMEONE BLOWN AWAY?
Stabbed? Beaten? Hit by a car? Raped? Tortured?
by Patience Mason

If you have seen someone killed or seriously injured by violence, or know someone who was hurt or killed, it can affect you without your realizing it. The person does not have to be close to you, although losing a friend or family member is more likely to affect you. If you yourself have been sexually abused or messed with sexually by a family member or person you trusted no matter how gently, injured in an accident or deliberate act of violence or suddenly lost your family or community or lived through a natural disaster, it can also affect you. If any of these things has happened to you more than once the effects can be stronger. Most people do not know about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, so if they have any of the symptoms listed below they hide them or try to numb them with drugs and alcohol because they feel crazy. These feelings and behaviors are not crazy. They are normal reactions to experiences that would upset anyone.
Three Big Ways That Violence Affects You:

1. Numbing And Avoidance: Many people become numb as a survivor skill so they can do whatever it takes to survive. It works. After the incident is over it’s real hard for most people to get back the ability to feel. It is easier to stay numb than to feel the pain, but it can make you wonder about yourself. After you’ve seen a few friends blown away you may wonder if you are some kind of monster because you can’t feel it anymore. You may find yourself doing things that are against the values you were raised with, especially if you had to do something that went against your upbringing to survive. You may lose interest in things you once loved to do. You may also lose the ability to feel good, to feel happy, to love. Violence seems normal. Isn’t that how everyone lives? You may begin to believe that you’re going to have a short life, so you might as well do what you want. You may avoid things that might make you feel anything. You may believe no one can understand you, like you are on the outside looking in at all these dumb people who haven’t a clue. You may hate them. You may even forget what happened, evidence that you may have been through something that was too much for anyone. All of these reactions are normal, but after a time they stop working. When the pain breaks through, you may turn to drugs, alcohol, sex, or even violence to get numb again.

2. Hyperalert: In order to survive in violent places, most people get hyper, another appropriate and effective survivor skill. You may have nerves, learn to sleep lightly, watch for danger everywhere all the time. Maybe you can tell when something bad is about to happen. You can read other peoples’ moods and faces. While you are doing this, your school-work may go downhill because you cannot concentrate on school-work and remain hyperalert. You may also suddenly go from fine to a killing rage in about half a second, which can scare you and your family and friends. You may also get a physical reaction, an adrenaline rush or the shakes and nausea, for example, when you walk down a street or go into a house that looks like the one in which the violence happened. All this is normal.

3. Reexperiencing: Finally you may not be able to stop thinking about the violent event, dreaming about it, feeling like it is happening again (flashbacks), or hurting yourself or others the way you have been hurt (re-enacting). When a similar incident is on the news it brings up a lot of feelings. The anniversary of someone’s death may really bother you. "Why aren’t I over this?" you may think. Or you may find yourself getting into the same kind of dangerous situation, time after time, as if you were trying to make it come out right for once. These are also appropriate and effective reactions to your experiences. They are messages from yourself telling you that you need help in dealing with what you have been through. "Respect yourself and your experiences," is the message. "Don’t discount what you have been through."

Why Do I Feel Like This?
Because you are a human being. If the violence around you is giving you nerves, that’s ok. It is normal to have nerves. Your nerves are supposed to tell you when this violence is too much. Feeling so numb you feel like you are already dead is normal too. Sometimes people alternate feeling all nerves and totally dead. That’s normal too. Each person reacts differently to things. You have a right to feel however you feel. It is normal to be affected by violence. You are having a Post-Traumatic Stress Reaction. If you have enough of the symptoms discussed above, you may have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Can You Get Help?
The most important help you can get yourself is to talk about the incident with a qualified professional or someone you trust, someone who will listen and not tell you to get over it or forget it. If you bottle up the pain, you’ll keep it with you forever, and it will affect you.
Reactions that were effective right after the trauma can become your biggest problems later on. You can’t heal what you don’t feel, so talking about it will hurt. Talking about it is a sign that you respect yourself enough to get help. It doesn’t matter if others have been through more. You don’t have to be Rambo. You have to be you. If it affected you, it affected you

Can You Help Yourself?
What if you don’t feel safe asking for help? Can you work it out by yourself? The shrinks all say it is better if you can find someone to share it with, but if you can’t the important things to think about are what you saw, what actually happened, what you wanted to have happen, how you felt. It is really important to feel the pain. Writing and drawing can also help ease the pain whether you write in a journal or write out your pain and burn the paper. Use your feelings to write a poem, a rap, or a song. Making a drawing or a collage can help too.
Finally: Once you have gotten over some of the pain, helping other survivors of crime and violence talk openly and with feeling about their experience— if you can— can help them and help you give meaning to what happened to you. This too will bring up pain, but it may help you heal. Turning a terrible experience into something which can help others can sometimes keep us going when nothing else can.. Take it easy and realize it takes time to get over stuff like this. It will probably always bother you a bit. Accepting that as normal can help you deal with it whenever it comes up.

©1992 by Patience H. C. Mason. All rights reserved, except that permission is hereby granted to freely reproduce and distribute this document, provided the text is reproduced unaltered and entire (including this notice) and is distributed free of charge.

The Post-Traumatic Gazette, P. O. Box 2757, High Springs, FL 32655).Visit any time at www.patiencepress.com

ISBN 1-892220-00-8 .25