When Dan cannot find the energy to struggle further, Mavis finds it for him. “She’d say, ‘Just sing me a line from our song. Just do it for me.’ That was how I started to learn to talk again.” Mavis sees the best in her wounded husband and reassures him he is still precious to her, wounds and all. She relentlessly gives him the message that she believes that he can improve and create a new life for himself. She blocks Dan’s descent into hopelessness and depression. She gives him a reason to keep trying.
I notice that even though Dan speaks slowly and slurs some of his words, the story they tell me is very much a joint creation. We know that part of healing from trauma is being able to grasp a cataclysmic event and shape it into a coherent story, one that makes sense out of chaos and creates a vision of renewed control. When one partner puts a negative spin on incidents, the other moves in to comfort and show the larger picture.
Mavis confides, “After a few months, when lots of the medical support seemed to fade out, I felt so much pressure to cope. I became obsessed with the idea that it was going to happen again. All I could think about was Dan’s pills and avoiding all the risk factors for stroke. So we sat and went over all the things the doctors had said, and we decided that the stroke most likely happened because of his high blood pressure and his history. It runs in his family. So we picked the person in his family who lived to eighty-seven, his uncle Austin, and looked at how he lived his life. We made four changes and decided that we had the bases covered as far as preventing a relapse. We listed all the things we had already done to cope and how they had turned out. I was less anxious after that.” The main thing they had done was face down the monster together.
A secure bond helps us deal with and heal trauma by:
• Soothing our pain and giving us comfort. Physical and emotional closeness actually calms our nervous system and helps us find our balance again, physiologically and emotionally. To a wounded partner, a lover’s comfort is as desperately needed and powerful as any drug. Sometimes we do not offer compassion because we are scared and we think that our emotional response will somehow weaken our partner further. We do not understand the power of the love we have to give.
• Helping us hold on to hope. Our relationships give us a reason to keep struggling. Dan tells me quietly, “If Mavis had moved away from me, I would have just given in and given up.” It was Mavis who gave Dan a woodworking kit about a year after his stroke! The kit had started Dan on a whole new career, and Mavis was so very proud of him.
• Reassuring us that the “new” person we have become is still valued and loved. We need to be told it is not a mark of failure to be overwhelmed by difficult events.
• Helping us make sense of what has happened. By sharing our stories we can begin to find meaning and create order from chaos, and recover a sense of control.
Emotional connection is crucial to healing. In fact, trauma experts overwhelmingly agree that the best predictor of the impact of any trauma is not the severity of the event, but whether we can seek and take comfort from others.
But not all of us can handle the dragon with the finesse of Dan and Mavis. As we have seen in previous chapters, we often miss each other’s attachment cues. We don’t see the longing for emotional comfort or connection; we move into action mode, solving logistical and practical problems but leaving our lover alone and hurting. Or we fail to send out a clear call for the comfort we need. Our need, our hunger for connection, our sense of isolation when we cannot find a safe haven, our loss of emotional balance, all these are exacerbated by the emotional chaos that monstrous events instill in us. And when we cannot find love and connection, the emotional chaos deepens.
TRAUMA’S ECHOES
Sometimes our emotions and the signals we send get confused because the echoes of trauma are too loud. These reverberations can also frighten and confuse our partner. Flashbacks, extreme sensitivity and hair-trigger reactivity, irritability and anger, hopelessness and severe withdrawal are hallmarks of trauma. People who are dealing with trauma’s echoes often hold back from telling their partner what is happening. They feel that they should be able to deal with it on their own, or that their spouse would not understand. The partner then takes these symptoms personally and becomes distressed and defensive.
Zena and Will are having a fight about what exactly happened to derail their lovemaking the night before. Will is offended by Zena’s “rejection,” and Zena is silent and tearful. Finally Zena tells Will that as she lay in bed and listened to his footsteps coming up the stairs, she was suddenly back in the parking garage where she was raped. She heard again the heavy footsteps coming up behind her, and she was flooded with fear. The last thing she wanted then was to make love. As she tells Will this, his face changes from tight resentment to compassion and caring. Zena’s confession was crucial. It kept Will from taking her rejection of him as a personal affront and becoming angry, which would have confirmed her sense that she must always be on guard. Zena explains to him that her body reacts as if she is still in danger even though she knows that she is safe at home. Will is able to comfort Zena as she weeps for her lost sense of safety and control.
It is natural for our nervous system to vibrate with shock for a while after meeting the dragon. Our brain is on alert, watching out for signs of danger and flipping into high gear at the slightest uncertainty. Not only do we have flashbacks, but we feel “hyped.” We can’t sleep, and we become unpredictably and easily irritated. Unfortunately, this irritation often ends up being directed at our partner. Our partner then also becomes tense and anxious. Traumatic stress infuses the whole relationship.
Ted, who has completed three deployments in Iraq, loses it when another driver cuts him off and he has to move onto the shoulder of the road. The edges of the road are dangerous territory in Iraq. Ted chases the offending driver for miles at high speed, at one point bumping the back fender of his car. He swears and curses at his wife, Doreen, when she tells him to slow down and calm down. Much later he is able to look at what happened and to apologize, and together they talk about different ways to handle this kind of situation. The line between being anxious and exploding into anger is thin and easily crossed at the best of times. After trauma, this line becomes even thinner. Ted finds it hard to deal with Doreen’s feedback that his temper scares her. They talk it through and come up with a few phrases that Doreen can use to signal Ted that “hype and fight” is taking control and to help him calm down. They feel closer.
STAYING ISOLATED
Going it alone after trauma — shutting down all emotions in an attempt to control the emotional turmoil — is disastrous for survivors and their relationships. It drives the survivor’s partner into a spiral of panic and insecurity and weakens the couple’s bond. It also walls off the survivor from all positive healing emotions, including the joy of feeling close to a loved one. Barricading emotions is difficult, and survivors often resort to drugs or alcohol to help relieve the tumult, which only further undermines any chance for emotional connection.
Joe, a long-serving police officer who had lost his buddy in a savage shoot-out, had been on sick leave for three months. He realized how cut off he had become when his little girl had her sixth birthday party and a buddy arrived to visit. His buddy told Joe how very lucky he was to have a family who obviously loved him very much and that this must be helping him deal with the death of his friend. Joe agreed that he was lucky. But he felt absolutely nothing. Later that night, he was able to open up to his wife, Megan. He told her that he felt that it was his fault that his buddy had died. He was ashamed and afraid to feel anything. His wife’s love and validation gave Joe the most powerful antidote to such shame and fears.
Joe and Megan were able to get back together fairly quickly, but what happens when trauma survivors stay emotionally shut down? Trauma’s echoes cannot dissipate. The continuing reverberations gradually erode connection and trust with loved ones. Partners need to recognize that avoiding emotion sets their relationship up for descent
into Demon Dialogues. “Joe,” I had warned, “there is a trap here. The more stressed and out of control you feel, the more you shut down. It’s hard to heal that way. Life becomes a search for ways to stay numb and avoid the dragon. And if you cannot feel, your wife is shut out. She cannot support you. In fact, she is alone. Your relationship falters, and you see this and get even more distressed. Round and round it goes.”
The hopelessness that survivors of trauma feel often leads them into actions that drive their partners away when they need them the most. Jane and Ed are both staring out of my office window. This is their fourth session with me. In the initial phone contact, Jane told me that the problem is that she feels alone in her marriage. They are here now because in their most recent fights, Jane, usually the more engaged, demanding partner, has added a new twist to their negative dance: she has stated that the only way out of all the hurt she is feeling may be suicide. Unfortunately, this final, desperate protest creates even more distance between her and Ed. He is generally the more withdrawn partner, but now he feels threatened and confused and has retreated even further.
Jane admits that she constantly “bitches” at Ed and agrees with me that this is a protest about his continuing distancing from her. He tells me that he responds to her “irritability” by coming home from work later and later. This young couple had been happy until two years ago, when Jane had opened her door to a young man who turned out to be a brutal robber. He had viciously knifed her, and she had nearly bled to death. She had spent several months in the hospital and was left in chronic pain. Ed thinks Jane should be over it all by now. But her nightmares of the attack are only getting worse, and she is talking about killing herself.
We discuss their negative cycle and how Jane’s threats about suicide are really pleas to her husband to help her escape the terrible feelings that haunt her. I can hear the echoes of her trauma in their fights. But Ed doesn’t agree. He tells me, “Well, for sure everything has changed between us since that attack happened. But I don’t understand how that translates into us fighting all the time. Like the fight we just had. She went totally nuts on me just because I forgot to turn my cell phone on for about two hours when I was playing golf. And now these threats to hurt herself. I just can’t cope with that.” He lets out a huge sigh, and Jane begins to tear up.
Jane has been very reluctant to tell Ed about the details of her attack or that she still has frequent flashbacks. She felt blamed by him for being fooled into opening the door to her attacker. I suddenly remembered something specific about a phone in her story of that terrible day. “Wait a minute,” I said. “Jane, didn’t you tell me that during the attack when you were lying on the floor and beginning to lose consciousness, you could see a phone on the rug beside the coffee table? But you couldn’t make your body respond. You couldn’t reach for it.” She nods, so I continue. “And I remember that you said that even though you were passing out and thought that you were dying, you kept fighting to reach the phone to call Ed. And you told yourself, ‘If I can just call Ed, he will come and save me,’ isn’t that right?” Jane weeps and murmurs, “But I couldn’t get to him.” “Yes, but the phone was the only hope you had. It was your lifeline. So now when you try to call Ed and he has his cell phone turned off, I guess panic swells up. You can’t reach him again, right?” Jane cries, and Ed, with a sudden look of understanding on his face, runs his hands through his hair.
Jane and Ed then move into a new conversation about how when something reminds her of her attack, she desperately needs to connect with him. When she cannot reach him, her body literally responds as if she were back on the floor with her life ebbing away. She tells Ed, “When I realized your phone was off and I was alone, I freaked out. My heart was racing, and I couldn’t breathe.” She had tried to get Ed to understand her desperation, her sense that her life was on the line, by announcing that she might as well commit suicide. But this threat overwhelmed Ed and made it even harder for him to respond.
Once Ed and Jane are able to move into A.R.E. conversations, they create a secure base from which to deal with Jane’s trauma. Ed realizes that it does not help to downplay Jane’s hurt and fear. If he gets overwhelmed, it is better for him to say so than to simply move away. As their relationship improves, Ed becomes less depressed, and Jane’s nightmares and flashbacks dramatically diminish. But more than this, Ed has learned that he can give Jane what no one else can, the comforting knowledge that her pain is seen and understood, the reassurance that she is not alone with her terror, and the support to let her life move forward.
While trauma survivors desperately need their loved ones’ support, they often react in ways that push that help away. That can skew survivors’ love relationships for decades, even for a lifetime. But if couples can reach out and face trauma together, they can put the dragon to rest.
It’s been a long time since Vietnam, at least for those of us who didn’t have to go or wait for someone to come home. For Doug, it was just yesterday. He is still the cocky twenty-three-year-old lieutenant who led his Army Rangers into peril and managed to bring them all home safe. Well, almost all home safe. Doug is a recovering alcoholic on a disability pension, and is on his fourth marriage, which isn’t going well. He says that he is sure that his wife, Pauline, is going to leave him. And maybe he is right. Most of the time when they are together, they are locked in the Protest Polka Demon Dialogue; she complains, and he withdraws. Pauline, a little younger than Doug and never married before, says angrily that they are “simply drifting apart.” She tells Doug, “I love you, but your short fuse has me so stressed out. You are either all riled up or gone. You disappear emotionally. If I try to tell you how much I need you, you just flip out. I am out of options here.” He looks around with a wry smile and says, “See, I knew she was going to leave me. And I will be ready. You have to be ready to deal with the worst that can happen.” That may be a good motto for a soldier, but not for a lover.
Pauline and Doug discuss their Protest Polka in more detail. The steps are quicker and more extreme than in most of the couples I see. Dealing with trauma adds an extra spin to negative cycles. I begin to understand why their Protest Polka happens when Doug talks about what he learned in ’Nam. “That’s easy,” he says. “Never reveal fear and never be wrong. If you are wrong, somebody dies. And it will be your fault. These two rules saved my life. They are etched deep into my soul.” It is not hard to understand how these “rules” translate into Doug shutting down and being hypervigilant for any intimation that Pauline thinks him less than perfect.
A key breakthrough moment occurs in this couple’s raw spot conversation when they share their vulnerabilities with each other. Doug not only admits to “hiding, safe in the dark tunnel,” but tells his wife that his main fear is that she will see who he really is. Pauline in turn tells him, “I yell and demand because I can’t find you. That is scary. I love you. Scars of ’Nam and all.” “You wouldn’t love me if you knew what I did there,” he shoots back. “I brought my boys home, but no one should have to do the things we did.” He reveals that he has never told anyone about a terrible firefight and the orders he gave that haunt him and engulf him in shame. “If you knew, you would walk. No one can love anyone who did those things,” he says.
After a few more sessions, during a Hold Me Tight conversation, Doug is finally able to disclose the basic facts of his “secret shame.” He does not tell Pauline all the details. He reveals just enough to check out his worst fear. That no one can love him. Pauline responds with love and compassion. “You are a fine and loving man, you did your best and you did what you had to do. And you have paid for it every day since. And right now, I love you even more because you took a risk like this and opened up to me,” she says.
Doug has to break his own “invincibility” rule, to never show any weakness. He explains that in battle, fear paralyzes; only perfect performance guarantees safety. As he tells his wife, “If you are perfect, never make mistakes, only then will the killing stop. Onl
y then will you get home.” She weeps and tells him, “But you are never perfect enough, so you never come home. Even when I am standing here with open arms, longing for you.” Then it is his turn to weep.
Doug and Pauline’s relationship is truly transformed when Pauline tells him softly, “I need you to let me in, to come close. I love you and I need you so.” But Doug doesn’t hear the invitation; he hears an indictment. He stares at his shoes and says, “Well then, you are just too demanding.” Pauline’s face crumbles in despair, but then Doug stops himself and looks up at her. “What did you say?” he asks. “I heard you say that I wasn’t doing my job, that I was blowing it with you. If you were happy, you wouldn’t have to ask for those things. But what did you say to me?” In the next few minutes, Doug understands for the first time that it is the voice of his own fear he hears saying, “She can’t want you. You will blow it, and she will leave.” This voice drowns out Pauline’s words of love and twists them into criticism. Pauline takes him in her arms. He tells her, “I need you too. I need your reassurance. I want to be there for you too.” After forty years, Doug finally gets to come home.
THE BIGGEST OBSTACLE
With all traumas, chronic fear and anger are problematic aftereffects. But the biggest sticking point in relationship problems, in my opinion, is the feeling of shame that afflicts survivors. After trauma, we feel scarred, contaminated, or just plain bad. We feel responsible for the terrible things that happened to us and unworthy of care and attention. How can we ask for what we do not deserve? At the beginning of our sessions, my client Jane tells me, “To be honest, all this talking about the relationship is a waste of time. Who would want to be with me anyway? Since the assault, I am just a disgusting mess.” At such moments, we need our loved ones to take the edge off this poisonous feeling and reassure us. Ed tells his wife, “You are my precious one. I nearly lost you. It hurts me to hear you say that. You were wounded. There is no shame in that. And now I know how to hold you so you do not have to be so afraid.”
Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love Page 22
