No, Actually Not Everyone Thinks That Way

Lately I've been doing quite a bit of reading on Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I'd been looking into trauma and the treatment thereof earlier because of my own therapy and because of slowly being able to recognize how much trauma had impacted my life. Then in April I was at a training for spiritual directors on trauma, and I think it was there the differentiation was made between trauma (often characterized by a specific event, such as a car crash or witnessing a violent event) and complex trauma (often involving ongoing, inescapable circumstances, such as in child abuse or neglect). 

One of the characteristics trauma survivors share is often feeling distinctly different from everyone else. Or, as I once put it to a former spiritual director, feeling like a red marble in a sea of yellow marbles. As if somehow, what comes through the osmotic social mindhive about normal experiences and thought processes just doesn't quite jive for me. 

Those who listen to homilies, especially daily Mass goers who listen to more than the average number of them, tend to hear a lot of these assumptions of normal experiences. And they used to make me wince a bit. They appear in the form of "we all tend to..." or "everybody" does xyz. No, actually not everyone thinks that way, Fr. Assumpto. 

I love the Carmelite devotion book Divine Intimacy, especially the newer revision that fits with the modern calendar. But the other day, I caught it making one of these assumptions, and it crystalized my thoughts on all of this on the spot. Here was the quote, from a meditation entitled Conquer Evil With Good:

You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth', but I say to you: Do not resist one who is evil. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also, and if anyone would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well" (Mt. 5:38-40). Faced with an insult or an act of violence, we are always ready to react and not only defend ourselves, but take revenge as well....

and then it goes on to say we need to respond not with evil, but with good.

Now, here's the thing, There is a danger here for those who were formed by trauma and are trying to live a Christian life. Not everyone who is faced with an insult or act of violence rises up with a sense of defense of the self. Some have never experienced anyone defending them. Some do not even have a sense of a self that is to be defended. Some who are faced with insult instictively absorb it, and believe or rationalize that they must have done something to deserve it, since no one insults another without good reason. Same with an act of violence. For some, the other way to be present to an act of violence is to appease or absorb or shut down to disconnect from an experience they have no way of stopping. These are trauma responses and they are very real. 

But a Christian who does these things may convince herself that this is obeying the Scriptural injunction to respond with good and not evil. Because obviously what is being condemned here is being a hothead and striking back. Insulting back. Yelling the other person down. And the trauma survivor may pride herself on not being like such people. Look at how meek I am. I am just like Jesus. Reviled, yet opened not His mouth....

Yeah, no. Appeasing and asorbing and shutting down and not having a sense of self and a sacred, dignified identity with worth is not acting like Jesus. It is not holy and it is not good. It is another evil response, just like angrily hitting back and hurting back twice as hard. Except instead of hurting the other it is re-insulting and re-violating the self. 

It is appropriate for the one tempted to slap back hard to pause, remember their sacred, dignified identity and, rooted in Christ's love, respond from it, with good -- and speak kindly. That is hard because it overcomes a certain animalistic gleeful tendency that a catfight lets loose in us. But in the same way it is also appropriate for the one tempted to suck insult up out of shame to pause, remember their sacred, dignified identity and, rooted in Christ's love, respond from it, with good -- and speak directly. I think of the story of Desmond Tutu walking on a sidewalk and being shouted at by a hostile passerby that he "doesn't share a path with gorillas." "But I do," said the archbishop, as he stepped aside for the man to pass. He was neither hostile in return nor collapsing into agreement with the aggressor. 

It takes humility to realize that not everyone shares my experience of life or yours, just as it is a blessing to find someone who can understand and empathize with other people well. May we all be those people, and not live in presumption.