Every few months I try to reread or relisten to The Body Keeps the
Score. I always feel like there is something that stands out to me that
explains how I act or feel every time I go through it. I was described
as a vividly imaginative child, though I...
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Every few months I try to reread or relisten to The Body Keeps the
Score. I always feel like there is something that stands out to me that
explains how I act or feel every time I go through it. I was described
as a vividly imaginative child, though I know creative is not an unusual
descriptor for children. I spent every bit of my time, including time
that was meant to be given to other things like classes, writing. I
still have a shelf of those books that I kept from my childhood,
including a broken leather file holder that I was 'gifted' by a teacher
in the 3rd grade, which contained most of my loose writings up until the
end of primary school. Something changed however. As time went on, I
could see in my writing when certain traumatic events took place. Their
imagination slowed, and became reflective, analogical, or metaphorical
for the events I experienced. This became even more apparent as I
entered my teenage years where my abuse worsened and traumas stacked on.
This is going somewhere I promise. In the book I mentioned, the author
relates an encounter where he asks traumatized veterans to engage in an
imaginative exercise. Most of them lead the exercise in a direction of
their trauma. However, there was a smaller population (the author deemed
to be more deeply traumatized) that refused or could not to engage with
the stimuli, stating that it was meaningless or that they could not
think of anything. The author concluded from this that trauma impacted
imagination, first restricting it in regards to trauma, then finally
smothering it completely. I related deeply to both these described
groups. I cannot be creative, and if I can it is extraordinarily limited
and shaped only by my trauma. I was wondering if anyone else had similar
experiences.
PTSD for Medical and First Responders
