Fire -A Trauma
For over three years Dan had wrestled the two-story brick schoolhouse into a home for his young family. Finally there were bathrooms, bedrooms, a kitchen and a large open area with old chalk boards on the walls. Then suddenly it was gone, destroyed by fire three weeks before Christmas.
Dan got the call and drove home just as the roof collapsed, blowing flames out through the gaping windows. The police radio scratched through the dark rainy sky with the flashing red trucks lighting the yellow helmeted fire fighters as they hustled in and out of the charred bare brick walls.
For a while he could not stand. A large hole had been punched in his life, and he sat in the car trying to grasp what was happening. It was something more than losing his home and belongings. Perhaps it was seeing how delicate life actually was. At least his family was safe.
Three hours later he was at work scheduling and directing as usual. He was grateful to be distracted even though he needed to find a new home quickly. He tried to swallow the loss and carry on.
By the next day Dan had moved his family into an old apartment building he was rehabilitating. Over the next few months three patterns surfaced in his behavior:
1) He hated to leave the apartment building.
2) He could not let his family out of his sight.
3) He became irritable and short-tempered with everyone.
These are predictable trauma symptoms, but was this fire traumatic for Dan? The fire itself was merely destructive. It was Dan’s response to the fire that holds the trauma.
We often process painful experiences and count on our brains to integrate these shocks without disrupting the momentum of the sensory and environmental flow we absorb every second. Trauma occurs when this flow is ruptured and the integration is interrupted.
“Trauma is an embodied experience touching all the neural pathways in our bodies, our muscles, the brains in our bellies and our hearts, our autonomic nervous systems, our brainstems, our primary emotional-motivational systems, and our limbic regions and neocortex.” (Badenoch). The layers are intricate and delicately balanced so when there is a rupture as in a trauma, the relationships all shift and behavior changes.
What changes did Dan experience? The first and second items on the list above indicate his
sense of safety had shrunk as he grew overly protective of his building and his family. The reality of losing his home exposed a sense of vulnerability he had never expected. The world had suddenly become more delicate and threatening. The ”irritable , short-tempered” behavior cited in item 3 is not a surprise when tolerance and trust have been undermined by the awakened sense of danger. Patience also fades as the threats increase.
Other trauma symptoms included intrusive flashbacks taking Dan into the burning rooms. These faded after a few months but he would feel a chilling reserve in the early weeks of every December for many years.
He eventually felt shame for losing his home and tried to take responsibility for the destruction, but the fire was caused by an unknown arsonist, not Dan. He was distorting what happened in a futile effort to control the loss.
The smell and sight of a burning building reduced him to tears for many years.
Dan tried avoidance by losing himself in his work and family obligations. He was effective in meeting his responsibilities but was unaware of the impact his irritability and vulnerability had on his family and employees. He felt he must move on and not dwell on what was lost, and he had no idea how to ask for help.
Decades later Dan was finally treated for trauma and one of his discoveries was a tight, hot point of pain in his left breast where he had held the fire for too long. Those muscles had tightened when he drove up to the fire, and he held that trauma there until it was released with several months of somatic therapy. He was relieved, had no shame, and was no longer irritable.
Trauma ruptures our response to the world, but healing can bring back the balance.