You are not alone (trigger warning - sexual abuse)
November 1, 2014 8:00 AM Subscribe
[Trigger warning] 10 Things No One Ever Told You About Life After Sexual Abuse by Dr Nina Burrowes (Buzzfeed). Illustrations by Nina Burrowes, Katie Green, and Jade Sarson.
however I think we're finding more and more that trauma can effect us in such a deep way that our biology itself can be impacted permanently and even into the next few generations beyond us
Is there research on this?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:20 AM on November 1, 2014 [3 favorites]
Is there research on this?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:20 AM on November 1, 2014 [3 favorites]
The entire book is linked at the end, and it's worth reading, too.
I liked everything about this except the reassuring but not necessarily evidence based assurance that everyone who seeks treatments and works to heal gets completely better.
Where are you seeing that? I see that she talks about how everyone can rebuild their lives after being assaulted, but I don't see any assurances that everyone gets "completely better." And I think it's worth differentiating between "better" and "exactly the same as before," too. Survivors can get better, but are unlikely to be exactly the same as before. (Which is not always a bad thing.)
posted by jaguar at 9:22 AM on November 1, 2014 [5 favorites]
I liked everything about this except the reassuring but not necessarily evidence based assurance that everyone who seeks treatments and works to heal gets completely better.
Where are you seeing that? I see that she talks about how everyone can rebuild their lives after being assaulted, but I don't see any assurances that everyone gets "completely better." And I think it's worth differentiating between "better" and "exactly the same as before," too. Survivors can get better, but are unlikely to be exactly the same as before. (Which is not always a bad thing.)
posted by jaguar at 9:22 AM on November 1, 2014 [5 favorites]
Yeah, there's no assertion that everyone gets completely better. The exact quote is: "Rebuilding a life after sexual abuse isn't easy or quick. But with hard work it can be done."
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:24 AM on November 1, 2014 [3 favorites]
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:24 AM on November 1, 2014 [3 favorites]
Study finds that fear can travel quickly through generations of mice DNA
posted by jaguar at 9:24 AM on November 1, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by jaguar at 9:24 AM on November 1, 2014 [2 favorites]
I don't think saying it's possible to "rebuild your life" is the same thing as saying you'll be "completely better" and "the same as before" and no longer be impacted or or permanently affected in some way. Perhaps it's not my place to speculate--since my own trauma experience is not as a survivor of sexual abuse but as a survivor of (my son's) suicide--but I think I can say simultaneously that I am rebuilding my life as a survivor and that I will always carry a wound that doesn't heal and will never "get over it."
posted by drlith at 9:26 AM on November 1, 2014 [6 favorites]
posted by drlith at 9:26 AM on November 1, 2014 [6 favorites]
"But with hard work it can be done."
I just know people who never succeeded at that rebuilding. I do not think it's their fault or a lack of trying on their part. Watching survivors who are homeless and not ever going to get better makes that whole "you can achieve anything you try at!" slogans sound kind of jerky and dismissive of all those I know need lifelong support and less well intentioned slogans.
So I guess it just depends on what is meant by "rebuild your life" which is a pretty flexible term. I think it's possible for what I'm saying and what the author intends to both be compatible, I just felt the phrasing left some room for interpenetration that all too often results in poor quality services and treatment of survivors who need lifelong care in terms of housing, financial support, and assisted living services.
posted by xarnop at 9:29 AM on November 1, 2014 [6 favorites]
I just know people who never succeeded at that rebuilding. I do not think it's their fault or a lack of trying on their part. Watching survivors who are homeless and not ever going to get better makes that whole "you can achieve anything you try at!" slogans sound kind of jerky and dismissive of all those I know need lifelong support and less well intentioned slogans.
So I guess it just depends on what is meant by "rebuild your life" which is a pretty flexible term. I think it's possible for what I'm saying and what the author intends to both be compatible, I just felt the phrasing left some room for interpenetration that all too often results in poor quality services and treatment of survivors who need lifelong care in terms of housing, financial support, and assisted living services.
posted by xarnop at 9:29 AM on November 1, 2014 [6 favorites]
My bad for mistyping, it's "hard work and support."
The author is saying that support is required.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:30 AM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]
The author is saying that support is required.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:30 AM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]
Right but often well intentioned support programs operate on the presumption that after a few years people are supposed to be better and cut off of services and this is not the case. Again I think over-confidence in treatment of survivors leads to real problems for survivors and it's a fair concern for me to hear that in the phrase "everyone can rebuild their life" but that doesn't mean that the author herself intended the phrase "rebuild your life" to mean live without need of ongoing support or still have lifelong effects. I just thought since the piece was intended to educate, I wanted to add on what I have seen even of people who regularly go to therapy and still struggle and need ongoing services throughout their lives. I'm just saying that is also a real thing, that people should know about, and services and social treatment should account for. If anyone wants any further discussion with me personally I'll respond by memail, so people can meander into whatever they want to chat about here.
posted by xarnop at 9:38 AM on November 1, 2014 [7 favorites]
posted by xarnop at 9:38 AM on November 1, 2014 [7 favorites]
Xarnop your comments are interesting and add to my understanding of sexual abuse and coping with it.
My takeaway (from my limited perspective) is that, as a professional psychologist, part of your role is to emphasize to patients, "Yes, there is a light at the end of the tunnel - other people have done it, and you can, too." I think that's a simplification but in their professional capacity it is completely in-line with the values of psychology as an occupation to take an *optimistic*, encouraging, and nurturing stance.
I get what you're saying, I just think in a cartoon format, you're going to lose some complexity. It's basically an endeavor to send out a hopeful message. I hope you got that. Again - thanks for your comments, they're interesting!
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 10:03 AM on November 1, 2014 [2 favorites]
My takeaway (from my limited perspective) is that, as a professional psychologist, part of your role is to emphasize to patients, "Yes, there is a light at the end of the tunnel - other people have done it, and you can, too." I think that's a simplification but in their professional capacity it is completely in-line with the values of psychology as an occupation to take an *optimistic*, encouraging, and nurturing stance.
I get what you're saying, I just think in a cartoon format, you're going to lose some complexity. It's basically an endeavor to send out a hopeful message. I hope you got that. Again - thanks for your comments, they're interesting!
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 10:03 AM on November 1, 2014 [2 favorites]
I'm not a professional psychologist, I hope that's clear. I meant, "an outsider looking in at the occupation of psychology and therapy, this is my understanding".
BTW any MeFite therapists/psychiatrists/psychologists out there - it would be great to hear what you think of this link. Do you think cartoons are a good format for outreach?
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 10:07 AM on November 1, 2014
BTW any MeFite therapists/psychiatrists/psychologists out there - it would be great to hear what you think of this link. Do you think cartoons are a good format for outreach?
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 10:07 AM on November 1, 2014
I am a therapist who specializes in treating survivors of sexual assault and abuse, and I did send a link to the longer book to all my co-workers, because I think it's extremely well done.
And my job is certainly to be optimistic, but it's based in reality. Working with clients dealing with these issues is so rewarding because it's a time when everything feels like it's fallen apart, and so it opens up the possibility of rebuilding one's self and one's life in an intentional, thoughtful way. My analogy for trauma (which very likely is not original, but I forget where I picked it up) is that it's like someone hit you on the head with a hammer and you've shattered into millions of pieces, which certainly feels overwhelming; my job as a therapist is to help you look at all those pieces on the floor and decide which ones you want to use as part of you going forward and which ones you want to discard -- maybe you hold on to your sense of humor and your awesome job, maybe you discard your family's secret-keeping and your unwillingness to be gentle with yourself.
Granted, I usually work with survivors who are seeking help many years later. Therapy immediately after an assault or other trauma is a bit different. I really like the bit in the linked piece about "Your behaviour makes sense," because I think it starts to address the progressive, cyclical nature of healing. There's generally a superficial healing that can happen pretty quickly after the assault, where survivors get to a place where they've dealt with the major crises and just want everything to go back to normal, and then over time some of the bits and pieces that weren't addressed at the time (because no one can address all the bits and pieces all at once) start leaking back into consciousness, and that's when some of the deeper work can happen.
People generally can't heal from trauma while they're still being traumatized or experiencing unsafe external circumstances (homelessness, other abuse, food insecurity, etc.), so xarnop's point that such situations will make healing difficult if not impossible are certainly true. In some cases where I've worked with survivors who are homeless or in abusive relationships or well below the poverty line, the trauma therapy really needs to be about solving those issues first.
posted by jaguar at 10:24 AM on November 1, 2014 [24 favorites]
And my job is certainly to be optimistic, but it's based in reality. Working with clients dealing with these issues is so rewarding because it's a time when everything feels like it's fallen apart, and so it opens up the possibility of rebuilding one's self and one's life in an intentional, thoughtful way. My analogy for trauma (which very likely is not original, but I forget where I picked it up) is that it's like someone hit you on the head with a hammer and you've shattered into millions of pieces, which certainly feels overwhelming; my job as a therapist is to help you look at all those pieces on the floor and decide which ones you want to use as part of you going forward and which ones you want to discard -- maybe you hold on to your sense of humor and your awesome job, maybe you discard your family's secret-keeping and your unwillingness to be gentle with yourself.
Granted, I usually work with survivors who are seeking help many years later. Therapy immediately after an assault or other trauma is a bit different. I really like the bit in the linked piece about "Your behaviour makes sense," because I think it starts to address the progressive, cyclical nature of healing. There's generally a superficial healing that can happen pretty quickly after the assault, where survivors get to a place where they've dealt with the major crises and just want everything to go back to normal, and then over time some of the bits and pieces that weren't addressed at the time (because no one can address all the bits and pieces all at once) start leaking back into consciousness, and that's when some of the deeper work can happen.
People generally can't heal from trauma while they're still being traumatized or experiencing unsafe external circumstances (homelessness, other abuse, food insecurity, etc.), so xarnop's point that such situations will make healing difficult if not impossible are certainly true. In some cases where I've worked with survivors who are homeless or in abusive relationships or well below the poverty line, the trauma therapy really needs to be about solving those issues first.
posted by jaguar at 10:24 AM on November 1, 2014 [24 favorites]
One has to have hope that things can get better in order for them to get better. What I read was about giving that hope.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 10:47 AM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 10:47 AM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]
#4 was a real eye-opener for me. I hadn't even considered that before.
posted by SpacemanStix at 10:54 AM on November 1, 2014 [3 favorites]
posted by SpacemanStix at 10:54 AM on November 1, 2014 [3 favorites]
Wouldn't it be nice to frame these, and use them to decorate a police station?
posted by Dashy at 11:50 AM on November 1, 2014 [8 favorites]
posted by Dashy at 11:50 AM on November 1, 2014 [8 favorites]
This is really interesting and the comic format takes a very serious issue and makes it engaging to read. I think some people will respond to the information it presents more readily than if it had been bullet points in a pamphlet.
Off topic, I am impressed by the changes I've noticed in Buzzfeed lately. It is never a destination site for me, but it seems like more and more interesting links are coming from them. And they hired Anne Helen Peterson, who really classes up the joint.
posted by danabanana at 12:19 PM on November 1, 2014 [3 favorites]
Off topic, I am impressed by the changes I've noticed in Buzzfeed lately. It is never a destination site for me, but it seems like more and more interesting links are coming from them. And they hired Anne Helen Peterson, who really classes up the joint.
posted by danabanana at 12:19 PM on November 1, 2014 [3 favorites]
One of the issues with how we have treated abuse in the past is an assumption both that the effects are solely psychological, and the assumption that everyone will do the same things and be treated by the same things.
The latter is what she's addressing, very cogently, in the cartoon. She may very well get to the former in the longer book. Both are intrinsic to Western Culture (as near as I can tell, standard disclaimers apply).
The "one size fits all" model is part of why expansion of production almost always means standardization of options and sizes; it also drives a lot of public reaction to various notable events and I think it factor's into the "go after the different colored monkey" response we see on MetaFilter, as well as other places. I honestly don't know how intrinsic it is; it's nearly impossible to differentiate between nature and nurture in a meaningful way. Most people point toward studies of primates going after individual primates who are different, but extended studies with bonobos (for example) shows that primates can also have a bias toward seeking out novelty, and often the studies of primates going after other primates include punishments for all for whatever the target primate did within the study, which tilts the bias toward exclusion.
The solely psychological gets into longterm biases and beliefs that the mind/brain and the body are separate (thanks Descartes). A lot of the movement in this area is around PTSD, which is turning out to be a lot more complicated and physiological than expected, and memory studies, where memories are a lot more re-writable than expected. This is an area of study openly and extensively in flux, and I really wish more research money could flow that way because I feel like it's critical to understanding a lot of cultural movement that we have difficulty understanding at the moment, like in group/out group dynamics and the like.
My takeaway (from my limited perspective) is that, as a professional psychologist, part of your role is to emphasize to patients, "Yes, there is a light at the end of the tunnel - other people have done it, and you can, too."
As a therapist who sometimes deals with people who have unresolved trauma, all I can say is "it depends." By and large, my job is to help a client explore where she is right now and what she sees right now, and where appropriate drop seeds or gesture vaguely in directions I think she'll find helpful. Sometimes that includes spending time in "it all seems dark here, and nothing is getting better" because that is where she is and it's a valid perspective (with the usual practices, like making a safety contract). The shift is that she is experiencing this and I'm there with her, which changes the experience in ways which might be difficult to verbalize (or even spot in the moment; I'm learning to trust this more as I practice).
Trauma, especially delayed trauma, works a lot more organically in my experience. I would say grief is a similar process and has a similar feel - where often you're not travelling in a straight line, but rather travelling in a (sometimes lumpy) spiral as you move away from trauma and into rebuilding yourself, your relationships, and your life. Emphasizing a "cure" or a "light" can actually sideline this process or trigger a client to feel as if she isn't doing enough or is somehow bad for not feeling/seeing those things, and so it's not always the right thing to do.
posted by Deoridhe at 1:15 PM on November 1, 2014 [6 favorites]
The latter is what she's addressing, very cogently, in the cartoon. She may very well get to the former in the longer book. Both are intrinsic to Western Culture (as near as I can tell, standard disclaimers apply).
The "one size fits all" model is part of why expansion of production almost always means standardization of options and sizes; it also drives a lot of public reaction to various notable events and I think it factor's into the "go after the different colored monkey" response we see on MetaFilter, as well as other places. I honestly don't know how intrinsic it is; it's nearly impossible to differentiate between nature and nurture in a meaningful way. Most people point toward studies of primates going after individual primates who are different, but extended studies with bonobos (for example) shows that primates can also have a bias toward seeking out novelty, and often the studies of primates going after other primates include punishments for all for whatever the target primate did within the study, which tilts the bias toward exclusion.
The solely psychological gets into longterm biases and beliefs that the mind/brain and the body are separate (thanks Descartes). A lot of the movement in this area is around PTSD, which is turning out to be a lot more complicated and physiological than expected, and memory studies, where memories are a lot more re-writable than expected. This is an area of study openly and extensively in flux, and I really wish more research money could flow that way because I feel like it's critical to understanding a lot of cultural movement that we have difficulty understanding at the moment, like in group/out group dynamics and the like.
My takeaway (from my limited perspective) is that, as a professional psychologist, part of your role is to emphasize to patients, "Yes, there is a light at the end of the tunnel - other people have done it, and you can, too."
As a therapist who sometimes deals with people who have unresolved trauma, all I can say is "it depends." By and large, my job is to help a client explore where she is right now and what she sees right now, and where appropriate drop seeds or gesture vaguely in directions I think she'll find helpful. Sometimes that includes spending time in "it all seems dark here, and nothing is getting better" because that is where she is and it's a valid perspective (with the usual practices, like making a safety contract). The shift is that she is experiencing this and I'm there with her, which changes the experience in ways which might be difficult to verbalize (or even spot in the moment; I'm learning to trust this more as I practice).
Trauma, especially delayed trauma, works a lot more organically in my experience. I would say grief is a similar process and has a similar feel - where often you're not travelling in a straight line, but rather travelling in a (sometimes lumpy) spiral as you move away from trauma and into rebuilding yourself, your relationships, and your life. Emphasizing a "cure" or a "light" can actually sideline this process or trigger a client to feel as if she isn't doing enough or is somehow bad for not feeling/seeing those things, and so it's not always the right thing to do.
posted by Deoridhe at 1:15 PM on November 1, 2014 [6 favorites]
10 You can be a role model.
I'm so sick of hearing that, about how it's my job to be brave and tell the whole goddamn world about what terrible things lurk out there in the shadows, like because I was the victim of some monster I must go around like the goddamn Ancient Mariner, riming my Rime.
As for "it CAN be done," that again just feels so ... invalidating. Like, if you haven't rebuilt your life already it's because you had the wrong therapist or you didn't try hard enough or you smoked too many cocaine pills or you didn't have enough/the right family all around you or you didn't have babies like your elders told you to, because that would make the pain of the trauma less severe. Like if you are a person who has survived abuse and you as a result are not whole even though you've been in therapy for the better part of twenty years, that makes you somehow bad and wrong. And that, by the way, leads to feeling guilty, in the a smaller re-creation of the same exact bad logic cycle that in abuse itself leads to feeling guilty: "I was abused. Something about me must have been bad. If I change that bad thing maybe I won't be abused again." Survivors have faulty wiring that way, like an alarm that is constantly always all the time telling us we are Doing It Wrong.
Sometimes it doesn't get better. For some people, like me for instance, it just doesn't get all that much better, or it gets better and then it gets worse again. I wish someone would have told me that. I wish someone would have told me that there is no Doing It Wrong.
Also, lately I've been writing about this topic publicly like with my Real Name for the first time. I won't self-link here, but I'll list the site in my profile.
posted by brina at 3:29 PM on November 1, 2014 [13 favorites]
I'm so sick of hearing that, about how it's my job to be brave and tell the whole goddamn world about what terrible things lurk out there in the shadows, like because I was the victim of some monster I must go around like the goddamn Ancient Mariner, riming my Rime.
As for "it CAN be done," that again just feels so ... invalidating. Like, if you haven't rebuilt your life already it's because you had the wrong therapist or you didn't try hard enough or you smoked too many cocaine pills or you didn't have enough/the right family all around you or you didn't have babies like your elders told you to, because that would make the pain of the trauma less severe. Like if you are a person who has survived abuse and you as a result are not whole even though you've been in therapy for the better part of twenty years, that makes you somehow bad and wrong. And that, by the way, leads to feeling guilty, in the a smaller re-creation of the same exact bad logic cycle that in abuse itself leads to feeling guilty: "I was abused. Something about me must have been bad. If I change that bad thing maybe I won't be abused again." Survivors have faulty wiring that way, like an alarm that is constantly always all the time telling us we are Doing It Wrong.
Sometimes it doesn't get better. For some people, like me for instance, it just doesn't get all that much better, or it gets better and then it gets worse again. I wish someone would have told me that. I wish someone would have told me that there is no Doing It Wrong.
Also, lately I've been writing about this topic publicly like with my Real Name for the first time. I won't self-link here, but I'll list the site in my profile.
posted by brina at 3:29 PM on November 1, 2014 [13 favorites]
Number 1: Everybody's reaction is different.
All the rest and especially number 9: You will definitely be horribly and unavoidably broken if you happen to experience whatever I define as abuse. You are probably fixable if you come to accept the absolute truth of my definition, and engage the forms of support I am comfortable with.
posted by Hizonner at 3:30 PM on November 1, 2014
All the rest and especially number 9: You will definitely be horribly and unavoidably broken if you happen to experience whatever I define as abuse. You are probably fixable if you come to accept the absolute truth of my definition, and engage the forms of support I am comfortable with.
posted by Hizonner at 3:30 PM on November 1, 2014
I can understand how 'it can be done' feels invalidating but I find it much less threatening than 'some people never recover' which just feels hopeless. Maybe using the word 'recover' isn't really helpful, it's more about feeling better, not about being the same person as you were.
10 You can be a role model for courage
I don't really want to 'teach people about having courage to be themselves' though. I just want to get on with actually, you know, being myself.
That said I do think it's a big problem with society that abuse in general isn't spoken about and is treated like some dirty secret. If there was more awareness of what abuse was and how to prevent and support people through it there might be less stigma attached to being a victim / survivor of it.
posted by Laura_J at 4:31 PM on November 1, 2014 [4 favorites]
10 You can be a role model for courage
I don't really want to 'teach people about having courage to be themselves' though. I just want to get on with actually, you know, being myself.
That said I do think it's a big problem with society that abuse in general isn't spoken about and is treated like some dirty secret. If there was more awareness of what abuse was and how to prevent and support people through it there might be less stigma attached to being a victim / survivor of it.
posted by Laura_J at 4:31 PM on November 1, 2014 [4 favorites]
I didn't appreciate the listicle format, but linking through to the longer "book" was rewarding and I think goes deeper into some of the issues I see people taking with this piece. As an abuse survivor I've read tens (hundreds?) of books and articles, and I don't particularly enjoy webcomics, so I didn't expect to see anything useful or interesting here, but the full length piece made me weep in recognition several times. Maybe it's just that I feel like my journey is reflected in this piece. I don't think my years (decades) of struggling with my assault means that I was a failure, and I wouldn't say I'm all better now. It's a process.
posted by lilnublet at 4:32 PM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by lilnublet at 4:32 PM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]
Let me preface this by saying that this was fine, and useful, even in its simplified form.
But -- I, too had a quick sense of rejection at both the idea of being a role model for courage and at the rebuilding notion. After a moment, I figured out what she chose rebuilding not in the sense of rebuilding a duplicate of what was there before (as you might do with a house or a model or a paper), but in picking up the pieces from a ground zero and moving forward and upward. It's a word that can have a lot of silent implication in it that I don't think she intended.
I still don't want to be a role model or a poster child, in part because I don't want to be defined by this experience(s). It may have affected me deeply, and it may (have) shaped and shaded so many things in my life, but I am so many things outside of it. I would rather be known/admired/respected for those other accomplishments. I don't want what happened to me to be the centerpiece of how people look at me, to become that thing about me. I spent too long putting the shattered pieces together, and then taking them apart and putting them back together again, too long trying to get past it, too long (and still) playing whack-a-mole with the spectres and side-effects of that experience -- too much to wrap it all up with a neat little bow and a uplifting, perhaps slightly mythologized narrative.
posted by julen at 8:45 PM on November 1, 2014 [4 favorites]
But -- I, too had a quick sense of rejection at both the idea of being a role model for courage and at the rebuilding notion. After a moment, I figured out what she chose rebuilding not in the sense of rebuilding a duplicate of what was there before (as you might do with a house or a model or a paper), but in picking up the pieces from a ground zero and moving forward and upward. It's a word that can have a lot of silent implication in it that I don't think she intended.
I still don't want to be a role model or a poster child, in part because I don't want to be defined by this experience(s). It may have affected me deeply, and it may (have) shaped and shaded so many things in my life, but I am so many things outside of it. I would rather be known/admired/respected for those other accomplishments. I don't want what happened to me to be the centerpiece of how people look at me, to become that thing about me. I spent too long putting the shattered pieces together, and then taking them apart and putting them back together again, too long trying to get past it, too long (and still) playing whack-a-mole with the spectres and side-effects of that experience -- too much to wrap it all up with a neat little bow and a uplifting, perhaps slightly mythologized narrative.
posted by julen at 8:45 PM on November 1, 2014 [4 favorites]
Right now I'm in the throws of some pretty hellish flashbacks and untangling very specific aspects of my abuse. The simple illustrated message is about all my brain can take in right now.
So I'm going to say effective.
posted by AlexiaSky at 9:10 PM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]
So I'm going to say effective.
posted by AlexiaSky at 9:10 PM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]
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It sounds nice and I know therapists and well intentioned friends and family want that to be so, however I think we're finding more and more that trauma can effect us in such a deep way that our biology itself can be impacted permanently and even into the next few generations beyond us.
The idea that everyone who seeks treatment and works hard enough gets better is a just world hypothesis that leads to practitioners and friends and family blaming survivors for continuing to be impacted by abuse and assault even after therapy or treatment. Or continuing to pressure survivors to recover in a way they simply aren't able at that time, instead of simply providing resources that address the lack of functioning and allow them to slowly build what skills they are able without being shamed for the ones they are currently not able to.
I think it's like saying that every one who gets in a car crash will recover, when no doctor would ever make such a statement. Many if not most car crashes result in injuries such as mild shock, scratches or even broken bones that are easily healed back to a state of good as new within days/months/a few years. But some injuries will result in permanent damage that no amount of physical therapy or treatment will repair. It really just depends. The fact that a small subset of survivors may be permanently injured does not take away from the fact that many or even most can recover and rebuild their lives- but denying they exist results in a lack of understanding and lack of ongoing services for people who may need lifelong understanding and care as a result of their injuries; struggling with employment, daily life management, emotional regulation, and other tasks in life.
I think the message doesn't have to compete with the idea of ongoing support for people who will not ever rebuild their health to the same as before, but I just wanted to throw that out there- as counter to how without further details it sounds very just world and not entirely accurate, from what I know personally of many many people who live with the ongoing effects of trauma even with therapy or mental health care.
Anyways-- otherwise it's really well done and I liked it, not trying to knock it!
posted by xarnop at 9:00 AM on November 1, 2014 [20 favorites]