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This is why we talk about the trauma …
on how memory is like a leaf rubbing
As a clinical social worker practicing in mental health, I sit with a lot of people as they work through trauma. Trauma is a broad category because it can cover events that go all the way back to your childhood, but could just as easily be something that happened yesterday. For the veteran, there are the vagaries of war. For a child, it could be the assault that happened from a trusted adult, or the long, slow devastation of neglect.
And no one really wants to talk about it.
Because even if you know rationally that the trauma was inflicted on you, there is a sneaky way in which you feel that you are somehow responsible for the trauma. So a large part of you feels deep shame for something that happened to you, that now feels as if it is a part of you.
It is an additional injury the way that trauma tries to define you, tries to become your whole story, not merely a part of your story.
So when I work with people on talking about their trauma, here is an analogy that is sometimes helpful:
Our memory is like a leaf rubbing.
Maybe some of you have had the chance to make one of these crafts as a child, a leaf rubbing. You find a leaf from a tree…
