Understanding the Problem
Living with the Problem
Questions to Ask about Trauma and Abuse
Questions for Parents and Families When Facing Trauma and Abuse
More Questions about Trauma and Abuse
Case Study: A 16 Year Old Girl and Trauma
Teenagers and Self Harm: Some Questions to Ask Adults
Possibilities for Change
Helpful Therapeutic Approaches
Single Adults and Self Harm
When a Partner is Harming Herself
Questions About Trauma and Abuse for Single Women
Fresh Perspectives on Trauma and Abuse
Trauma Do's and Dont's
Audio Workshops

Trauma and Abuse

Helpful Therapeutic Approaches

One helpful therapeutic approach is to begin understanding how we as individuals help support trauma in our own lives and the lives of others and how it is that our society has been set up to support the life of the problem of trauma.

Trauma and Abuse support systems may include linking together:

  • the tyranny of perfection to high school expectations (case study and youth) and peer group pressures

  • fear and isolation with a breaking down of communities

  • negative imagining about ourselves with media advertising

  • mother blaming to a lack of community and professional responsibility

It is important to begin finding answers to the questions of why so many people - from corporate executives, college students, young women, mothers, and people of color experience feeling so less than worthy.

People struggling with trauma continually say these societal (socio-cultural) factors are central to trauma's strong hold over them. If we continue to simplify the "origins" of trauma by placing blame solely on the person and by-passing societies role, the problem of trauma will not go away and grow larger.

Therapists and family members need to pay close attention to the anorexic fears, beliefs and rules a person is experiencing. However bizarre these anorexic lifestyles may seem they can always be linked to a persons interpretation of societies rules for living. By analyzing a persons anorexic beliefs and fears and linking them -- not to a pathology of the person-- but to normal and dominant ideas of the persons community has proven to be very helpful in therapy.

For the first time in years many anorexic sufferers can experience the years of anorexic blame and shame lift away from themselves. They begin to see how they were duped, recruited, and invited into trauma from many source. For the first time many can begin to unravel their relationship with trauma and begin to question their involvement with this silent killer.

A therapist or family member wanting to open up a conversation to explore the communities impact on helping trauma get away with murder might begin by asking one simple question -- Have you ever wondered why so many women report hating their bodies?

Discussion at this point could be general and non-threatening. You might ponder the fact that body-hatred among women is staggering and yet women do not have a genetic pre-disposition to hate their bodies. Women, it would seem, have been trained into specific ideas (some would call them constructions) about their bodies. The training grounds for body-hating ideas are many and include: religious institutions, abuse against women, media/advertising, male culture etc.

During these discussions space is opened up for sadness, hope and anger towards trauma and its societal supports. There is no self blame, no shame and there is certainly no room for feeling like a less-than-worthy-person. Try it - it may help.