PTSD is Soul Loss

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an extremely challenging mental disorder that has reached high levels of human interest because of its frequency in combat veterans. It truly is Soul Loss… marked by nightmares, hallucinations, and behaviors destructive of self and others. In short, though, it has been with us for centuries, triggered by participating in or observing horrifying events. It is associated with changes in the brain that can be found with today’s sophisticated technologies. Its effective treatment has seriously challenged the mental health community. However, it has not been recognized as a psychospiritual condition, even though it has been recognized for centuries in indigenous nations that see its expressions as “soul wounds,” especially, “soul loss”.

Lately, though, Edward Tick, PhD, a psychologist working with veterans of all of our current wars, starting with the war in Vietnam, has written a groundbreaking book about this called, War and the Soul: Healing Our Nation’s Veterans from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. (Quest, 2005). He is Founding Director of Soldier’s Heart, “(whose) goal is to prepare families and communities in supporting and healing veterans—both those returning from current wars and those who fought in past wars.” . I have read the book and find myself in deep sympathy with, and appreciation of, his thesis that PTSD is a misnomer for what is really soul loss. Meet Dr. Tick at http://www.soldiersheart.net/index.shtml.

I use that word, “soul” deliberately, knowing that it is commonly confused with “spirit”. We, in the West, have the confusion because the philosophers of the 17th century Age of Reason decided that the soul’s existence could not be scientifically proven, and, for that reason, the soul does not exist. Prior to that time, we tended to believe that we were made a four–part being comprised of body, mind, soul, and spirit. It is easy to to see an ascending order to this rising from the body to the spirit. In this order, the soul can be seen as the bridge between the material body–mind and the immaterial spirit.

If we look at our languages around the world, the word for spirit is usually the same word for “air” or “breath”. In these languages, the soul, on the other hand, carries with it an image of individuality and personality. Yes, it is difficult to get your hands on it, but we do have a common picture that the soul comes here to occupy a human form and then when that form dies, the soul passes on to inhabit another form. Indeed, that image is common to the definition of soul in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Of note, before the Age of Reason took our soul away, all of the Abrahamic religions believed in reincarnation. Then reason destroyed it. It appears that this belief is reestablishing itself and our collective soul is coming home.

The Quaker educator and philosopher, Parker J Palmer, appreciates the existence of the soul. He gives it the qualities of fragility and shyness. These are consistent with the beliefs of indigenous people that say that it is easy to wound the soul—fragmenting it with an injury as simple as a sprained ankle. In almost all indigenous societies, there are human beings who have talents for being able to retrieve wounded soul fragments that humans leave scattered on their path of life as they move through it. Such a specialist is called a shaman. We shall look at shamanism and the shaman in the next blog.

As a key feature of PTSD is terror, I now share with you a terrifying experience that took place when I was not quite four years old and that held me in its grip for 50 years. My parents had rented a cabin on the western shore of Great Peconic Bay out on the eastern end of Long Island, New York. A simple wooden staircase led down to the beach where there was a small dock, to the right of which was a clam flat where I used to go barefoot at low tide and talk with the clammers and watch them dig the big clams with their three–pronged rakes, fully enjoying the feel of the mud squishing up between my toes. One day I saw a garden rake with its many short tines leaning up against the cabin and decided I could go dig clams with it. I remember well the argument between a voice on my right shoulder that knew the rake was the wrong kind and a voice on my left shoulder that encouraged me to use it to dig clams. Listening to the one on my left, I picked up the rake, went down the stairs and out into the bay… to the left of the dock, and not the least aware that it was high tide!

Raking busily, all I could get were round rocks… not round clams. When the water got over my head I could see what I was raking, and knew that the clams just had to be a little farther out. I was only four years out of my mother’s womb, so I was not afraid of water. Something got my attention. I looked up and saw ripples in the water over my head and that was the last I remembered for 50 years! My mother filled me in with the details about her sister seeing me disappearing under the water and running into the bay in her “best summer dress,” (thus compounding the trauma of what happened next, namely, my “rescue from drowning,” in my mother’s words). I remembered nothing of that, but my mother reminded me of it quite often, telling me that that was the reason I would never go into the water above my knees. Yes, I had an abject fear of going into deep water for at least the next five years. My failure here caused me to feel shame every time my fear of the water was brought to my attention. I also used to tense up in the presence of my mother’s sister, she who “rescued me from drowning.”

50 years after the clam–digging episode I received a brochure announcing a weekend workshop called “The Use of Metaphors in Healing the Wounded Child Within.” It was put on by a PhD psychotherapist from New Zealand named David Groves. I signed up for this, and went down to Massachusetts to be a part of it, singing, as I drove, the Grateful Dead song, Ripple, for which I had a passion (strangely enough)! In the workshop, David explained his use of the word “metaphor” for use in healing childhood wounds… it was a sign or symbol of the last thing remembered before,during, and after the trauma. He asked if anyone had such a situation, and my hand went straight up. He asked me to tell the story, and when I finished, he asked me, “What to the ripples know about what happens next?” I experienced the trauma completely! Getting grabbed from behind by an unknown force (my aunt) evoked total terror. My answer to him was, “Splash!” His response was to ask, “And what does “Splash” know about what happened next?” Virtually overwhelmed by the terror, I saw and felt my aunt spinning me around in midair, giving me a good shake, and screaming at me, “You stupid little boy!” Then she took me under her arm and carried me, terrified, up those stairs to confront my angry, deeply frightened mother…

The instant this incident replayed itself, I felt the greatest compassion for my aunt and for myself. Immediately I experienced a deep understanding of why it was that I was frequently given to judge myself for being stupid over the next 50 years. It was such a powerful conditioning then, that I still struggle with my tendency to judge myself and others for being “stupid”. There was the trauma, and there is the disorder. The trauma had caused a significant fragment of my soul to get out and stay under the waters of Great Peconic Bay for every one of those 50 years. The fact that I went through the trauma to fetch that soul fragment is, to me, a soul recovery. If there was a shaman involved, it was David Grove, the skilled psychotherapist. I have been given great insight into the nature of soul loss, and the two ways of recovering that loss: reliving the trauma in the presence of a compassionate mental health professional—recovering—the “lost” soul fragment; or eliciting the help of a shaman—retrieving—the soul fragment. Either way, bringing the fragment home again is what it means to heal—to become whole.