What psychological effect does death have on the human mind before and after a traumatic experience?
Some people associate the word trauma with physical pain and others with feelings; any sort of trauma is defined as making you feel unsafe or insecure after the event and as something that makes you feel insecure, but at what point of this potentially devastating experience does the human mind react and change in such a way that its perception of the outside world and experiences like their own become different?
Of all the possible traumas a person can sustain I chose death as a core subject to focus on because of the unit as well as my personal affection towards those who have lost someone they love. To answer this complex question I decided to focus more on “real” evidence that I could interact with which in this case was a person. I also used evidence from other sources such as the internet and passages relating to my essential question.
Personally I find traumatic experiences to be something that no one should have to go through but at the same time I understand it is a part of life that forms people into who they are. I don’t want to confuse this idea with thinking that you are no one until you go through a traumatic experience but I find the two are very closely related in the sense that a large portion of you is directly affected by the experiences in your life. The experiences that we view as traumatic are often related to death and are usually the most damaging, many sources support this thought such as these lists that explain when trauma can occur and how to know if such an experience can be traumatic.
A stressful event is most likely to be traumatic if:
- It happened unexpectedly.
- You were unprepared for it.
- You felt powerless to prevent it.
- It happened repeatedly.
- Someone was intentionally cruel.
- It happened in childhood.
(Smith, Melinda, and Jeanne Segal, Healing Emotional and Psychological Trauma)
Other sources describe which experiences are the most traumatic but I will only show those directly related to death:
- The discovery of a life-threatening illness or disabling condition, or other similar situations
- Serious illness, especially when accompanied by very high fever
- Hearing about violence to or sudden death of someone close
- Physical assault, including rape, incest, molestation, domestic abuse and
serious bodily harm
Þ 5.Serious accidents, such as automobile or other high-impact scenarios
Þ 6.Experiencing or witnessing horrific injury, carnage or fatalities
(Glenn, Marti, Trauma, Attachment, and Stress Disorders: Rethinking and Reworking Developmental Issues)
I decided to put arrows next to two of these sources of trauma because they relate to my real evidence in a way that can potentially explain that why the person I interviewed feels towards death.
Around the mid-1960’s my grandfather was 10 years old when he went through what is arguable the most traumatic experience of his life and quite possibly more traumatic than anything other people may experience. On a hot day in Colombia, my grandfather, his five brothers and his father decided to go for a hike in the steep mountains that were considered dangerous because of the FARC which are the Colombian communist party that have plagued the country for decades. While avoiding these counter-military groups, they encountered a large gap in the mountain that formed a sort of river a few hundred feet below. At this point in my grandfathers telling of the story, his eyes glazed over in such a manner that suggested crying but looked more as if pure anger or hate would soon spew from his eyes. As he continued he seemed to want to stop telling me the story and I also told him to stop if he didn’t feel well but I suppose he found some sort of consolation in telling me what can be looked at as HIS story because of how heavily it affected him. Facing the other side of this chasm and noticing a massive tree placed in between the two sides to form a makeshift bridge his brothers and his father decided to cross the tree like in some sort of bad adventure movie as my grandfather explained it. They all noticed how old the tree looked but decided to go forward completely disregarding the danger. Trailing behind of the group my grandfather watched as his brothers and fathers attempted to cross the tree; as he continues the most traumatic part of this story becomes obvious as my grandfather tells it because his voice cracks almost in unison with the crackling of the tree below their feet as it gave away under their combined weight before my grandfather set foot on it. He describes not knowing what to do and the feeling of hopelessness as he watched his brothers and father fall to their death. As he describes it, the walk back home was confusing and seemed as if the world around him was peeling away as he came to the realization of what had happened. Im not sure if this tremendous loss is more traumatic than what soon followed despite the fact that it has no actual death in it besides its mentioning.
Through this grieving process, my grandfather changed into a person that he wishes he never was mostly due to his mother’s reaction to this loss. A 10 year old boy was forced to live with a mother that had lost it all as he had but used it in a selfish way that may have been more of a defense mechanism than an actual offense. Because of her misplaced hate, sadness and anger toward what happened, she turned to the only person who se could blame which was her son. While constantly blaming him for her pain she told him that she wished he had been the one who died instead of his brothers and father. He told me to keep in mind that 1 other of his brothers who was not present at the moment of the incident was still alive. I found it incredible how this one phrase changed his life so much more than the actual deaths. He also accentuated the fact that she has not, to this day, said sorry to him for what she said to him.
After this saddening story I asked him how he looked at death when he was a young boy before incident. He told me that he was aware of it and he heard of people dying regularly but he didn’t think much of it. After the losses he tells me he became a shell of the person he once was as he was mentally abused by his mother on a daily basis because of her reaction to the loss. He looked a death as a person who he hated with every all of his power and that he hates to this day.
Hearing this terrible story coming from an actual person and not from some sappy movie gave me a look into the human mind with no boundaries. On some levels I am glad that I learned this about our human nature and how we deal with things but I also wish that I had maintained that “innocence” that you have before you are forced to go through something like that and actually think of something to disturbing. Because of the time difference, my grandfather explained to me that before death was considered to be more normal because there was a lot less to do for someone sick or physically injured in such a way that death was unavoidable. Now death I much more terrible because we have thousands of things that we can do to draw out the process as much as we can so that we don’t have to lose any one which is a really selfish endeavor. If we had not made all of the advances in medicine and technology, how would we treat death today?
Citations
1. Smith, Melinda, and Jeanne Segal. "Healing Emotional and Psychological Trauma." SYMPTOMS, TREATMENT, AND RECOVERY Nov 8. n. pag.Helpguide.org. Web. <http://helpguide.org/mental/emotional_psychological_trauma.htm
2. Glenn, Marti, and . "Trauma, Attachment, and Stress Disorders: Rethinking and Reworking Developmental Issues." n. pag. Web.
