Abstract
This essay describes the body’s states of nervous system activation after trauma—focusing on intimate partner violence and sexual assault against women—as signs of resistance and posits that caregivers should attend to these phenomena as the body’s way of communicating. Trauma triggers nervous system responses. and understanding these responses helps caregivers to read the body language of survivors and thus avoid retraumatizing them in pastoral care. Fundamentally, rather than being seen as symptomatic of a disorder, the aftereffects of trauma should be seen as a survivor’s witness to the profound harm experienced as well as to the image of God in the survivor. This approach offers ritual and social ways of addressing this harm.
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Notes
In making this claim I do not speak to the experience of trauma suffering in general but only to the likelihood of developing PTSD.
Although the quote from Judges above does not necessary describe a situation of self-protective violence, it does exemplify a woman’s use of violence for the liberation of her people.
Yoga and post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: an interview with Bessel van der Kolk, Integral Yoga Magazine, n.d., http://www.traumacenter.org/clients/MagInside.Su09.p12-13.pdf
Library of Congress, Bill summary & status, 103rd Congress (1993–1994), H.R. 3355, http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d103:H.R.3355.
Take Back the Night, https://www.takebackthenight.org/
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Helsel, P.B. Witnessing the Body’s Response to Trauma: Resistance, Ritual, and Nervous System Activation. Pastoral Psychol 64, 681–693 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-014-0628-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-014-0628-y