Pacifying the Rage: Notes from a recent talk/bookreading
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Last week I gave a talk at the West Grove Meetinghouse about trauma and non-violence. It was interesting because I was raised Quaker and steeped for many years in the principles and practices of non-violence. And yet I wrote a somewhat violent young adult fantasy book called The Rage. Not so Quakerly, huh?
But here’s what I tried to explain during my talk: Even as a little Quaker kid I always had an awareness of the fact that violence happens--even if it was just smooshed squirrels on the side of the road or watching kids get hassled at school. There were bigger incidents as well, like watching the Challenger blow up on TV. And that’s not even taking into account the glorified violence in TV shows, movies, and books. Even though as an upper middle class white kid living in a well-off rural area, I was exposed to much much less of it than most people in the world, there was still violence, in different forms, all around. I was aware of it and struggled to reconcile it with the Quakerly ideals of pacifism, nonviolence, and peace with which I was raised and educated.
And then, of course, to make matters even stickier, I was a student at a Quaker boarding school when I was kidnapped off the campus at gunpoint by a serial rapist. At that point, the need to reconcile violence in my world became an imperative for my survival.
It’s been the focus of my journey ever since and I can’t say I’ve totally figured anything out, but I did learn some things that I tried to put into my book, The Rage.
One of the recurring themes in the book is the inextricable relationship between violence and trauma. It is a major oversight to ever discuss one without the other. Trauma is a relatively new way of approaching the issue of violence, and therefore potentially challenging because it’s not totally mainstream yet. But it is essential that we make an effort to understand trauma and how it informs so many of our thoughts and actions as individuals as well as societies. Even more importantly, we need to understand trauma better so we can help kids work with it and move beyond it. And maybe even someday evolve beyond the patterns of trauma and violence that have defined human history for so long.
To give you an idea of the effects of trauma inherent in violence (and one potential starting point for discussing it with kids), I’m including the following passage from The Rage. It’s told from the perspective of Peyewik, a young Native boy who has gotten up early to go fishing with his best friend Chingwe. Their fishing rods are dangling in the river and the sun is rising, warming them up and making them feel content and sleepy...when suddenly Peyewik realizes they aren’t alone. He and his friend are attacked by what he thinks is a monster, but is in fact the first white man he has ever seen:
“Peyewik looked up and saw a monster standing on the tree trunk above them. Its face was the color of a plucked bird and half covered with hair like dried corn silk sticking out all over...Peyewik saw shards of blue sky where it’s eyes should have been...The monster howled when it saw him. It bent forward and seized him by the hair...Peyewik started flailing, kicking and punching until a fist crashed into the side of his head...Peyewik tried to struggle again, and then to shout, but the monster put a hand over his mouth...he sank his teeth into {the hand and} tasted blood. The Sky-Eyed monster yelled and shook him off...Peyewik tumbled down the riverbank onto the rocks at the edge of the water. Peyewik {tried to} push himself into the current to be carried away. But Sky Eyes caught his ankle and dragged him back...Without warning he pushed Peyewik’s head under water. Peyewik gasped reflexively and inhaled water. He panicked and thrashed as water choked his lungs...darkness seeped in behind his eyes and his arms and legs grew heavy. Panic ebbed, and river pulled him gently towards deep, quiet waters…”
This passage describes Peyewik being shocked out of the world he knows and understands by something too terrifying and strange to comprehend. He doesn’t drown because he is saved by Tribulation, a young female warrior who kills his attacker. But Peyewik’s nightmare does not end with the bad guy getting killed, as so many books and movies would have us believe. In fact, his nightmare has only begun, which is always the case with the after effects of violence. Once we have survived, the real struggle--in the form of trauma--sets in.
More from The Rage: “Peyewik stared at Sky Eyes, his breath coming in shallow gasps. He could feel Sky Eyes spirit struggling as it was pulled away from his body, drawn towards the spirit world. Peyewik knew he needed to sing to the spirit, to help it cross the river of death, but he couldn’t remember the right song...He tried to back away from the now empty body. His own body felt empty too, as if his spirit had fled far away. He wanted to run, but his legs were shaking too hard…”
In this second passage, Peyewik demonstrates the beginnings of the aftershocks of violence, which are often felt in the body. His legs are shaking, his body feels empty, his spirit has fled, he cannot think clearly enough to remember the songs that his people sing to make sense of and define their place in the world. In other words, Peyewik has been traumatized. He is showing the physical, emotional, and mental symptoms of a system that has been overwhelmed beyond its capacity to cope.
And he’s not the only one. Trib, the warrior who rescues him, also feels the after-affects of violence in the form of trauma. Because it’s not always just the victim who experiences trauma. In fact, violence and trauma are a vicious cycle. Trib demonstrates this cycle in the following scene from the book, where she is forced to fight Bear Woman, the warrior who raised her. The fight is told from Peyewik’s point of view. He calls Trib Flame Hair because of her red hair.
“Peyewik stood transfixed as the two warrior women came together in a clash of weapons that sent sparks flying into the night...they seemed to become pure energy, like fire, their fury feeding on the air around them...Peyewik saw the first blood...Bear Woman let out a roar and seemed to grow taller and wider. Her eyeballs bulged in her face and she bore down on Flame Hair like an angry she-bear, ready to fight to the death...Years of anger and fighting consumed Bear Woman. Flame Hair tried to resist, to match the fury with her own, but Bear Woman’s anger was too vast and unyielding. Flame Hair...fell to her knees. Peyewik could see her magical fury dwindling, suddenly turning black and charred as a ribbon of grief snaked its way around her heart...her fury was gone…”
Trib (or Flame Hair) has also started demonstrating signs of trauma in the form of freezing. Fight, flight, or freeze are three modes the body can adopt as a means of survival when experiencing a life-threatening situation. They’re often adopted automatically, bypassing rational decision-making processes. In Trib’s case, her overwhelmed system has gone into freeze mode, to the point where she needs Peyewik’s help to run away from danger. When asked what is wrong with her, Peyewik observes: “Her spirit has traveled far from her body...it won’t know how to return unless I help her. Bear Woman was like a mother to her. The betrayal is too much.”
Trib was raised to think of violence as a way to be strong and protect herself. But violence also betrays her, robbing her of her family and her own capacity for trust and empathy. After doing battle with Bear Woman, Trib enters a traumatized state, for which the spirit traveling far from the body is a metaphor that recurs throughout the book.
For the characters in The Rage, trauma is both the cause and the result of violence.
The following passage, from the website https://www.psychguides.com/trauma/, describes various forms of violence as the source of trauma:
“Trauma can be caused by an overwhelmingly negative event that causes a lasting impact on the victim’s mental and emotional stability. While many sources of trauma are physically violent in nature, others are psychological. Some common sources of trauma include: rape, domestic violence, natural disasters, severe illness or injury, the death of a loved one, witnessing an act of violence…”
The following passage, from a report by The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies in the UK, identifies trauma as also being the cause of violence:
“...for some people traumatic experiences are directly related to future perpetration of violence...traumatic experiences also might contribute to the development of several risk factors associated with violence (e.g., substance use, personality disorder, emotional dysregulation). Based on available research...it is reasonable to conclude that trauma might directly and indirectly contribute to violent acts.”
(https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/sites/crimeandjustice.org.uk/files/09627250608553387.pdf)
Trauma and violence are inexorably linked. They are part of a vicious cycle. A partial explanation as to why is that when the mind and body are in a trauma state, parts of the brain literally shut down, thus rendering a traumatized individual physiologically incapable of rationally assessing what is happening in the present moment. The traumatized individual is stuck reliving the traumatic event in acute ways (like flashbacks) or more subtle ways (like a generalized sense of unsafety or insecurity). Trauma makes the world seem more dangerous and threatening than it actually is. A traumatized individual lives in a near constant state of fear and, like Trib, can become more inclined to respond to this sense of threat with violence.
The following quote is from an online article on welldoing.org entitled How Fear and Violence Are Connected:
“What we know about trauma or fear tells us that it is compounded. If we live in chronic fear we do not grow to be immune in the same way we might be if we were exposed to germs. We are in fact much more likely to react extremely when under threat if we have experienced threat repeatedly...When we are fearful our reptilian brain is hypervigilant, ready to activate our response to danger at any one moment, putting reason behind the hair-trigger temperament so often associated with those we consider violent people. Violent people are terrified. If we are to become a less violent society we need to address the fear behind the violence.”
https://welldoing.org/article/how-are-fear-and-violence-connected
So, as we saw with Bear Woman’s overpowering rage, and perhaps also in ourselves and the world around us, unresolved trauma holds us prisoner in fear and, in some cases, inclines us more towards violence as a solution. This isn’t always the case. In some instances traumatized individuals do the opposite and shut down in depression and immobility. But for some, the risk of violence increases. In fact, in some cases a violent response is expected. How often have we seen the solution to tremendous loss or hurt depicted in the movies as a responding act aggression or revenge?
All of this said, though, once we recognize the relationship between trauma and violence, and take steps to heal the trauma, what are the alternatives? What happens next? Again, I turn to characters from the book to demonstrate:
“Peyewik sang songs of grief for Chingwe and Old Woman Menukan, and for the village of the Original People, the only home he had ever known. Then he went to the dancing circle and leapt for joy at being part of Manito’s beautiful world. At one point he looked up and saw Trib in the dancing circle...The grace that he had only ever seen when she was fighting found a new and greater expression. She moved in complete harmony with the sound of the drums and the chanting of the people around her. Peyewik could hardly believe she was the same awkward, aggressive girl he knew...As he watched, he saw her spirit animal clearly, leaping and turning around the fire. It was a lynx, full of pure, joyful energy (174).”
Once trauma is healed, we are freed from this frozen/fearful/aggressive state, and like Peyewik and Trib, we can move forward again--in the form of feeling, speaking, singing, grieving, weeping, and leaping with joy. Where once Peyewik observed that Trib’s spirit had gone far away, now he sees it dancing within her and full of joy. This is what is available to us all.
Every day we are understanding more and more about the mind, brain, and body, how trauma works, and how to treat it. There are healing tools available. And once we start healing trauma, we also make tremendous headway in addressing one of the root causes of violence. This is what I’ve learned in my journey thus far. This is the happy ending I tried to convey in The Rage. And this is something that would’ve helped me to heat when I was a little Quaker kid trying to make sense of violence in the world. It’s there, and sometimes there’s nothing we can do to stop it from happening. But we can understand it and help ourselves and others heal so that the impact is lessened.