When The Ties That Bind Also Feel Like They Strangle

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

When I first entered therapy in my twenties I came across a fascinating book called Too Scared To Cry.  The book, written by child psychiatrist Lenore Terr, utilizes a highly conversational writing style to explore the phenomenon and impact of trauma upon children.  Terr uses the abduction of a group of children on their school bus in Chowchilla, California in the late 1970s as source material for her survey of the subject.  I recall being absolutely fascinated as I turned the pages of the book.  It was truly a page turner.  I suppose you could say one of the advantages of a chaotic childhood is that you may find your future adult development such an enigma that you never find life all that dull or predictable.  It has been common for me to be fascinated by my own development, dreams and fears.  But thankfully the fascination has never really developed into a full blown case of unhealthy (read here excessive) self-absorption.

At one point in her book Terr introduces us to the role of trauma in the development of one of America’s most well known horror writers.  That distinction goes to Stephen King.  She specifically focuses on one of his tales in which four nearly teenage boys go on a field trip to view the body of a local boy who was killed by a train.  Read closely and with a thoughtful  eye you can find yourself getting into the mind of Stephen King and even make some educated guesses about King’s own formative experiences.

One story that was also made into a film that made quite an impact upon me is Cujo.  For those domestic and international readers unfamiliar with the tale I will reprise it here.  A woman and her son experience traumatizing terror when a large dog belonging to a nearby resident in their small Maine town becomes rabid.  Unfortunately the mother has no idea what horror is about to befall her until the dog announces itself with a terrifying display of fury.  The horror escalates exponentially when her attempt to drive away fails as her car’s alternator dies.  Thus begins a period of many days in which mother and son gradually suffer growing levels of anxiety, dehydration and terror.  A person fascinated by the movie version of the story will reach the threshold of despair if he has any feelings of empathy whatsoever.  The mother is ultimately able to save herself and her son but not without first experiencing some serious wounding.  Though the physical scars will ultimately heal you can well imagine the psychic harm would require much therapy to overcome.

I’ve thought about this story a fair bit lately.  And here is why.  One of the most powerful scenes is the very ending.  In the movie the mother takes her essentially unconscious son into the house after first successfully bludgeoning the dog to the point she earns a short reprieve from its madness.  With a mixture of determination and seeming desperation she scatters the contents of a kitchen table out of the way and lays her son on it.  She begins giving him mouth to mouth resuscitation and rubs water on his chest.  Many painful seconds later the boy finally comes back to consciousness.  The mother then grabs up the boy to cradle him.  A look of joy and relief fills her face.  Then the dog crashes through a window and makes a final attempt to kill them.

The movie does a fine job of capturing the pain and terror of a mother and son whose desperate situation escalates more and more as days pass and no help comes.  The traumatic element of the story (the rabid dog) represents a departure from typical King storytelling; the horror is entirely not supernatural.  This was horror completely plausible given the right mixture of timing and bad luck; the dog had become rabid due to a bite it suffered while playfully chasing after a bat.  And there one sees another potential subtext.  The innocence of play is not necessarily without its unintended consequences.  You can almost sense a sort of negative lesson being inferred in the plot: even in play you must be on guard.  Another way to describe being on guard is being hyper-vigilant.  This is but one unfortunate symptom that can be attributed to the condition of PTSD.

It’s easy for me to see that image of the mother working to resuscitate her son in my mind’s eye.  It’s a powerful image.  The maternal instinct of a mother will do most anything to protect her own.  This image is especially powerful for me now because I see myself as actively resuscitating my child self who experienced trauma of a similar sort.  Just as the boy was trapped in a desperate situation with only his mother to look after him so did I feel trapped as a young boy.  Yet the major difference was that the source of my terror was my mother.  And in that sense my own trauma holds perhaps yet an additional layer.  It’s disturbing when that which is idealized as the archetype of nurturing (the mother) is also the source of your greatest terror!  How can a little child’s mind reconcile such seeming polar opposites?  The answer it would seem is ‘not easily’.  I know it was certainly not easy for me.  I am now working through grief that is decades old.

It is indeed a disquieting thing when the people you love the most can also, by intention or accident, cause you great harm.  I believe it is quite a natural response that a person affected by this particular ‘variety’ of trauma develop a certain ambivalence about intimacy.  I certainly have felt that to be true for my own experience.  Developing a greater capacity for love based in a trust that such love is not only possible but can even be enduring is a challenge many of us face even if we have not suffered significant trauma.

I personally have ventured so far along the road of healing that there can be no turning back now.  I have made the investment; I can only move forward.  I am growing more excited with each day as I continue to remain steadfast in my commitment to my own personal healing.