From Post-Traumatic Stress to Post-Traumatic Growth: Transforming Adversity into Creative Rebirth

A child-like family of origin poetic allegory captures meaningful complex family dynamics through the story of "The Spider and the Butterfly."  The poem is followed by an in-depth essay on the process of traumatic to dramatic-creative transformation.  Enjoy.  MG

From Post-Traumatic Stress to Post-Traumatic Growth:  Transforming Adversity into Creative Rebirth

This is another head- and heartfelt essay & poem combo about the motivational forces that for me spurred new genre writing:  poetic allegory.  According to Merriam-Webster, "allegory" is the expression by means of symbolic fictional figures and actions of truths or generalizations about human existence.  The work below is a deep examination of early family of origin dynamics captured in a children’s story-like format.  More specifically, the poem illustrates one variation on the universal triangle themes of codependence, separation, loss, fear, and the struggle for individuation, for developing your own authentic voice.  Mr. and Mrs. Spider and a little butterfly are the principal players.  With its interplay of adult themes and children-of-all-ages format, I believe the piece (Parts I & II of a continuing saga) is both fairly compelling and insightful.  I have placed it before the introductory essay.  The essay explores – both conceptually and personally – the psychically disruptive backdrop to the creation of the allegory.  As always, would love your feedback.  Enjoy the journey.  MG

The Spider and the Butterfly:  Part I

Not Necessarily Just a Children’s Story

The spider spins a silky web

Of soft and shiny aura.

How will a little butterfly

Know the coming drama?

Lady S so wants a child

But she herself is dry

And a wounded Mr. Spider

Turns his back and cries.

Sunlight sparkles on the weave

Catching the ‘lil butter’s eye.

He soon alights upon the web

Her tapestry does hypnotize.

The ‘lil one fills a big hole

In her broken heart.

The spin-stress knows not why she craves…

But he must play a part.

Is he embraced or entrapped

In the lady’s many arms?

Instinct tells ’lil b to flee

Despite her luring charms.

But Lady Spider starts to sing

Her haunting Siren ** song.

How is one so young to know

Just what is right from wrong?

The moon has journeyed many times

Giving in becomes veiled lie.

‘lil b now wonders who he is…

“Oh no.  I’ve forgotten how to fly!”

**  In Greek mythology, the Sirens were dangerous creatures, who lured nearby sailors with their enchanting music and voices to shipwreck on the rocky coast of their island.  (Wikipedia)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Spider and the Butterfly:  Part II

Not Necessarily Just a Children’s Story

So where is Mr. Spider’s thread

In our enmeshed story?

For in this tale of web and woe

Lady S spins all the glory.

Mr. S, alas, cannot weave…

His scarlet mark of shame

Adding insult to injury:

The Queen’s needles are a pain.

To numb a spider’s injured pride

He gorges on the blood

Of his wife’s hard-earned bounty

Drinking far more than he should.

Mr. S silently seethes

Black smoke clouds his red-hot brain:

How can he seize ‘lil b

From the Queen’s web domain?

While ‘lil b so quietly

Morphs…now the “too good” child:

Wings aflutter cool spider fears, but

White noise “call of the wild!”

Then one day, Mr, Spider

Announces to his mate

That he and the butter boy

Have planned a hunting date.

‘lil b unexpectedly

Eyes Mr. S. with newfound hope

But quickly turns to reality…

Will she let us cut the rope?

© Mark Gorkin  2017

Shrink Rap ™ Productions

lil b may not know where he is going

but I believe he will know how to get there.

Just between you and me...

I'd stay tuned for Part III. 

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From Post-Traumatic Stress to Post-Traumatic Growth:  Transforming Adversity into Creative Rebirth

We all have heard of “post-traumatic stress,” the aftermath of shock and hypervigilance, loss and adversity with its many lingering, disruptive signs and symptoms of mind-body turmoil.  Hey, what about post-traumatic growth?  To understand the latter, we must recognize the former.  Potential major traumatic events include:  a) the death or painful loss of a loved one, b) the end of a long-time, meaningful relationship, c) the sudden and unexpected loss of a vital job, position, community, or role, d) a life-threatening illness or accident, e) a social environment that has you always on guard or living with a smoldering, just beneath the surface sense of angst or near panic, whether because of a substance-abusing parent, cyber-bullying peers, a climate of harassment, or nightly gunshots in your neighborhood, f) a war-zone experience with its potential for multiple trauma triggers, or g) a shocking natural catastrophe, along with the uncertain waiting for aftershocks, as in the 2015 earthquakes in Nepal, etc.  These complex events not only endanger a basic sense of security and community, but may threaten or unravel a personal identity.  Such trauma can challenge our foundational belief systems.  Assumptions and expectations about ourselves, our supportive circle, the surrounding world, about life or nature – human and otherwise – are being tested.  Adding to the psychic injury, subterranean memories or, at least, the lurking emotions, further disorient as they surge to the forefront of consciousness.  And nothing can be taken for granted; we must reexamine fundamental premises.  We must entertain unprecedented survival, psychological, and existential-behavioral questions and patterns.  And, of course, this reassessment or mind-body-moral inventory is the conceptual, psycho-spiritual, and creative bridge to new paths and possibilities.

Post-Traumatic Growth

Ironically, it is just because our worldview, beliefs, and role-identities have been so profoundly shaken if not shattered by physical, but especially psychic-seismic upheaval, that we have the opportunity to experience the inverse of post-traumatic stress…post-traumatic growth!  “Growth after trauma can take a number of different forms, including a greater appreciation for life, the identification of new possibilities for one’s life, more satisfying interpersonal relationships, (including increased empathy and altruism), a richer spiritual life and a connection to something greater than oneself, and a sense of personal strength.”  (Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gegoire, Wired to Create:  Understanding the Mysteries of the Creative Mind, Perigee:  Penguin Random House; New York, 2015.)

How to achieve such lofty goals as post-traumatic growth? Chaotic reality flies in the face of past beliefs, emotional-interpersonal schemas, and action plans. Letting go of the once predictable or familiar, while scary – the approach/avoidance or risk/reward uncertainty conundrum – helps open us to new or “nothing left to lose” perceptions, to consider unthinkable problem-solving ideas and strategies, to generate novel ways of framing, defining and defying, and, ultimately, giving meaning to crisis and loss, to pain and suffering. Akin to a city whose neighborhoods, roadways, power lines, and monuments have been rattled, battered, and razed by an earthquake, we must first distinguish the functional from the dysfunctional. Then, one must learn from the past to rebuild schematic structures that guide understanding and decision-making; that harness – individually and collectively – purpose, passion, and persistence. Of course, initially there is a grief process – shock, sadness, loss, anger, doubt and ambivalence, and angst, etc. – that often precedes and gradually nurtures (though not always on a predictable schedule), sustained rebuilding and rejuvenation.

Grief as Growth

In fact, the path of grief is a major growth stimulant, a challenging and fluid formula for finding-designing renewed meaning for living.  With sufficient support and time, by embracing the dark side of melancholy and mourning a new season of light and rebirth imperceptibly yet magically often appears on the horizon.  As I once penned:  Whether the loss is a key person, a desired position, or a powerful illusion, each deserves the respect of a mourning.  The pit in the stomach, the clenched fists and quivering jaw, the anguished sobs prove catalytic in time.  In mystical fashion, like spring upon winter, the seeds of dissolution bear fruitful renewal.

In summary, to stabilize a self shaken at its roots, we often must let go of comfortable and reassuring or stress-relieving habits, that is, coping adaptations that have become limiting or, at the least, do not fit a new post-trauma reality.  We must learn to both explore wildly and fail fearlessly – “strive high and embrace failure” anyone?  Or, at least move – whether steadily or in fits and starts – out of that proverbial comfort zone.  Why?  Because, as an adult, habitual cognitive-emotive-behavioral patterns not courageously and thoroughly questioned have decided dysfunctional, self-constricting, “b.s.” – be safe – potential.  However, through individual and group grief, rumination, sharing, and reflection, and active trial and error exploration-experimentation we are in a position to gain up-to-date information about ourselves and our environments.  My regeneration mantra:  Learn to Fail or Fail to Learn!  We are now rebuilding from the ground up; we are pursuing unprecedented – and perhaps creative – pathways and opportunities.  The poignancy and pregnancy of this “no exit challenge,” will present itself, especially if we understand the wisdom articulated by French-Algerian, Nobel-prize winning author, Albert Camus:  Once we have accepted the fact of loss, we understand that the loved one obstructed whole corners of the possible…pure now as a sky washed by rain.

That is, we have invested so much time, energy, emotion, ego in that one special person, one right position or living space, one acceptable self-definition, only one possible outcome, that we are not even aware fully of what else lives inside us and what is conceivable outside us…and the evolving magical “transitional space” when boldly and imaginatively playing with the two.

Corners of the Possible

Which brings me to five new or reinvigorated “post-traumatic” corners of the possible recently discovered and designed in the aftermath of: a) the end of a ten-year relationship, b) the loss of a three-year old “grandchild,” c) the dissolution of my Cleveland social network, d) having to find new living arrangements, d) decidedly more ebb than flow in my speaking gigs, that is, e) basically having to start over in Columbia, MD feeling mostly isolated, wounded, and defeated.

Five of the recent corners of hibernation and healing:  1) participating regularly in a variety of twelve step groups, 2) making new friends both inside and outside the “step” experience, 3) carefully listening to my dreams, 4) engaging in creative-therapeutic writing, especially capturing my traumatic stress to growth process through various forms of poetic expression, and 5) finding creative partners to help turn poetic concepts into creative products.  I believe the common and creative threads connecting the five corners is simple yet substantial:  All corners, especially the first four, provide a space for me to discover what psychological emotions and ideas are swimming and swirling in my conscious and subconscious minds.  For example, the first four corners definitely hold up a mirror to my psyche, heart, and soul.  This can occur by talking out loud in a group to hear and, thereby, clarify the jumble of mind-body-spirit thoughts and feelings.  It also evolves through give-and-take sharing and feedback with self-reflective kindred pals.  I hear disguised or denied parts of myself in their stories.  Dreams are another subterranean, self-revealing mirror (sometimes of a fun- and not-so-fun-house variety) that often puzzle and propel me into deeper confusion and exploration.

Writing is Conceiving Is Believing Is Reframing Is…

Then, of course, there is creative writing. A number of colleagues have asked why I keep exploring what appear to be familiar themes: why don’t you move on? For me, relationship loss – whether of early or more recent origin – is a mine of infinitely rich and vibrant, yet often painful, minerals. And the deeper I dig and sift, recall and sort, the ore brought back to the surface is not just richer but more of my human essence. And under red hot, laser-like inner gaze, the ore becomes fluid and fleeting, inducing a state of mental meandering and kaleidoscopic possibility. In dream-like fashion, the interplay of past-present-future takes me down the rabbit hole…to unexpected places if not unimaginable spaces. Once the ore begins to cool and my mind begins to converge (that is, evolves from the seemingly psycho-logical to the more logical) … the protean-like ore can be molded into a myriad of forms and functions, such as a new format like poetic allegory. Finally, not surprisingly, soul material always retains an element of unfinished mystery.

Let the writing adventure begin.  As I sit before the computer, turned on by my performance angst, mind wandering is followed by more focused, mindful/meditative states (or as easily, the reverse cognitive sequence.  I call this mercurial ebb and flow finding that elusive balance between mindfulness and out-of-mindfulness; the latter being my specialty ;-).  Shifting between unconscious percolation to building surprising subconscious and conscious connections, then once more back down into the writer’s well for additional sediments and sustenance.  All this meandering, molding, and new meaning construction hopefully, gradually, leads to clear, concise, and compelling sentences or captivating visually rhythmic and evocative lines. This discovery-to-design process helps soothe past pain, clarifies present understanding, and purposefully yet playfully spins and shapes new corner possibilities. (In fact, I think an essay about the importance and power of these “five corners” is waiting in the wings.)

Phew. Time to reread “The Spider and the Butterfly.” Hopefully, it brings to life more tangibly the evolution – from pain to poetry – of post-traumatic stress, growth and creativity. To be continued! Amen and women, to that!

Mark Gorkin, MSW, LICSW, "The Stress Doc" ™, a nationally acclaimed speaker -- on stress & burnout, performance-leadership & captivating communication -- as well as recognized authour, and "Psychohumorist" ™.  Mark is a founding partner and Stress Resilience and Trauma Debriefing Consultant for the Nepali Diaspora Behavioral Health & Wellness Initiative and is a current Leadership Coach/Training Consultant for the international Embry-Riddle Aeronautics University at the Daytona, FL headquarters. A former Stress and Violence Prevention Consultant for the US Postal Service, he has led numerous Pre-Deployment Stress Resilience-Humor-Team Building Retreats for the US Army. Presently Mark does Critical Incident Debriefing for organizational/corporate clients of Business Health Services. The Doc is the author of Practice Safe Stress, The Four Faces of Anger, and Preserving Human Touch in a High-Tech World. Mark’s award-winning, USA Today Online "HotSite" – www.stressdoc.com – was called a "workplace resource" by National Public Radio (NPR). For more info, email: stressdoc@aol.com.

A Tale of Two Dreams: A Streaming Short Story of Loss and Recovery – Part I

The Stress Doc explores transforming two bookend dreams into a powerful and poignant three-part short story -- about losing and rediscovering one's mind and voice.

Having recently given a talk on “Finding Your Voice at Any Age,” I too must walk my talk, perhaps pitter my patter.  Here’s an attempt to encapsulate a dream into a short story.  For me, dreams are not just, to quote Freud, “the royal road to the unconscious.”  Dreams are like a time machine, enabling travel back in psychic space…or a time warp jump to some (un)imaginable future.  And sometimes, in paradoxical fashion, there is a space-time, imaginative stream of confluence of past-present-future.  Like now, using a very recent, up-to-date dream to reconnect to a decades old nighttime visual metaphor-hallucination.  And this psycho-existential gestalt of present and past consciousness ignites a simmering desire:  to explore whether short-story writing can be a part of my creative future?  And desire might not be the right word.  Perhaps it’s a familiar. gnawing obsessive need:  survival in the psychic jungle.  Perhaps branching out once again reflects the wise observation of author and essayist, Adam Gopnik:  Repetition is the law of nature; variation is the rule of life!  It’s my inaugural effort; who knows what subsequent forays will bring, what life may emerge.  What do you think?  Thanks, MG

A Tale of Two Dreams:  A Streaming Short Story of Loss and Recovery – Part I

Fast forward forty years…four decades between iconic-existential dreams.  Yesterday’s subconscious video probably had to do with hearing a support group member talk about a traumatic phase of his young adult life – from losing a two-year old daughter when his ex remarried (turns out, biologically, the child was not his) to the sudden death of a sister in a car accident.  The 40-something held it together while sharing; actually, had a fairly coherent, well-ordered timeline of events, but you could see traces of water in his eyes.

How would he, a senior, recount the early childhood trauma of his life?  As powerful and surprising as the recent dream, a bookend of sorts to his primal family Holocaust dream-nightmare, it did not have the same vivid clarity, metaphoric transparency, and grief-like outpouring of the original.  Nonetheless, he goes back in time; the cloudy mist starts to fade, the memory vault opens, now the visual hallucination envelops him…

They are hurriedly approaching an incoming train at the station.  In truth, it’s less a train than an endless chain of WW II, Nazi-like cattle cars bound for some unknown terror.  The open doors of the car demand their presence.  His uncle is in the lead, moving at a pace and with a purpose in which he and his mother barely can keep up.  The mother-child tandem is slowed as they are holding, no, anxiously gripping, each other’s hand.  In this desperate, symbiotic clutch, it’s not clear who is squeezing harder.  Only that the two are locked into a life and death grip; their survival is inexorably linked to a codependent fate.  Hopefully, his uncle, the boy’s hero, the family member he has always blindly trusted, knows what he is doing.  There’s no time, there’s no peace of mind, to question what is occurring.  He is the good-loyal six-year-old little boy, without voice, in a silent state of panic, robotically doing what he is told.  His mind has mostly shut down; for him, it’s a not uncommon traumatic default, disconnected from his feelings, barely able to notice his surroundings, unable to intentionally focus outward beyond his own consuming sense of dread.  Yet, being an acutely sensitive child, he is subliminally and subtly absorbing an emotionally charged land- and mindscape that overwhelms and basically paralyzes his conscious mind.

But then, just before they are to enter the boxcar, out of the corner of his eye, he notices a human figure slumped against a wall and the station floor.  It his father…with the emaciated look – sullen grayish appearance, dressed in a simple, nondescript manner (neither the worn and tattered rags of one who is homeless nor the stylish manner of dress for which his father was known), sunken eyes, bony angular facial features – of a wasted drug addict.  While he cannot make out more details, nonetheless, there’s a deep sadness, a bowed head, arms encircling bent stick-legs, as if dearly holding onto a mangled two branch life raft.  Ultimately, emanating from his father’s face and bodily form, a sense of resignation and hopelessness – an inability to imagine a future worth living.  The boy knows that face and form.  And why is it that only the boy notices his obviously destitute, pale, and sickly father?  Beyond awareness, at some biologic-psychic conjunction, the existential question echoing deep within: “Who are you?  Who me?!

Finally, he awakens from his dream, more a nightmare, “inspired” by a mid-late ‘70s television special, a historical fiction blockbuster about the Holocaust.  Actually, his nocturnal drama was less an inspiration and more an excavation, a subterranean visual metaphor, resurrected, at the age of twenty-eight or twenty-nine, from the shadows of his soul.  Clearly, the envisaged scene reveals parallels in his mindscape between a dramatic moment of the Holocaust and the secretive “survival” dynamics of his family, dynamics emitting toxic emotional radiation, never acknowledged, let alone discussed throughout his childhood and teen years.  He only learned about his father’s breakdown and hospitalization, and subsequent “rehabilitation” – the shameful family secret – nearly two decades after it occurred.  The boy has a tender psyche, teeming with subconscious images and emotions of abandonment and suffocating closeness, with periods of sheer terror; hallucinatory memories of being swallowed whole inside a woman’s stomach, his only shelter in the storm.  (A little over a year out of graduate school, in his mid-20s, he shared this memory with a Social Worker Manager providing him supervision.  Her non-verbal look of upset told him this was DSM diagnostically serious.)  Formless, unimaginable, and chaotic questions whirlpool about the ground of reality, pulling him down, down…until the questions themselves, along with any self-awareness, go into deep freeze. 

Or, the wake-up dream is a mind-quake revelation.  Never before the Holocaust series has a subterranean video broken his plain of consciousness, capturing the family dynamic with such startling metaphoric clarity.  And the unprecedented subconscious eruption releases a shocking tsunami of emotion. Fortunately, soon after the dream, he was able to cry unashamedly at a woman friend’s house.

On the surface, this inner drama was mostly repressed.  But in the boy’s childhood, so many stressors triggered the everyday fear of being exposed or the humiliation of failing.  Alas, a well-honed mask meant that his acute vulnerability and tension was rarely seen (or was usually denied) by his parents and other significant adults.  There was a poignant exception:  In sixth grade, his teacher, Mr. W, deviating from the class routine, had the students do a free-form drawing exercise.  Likely startled by the boy’s passionate outpouring, in contrast to his typically more passive, quietly anxious, too good persona, Mr. W approached him after class.  Trying to connect with the boy, he says, “You’ll be going into junior high soon; high school is not far off.  Maybe you should think of applying to New York City’s School of Music and Art.”  His puzzlement quickly morphs into subterranean shame and self-doubt.  Not allowing expression to seep through the mask, the boy thinks to himself:  “Mr. W doesn’t think I’m smart enough to go to a regular school.”  And he continues his stony silence.  And the subject is never again broached…with anyone.  And another lock is added to the prison cell.

A primal emotional core of abandonment, emptiness, and loneliness could not be anesthetized, despite all his efforts, one example, through desperate masturbation.   When combining this “troubling trinity” with trepidation around speaking up, rarely displaying any form of real angry protest – with family or bullying peers – the mind-body manifestation was predictable:  a seething and numbing inner mindscape would finally implode with stomach aches, skin infections, difficulty sleeping, etc.  Or an inability to concentrate at school or school work, along with periodic lying, cheating, minor shoplifting (as a young teen, an obvious cry for help).  Now, exploding to the surface chronic symptoms of anxiety, guilt, and shame and, ultimately, unrecognized depression – likely both clinical and situational.  And icing on the psychic cake:  sometimes more, sometimes less overt smoldering dread along with periodic bursts of panic and terror.  The boy’s life invites the paraphrasing of the three-word alliterative original, now an apt psycho-architectural axiom:  form may also follow family dysfunction! 

And Part II will place his primal hallucination, actually, more retrospective family X-ray vision, in some historical and psycho-social context.  (The word psycho-social reminds him that as a speaker after telling an audience he’s a “Psychohumorist, the immediate punchline:  “I let you all decide where the emphasis on that word should go!”  This dream let's him know from where both emphasis and flow and even his quirky humor stem.)  Finally, Part III, will get us current; telling a tale of a life of running:  running from and running to.  And now that he has slowed his gait, in a semi-retired state, where will his mental motor take him?

Mark Gorkin, MSW, LICSW, "The Stress Doc" ™, a nationally acclaimed speaker, writer, and "Psychohumorist" ™, is a founding partner and Stress Resilience and Trauma Debriefing Consultant for the Nepali Diaspora Behavioral Health & Wellness Initiative. Current Leadership Coach/Training Consultant for the international Embry-Riddle Aeronautics University at the Daytona, FL headquarters. A former Stress and Violence Prevention Consultant for the US Postal Service, he has led numerous Pre-Deployment Stress Resilience-Humor-Team Building Retreats for the US Army. Presently Mark does Critical Incident Debriefing for organizational/corporate clients of Business Health Services. The Doc is the author of Practice Safe Stress, The Four Faces of Anger, and Preserving Human Touch in a High-Tech World. Mark’s award-winning, USA Today Online "HotSite" – www.stressdoc.com – was called a "workplace resource" by National Public Radio (NPR). For more info, email: stressdoc@aol.com.