In the Aftermath of Collective Tragedy

Why Ending Trauma's Cycle Starts Here On September 10th, I prepared for my notes for my fall course on the consequences of trauma. I always begin with an exercise that moves students out of their intellects and into trauma's stored memory of sensation and emotion. The next day's attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon dropped our entire nation into trauma's immediacy. When my class met, we could not talk about trauma in the abstract; it had become a painful shared experience. My role as teacher did not protect me in any way. What I could offer was simply the emotional and intellectual reasoning behind what happens to us during traumatic experiences. [caption id="attachment_9170" align="alignleft" width="185" caption="Associate Professor Catherine Ayoub"] [/caption] But the intellectual understanding that we so prize at this institution of higher learning would not remove from any of our minds the images of the planes colliding into the World Trade Center or the growing awareness of the enormity of September 11th. Our lives were changed. Much of what we were feeling and thinking—the numbing calm followed by tears, the sense that time had stopped or changed directions, the floating, dislocated sensations—were adaptive and protective coping strategies that helped us "survive" as we struggled to find safety again. Trauma's Lasting Impact Traumatic experience peels away the trappings of our lives, revealing what is truly important to each of us. A desire to be part of a larger community made the crazy drivers in Boston a little more civil for the weeks after the event. For a time, people offered one another pleasantries in the supermarkets, and we found ourselves talking to strangers on the streets. For many, close relationships took on a renewed focus. For others, it became harder to remain connected to friends and community as the pain of the experience grew. Several weeks after the terrorist attack I was in a meeting with a colleague whose attention was clearly somewhere else. She just stared out of the window. When the meeting was over, she was still transfixed. Finally she said, "Do you see all the airplanes circling the Hancock Tower? I just keep waiting for one of them to crash into it." As we returned to our routines, we might have been lulled into believing that we could go back to our prior lives unscathed. But trauma doesn't work that way.

“The intellectual understanding that we so prize at this institution of higher learning would not remove from any of our minds the images of the planes colliding into the World Trade Center or the growing awareness of the enormity of September 11th.”

The experience of national tragedy, especially one that renders us feeling unsafe in fundamental ways, has left lasting changes in each of us. In the weeks following the attacks, many of us came to consider the places we visit, work, and sleep each day as less than safe havens. We worried about entering a tall office building, opening our mail, riding on the subway. By the time we reached mid-winter we began to wonder why we were still jumpy. We believed that we should "get over it." Some of us believed that we were over it. We might have felt guilty at our continued edginess, at the tears that still came more freely, at the trouble with concentration. It is hard to imagine that the events of a single morning will leave, for many of us, a lasting impact for years to come. Dismantling Trauma: The Slow Solution This tragedy offers us a unique opportunity to empathize with victims. Stopping terrorism requires that we look closely at our own feelings as they turn from sadness and fear to the desire to lash out—against our own communities and those in Afghanistan. After September 11, we saw an increase, in our nation, of hate crimes, violent mental illnesses, domestic violence, and child abuse. Trauma always drags into its wake the potential to perpetuate trauma. I am not advocating passivity; I'm saying we need to check our impulses and make well-considered decisions. I ask my students to do the difficult, duplicitous work of taking care of the fragile emotions that have arisen in them since September 11th, and also of mustering curiosity about the terrorists. It is critical to check the impulse that equates these men with evil. The truth is that they are only human beings whose own pain has driven them to commit terrible acts. I wonder how their parents, circumstances, or culture molded them to become comfortable killing hundreds of people. This kind of deep intellectual understanding, fused with curiosity and a commitment to empathy, creates good care for anyone in need: from schoolchildren to victims of violence to violent offenders. Children who have surmounted familial trauma often report that there was one person—a teacher, a neighbor, a relative, a friend—who stood by them and maintained the human connection they so desperately needed. This person gave them the hope of a positive relationship, of caring, not just in a single outreach effort, but over time, one-on-one. This is nothing flashy, nor will it make the network news, but the one-to-one work that we teach, study, and engage in at the Harvard Graduate School of Education is the kind of core connecting that holds the hope of dismantling child abuse, terrorism, and many other traumas. Disastrous events can never be wiped away. In the minds and bodies of approximately 300 million U.S. citizens—not to mention the rest of the world—the towers will burst into flames over and over again. As you finish reading this piece you may, again, feel the reverberations of September 11th. You may be able to visualize where you were when you first experienced the sights and sounds of that disaster. We may all, in a returning cycle, find ourselves afraid again, wondering where our fate lies. If you maintain a connection with others, understand your sadness, and harness your anger so it does not turn against others, you are working on a healthy mastery of trauma. If you can convey resilience to others through this experience, find hope in the face of tragedy, and human connection in the face of rage, there is the possibility for all of us to build a better world. About the Author Associate Professor Catherine Ayoub, Ed.M.'88, Ed.D.'90, is a psychologist who studies how traumatic events, such as divorce, abuse, or chronic illness, affect young children's development. She codirects the specialized master's program in Risk and Prevention at HGSE, and is director of research at the Law and Psychiatry Service at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she serves as a forensic advocate and mental health expert for children and families. About the Article A version of this article originally appeared in the Spring 2002 issue of Ed., the magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.