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"On
Killing II: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill"
You
Are Only as Sick as Your Secrets
If
we understand that the “universal human phobia” is close-range,
interpersonal aggression, and that we are systematically
enabling our combatants to kill in combat, then we can also
begin to understand that aggression from a human enemy will
result in a magnitude of trauma that is generally unlike
anything else that a human being can encounter. If you have
never experienced such a trauma, you are apt to try to place
it in terms of your own experiences and traumas, but the
reality is that this will be a fundamentally flawed exercise.
Perhaps
one of our greatest handicaps in attempting to identify
with the victim of human aggression is the fact that we
cannot help but be influenced by Hollywood. I like to ask
my audiences or psychology classes, “All’s fair in...what?”
And they always answer, “Love and war.” “That's right,”
I respond. “You see there are two things that men will often
lie about. They will lie about what happened on that date
last night, and they will lie about what happened to them
in combat. And therefore that means that what we think is
happening in combat is actually based on 5,000 years of
what?” And the answer is always, “Lies.”
Truly, Hollywood lies to us, and we cannot help but be influenced
by these lies. There are a wide variety of profoundly distressing
physiological and psychological responses to close-range
interpersonal aggression. These include loss of bowel control,
sensory gating, loss of fine and complex motor control,
and memory loss. For example, in one major survey conducted
during World War II, a quarter of all combat veterans admitted
that they urinated and defecated in their pants in combat.
(Those are the ones who would admit it. The actual number
may be quite a bit higher.) Among those wounded, defecation
and urination are almost universal. But you never read about
that in the books or see it in the movies, do you? Yet this
is just the tip of the iceberg of deception and lies that
we must confront when we begin to examine the impact of
close-range interpersonal aggression.
To
fully comprehend what happens to an individual in such a
circumstance we have to realize that sympathetic nervous
system (SNS) activation has become completely ascendant,
shutting down all parasympathetic processes such as digestion.
Furthermore, and most importantly, a frightened or angry
individual has a shutdown of the forebrain, resulting in
a powerful midbrain, or mammalian brain ascendancy, which
is purely and absolutely focused on one thing: survival.
One result of this is that the midbrain (which is a relatively
simple mechanism, incapable of denial or transference) says
“Hey! Something very bad just happened, figure out what
it is and don’t ever let it happen again!” Of course the
midbrain does not speak to us in words, but rather in bursts
of emotion, and those emotions are translated, all too often,
into a sense that, “It is all my fault.” During the critical
incident debriefings after the Jonesboro shootings, many
of the survivors (including 11, 12, and 13-year-old children)
said, at some point, “It was my fault.” And the ones who
were best able to convince them that it was not their fault
were the individuals who shared the experience with them.
Perhaps the most distressing response of all is the common,
immediate, "survival instinct" reaction of intense relief
after witnessing violent death, even the death of a loved
one, which is often articulated as, “That could have been
me!” or, “Thank God it wasn’t me.” The midbrain can be mercilessly
logical, and it is intent on survival. In order to be able
to help someone else survive you must, generally, first
survive yourself. It is like the passengers on an airplane,
who, “In case of loss of cabin pressure,” must “...put your
own oxygen mask on first and then assist any small children
traveling with you.” In a mercilessly logical system you
must acknowledge that in order to help your children survive
you must, with few exceptions, first survive yourself. Of
course, afterward, this initial, self-centered impulse can
result in powerful guilt feelings if not addressed.
During the initial inbriefing for the teachers who survived
the shootings in Jonesboro, I outlined to them: what would
be happening, the moral obligation to participate, the need
to “de-link” the memory of the event from anxiety, the breathing
exercise that would help in this “de-linking,” and some
miscellaneous things that they needed to know up front.
One of the things I addressed was the loss of bowel and
bladder control, the memory loss, sensory gating, and visual
narrowing (tunnel vision) that was very common and perfectly
natural. Then I outlined the irrational acceptance of responsibility
and the common human reaction of “Thank God it wasn’t me,”
after witnessing violent death. After I told them this last
item, this “Thank God it wasn’t me response,” and told them
that it was a perfectly natural and common response, several
of these teachers laid their heads in their arms and began
to sob uncontrollably. They had experienced the intense
relief of having their deepest, darkest secret laid out
on the table, only to find out that everyone else had the
same secret in common, and it was OK. They were perfectly
normal. There was nothing wrong with them if they felt this
way.
Perhaps
half of the essence of counseling is that you are only as
sick as your secrets, and until we begin to address some
of these secrets we will never truly be able to assist fully
in the healing process. The other half of the essence of
counseling may be that pain shared is pain divided. And
the means by which this “sharing” can occur is in a group
critical incident debriefing, shortly after the trauma,
in which each individual works completely through what occurred
and receives the acceptance, forgiveness, and support of
their fellow victims.
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