People who have suffered abuse tend to have protective impulses toward others who they see being taken advantage of or abused. "Normal" people have these impulses too. But I think that they are sometimes stronger, especially toward the innocent and helpless, in people with PTSD. I think also that these impulses are a good gage for people with abuse histories, of what is and is not appropriate behavior toward individuals who are weaker and more vulnerable.

People, who have suffered childhood trauma in the form of physical, sexual or emotional abuse, or in the form of traumatic neglect, often have difficulty measuring the extent, degree and significance of the trauma they suffered. Partly this is due to repressed memories. However, even trauma that they do remember seems hard for most victims to assess. It therefore is helpful to have something to measure it against. One possible measure is their own reaction to traumas perpetrated against other people. Taking this more objective measure and then applying it against their own experience gives them a better perspective about their own experience. Their own subjective perspective is skewed, sometimes very radically, by the enormous mix of emotions that they had and still have around their own traumatic events.

This skewing occurs because the perpetrator is in the vast majority of cases a family member. From family members we have certain expectations of behavior. We have needs, desires and longings for healthy relationships with them. From them we want interest, understanding, concern, love, caring, protection, comfort, guidance and so on. In most of the cases I have seen of childhood abuse the perpetrator did in fact provide a considerable amount of these needs and desires. This fulfillment of needs coupled with their role in our trauma left us very mixed up emotionally and confused about that mix of feelings about this person. We didn't know how to feel. We wanted to feel good about them. So we minimized the trauma or we suppressed it or in most cases we did both. Sometimes the only current experience that can help us get in touch with our outrage is our protective impulses toward another who is being traumatized.

Protective impulses get expressed in a variety of ways. I can think of several examples from the stories clients have told me over the years. Some of us are emboldened by our protective impulses. Some of us are frightened by them or triggered by them. Some of us take action easily or automatically. Some of us are frozen or eager to get away. These protective impulses naturally come out toward our loved ones. But they also come out towards friends, acquaintances or even strangers we encounter. In fact I wonder if protective impulses don't come out in their purest form when directed toward strangers.

One client told me about a time as a young man when he and a friend automatically and without stopping to consider, jumped out of their car and took on four men who were beating and kicking an old man. Another client routinely confronts abusive parents in grocery stores. And most all my clients report a high degree of distress upon witnessing abuse in any form. I submit that these are normal healthy responses and that people observing us when we were little children being traumatized, felt the same way about us. Even coconspirators with the perpetrator can be aghast when they see that some line has been crossed, e.g. the line between kids having fun teasing another kid and kids traumatizing another kid.

Observers of trauma suffer what we call second hand traumatic effects. A number of my clients over the years have been as much or even more traumatized by acts committed against others than by the acts perpetrated against them directly. Even perpetrators can be traumatized by their own or a fellow perpetrators actions. The extreme and most obvious cases of this occur when people are involved in military actions. I know a man who as a boy participated in the ritualistic abuse of a younger child and who years later still carries the emotional scars from those events. He tells me that he felt protective impulses but did not act on them except in extreme circumstances. He hesitated out of his fear of the primary perpetrator who instigated the abusive behaviors.

Desired Outcome:
To understand that our protective impulses towards others give us a measure by which to gage the severity of the trauma we suffered.

Discussion Starters:
How do I feel when I see another abused or neglected? What do I think about how children should be treated? Is there a discrepancy between this and how I view my own experience?
 

John C Flanagan, LCSW
818 NW 17th Avenue, Suite 7
Portland, OR 97209-2327
503-228-7574
www.johncflanaganlcsw.com

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