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Trauma is Really Strange
Nov. 13th, 2017 04:58 pmTrauma is Really Strange, by Steve Haines, art by Sophie Standing.
I like this format, though I don't know what to call it. Non-fiction comic? It's 32 pages of drawings with word balloons and captions, on the topic of recovery from trauma. I found the visual images very effective in communicating feelings. A few didn't work: a drawing of a padlock inside a head was, I think, supposed to signify "security", but to me it looked like the freezing up and losing access to words that can happen when you're overwhelmed. And sometimes there were just too many metaphors: the author used the word "titration" to talk about increasing your exposure in small steps, and stepping back before you get overwhelmed. I don't think that metaphor adds anything to the concept of small steps if you don't already understand titration, and if you do, it only adds noise: titration is about how to discover an exact concentration, while exposure to things that cause fear has too many unmeasured and uncontrolled variables, in the environment and inside the person, to learn exactly how much is too much.
Still, I found the book effective at communicating that
I like this format, though I don't know what to call it. Non-fiction comic? It's 32 pages of drawings with word balloons and captions, on the topic of recovery from trauma. I found the visual images very effective in communicating feelings. A few didn't work: a drawing of a padlock inside a head was, I think, supposed to signify "security", but to me it looked like the freezing up and losing access to words that can happen when you're overwhelmed. And sometimes there were just too many metaphors: the author used the word "titration" to talk about increasing your exposure in small steps, and stepping back before you get overwhelmed. I don't think that metaphor adds anything to the concept of small steps if you don't already understand titration, and if you do, it only adds noise: titration is about how to discover an exact concentration, while exposure to things that cause fear has too many unmeasured and uncontrolled variables, in the environment and inside the person, to learn exactly how much is too much.
Still, I found the book effective at communicating that
To heal trauma we do not need to understand and we do not need to remember[....] Please don't try too hard to think or rationalize your way out of trauma. The old parts of the brain that deal with trauma do not know how to do these things. But we can use our body and senses to feel and orient our way out of danger. Body up rather than ego down.