Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Suffering, Scars, and Healing - Psychological Suffering Week 10 Reflection

**The following is an excerpt from a reflection paper for my course on Psychological Suffering and Disorders.  There are many references to other reflection papers and class discussions of which some have and some have not made their way onto this blog.  Nevertheless, I feel it was worth putting up here.  The information presented here is done so in its original content.**


          As I have mentioned before in class and in other reflections there is something unsettling to me about the commonly used notions of “coping” that imply a “fixing” or “getting over” suffering. Other reflections brought to light ideas of forgiveness in terms of love and understanding which I feel are much truer to what we mean when we say “cope.” I would be inclined to take the same approach towards “healing.” There is not necessarily a coming clean, making peace with, or closure of suffering, but an acknowledgement of ownership that our suffering is now part of our lives and we continue (if you're reading this then you are already doing so) not burdened under the the guise of suffering, but in spite of it; ala Sisyphus.
          In my personal preference I don't think that healing is nearly as implicative of “fixing” than coping. This may seem a strange paradox, but I think a biological example may help illustrate the point. When our body receives a superficial wound (a scratch or a bruise) we might not notice it at first, however, left unattended it will fester. If too much attention is paid to it, like picking a scab, the “wound” persists. Taken to a different degree; severe injuries leave scars once they heal. The wound or immediate danger (to the body) will close and heal with the right precautions. However, a scar remains... it serves as a reminder of the incident. I'd like to think of psychological suffering in the same manner. That the scars of our trauma and suffering serve as a persistence of memory. They remind us that our “wounds” are part of us. Scars may “heal” or disappear over time, but to an entirely different scale and degree than the “bleeding” wound.
          I've heard and used the expression that “scars are just tattoos with better stories.” However, this class has brought new light to that story. Not only do physical scars represent a “chapter” of our lives, but our psychological scars create the same kind of story-telling, an integral part of our meaning-making process. I think that healing is just that, a process. It is not a capstone or remedy, it is a growing not after suffering has been resolved but growing with that as part of our lives. We have talked before about about trauma be a sudden shock to our worldview, lifestyle, or “dam.” Trying to “get over” that shock is probably traumatic in its own right in that we are constantly and intimately reminded of it.
Irvin Yalom uses an analogy to title one of his books; “Staring at the Sun.” In the book, the sun is used to represent our death (ironic and paradoxical in its own right). Yalom emphasizes that without the sun we would live in a world of darkness; similarly being reminded of our mortality can serve as motivation to live a “fuller” life. Conversely (as Yalom also writes) staring directly at the sun is painful and can ultimately permanently blinding. In such a metaphor, too much concentration on our own death can be crippling in a neurotic disabling way. I'd like to think that the same metaphors hold true when talking about suffering rather than death.
          I don't know that I can think of any specific poems or songs that reflect the concepts I'm trying to convey; or perhaps there are too many. I can't think of any that capture suffering's complexity in entirety, but there is something (as we have also talked about) breathtakingly similar in all of they, yet each is uniquely different and elicits a specific “suffering.” However, if I had to pick one, the following comes pretty close to capturing my above thoughts on suffering, scars, and healing...

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