Frozen Tears
Frozen Tears: Psychodrama in the Resolution of Trauma and Grief
By Tian Dayton PhD, TEP
“The deepest pain has no words,” echoes the ancient Chinese proverb. Today’s trauma theorists, it would seem, agree. Time stands still and so do we when something frightening is happening that doesn’t fit into our framework for “normal.” We freeze like a deer in the headlights- locked in a trauma response that was coded into us from the beginning of survival, from the earliest development of the human brain.
Relationship ruptures or losses whether of a spouse, a secures family unit, or a period in one’s life, can result in symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder PTSD (Van der Kolk, 1994, see
“Symptoms of Trauma and Addiction”). Psychic numbing, along with the fight, flight, freeze responses associated with traumatic experience, can render us unable to respond coherently to what may be happening around us. The urges to run or fight along with feelings of disorientation, shutting down, or loss of connection with our inner world, if they persist through time, can make it difficult to conduct successful intimate relationships. When we rupture deep limbic or emotional bonds that have imprinted themselves on our neural systems we can feel “shattered” or
“fragmented” making it difficult to pull the lost pieces of self together into a coherent whole. We may have trouble locating and describing our feelings because we have lost access to them due to the psychic numbing, dissociation or memory loss that often accompany trauma. Intense emotions such as sadness, that are an inevitable part of grieving our losses, can make us feel like we’re “falling apart” all over again and consequently we resist the grief process so necessary for healing. Living with addiction is inevitably traumatizing. The chaos, neglect, abuse, or dramatic shifts between the sober and using world that often accompany addiction, affect both the addict and those close to the addict in ways that
By Tian Dayton PhD, TEP
“The deepest pain has no words,” echoes the ancient Chinese proverb. Today’s trauma theorists, it would seem, agree. Time stands still and so do we when something frightening is happening that doesn’t fit into our framework for “normal.” We freeze like a deer in the headlights- locked in a trauma response that was coded into us from the beginning of survival, from the earliest development of the human brain.
Relationship ruptures or losses whether of a spouse, a secures family unit, or a period in one’s life, can result in symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder PTSD (Van der Kolk, 1994, see
“Symptoms of Trauma and Addiction”). Psychic numbing, along with the fight, flight, freeze responses associated with traumatic experience, can render us unable to respond coherently to what may be happening around us. The urges to run or fight along with feelings of disorientation, shutting down, or loss of connection with our inner world, if they persist through time, can make it difficult to conduct successful intimate relationships. When we rupture deep limbic or emotional bonds that have imprinted themselves on our neural systems we can feel “shattered” or
“fragmented” making it difficult to pull the lost pieces of self together into a coherent whole. We may have trouble locating and describing our feelings because we have lost access to them due to the psychic numbing, dissociation or memory loss that often accompany trauma. Intense emotions such as sadness, that are an inevitable part of grieving our losses, can make us feel like we’re “falling apart” all over again and consequently we resist the grief process so necessary for healing. Living with addiction is inevitably traumatizing. The chaos, neglect, abuse, or dramatic shifts between the sober and using world that often accompany addiction, affect both the addict and those close to the addict in ways that