LIFE AND ITS THROWNNESS
“When I consider the brief span of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and behind it, the small space that I fill, or even see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces which I know not, and which know not me, I am afraid, and wonder to see myself here rather than there; now rather than then.” (Pascal; in May R, 1983) In existing and being in this world, we are faced with the thrownness of life, of what it brings to the forefront. It makes me wonder about life. What we face and how we find a way to ‘be’ with all it has brought upon us. Life is not all terrible and gloomy. But the real anxiety we hold is the desire to live, be okay, feel okay and enjoy, but also being aware that things might not last. Witnessing the despair of others, is sobering. Life can throw…
UNDERSTANDING TRAUMA
What is trauma? And what is so traumatic about it that makes it unbearable? I pose these questions in an attempt to think about how to comprehend such a vast and difficult topic. So What is so traumatic about trauma? The word ‘trauma’ originates from the Greek word ‘wound’. As a ‘word’, trauma describes a physical injury that connotes psychic wound’ (Dass-Brailsford, 2007). I have found that defining trauma literally does not suffice the profoundness of what trauma is. I will use Robert Stolorow’s emotive definition of trauma as a working definition: “Trauma is constituted in an intersubjective context in which severe emotional pain cannot find a relational home in which it can be held. In such a context, painful affect states become unendurable – that is traumatic” (Stolorow, 2007 pp23 -24). Personally, in my experience, I believe that trauma can shatter a person’s very sense of being, going beyond normal…