Not an easy way for your grandma to live her life

But I know my grandmother wouldn’t agree – the way she sees it, she’s happy, other people have more serious problems than her and my ‘psychologising’ is unfair and reductionistic. And that’s fair enough. For while I think it’s a very good thing that we are starting to take a more trauma-informed view of mental illness, I think it may occasionally lead to more (not less) stigma and blaming, the imposition of totalising, deterministic narratives, and (usually unflattering) assumptions and expectations being made about one’s current behaviour and level of functioning. I call it the “You were fucked and now you’re fucked” argument, and I think this is one reason why my grandmother dislikes my formulation of her, although she would never put it so crudely!

From discussions with those doing research into PTSD, I gather that apart from one or two researchers who have enough clout to direct their own work, the work of Herman et al sadly hasn’t caught on much in Australia, at least not in academic circles. I suspect that the concepts of “complex PTSD”, dissociation and similar are seen by many researchers as self-indulgent, hysterical Americanisms, borne of the same puritan panic as satanic ritual abuse, alien abductions and so forth. Trauma is still mostly conceived of as discrete, episodic and “outside the range of normal human experience” (i.e. “real problems” experienced by “real men”), as opposed to the chronic, common, interpersonal “women’s issues” stuff. I gather you’ve done a fair bit of reading around this topic, so I would be interested to hear more of your thoughts, if you are inclined to share them.

Not an easy way for your grandma to live her life: always on red-alert, barely eating or sleeping, obsesssing about dirt etc. She must have been living like this for a long time, which sounds utterly exhausting. It’s not hard to assume that she might crave having some control over her life and surroundings. It must have been hard for her to have to make that decision about her mother: treatment for the mentally ill isn’t particularly pleasant these days, but in days gone by…not good at all.

I love that idea of being a witness to other people’s experiences. It’s so important.

After my recent experience of being diagnosed with a mental ilness (disorder – whatever the shrinks call it), I found hearing other people’s experiences of living with the disorder and also recovering from it to be incredibly important. Very exciting to come across the work of experts like the feminist clinician Judith Herman as well.

Being part of a community and having our lives validated are important for us all.