Narrative Writing: a Powerful Tool in Coping with Post-Trauma and a Severe Brain Injury: The Injured Person's Perspective

Transcription

1 Narrative Writing: a Powerful Tool in Coping with Post-Trauma and a Severe Brain Injury: The Injured Person's Perspective Prof. Yoram Eshet Director, Research Center for Innovation in Learning Technologies, The Open University of Israel

2 The Brain: A Meaning-making Machine

3 The Brain Injury Paradox In a brain injury, the ability to create meaning is damaged Identify the situation Adopt rehabilitation strategies Define attitudes/points of view , Battalion Medical Station west of the Suez Canal

4 Right Parietal injury

5 I didn t know how it happened And thus, thanks to the laws of physics, I was saved from the horrifying knowledge of my death plunging down from No awareness to it above. I did not feel the side of my skull crack open like an eggshell No sense or seeof pieces ownership of my brain scattered over the ground, God took No position mercy ontowards me and chose the trauma for me and epidural the injury injury, free of pain and fear. I lost consciousness in the battlefield and woke up in a hospital bed. And when I opened my eyes, I had completed my metamorphosis from healthy man to invalid, from war to peace, from trauma to post-trauma. Like falling asleep at the beginning of a drive and waking up when the bus reaches the last stop: disoriented, you shake your head and try to figure out where you are, how you got there, and why.

6 I find myself paralyzed Blind Sure I m a hostage in Egypt Can t read; can t write Don t understand anything

7 There is something sly and slippery about brain injury It is obscured from the eye The wounded person must investigate himself in order to cope with it. Mapping the injury takes decades

8 Assign meaning from Meaningless Memories Brain injury: A shapeless & meaningless nebula Writing process: Framing, demarcating & assigning titles All I wanted in writing this book was to organize my murky world. to bring a little relief to the unrelenting pain, to shake the dust off dormant memories, to interpret the events and call them by their name... And on the way I was reacquainted with you, my loves, and with spirits I had tried unsuccessfully to bury. I met myself on the way, too, and perhaps that was my greatest reward.

9 Narrative: Creating a Personal Theory Defining perspectives & positions Resurrection Catharsis & redemption A Man Walks Home: a personal theory of my trauma & disability

10 Gain Ownership On the Trauma Therefore, for many years, my disability was like a stepchild. I had not experienced its labor pains or seen it emerge from the womb It is a stranger to me, this disability that clinged to my flesh uninvited. I do not feel that I own it. A sharp phantom pain, the echo of an event I did not experience, yet still it is the foundation of my life, and I no longer want it to leave. Once read an interview with a rape victim who described how her soul left her body during the rape and how she watched it happen from outside.

11 Be Your Own Trauma's Director

12 The curtain is about to fall on the first act of my story. The actors are in their places, waiting for their cue. The pair of Egyptian tanks is moving in the distance And from his shelter atop a tall structure, the Egyptian lookout has already located a convenient position. He watches us from above, seeing but unseen, drawing lines on the map spread out before him, making calculations, as lookout officers do, waiting for the signal. And faraway in the east, my letter makes its way to Noga and to you, my son. Just a crumpled piece of paper I pushed into the hands of the soldier who wrote down our names before we set off to cross the Canal. I wrote because I knew I was about to die. Just the words of a condemned man whose heart was frozen by the approaching certainty. And just as the postal vehicle turned left into the village, the lookout gave the signal. And in the roads northwards, Noga travels to visit my parents. She does not know that the signal has been given, that all her fears are about to come true.

13 Breaking Free Of the Trap Of all those memory fragments, I remember to the very last detail every minute, every second, of the day when I was struck by my new reality and discovered that my brain was not as it had been, that I could no longer do the things intelligent human beings could do, and that perhaps I was no longer a human being. With the instincts of a hunted animal, my body filled with enormous strength - to break through the walls of my cage, to shake them over and over again until I could be free.

14 Intimacy that Comes from a Distance Here you are, telling me everything you wanted to and did One not know night, how when to, he I think sat to down myself. in his Here usual I am, chair listening next to to the my bed, things I stuck that so out frightened my tongue me at the and Burnt sealed Soldier off my and heart. gave And him I the wonder: finger. How Look is it what that from you ve distance, missed comes out on, such you intimacy? loser! I spat at him. Look what s left of you! I kept on belittling him and taunting him with my creature comforts until he started to shrink. His nails loosened their grip and I could feel them slowly pulling out of my body and the pain gradually melted away. When I opened my eyes, the Burnt Soldier had vanished and I was a bird alight, free of pain. He was not gone forever, Here and there he even manages to sit down right next to me. But I am ready for him with welcoming arms, and I hold him to me as though he were my evil twin. And with words of love and fondness I imbibe his terrible catastrophe. Only then does my profound guilt over staying alive dissipate.

15 Defining Attitude Towards Trauma And then, all at once, like steam from a pressure cooker, we burst into liberating, belly-shaking, uninhibited laughter. Commando! In the enemy s rear! And there we were, a few dozen men wandering in the desert, abandoned at the foot of Zayin Sagol, laughing at ourselves, lamenting our misery, still not knowing that, as they always said in the army, you always end up getting dicked out of a good day.

16 Reconciliation Through Writing you were only two years old, when you slammed your fists against my door until they bled. Yes, I have many excuses, and I wish I could offer them to you as compensation: I was paralyzed, shell-shocked, suffering from a brain injury. What could anyone expect of me? Today I am a loaded pistol of longings, hoping you will forgive me for that moment, for not being able to contain your fears and be a father to you. And perhaps the pages I am writing here will be a substitute for what I could not tell you with my eyes and my heart that death had blinded, my child.

17 Hope I succeeded to say something meaningful to you תודה Tanks Gracias

18 תובנות גבוהות שהתגבשו במהלך הכתיבה

19 In My Own Way like a pedantic researcher, I am relearning my body by dismantling each movement into countless components, examining each one and becoming very familiar with it. Finally, in my own special way, I reassemble them and manage to create a new movement one that works only for me. That is how I learned to tie my shoelaces my own way, to button my sleeves in a manner that looks comical but is right for me, to redraw letters and words with a damaged brain, and to rethink in my own way. That is how I learned, and am still learning, to redo almost everything in my life in my own way.

20 Reality Vs. Truth What really happened there? What did I imagine? Private narrative vs. collective narrative Where was Zain Segol

21 מהו שיקום? העובדת הסוציאלית מאגף השיקום שמטפלת בי טוענת שהיום, עשרות שנים אחרי שנפצעתי, אני כבר נחשב נכה משוקם. הרי יש לך בית, יש עבודה, יש לך אישה ויש ילדים, ואתה מסוגל לדבר וללכת. מה עוד צריך הבן אדם בחיים? היא שואלת. ואילו ד"ר וייסברוד, מבית החולים הדסה, אומר שאני משוקם כנכה. נכון, יש לך הכול, בית, אישה, ילדים ועבודה, ואתה מסוגל לדבר וללכת, אבל עמוק בפנים אתה חושב כנכה, פוחד כנכה ופועל כנכה.