Word: traumas
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There can be an odd, exponential geometry to trauma. Lose a single person in an accident, and the lives of five or six more people--family, friends--are rocked. Each of those five or six lives may touch five or six more, and those still more. If the original death toll is higher--say, 168 in a truck-bomb blast--the shock waves may extend across an entire state. And when the number of fatalities reaches the thousands, the very mental health of the nation can be shaken...
...recorders and buried bodies, damaged psyches often require a long time to reveal themselves. The longer they take to appear, the longer they will take to heal. "We need a systematic approach to triage not only physical problems but also emotional ones," says Dr. Robert Pynoos, director of the trauma and psychiatry program at UCLA...
...physical symptoms that cascade from the brain when it is infected by fear are familiar--sweaty palms, accelerated heartbeat, jumpiness, sleeplessness. Frequently, long after the immediate danger has passed, anything that calls the trauma to mind--a picture of the New York City skyline shorn of its two largest shapes; the sight of an airplane gliding by overhead--can give rise to the same symptoms. All too often, the most obvious coping mechanism, if only in the short run, is simple avoidance. And this week a lot of Americans are practicing...
Still, Akana recommends that if people are willing to sacrifice three or four days, put their lives on the line, and commit themselves to a task that exposes them to an extraordinary amount of toxins and trauma, they should go for it. I think people underestimate how much theyre getting themselves into. I consider myself pretty tough and durable, having seen some of this stuff before, but it was still very hard to deal with...
...passage out," Melville wrote in Moby-Dick, "and the pulpit is its prow." That may have been true at one time--but times have changed, moral authority has dispersed, the 1960s and '70s toppled many a preacher from his rostrum, along with other symbols of authority. "That created a trauma in the churches," argues William Schweiker, professor of theological ethics at the University of Chicago. "The first reaction was to encourage a therapeutic emphasis on pastoral care." When it came to preaching, as opposed to social activism and counseling, the mainline churches lost their faith, lost a whole generation...