Danger of a Single Story: The PTSD Narrative
And Why It Should Be Shattered
If you’re one of the few individuals who has not yet seen Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s brilliant “The Danger of a Single Story” — then you need to watch it and listen carefully.
To continue Ms. Adichie’s theme, a brief commentary on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and the dangers of a single story:
I read A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens late in life. The narrative of Dr. Manette and his daughter brought tears. Dr Manette exhibits trauma symptoms from a torturous imprisonment during the horrific French Revolution, not from participation in war itself.
Virginia Woolf’s Septimus in Mrs. Dalloway, offers a profound and disturbing glimpse into post-WWI PTSD “sleep” treatment, visions of flashbacks, and paralysis of thought and perception in a world going on without him — a brilliant portrait of shame, depression, and eventually suicide by a man no one else could seemingly reach or understand.
The connection of symptoms of what prisoners endured, what soldiers and veterans suffer, and the plight of survivors of sexual assault/abuse was not connected until the late 20th century. Prior to this, for centuries of human existence and violence, the symptoms and traumatic experiences individuals presented with were seen as weak or as enigmas to be swept under a rug or put to sleep with pills or shocked into normalcy by electric currents — sometimes successfully, but oftentimes leading to more destruction rather than healing.
These traumatic experiences and those who survive them are only just now being sensitively identified and treated with more nuance and humanity.
The work is far from done.
What I love about the dangers of a “single” story and the way Ms. Adichie presents it is the truth behind how often this occurs, usually subconsciously, not only in literature, politics, and the media — but in the conclusions we seek for mental and physical health even now.
It took another century post-WWI for us to recognize that sexual assault and rape victims also suffer PTSD, often experiencing the same symptoms as those returning from combat: anxiety, flashbacks, social triggers, isolation, freezing, etc. The single story, then, and sometimes now, is that war alone becomes the inciting incident and explanation for this terrible condition.
No longer. We know this to be a faulty conclusion. Survivors are unique individuals with the same biological make-up; therefore, the treatment of human beings should cross the gender/experience lines to identify and treat the symptoms, the brain’s coping mechanisms, instead of merely the blatant (or assumed) “cause.”
All too often the path of least resistance, the “easy route” (i.e. — typical human nature) is followed pertaining to the first-look analysis of cause — “Oh, yes, you’re one of those types” — becomes the easy diagnosis by practitioners who offer no second glances or careful listening, investigation, and exploration to identify complexities to the story.
Not all soldiers display physical wounds or scars — or exhibit nervousness at sounds or speak incoherently when asked about their experiences or react violently in a triggering moment.
Not all sexual assault victims display physical wounds or scars — or hide in corners, or fail to articulate what’s happened to them, as media seem to enjoy portraying in various shows and films.
Stop expecting every abuse story to sound the same.
Stop expecting every rape story to be “date rape” or “stranger rape” or whatever other convenient phrase people and the media like to use.
Stop expecting veterans who appear “whole” to be “fine.”
Ask questions. Listen for the nuances. Each survivor brought their own frame of reference and experiences to the moment of their trauma — and each experienced it and handled it differently.
Cease judging and victim blaming. “You should have…” or “Well, I would have done…” are ways of saying: “It was your fault because you didn’t do...”
I think some practitioners are on the right track, willing to take the time to look beyond the the first layer and the easy, hasty assumption of how and why the trauma happened, and they are backing off of the reliance on powerful drugs to manage symptoms with more emphasis on lifestyle changes, mindfulness, experiences in nature and the like. I hope this becomes the norm in the coming years to help those who often cannot help themselves fully realize a life and what it means to live again.
Bottom line: We cannot continue to categorize simplistically in the treatment of individuals, nor can those categorical bounds remain so steadfast in our thinking that we miss the connections. We cannot cling to a single definition, a single trigger, a single cure… or a single story.
