5 Lessons For Survivors From A Christmas Carol
The recent BBC adaptation of Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol, starring Guy Pearce as Scrooge, and Andy Serkis as the Ghost of Christmas Past, has attracted a great deal of comment from people outraged about the liberties it has taken with Dickens’s original story. However, those concerns rather miss the most important point. This version deals squarely with the long-term impact of childhood trauma and abuse, something that doesn’t often make it into mainstream television programmes.
This article contains spoilers, so if you haven’t done so already, you might like to watch the programme first. You can find it on BBC iPlayer at this link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000csdm/a-christmas-carol-series-1-episode-1
The story follows the transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge from a hard-hearted, callous person to something akin to a halfway decent human being. But what really sets this adaptation apart is its treatment of how Scrooge became the person he was, and what it took for him to be transformed.
As the story unfolds we start to realise that Scrooge had a very unhappy childhood. In fact what is revealed slowly and almost painfully is that he is a survivor of childhood abuse. He was abused emotionally and physically by his father, and was prostituted by his father to be sexually abused by a schoolteacher in return for money. It was these events that caused him to become hard-hearted and indifferent to the sufferings of others. Today we would say that he was suffering from a complex Post-traumatic reaction to the trauma he experienced.
In the course of the drama Scrooge is confronted by the spirits of Christmas past, present and future. In an interesting parallel with the process of trauma therapy, they take him step by step through his own history. They make him think about the impact it has had upon him and on others. At first he is unwilling to engage with the truth, and refuses to face his own feelings about what happened to him. Neither is he able to see how the decisions he has taken not to feel or face his own pain have affected those around him. Gradually, as the story unfolds we see how the truth he is now unable to escape begins to soften and change him.
This is not an easy series to watch, but there are some key lessons to be taken from it by survivors — lessons that if learned well can greatly aid us on our journey of recovery and healing.
1. Unhealed trauma causes pain to us and those around us
Trauma, and particularly childhood trauma changes the way we think and feel. It gives us a particular perspective on the world. But it also shapes our identity and character. Pain, fear and distress cause injuries — sometimes to our bodies, but most often to our mind and our soul. We walk through life, limping from the emotional and psychological wounds. Whatever front we may show to the world, inside we are often hurting.
For those of us abused by the people who were supposed to love and care for us, our view of love and care becomes distorted. We should not be surprised that we don’t always know how to give love and care in the ways we might want to.
There is an old and very true saying that ‘hurt people, hurt people’. It is almost inevitable that our own pain and the deficit of love and safety that we experienced as children will spill over onto the people around us. We may not intend to hurt or upset those closest to us, but the reality is that the wounds we carry often drive our behaviour in ways that others find hard to live with.
2. Trauma does not absolve us of responsibility
At one point in the story, after Scrooge is confronted with the abuse he experienced as a child, he tries to use it as an excuse for his attitudes and behaviour. He has missed a fundamental point that all survivors of abuse need to get to grips with if we are to recover fully from what happened to us.
The abuse we experienced provides some reasons for why we respond to situations and people in the ways that we do. But those reasons are not an excuse. They do not absolve us of responsibility for how we act. Making excuses and abdicating responsibility for our lives keeps us powerless and imprisoned by the legacy of the abuse.
We were not responsible for the abuse, but we are responsible for how we respond to it now. We are responsible for the impact our pain and distress has both on ourselves and on others. In short, though others may help or hinder us along the way, we and no one else are responsible for our own recovery.
3. We have to know the full story
In the TV drama, Scrooge is often reluctant to see the things the spirits show him about his own past. He keeps saying he doesn’t need to see it. However, by refusing to own up to what really happened, he is preventing himself from receiving any healing.
We cannot take responsibility for our recovery by continuing to deny or avoid the truth about what happened to us. Of course the abuse we experienced was appalling, and it is totally understandable that our minds want to disconnect from it. This type of disconnection or dissociation is part of how we were able to survive. But now we are adults, disconnection and denial are no longer helpful to us. Even though it is painful, we need to know and understand the truth. So many survivors live with a false narrative about their lives — one that denies, minimises or distorts the real story. When we reclaim the story, we can start to heal from the pain, and we open up the possibility of rewriting our future
4. Facing up to the pain is the only way to heal
Scrooge believes that by denying the value of emotions, he has somehow insulated himself from all the pain and distress of the abuse he experienced. In fact, all he has chosen to do is to displace that pain onto others, and to continue the toxic cycle.
As well as knowing the facts of the story, we also need to face up to the pain of what happened to us. That is never going to be easy. As children we were vulnerable and we got hurt. Now as adults we need to make ourselves vulnerable once again, so that we can start to work through and discharge all the fear, pain and distress that we were not able to deal with at the time.
When we allow ourselves to be vulnerable in this way, it helps us to take back the power that was stolen from us by our abusers. We become no longer victims, but survivors with the means to break free from self-destructive and limiting patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving.
5. We can always choose how the trauma shapes our character
There is no denying that trauma shapes our character and our identity, but we have choices about the way in which it shapes us. When we were hurt children we made choices about how we were going to respond to what happened, but our choices were limited by our age, our specific situations and possibly by the choices of others.
Now we are older we can make different choices. Trauma and abuse will always shape us, but we can choose how it shapes us. At any time we can choose to take down the walls we have built between ourselves and the rest of the world. We can choose to allow ourselves to become vulnerable enough to heal and grow. If like Scrooge in this story we can embrace our history and become fully vulnerable, the impact on us will be amazing. When we choose vulnerability it opens our hearts up to the possibility of a life filled with hope, joy and peace.
Breakthrough is a UK Charity providing specialist therapy and other support for survivors of abuse and trauma. You can find out more about our work at traumabreakthrough.org or facebook.com/traumabreakthrough
Giles Lascelle is the founder and clinical director of Breakthrough, and the author of Breakthrough: The Art of Surviving. A guide for survivors of abuse and their supporters.
