Essay Sample on Van der Kolk and Psychology

Introduction

Van der Kolk (2014) is quoted in his book to have said "traumatized people feel unsafe inside their bodies: their past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become experts at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves." The events which unfold in the short story, "from bite" support Van der Kolk's statement with relation to post-traumatic disorder which takes place after one undergoes a severe traumatic event during a lifetime.

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In the short story, Charlene chronically feels unsafe inside her body because she is still affected by a traumatic event which happened to her during her childhood. She narrates the ordeal to her workmates, Ken and Marissa (on her first day at work) concerning a traumatic experience she had when she was eleven years old. A neighbor's dog bit her while she was playing in the yard in Oshawa with a bunch of neighborhood kids. Her face was buried in the snow when the dog attacked her. She manages to remember this event and vividly narrate it to her attentive audience, Ken and Marissa who find themselves glued to what she was saying. She says, "And then my brother gets to the door. My brother is about twenty-two years old...he runs straight down the stairs from the shower ...he opens the door and sees my face. And he projectile vomits all over me. So I've got the blood. I've got the shards of glass..." The vivid description which Charlene gives shows that the ordeal deeply affected her, and therefore makes her feel unsafe inside her body. Her manner of narration also indicates that her past, especially the traumatic event, is still alive within her, and makes her uncomfortable. She admits that she is aware of dealing with childhood trauma.

Based on her childhood experiences, she attempts to link her experiences with what her child was going through at that very moment. The fact that her child was undergoing a traumatic experience also supports the fact that "traumatic individuals usually feel unsafe inside their bodies, and that their past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort" Charlene narrates that she got a call from the school that her eleven-year-old daughter had witnessed an accident. The theme of tragic experience and accidents comes out in these two events. Her eleven-year-old daughter witnessed a car hitting a little girl, and it was pretty bad. Charlene explains that these events happened right in front of her daughter as she was walking past the patrol post. The tragic experience subjected her daughter to a post-traumatic stress disorder since she was experiencing nightmares on several occasions. She links her daughter's experiences to hers. She says "...because of the accident that she saw; she's relieving it every night. She closes her eyes and keeps seeing it...I did it too. For years I would go to sleep, and I would dream it. I dreamt that that dog talked to me and haunted me and became like this evil-man dog. Up to twenty-five years old, I dreamed that." The dream is a characteristic of the post-traumatic disorder. It is an implication that someone underwent a very tragic experience and it displays the inner fears of that individual. Since her daughter experiences nightmares and Charlene also admits having dreamt of the traumatic dog bit up to twenty-five years old, it supports the fact that "their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs" Van der Kolk (2014). What her daughter experiences also support the fact that "the past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort." It is because the past is alive that they still experience dreams and nightmares.

Van der Kolk (2014) also asserts that such individuals tend to "hide from themselves." The assertion is true for Charlene. She narrates "for twenty-five years until my brother let his guard down for a second." She realizes that her brother had killed the dog with a kitchen knife. Her brother killing the dog is a family secret which had been kept for twenty-five years. Charlene not knowing this secret means that she was hiding from herself. She is also hiding from herself because she fails to tell her daughter that her uncle, Kevin killed the dog. She says, "I didn't tell her that her uncle Kevin killed the dog. But I told her everything else..." However, the fact that she narrated the same ordeal to her daughter was a way of helping her daughter to get relieved since she, at one point in her life, had experienced the same thing.

Conclusion

In conclusion, both Charlene and her daughter are delusional. She "attempts to control the processes." She, therefore, manages to "become an expert at ignoring her gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside." She also attempts to help her daughter cope up with her situation.

References

Rick Chafe (2015). from bite, in Electric City 2 - Prairie Fire, Vol. 36. No. 1 pp. 157-163

Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The body keeps the score. New York: Viking.