Concentric Circles of Trauma

A few weeks back, in the lead-up to Veterans’ Day, I was conversing with someone in my virtual workplace about how military spouses and families are heroes, and we began talking a bit about how far that extends. How one person being deployed overseas meant that their spouse was now raising their children alone, which required their sibling and parents to help out more with those children, which meant that the sibling’s spouse and kids were now having their cousins spend the night more frequently than they would if both parents were home, and how those kids were being impacted by having their cousins around more, and maybe then having to integrate their cousins into their local friend group, and on and on.

I kept thinking about that pebble dropped into still water and the circles it left behind.

This also made me later consider how much trauma can be the same. Similar to that one military member who gets deployed, there’s one person who suffers trauma, and then there are all the ways that impact their lives and the lives of the people around them. When a child is abused, for example, there’s an impact on the parents, and there’s a noticeable impact on any siblings that are around as the immediate family adjusts to support the needs of a child who has faced the abuse. Then there is the extended family, who now might be counted on to help not only the abused child but also support the parents and other kids. Then all the other kids might now be dealing with a friend who has changed and isn’t the same, and we can keep counting the circles, as abuse may have lasting impacts on adult relationships and the kids this survivor might have. The thing is like that pebble dropped in the water; the only thing that breaks up those concentric circles is something else hitting the water. Ignoring it doesn’t do much. The circles will keep going for quite a long time. Refusing to acknowledge them because you don’t want to be impacted by them in your own life does nothing either. They are still there and still impacting your life. You’re making decisions on how to avoid the impacts, and that is an impact.

No, the easiest way to break up those circles, as any kid who threw rocks into the water can tell you, is to throw another rock and create new concentric circles starting from a different location.

In my metaphor about the trauma, I wonder what those other rocks could be. Mental health treatment? Care and support from family and friends? The elimination of stigma attached to trauma?

How about instead of ignoring the circles, we start throwing some more useful rocks and disrupting the cycles of trauma that we see repeated over and over again in those circles?