Trauma
A lot of people who have experienced trauma in their lives are drawn to the theatre. This is largely because the theatre is a welcoming and warm home for marginalized people. Trauma causes us to feel marginalized, regardless of our pedigree, race, gender, etc…
Trauma is a cycle. Your parent or older relative, your sibling or best friend growing up did something to you many years ago that hurt you deeply. You carry that hurt around with you like a saddlebag, shifting it from shoulder to shoulder as you walk through life. The theatre gives you a little respite from its weight. You can display it in a character for people to watch, and they take the weight on for two acts or a show run. That makes you feel better, temporarily. And that’s lovely. Then the show ends and it’s back in the saddle again for you. You wonder why you need to string shows together back to back and keep playing roles that let you flirt with that trauma of yours.
Now I’m going to say something that is going to offend some of you. Enjoy it. Relish in it. Use it. Embrace it. It’s good for you.
Your trauma is just that: Yours. You have made the choice (not the same thing as a decision. A decision is a move against, whereas a choice is a direct action toward) to carry that trauma through your life. It sits there, in the cue, waiting for triggers to flare it up so that you can continue your story of oppression; a story that you are somehow less capable, less valuable, less viable as a human being in this life than others. A story that you need a parent, some outside force, to discipline the world who is bullying you because you are incapable of defending yourself.
I call bullshit.
So on social media, as is an aspect of the current epidemic we face, someone posts something that is an opinion of theirs (maybe even from a trauma they chose to carry), it may even be racist or sexist, it may be classist, even just crass, and we use their words to pull the trigger on our cued-up trauma so that we can keep our narrative going. For the record: That’s not their fault. Your trauma doesn’t equal someone else’s abuse of you. We need to learn to tell the difference between the outside world and our own psyche. We need to learn not to take personally what others say or do. Further, we must stop expecting an apology from our abusers. It’s never going to come.
Now I’m going to say something else that’s going to offend some of you. If you need to pause for a moment before proceeding, you might want to do so here.
Your traumatizers have forgotten about you long ago. What they did to you doesn’t belong to them. It belongs to you.
Take your time with that. Does that make you feel silly at all? It should. Not because we are silly intrinsically, but because we acted silly in carrying around someone else’s trauma for years, decades, or most of our lives, and the person who abused us is often long dead, or doesn’t remember us or the event anymore! (If you are currently being traumatized by someone, get the hell away from them! What are you doing?)
For whose benefit are we dragging along that saddlebag? Is it for us? It would have to be, wouldn’t it? Because it certainly ain’t for anyone else’s benefit. Trauma begets itself. It’s a cycle. Our traumatizers are victims whose trauma was so heavy that they couldn’t stand to hold onto it another second, and they thrust it upon us; and we graciously took it from them. That was really nice of us.
It’s not your fault. But you made a choice, conscious or un, to accept their offer of trauma to you. Metaphorically, they said, “Hey! My trauma is too heavy! I need you to take some of it for me!” and you replied, “Okay, sure. Gimme some.”
Why’d you do that? Well, it depends on the circumstances, but there are many reasons why we’ve taken on the bullshit of other people and carried it for years and years for no useful purpose at all. One is that we were a child and children accept everything that is given to us. We are completely open vessels, angels who carry the burden of a life we’ve not yet lived. Our parents abuse us and we say, “that must be the way of the world. Give me more.” Another is in relationships. Our spouse browbeats us with their trauma and because of our own upbringing, we are accustomed to taking on trauma from our loved ones; it’s a natural carryover into relationships to accept trauma from our husbands or wives. We have children ourselves, and we pass the trauma torch to them like a medieval relay race to light the villages downstream: a sacred badge that must be coddled and cared for at all costs.
Nonsense! Your trauma is yours and yours alone. You purchased it with your story of woe. That is an ego game. Play it if you want, but don’t blame others because you want to play the game.
So, when someone triggers us by saying something that is offensive or hurtful or just plain stupid, and we light up our trigger response, what is actually happening is that we are continuing the cycle of trauma by blaming them for our abuse. We are abusing them and ourselves.
This can be a hard concept to grasp, I know. Some of you will stop reading this essay now and call it a waste of time. That’s sad, but that’s your decision. And that’s okay. All decisions and choices are okay. There are no good or bad selections in this choose-your-own adventure. It’s all a matter of your comfortability in this life.
All of this information is to help us move forward in making a theatre that is truly, substantively just and equitable. A Gonzo theatre, not unlike the journalism of Hunter S. Thompson, who so famously used his own character flaws to relay critical cultural information to his readership, calls us to expose ourselves in full view of the audience in order that community healing may take place. A Gonzo Theatre is absolutely impossible if members of our community shut the art form down to force us all to carry their trauma. We’re all guilty of it at one point or another.
Deal with your trauma. Let it go. Release it to the ethers. The ethers are conscious, too, and they are happy and able to process your trauma. Give it to them; none of us wants it. We’re all busy working on our own bullshit. Start to understand the difference between decisions and choices, and your life will improve vastly overnight.
A final note on trauma and acting: Once we release that trauma, we realize that nothing anyone else says or does has control over us. Oh, it may affect us in a moment. But it never has control over us. And once we realize that it’s us and us alone who are responsible, that it’s us who holds the power over our own mental health, we are going to make great theatre. Until then, we will always be fakers, because we don’t know ourselves well enough to portray someone else. And our audiences will always know.
Don’t give your power away to others. That is inappropriate and it’s abusive to those you are putting in the position of power over you. That’s called topping from the bottom. You can’t have it both ways: you can’t be a victim and control how your victimizers abuse you. That’s a weakness of character and it’s anathema to the practice of theatre.
Trauma and Bullying
Some traumatized people turn to bullying to prop up their self-narrative of how the world should have gone. Bullying is simply the act of attempting to maintain a trauma narrative by forcing others to conform to the fictional universals that one has set up around their trauma.
One way that we bully others is to use “triggers” and passive aggression to make others feel badly for not buying into our trauma narrative.
A trigger is not a thing. A trigger is simply us using others’ words or actions (other than violence) to offend ourselves. That’s not bullying in and of itself. Someone who is triggered, and takes the time to move through and past it, is behaving in a healthy manner. It only becomes bullying once we involve someone else in our drama. Bullying occurs when we choose to tell others how to speak in a certain way, or to apologize for a statement, or to change their behavior for our triggered trauma. That’s bullying. Don’t do that.
Bullying is to be guarded against, and we must defend ourselves against this behavior. If we don’t nip it in the bud, we will all continue to be nudged all over the place in a wild goose chase that will never yield us a bird. Those who trigger will fall all over ourselves apologizing for others’ trauma and they’ll never be happy, and we’ll drag ourselves through the mud for their bullshit. Don’t do that either.
Likewise, the triggered among us will never be happy because we’re not dealing with our trauma, but instead are just trying to shove it at the people around us until they get the shits of it and leave us to our personal hells. Don’t do that either either.
Simply stated:
Don’t ask others to change their behavior for you (unless they’re actively abusing you). That’s being a child
Don’t let others brow-beat you into apologies or a dampening of your character
Stay away from a victim mindset (self-identified victims attract abusers. It’s bad for everyone to engage the victim/abuser dynamic. That’s a remnant of our animalistic minds which we no longer need)
Don’t deliberately be an asshole. If you’re an asshole, apologize. Learn to know the difference between triggers and actual offenses
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