I have not watched the Will Smith incident at the Oscars but I have heard enough about it to want to comment and hopefully use this moment to raise awareness about Adverse Childhood Experiences and Trauma.
It was such a terrible moment for so many reasons I won’t go into here, but I think this can be an opportunity for all of us to reflect on our own capacity for violence. However, for those who have experienced violence in what should be the safest place on earth, namely, home, those early experiences of terror can leave more than a physical mark. That mark is called “trauma”. As defined by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), “Trauma is the lasting emotional response that often results from living through a distressing event.” The key word here is “lasting.”
We can go through difficult experiences and not have lasting effects-with the right support, we can be resilient to life’s challenges if our hearts and our bodies are attended to and offered healing.
Potentially traumatic events are situations in which a person experiences intense fear and helplessness that usually, but not always, involve physical threat to self or to another person.
When a child experiences terror in the home, by witnessing a parent go after another parent, or when a child is physically hit or threatened by a caregiver, the emotional viral load placed on the child increases tenfold. That action exponentially increases the risk for that child grow up with anxiety, depression, PTSD, heart disease, time in jail, smoking and other drug use, difficulty in getting along with others and/ or difficulty regulating emotions.
Will Smith has been open about his own story of seeing his father hit his mother and feeling the need to protect her. I believe that he unconsciously projected those psychological dynamics onto the interaction with Chris Rock. A male going after a woman he loves, triggering his need to protect. His executive functioning was overtaken by the “flight, fight, or freeze” system and he acted without thinking. Clearly not the right thing to do. But how many of us have grown up with a cultural story that normalizes the use of “corporal punishment? “ Yes, I got hit. But you know how____________parents are.” How many of us have grown up being taught that, yes, violence is bad and we should never use violence to solve problems…unless…
Our propensity to respond physically to what we identify as a threat to our organism is built into our genetic code. It takes work for a person with the most nurturing, stable background to respond appropriately to difficulties, managing each perceived threat to person or reputation through balanced analysis.
But when a child experiences violence in the home, they will need even more support in learning to how to categorize threat levels because their Window of Tolerance may have been negatively impacted. The reptilian part of our brain says it’s better to treat everything like a threat because you’re more likely to survive. This ancient part of our brain is great for surviving in the savannas, not so great for handling the multiple, nuanced situations modern humans deal with daily.
If you’d like to learn more about the Window of Tolerance, you can click here. Basically, when we are handling life pretty well, we can return to a state of calm and alertness relatively easily. Boss gets mad, we get upset, we figure out a solution, we feel better. Traffic is heavy, we feel frustrated, we turn on music, we feel better.
But it’s a lot harder for a child who has experienced violence in the home to get to that state of feeling better. If they had their feelings minimized, and/ or the cause of the violence in the home was left un-addressed, normalized, or even out right denied, it can leave that child in a state of a sustained alertness to potential threats. If you can’t trust your caregivers, how can you possibly trust anything or anyone out there not to be out to get you? So the boss acting funky is more threatening, traffic is more personal, the sidelong glance of your partner, all can be more likely to activate the fight, flight, or freeze response in a person who still carries unresolved trauma.
For the millions of people of all backgrounds, like Will Smith and so many others who have experienced violence as a child, there is hope and healing. Beyond discipline and commitment to a life of non-violence, people need to be able to talk about abuse, be it one incidence or many, to a safe and brave enough adult willing to listen.
People need to know that they are not alone, that millions of wonderful people have experienced at least one physically threatening incidence in their home. If you want to learn more, you can look up the Adverse Childhood Experiences questionnaire (ACE) here.
People need to know that is vital to work through their feelings and learn skills in emotional regulation that were not modelled in the home. Working through feelings might be writing a journal about what it was like for that child and how you as the adult version of that child, will give yourself the love, the tools, and emotional support that you did not get then. You might need to clearly state that what happened was wrong and not your fault.
Working on emotional regulation skills might be building in a radical daily self care routine, such as yoga, meditation or other spiritual practice. The benefit of a daily self care routine, particularly for those who are experiencing trauma, is that you develop a methodology for returning to a state of Calm Alertness. This is your birthright, the homoeostasis you deserve to experience, feeling safe, vibrant, able to access the highest levels of your thinking and creativity.
It might mean lifestyle choices, such as dedicated sleep time of 8 to 9 hours and regular time with loving, supportive people talking about things that matter to you.
It might mean working on forgiveness for caregivers who did not know better, if that feels right for you. But don’t feel pressured to rush into forgiveness, until and if you feel ready. And remember, forgiveness is never about forgetting or reprieving others of their response-abilty. it’s about freeing yourself of the additional emotional burden of rage and giving yourself peace, when and if you are ready.
I am sad about what happened at the Oscars. But I am hopeful that if you are reading this, you will be inspired to attend to your own emotional need for healing and perhaps share this article with a friend or family member who may benefit.
Wishing us all inner peace, wishing us all the experience of safety.
Maedean Yvonne Myers, RCC, CCC, RYT