It’s been said that one of the perverse comforts in the wake of a massive terrorist attack on New York City was our density of mental health professionals — we need not worry about a population plagued with PTSD or other forms of permanent psychic trauma.
Yet what we’ve learned in the past 10 years has upended much of the conventional wisdom about the benefits of talk therapy. Most acutely: Might the Irish way — shove it down and speak of it not — actually have more benefit?
“The [risks] of opening people up too much — that’s really the issue here,” says Dr. Elizabeth Goren, whose unconventional work with New York City firefighters is recounted in her new memoir, “Beyond the Reach of Ladders.”
“Understanding your feelings and working through them is a complex process that needs to be done in a careful way,” she adds. Living in a confessional culture that reached its apotheosis with reality TV and the cult of Oprah, society has absorbed the deeply misguided idea that verbally regurgitating one’s trauma is the only way to heal.
While many of the trained therapists who flocked to Ground Zero in the immediate aftermath were commissioned by the city and the Red Cross and were well-trained in Critical Incident Stress Management — which has as its goal calming a traumatized survivor, nothing more — there were a number of therapists who showed up of their own accord, free-styling with first responders to great potential harm.
“It’s true that there was a deluge of do-gooders and people not familiar with the best ways to help,” says Goren. Charles Strozier, historian, psychoanalyst and director of John Jay’s Center on Terrorism, believes that the vast majority of shrinks who flooded the zone were, ironically, acting out their own frustrations at being unable to help in a larger, more concrete sense. Those who engaged in “debriefing” — asking a trauma victim to recount the very experience they’ve just lived through — is highly risky.
Goren, emphasizes that the presence of what’s called a “therapeutic listener” — in lay terms, a friend or family member — can be as good, and sometimes better, than that of a counselor. “Most people will go as far as they can, or are willing,” she says, and that’s good and healthy.
“When you experience a life-altering event, or series of experiences, it marks you as a person and will affect your whole life,” Goren says. “But it does not have to damage you.”