Introduction
The Recovery movement says that children's responses to the trauma of an alcoholic home can be divided into four basic coping strategies. The child becomes a Hero child, a Rebel child, a Clown, or Lost Child. The author Starhawk uses something similar when she says that people's responses to an oppressive system can be seen as divided into four basic coping strategies: Conform, Rebel, Manipulate, or Withdraw. She also names a fifth option, Resist, which is the attempt to stay conscious and to act to change the system itself. In the language of alcoholism and codependency, that fifth option would be the path out of the traumatized family roles and into Recovery.
In terms of the Bridging Trauma Syndrome that I am trying to give words to, I think the fifth option is soul retrieval, and then also successful Bridging, successfully carrying your full spirit forward into full adulthood.
I think the four patterns of trauma response can be seen in Bridging Trauma also. These are the trauma response patterns that I have seen:
1. The Good Church Girl or Boy
2. The Youth Rebel
3. The Religious Fanatic
4. The Lost Child
Bridging Trauma Syndrome: 1. The Good Church Girl or Boy
The Good Church Girl or Boy responds to the Cliff, to the trauma of the outside world, by never leaving church. They become a model congregant, committee chair, trustee, or minister. They serve with loyalty and reliability, and help hold the institutional church together. Like the Hero child in an alcoholic home, they are considered part of a success story, someone you can point to as an example of raised-UU well-being.
But if you look at them more closely, you find a surprising degree of conformity, timidity, a sort of channeling of the party line. If these are the best of our youth programs' graduates, then originality, courage, and fire are strangely absent.
The hidden soul is the Mark of the Cliff.
Bridging Trauma Syndrome: 2. The Youth Rebel
The Youth Rebel takes an opposite strategy. They reject the bland and conformist congregation and become a passionately dedicated advocate for the youth and youth culture. They make very loyal YRUU advisors.
But staying close to YRUU when you are no longer a youth does not in itself heal the wound of the Cliff. The spiritual distortion can still be seen, in a kind of stagnation, a stuck-in-the-past feeling. Mixed with all that universal love you can feel a tense edge of bitterness. The person might tend to teach the youth to see themselves as superior to, and/or as victimized by, the adult community. To portray adults as oppressors and spiritually dead, rather than as sources of support or as role models for people to dream of becoming. And at its worst, this syndrome can lead the person to seek emotionally or sexually inappropriate peer relationships with their youth advisees.
Bridging Trauma Syndrome. Cliff Children, I sometimes call them. Former youth, who have not yet made it across the spiritual Bridge to full, authentic UU adulthood. They may be 30 or 60 years old, but some part of their soul has not yet found a way to come forward.
People in one of the first two patterns generally tend to retain close ties to the church and to be visibly identified as raised-UUs. This is less likely to be true of people in the 3rd and 4th patterns.
Bridging Trauma Syndrome: 3. The Religious Fanatic
Cliff Child Number Three is the Religious Fanatic. By "religious" I don't mean Jesus here, or even institutional UUism. This person is most likely to be a Pagan, or a sex liberationist, or a social activist, or a chemical psychedelicist. This person chooses a third method of acting out their loss and their need. They cling to some particular namable element of the UU youth experience that might have been different from the dominant culture, and they become dedicated activists for its cause. They are most likely to give their leadership and volunteer energies and community identity to a non-UU organization.
Now, activism and alternative lifestyles I think are good things; but when a person approaches them from a condition of Bridging Trauma, they are unlikely to be approaching it in a holistic, balanced way. There is a kind of franticness, obsessiveness or desperation, a cultish kind of aloneness to it. Like, "You people don't understand."
Without the full presence of their soul to guide them, and without the balancing effects of a trusted UU community in which to reflect on and refine their passion, these people may pursue their particular cause, or group, or drug to the point of causing life damage, impoverishment, or abusive relationships.
Bridging Trauma Syndrome: 4. The Lost Child
Cliff pattern number four is the invisible person, the Lost Child. Like the people in the first three patterns, this person is functioning at well below their true adult potential. But this one, this Adult Child of the Cliff, this one you never hear from. They may quietly go forward into a family or job, but they spiritually disappear from the life of the community. Their voice becomes a whisper, and then silent. If their life malfunctions significantly enough, they may end up in a treatment for low self-esteem. But it's seldom self-esteem that's the problem. It's culture shock. They know that they are lovable, intelligent, and good. What they do not know is how to cope with the outside world.
The Cliff affects different people in different ways. I hope that these images will serve as conversation starters, and that the discussion will go on in our communities.
The Cliff is real.
For adults who grew up in close UU community, it is often the defining story of our lives.
Let's give it words, let's talk about it.
Blessed Be.