What I Wish I'd Known About Trauma, Starting With 9/11

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was on the E train, which stops beneath the World Trade Center.

I'd caught the subway across the river in Brooklyn, where I had already seen smoke coming from the towers.

On the street, I had overheard a police officer telling someone that a plane had hit a tower. I imagined a small Cessna hitting it, a pilot and perhaps a passenger dying in the crash. Sad.

That was still a world where it was unimaginable that the towers would ever be hit by two hijacked commercial airliners and then crumble to the earth.

The train was stopping and slowing. Then starting back up again.

People started to murmur about what was going on, which was unusual for commuters, usually we guarded our early morning silence.

The doors finally opened and people began getting on, visibly shaken, some covered in white powder. I considered getting off the train to go upstairs and see what had happened.

If I had, I would have been there when the towers fell.

The experience of living in New York during September 11 was one of the first big traumas of my life.

There were others before and there have been others after.

It stands out among the all the others because it was shared by so many, first by my fellow New Yorkers, then by America (though I felt many misunderstood much of what happened that day), and then by the world.

It also stands out because it was the first trauma that was so big I needed something beyond the usual ways of coping. And because I didn't have them, the trauma affected me more than it might have otherwise.

In the days afterward, I remember waking from a fitful sleep terrified by the sound of choppers circling downtown Manhattan. I probably had PTSD, but didn't know that what I'd just been through could do that to me.

A year later, I decided to leave New York, after living there more than five years. I had realized that I'd never fully recovered myself after 9/11.

Then the final push came when there was a fire in the apartment above mine and I'd come home to my apartment building after a weekend away to the horrific sight of all my windows open, curtains drifting in the wind, soot and smoke stains everywhere. I had the momentary shock of thinking I'd lost everything.

My upstairs neighbors did lose nearly everything. I hadn't.

The fire fighters had broken the door and opened all the windows. Sooty water had leaked down the walls, damaging many of my things. Smoke permeated everything I owned, and the smell always took me back to that terrible feeling of loss that I desperately wanted to forget.

I left New York to return home to Portland, Oregon, because I knew those lush green, peaceful forests would restore me.

It breaks my heart to write this, when now that land -- and its people -- are the ones permeated by that nightmarish smell of char, smoke and loss.

I'm so sorry.

Since that freakish moment in mid-March when I went into lockdown with my family here in Spain, and felt afraid that first night to even go outside the house, I have been thinking about trauma.

I recognized the feeling.

I understood that with this pandemic we were all going through a global trauma. I also knew that, in my experience, many of us are not very well prepared for it.

I started researching it to learn more and one of the most useful things I found was this passage by James S. Gordon, MD, in his introduction to The Transformation: Discovering Wholeness and Healing After Trauma:

"There are two common and dangerous misconceptions about psychological trauma.

The first is that trauma (the word is Greek and means "injury") comes only to some of us: combatants or civilians in a war, victims of natural disasters, survivors of rape and incest, children who've grown up in the most callous and sordid families.

The second is that trauma is an unmitigated disaster, causing permanent emotional crippling, requiring never-ending treatment, severely limited the lives of those who've experienced it.

In fact, trauma comes, sooner or later, to all of us ...

Having a life-threatening illness, a long-term disability, or chronic pain is traumatic. So is caring for someone with these conditions.

Poverty is traumatizing, and so are racism and gender discrimination.

Loss of a loving relationship is deeply traumatizing. So is the loss of a job that gave our lives meaning and purpose.

And all of us, if we live long enough, will have to contend with the trauma of losing loved ones and with old age, physical frailty, and death."

We all experience trauma. This is part of the human experience. We can know, when we talk to others about our trauma, that we are not alone and we don't need to feel ashamed.

Trauma is not an unmitigated disaster. It's a part of life, from which we can all survive, grow from, and emerge stronger.

All of us are beat up by life sometimes, and we can all be there for each other because this is the human experience.

For all that you are going through right now, with everything that life is handing you, take care of yourself. The people around you who care about you want to know how it is on the inside. Speak openly about that with those you trust.

It's okay to have been hurt and be hurting. It's okay to have been damaged by life. Your feelings need space so they can heal, and so they don't get worse.

That's the advice I would give myself as a young woman recovering from the trauma of 9/11, nearly 20 years ago.

And here I am working on it again.

And again.

Take good care.

A note: Coaching definitely overlaps with areas of psychology, so I often study and cite works and ideas from this field. In my practice, as part of my code of ethics as an ICF-certified coach, I always refer clients to a mental health professional if I feel they would be better helped by them.
More resources

To support you in all the big feelings from the pandemic, wildfires, racism and police brutality, U.S. elections, and life itself (wow, what a list):

Dr. Kristin Neff and her book Self-Compassion. Her website is full of free resources. The Center for Mindful Self-Compassion, a non-profit she co-founded, is also offering free daily group meditations. (I also recommend their newsletter!)

Marc Brackett, Ph.D., and his book Permission to Feel. He's doing a free book club (with purchase of his book) in October.