THE EFFECT OF TRAUMA

This article is the third in the series Alex Hart (https://medium.com/@dralexhart  https://www.instagram.com/dr_alexhart/) and I are putting together on the source and consequences of trauma in sport. The first post was entitled “Address the Real Issue” and the second, “How Does Sporting Trauma Operate”. This one examines the effect of trauma.

David: Over many years coaching athletes, I have witnessed the effect of trauma. Ten of my students have represented their country. The effect of the trauma they have had to endure has been beyond belief. Some handle the stress better than others. I’ve come to understand that what I thought was handling trauma better was in fact just more able to hide the damage. The appearance of calm did not mean undamaged. Jane Copland was a classic example. No matter what happened Jane soldiered on. Hiroshima scale trauma appeared to only strengthen her willingness to fight back. Many times, I have thought, “What would it take to break her?” Years later I discovered that although the trauma never appeared as an end, just another “to be continued” the mind was dying inside. There was no bleeding scar, but the damage was real enough. Jane describes this in an article she wrote for the New Zealand news website Newsroom.co.nz (‘Pawns in adult power games’ (newsroom.co.nz))

The closest I’ve seen to an athlete almost immune to trauma was runner, Alison Wright. Charles Kingsley came close to describing Alison in The Water Babies (1863) when he wrote, “hard words run off them like water off a duck’s back.” [Editor: it should be noted that any trauma Alison endured was never on the scale of these other examples.]

For example, before a big race in New Zealand a runner asked Alison if she was injured as she appeared to be limping. Clearly, it was an effort to put Alison off – a psychological war game. After the race, which Alison won, I said to her did you hear what she said before the race to put you off. Alison genuinely said, “No, what did she say?” The attempted putdown had no effect. It wasn’t true. It was worth no further consideration. And that was typical of Alison. Outwardly and inside there is little evidence that her years of international running at the world’s highest levels had any adverse effect.    

Others wear their heart on their sleeve. They show real distress. Two weeks ago, I was at the Auckland Swimming Championships. I decided to take a short cut through a back and deserted alley to get to another part of the pool. Partway through the alley, hidden in the shadows, I passed one of New Zealand’s best swimmers quietly sobbing into her towel. I knew she had recently been beaten in one of her best events. But I doubt that was the cause of her distress. She has been beaten many times before. I bet someone had said something cruel. Had some idiot called her a “national embarrassment?”

Not knowing what to do, I walked quickly by. In the old days I would have thought, “toughen up”. But now I was angry. Angry that this rubbish is still happening. Yes, swimming has improved recently, but we have a way to go. Apart from a very few, and however swimmers handle their stress, it causes damage. Lots of damage. And we must do more than walk on by.

But let Alex explain a subject she knows much more about.

Alex: The ultimate effect of trauma is defeat, or in technical terms, the ‘inability to do or be’ in any of the following aspects of human experience: the physical, emotional, cognitive or relational.

Examples of the inability ‘to do’ physically include exhaustion and an increased vulnerability to injury. An example of an ‘inability to be’ physically is the inability to recover or be relaxed and sleep when you need to. Examples of the inability ‘to do or be’ emotionally are cutting one’s self of from ones feelings (dissociation) or becoming unable to self-regulate a feeling and becoming stuck or overwhelmed by a feeling like fear or anxiety.  Examples of the ‘inability to do or be’ cognitively would include the inability to appraise the world accurately and consequently becoming hypervigilant to anything that could be a threat or criticism or becoming unable to focus, maintain a string of thought or remember or recall events or facts accurately and easily.  Examples of the inability to do or be relationally include the inability to trust others or feel safe in a close relationship. In other words, the ultimate effect of trauma is to prevent a person from being able to live their life fully in one or many aspects of their world. These are just a few examples of the effects of trauma. Perhaps in a future blog, one that may come with a health warning, I will provide a more comprehensive list of the effects of trauma Let’s unpack this through a surprising story about how winning and losing creates these inabilities to be and do and what the solutions are.

In WWII there was a famous fighter pilot by the name of John Boyd. Boyd appeared to everyone who went up against him to be untouchable. Not only did his combatants fail to engage him in battle but they would come away from the experience confused, overwhelmed and defeated. Boyd was asked to explain his technique. He became a renowned theorist of military tactics by inventing what he called the OODA loop.

OODA stands for: observation, orientation, decision and action. What Boyd discovered was that if you could disrupt a person’s OODA loop you could undermine or even destroy their ability to act or create an ‘inability to do’. Disrupting an opponent’s OODA loop in combat has the same effect as a traumatic experience. Why is this such a critical observation? If you can figure out how to cause a result, then you can also reverse engineer that to figure out how to prevent a result. If you know how trauma is caused, then you can figure out how to prevent it. We will return to this point later.

If you step up to the blocks at a race having: 1) implemented a sound training process that means you can make accurate observations of your own abilities (O) and 2) on the basis of 1, appropriately oriented towards an achievable outcome (OO) and 3) on the basis of 1 & 2,  decided clearly how to deliver your performance (OOD) and 4) you act accordingly (OODA) then whether you win or lose the race you have succeeded. The process you have implemented has been a success, the outcome predictable and reasonable, even if you come last. Losing will not be traumatising and winning will be no more and no less than doing your job as an athlete guided by a sound process that has protected you from trauma.

Trauma occurs for athletes when their OODA loop becomes disrupted due to interference to any one of or any combination of their ability to observe, orient, decide or act. That might be their goggles filling up during a race, interfering with their ability to observe – but that can be trained for. It’s more likely to be someone deliberately trying to distract them by making remarks about the way they look and bashing one of their boundaries as a consequence.

It might be the swimmer becoming disoriented and missing the wall – but that also can be trained. It’s more likely to be a situation that causes the athlete to become confused about their goal, what performance they are capable of delivering or required to produce to achieve their goals. These issues arise when parents pressure athletes to do more than is reasonable or when coaches use training processes or competition timetables that are not sound or tailored appropriately to the needs of the athlete.

It might be a poor decision the swimmer makes about how they need to deliver their strokes, or how and when they need to breathe. Again, these things can be established in training. It is more likely to be an environmental factor that means they cannot clearly make the decisions they need to in any aspect of their training or competing. This can arise from rules being applied inaccurately or access to opportunities or resources being distributed inequitably. Similarly, athletes’ actions (or inaction) are under constant scrutiny. For that scrutiny to be productive, it must be accurate.  If it is not accurate (“women can’t do that”, “they are too old”, “she’s too fat”, “he’s not motivated” … ) then it will cause trauma.

How do we fix this situation? In my doctoral research into trauma and my many decades in practice, I recognised the similarity between the reports of Boyd’s opponents and the stories and health records of the interviewees and clients I have spoken to about their trauma. I have reverse engineered Boyd’s OODA loop, studied other aspects of military intelligence, psychotherapy, psychology, mindfulness, medicine, cognitive science, the philosophy of science, learning, and creativity, the Eastern and Western wisdom traditions and much more. It took a few decades but what I discovered was 10 basic human skills that done properly maintain our ability to observe, orient, decide and act, protect against boundary bashing and both avoid and heal trauma. These ten skills are: pause and observe, focus and explore, decide and let go, expand and integrate, receive and act. You can see from this list that the four potential points of weakness Boyd identified need to be strong but it takes more than just that. Every skill on this list is necessary. If you are to be able to observe accurately, for instance, you must also be able to pause and focus. If you are to be able to orient correctly, you must also be able to explore your options and focus on the one you choose. To stick to your decisions, you need to be able to focus on what you need to hold on to and let go of what is no longer relevant. Once you decide to be an Olympian you need to plan (integrate) your training appropriately and grow a sense of self (expand) that supports your goals.

In my practice, I have developed ways of diagnosing any disruption to these skills that has led to trauma and ways to teach or heal these skills. This is what I refer to as the Praxis for Change. The Praxis for Change is a developmental framework that assists any individual or group to go about optimizing their performance through safe and rapid change and growth whilst eliminating any vulnerability to and healing any existing trauma.

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