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Narrative Writing: a Powerful Tool in Coping with Post-Trauma and a Severe
Brain Injury: The Injured Person's Perspective
Prof. Yoram EshetDirector, Research Center for Innovation in Learning
Technologies, The Open University of Israel
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The Brain: A Meaning-making Machine
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The Brain Injury Paradox• In a brain injury, the ability to create meaning is damaged
– Identify the situation
– Adopt rehabilitation strategies
– Define attitudes/points of view
18.10.1973, Battalion Medical Station west of the Suez Canal
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Right Parietal injury
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• I didn’t know how it happened
• No awareness to it
• No sense of ownership
• No position towards the trauma and the injury
And thus, thanks to the laws of physics, I was saved from
the horrifying knowledge of my death plunging down from
above. I did not feel the side of my skull crack open like an
eggshell or see pieces of my brain scattered over the
ground,…
God took mercy on me and chose for me an epidural injury,
free of pain and fear. I lost consciousness in the battlefield
and woke up in a hospital bed. And when I opened my eyes,
I had completed my metamorphosis from healthy man to
invalid, from war to peace, from trauma to post-trauma. Like
falling asleep at the beginning of a drive and waking up
when the bus reaches the last stop: disoriented, you shake
your head and try to figure out where you are, how you got
there, and why.
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• I find myself paralyzed
• Blind
• Sure I’m a hostage in Egypt
• Can’t read; can’t write
• Don’t understand anything
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There is something sly and slippery about brain injury
• It is obscured from the eye
• The wounded person must investigate himself in order to cope with it.
• Mapping the injury takes decades
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Assign meaning from Meaningless Memories• Brain injury: A shapeless & meaningless nebula
• Writing process: Framing, demarcating & assigning titles
All I wanted in writing this book was to organize my
murky world. … to bring a little relief to the
unrelenting pain, to shake the dust off dormant
memories, to interpret the events and call them by
their name... And on the way I was reacquainted
with you, my loves, and with spirits I had tried
unsuccessfully to bury. I met myself on the way,
too, and perhaps that was my greatest reward.
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Narrative: Creating a Personal Theory
• Defining perspectives & positions
• Resurrection
• Catharsis & redemption
• A Man Walks Home: a personal theory of my trauma &
disability
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Once read an interview with a rape victim who described
how her soul left her body during the rape and how she
watched it happen from outside….
Gain Ownership On the Trauma
Therefore, for many years, my disability was like a
stepchild. I had not experienced its labor pains or seen it
emerge from the womb… It is a stranger to me, this
disability that clinged to my flesh uninvited. I do not feel
that I own it. A sharp phantom pain, the echo of an event
I did not experience, yet still—it is the foundation of my
life, and I no longer want it to leave.
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Be Your Own Trauma's Director
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The curtain is about to fall on the first act of my story. The
actors are in their places, waiting for their cue. The pair of
Egyptian tanks is moving in the distance …
And from his shelter atop a tall structure, the Egyptian
lookout has already located a convenient position. He
watches us from above, seeing but unseen, drawing lines on
the map spread out before him, making calculations, as
lookout officers do, waiting for the signal.
And faraway in the east, my letter makes its way to Noga and
to you, my son. Just a crumpled piece of paper I pushed into
the hands of the soldier who wrote down our names before
we set off to cross the Canal. I wrote because I knew I was
about to die. Just the words of a condemned man whose
heart was frozen by the approaching certainty.
And just as the postal vehicle turned left into the village, the
lookout gave the signal. And in the roads northwards, Noga
travels to visit my parents. She does not know that the signal
has been given, that all her fears are about to come true.
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Breaking Free Of the Trap
Of all those memory fragments, I remember to the very last
detail every minute, every second, of the day when I was
struck by my new reality and discovered that my brain
was not as it had been, that I could no longer do the
things intelligent human beings could do, and that
perhaps I was no longer a human being. With the
instincts of a hunted animal, my body filled with
enormous strength - to break through the walls of my
cage, to shake them over and over again until I could be
free.
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Intimacy that Comes from a Distance
One night, when he sat down in his usual chair next to my
bed, I stuck out my tongue at the Burnt Soldier and gave him
the finger. “Look what you’ve missed out on, you loser!” I
spat at him. “Look what’s left of you!” I kept on belittling him
and taunting him with my creature comforts until he started
to shrink. His nails loosened their grip and I could feel them
slowly pulling out of my body and the pain gradually melted
away. When I opened my eyes, the Burnt Soldier had
vanished and I was a bird alight, free of pain. He was not
gone forever, …Here and there he even manages to sit down
right next to me. But I am ready for him with welcoming
arms, and I hold him to me as though he were my evil twin.
And with words of love and fondness I imbibe his terrible
catastrophe. Only then does my profound guilt over staying
alive dissipate.
Here you are, telling me everything you wanted to and did
not know how to, I think to myself. Here I am, listening to the
things that so frightened me and sealed off my heart. And I
wonder: How is it that from distance, comes such intimacy?
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Defining Attitude Towards Trauma
And then, all at once, like steam from a pressure cooker, we
burst into liberating, belly-shaking, uninhibited laughter.
Commando! In the enemy’s rear! And there we were, a few
dozen men wandering in the desert, abandoned at the foot of
Zayin Sagol, laughing at ourselves, lamenting our misery, still
not knowing that, as they always said in the army, you always
end up getting dicked out of a good day.
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Reconciliation Through Writing
you were only two years old, when you slammed your
fists against my door until they bled. Yes, I have many
excuses, and I wish I could offer them to you as
compensation: I was paralyzed, shell-shocked,
suffering from a brain injury. What could anyone expect
of me? Today I am a loaded pistol of longings, hoping
you will forgive me for that moment, for not being able
to contain your fears and be a father to you. And
perhaps the pages I am writing here will be a substitute
for what I could not tell you with my eyes and my
heart—that death had blinded, my child.
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Hope I succeeded to say something meaningful to
you
תודה
Tanks
Gracias
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תובנות גבוהות שהתגבשו במהלך
הכתיבה
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In My Own Way
…like a pedantic researcher, I am relearning my body
by dismantling each movement into countless
components, examining each one and becoming very
familiar with it. Finally, in my own special way, I
reassemble them and manage to create a new
movement—one that works only for me. That is how I
learned to tie my shoelaces my own way, to button my
sleeves in a manner that looks comical but is right for
me, to redraw letters and words with a damaged brain,
and to rethink in my own way. That is how I learned,
and am still learning, to redo almost everything in my
life—in my own way.
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Reality Vs. Truth• What really happened there? What did I imagine?
• Private narrative vs. collective narrative
• Where was Zain Segol
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?מהו שיקום
עשרות , העובדת הסוציאלית מאגף השיקום שמטפלת בי טוענת שהיום
יש , הרי יש לך בית. אני כבר נחשב נכה משוקם, שנים אחרי שנפצעתי
מה עוד . ואתה מסוגל לדבר וללכת, יש לך אישה ויש ילדים, עבודה
מבית החולים , וייסברודר "ואילו ד. היא שואלת? צריך הבן אדם בחיים
ילדים , אישה, בית, יש לך הכול, נכון. אומר שאני משוקם כנכה, הדסה
, אבל עמוק בפנים אתה חושב כנכה, ואתה מסוגל לדבר וללכת, ועבודה
.פוחד כנכה ופועל כנכה