PTSD and Sanctuary Trauma: When the Sanctuary Turns into a Collapsing House of Cards

Developed by Dr. Steven Silver, sanctuary trauma “occurs when an individual who suffered a severe stressor next encounters what was expected to be a supportive and protective environment and discovers only more trauma.” 

https://steverosephd.com/sanctuary-trauma-and-the-sacred/ 

There are many ways to kill people without physical violence. PTSD and sanctuary trauma.

When people deny their own humanity to deny your humanity. 

Lies silences coldness cruelty deafness coercion bullying indifference selfishness 

And when institutions hurt you so much there might be consequences they will be held responsible for, they will protect themselves from liability so that your life or death doesn’t matter; what matters is that the institution survives without serious damage while you, the individual, suffer from damage you cannot recover from.  

Remember your life or death doesn’t matter.  

The ability of lawyers to erect a fortress of bullshit and gaslighting matters. Because human remains should not stain the sterling floors and walls of the institution.  

Money matters, Power matters, but you, you don’t matter.  

You are a bug that needs to be squashed so expensive shoes stay pristine. You are vermin in the kitchen of the restaurant. So, the trapping and drowning are understandable. Nobody wants to see your wiggling whiskers or clean the crumbs you nibbled or hear your scratching feet.  

The world will, the world is, going on without you as this sentence is being written. The world loves to look elsewhere. The world loves its Teflon, carcinogenic, but so slippery! Every dead thing, potentially messy, just slides off and into the garbage where it belongs.  

The Forever Chemical is cowardice, tainted by laziness and self-preservation.  

Oh, that salary, those benefits, the stuff it all buys, the ease and security, how luscious! 

How valuable! More valuable than life itself.  

All it takes is obedience. A willingness not to think or care. Orders are orders and bosses are bosses. And the people who run the system and who benefit from the system blame the system for their deficiencies. It must be someone else’s fault, or fate, or bad luck, or just the way the world works. And you can’t blame the world, apparently, for anything.  

A vulnerable person might cringe as the faces harden, and the backs turn into impenetrable walls. As the doors close and the windows lock. The sanctuary turns into a collapsing house of cards, where someone is always going to end up crushed at the bottom. The higher-ranking cards preserve themselves and preserve each other. They recognize their own value; they adjust their crowns and straighten their furs and their gold chains. The vulnerable is now not a person, never was a person. How easy it is to change the script! To erase the name! Now whoever it was is nothing. Nothing but a burlap sack at the bottom of the heap, nothing but a dirty, discarded mitten, parted forever from its child. 

And perhaps the child was never born. Perhaps the child never made a sound. 

....

Author’s note: This piece of writing is dedicated to all the people who have hurt me. Consider it a substitute for suicide, because the people who neither think nor care are not worth me, are not worth my self-destruction. I offer this writing as an incendiary and hope that the flames give warmth and light to those at the edges, those who are, like me, looking for relief from the cold and the dark. 

Writing as an incendiary, giving warmth and light