The Big Question about the Boston Marathon Bombing:  Why?

by Dana Terrell, LCSW, EAC

There is nothing that justifies violent bombing and killing, other than self-defense of a nation, group or individual against violent attack.

So, in seeking understanding, I approach it as a trauma therapist who looks at life from a Bowen Family Systems perspective.  I have observed generational patterns of behavior in my own family and in about 2,000 families during my career.

When the facts are known, it becomes clear.  Perpetrators of violence, emotional abuse or neglect had a heavy weight of unresolved trauma themselves.  This never makes violence “OK.”   But I find it useful to acknowledge this reality.

One client who endured a childhood of abuse and neglect, exclaimed after a year of EMDR therapy, “My father was hateful because he hated himself!”  She could now see it clearly.

There is an documentary about EMDR (see www.emdrmovie.com) which is a great resource for groups or individuals trying to understand, cope and respond to violence and trauma.  Filmmaker Michael Burns favorite professor from college opened the film with some thoughts, including this one:  “People either transmute their pain, or transmit it.”

There are many extensively researched articles in newspapers about the background of the Boston bombers, that give hints of trauma:  separated parents (many of my young clients in their 20’s list their parents divorce or separation as the biggest trauma of their lives), being exposed to war in Chechnya, watching a father try to support his family of 4 children in America by making car repairs for $10 an hour, seeing that father become severely depressed, ill and return to his homeland.  All of these are traumas.  The war scenes that may have been witnessed would be called “Big T” trauma by EMDR developer, Francine Shapiro, PhD.  The “small t” traumas can also cause PTSD per research reported in the 2005 British Journal of Psychiatry.  So, we can no longer minimize the lesser traumas.

Again, the trauma history doesn’t remove responsibility for behaviors and choices.  But it does help us understand “why.”  And most importantly, it gives ideas on how to learn from this experience, how to prevent the trauma from being “transmitted.”

How?  By transmuting.  EMDR changes the trauma into desensitized memories that can be stored in the brain in a healthy way, that doesn’t impact us in the present other than with our solid knowledge of the strengths we gained from getting through our difficulties.  This is not just a nice thought, or intellectual concept.  But an actual experience, a conviction felt in the body, heart and mind.  As Shapiro indicates, we can access our “Adaptive Information Processing System” when the trauma is processed.

Any EMDR client who has experienced the full EMDR protocol knows how real that is.  This is what gives me much hope.  Terrible things can be overcome.  It’s not easy, but healing is possible.