University of Human Development and Harvard University held a joint webinar on the Zoom platform on the empowerment and recovery of trauma survivors on 20th November 2023. The guest was Dr Judith Lewis Herman from Harvard and the host was Mr Araz Ahmed Mohammed from UHD.

The purpose of the webinar was to educate the audience on traumatic events and experiences, and to instruct and outline the stages of recovery from traumatic occurrences such as rape, natural disaster, or an unprecedented incident that usually cause shock and denial.

Dr Herman principally focused on the rules of dominion in which perpetrators impose their will and the victim becomes submissive. What is alarming, according to Dr Herman, is the role of bystanders who seem to be helpless, indifferent, or complicit.

Violence and threat of violence, control of bodily functions, capricious enforcement of petty rules, intermittent rewards, isolation, degradation, and enforced participation in atrocities were among some of the methods of dominion explained during the webinar.

Dr Herman went on to analyse the common reactions to traumatic events, stating that the victim is either in fight or flight, freezing and numbing, or submission position. She stated that symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder include reliving the trauma in recurrent, intrusive images, thoughts, flashbacks and nightmares. Feeling constantly on alert for danger is a persistent symptom of a fight or flight response. Difficulty falling or staying asleep, difficulty concentrating, irritability, and exaggerated startle are features of victims who suffer from hyperarousal. Victims who suffer from constrictive paediatrics usually feel numb, frozen, helpless and ashamed. Withdrawing from people and avoiding reminders of the traumatic event are also features of a victim who suffers from constriction.

The stages of recovery were also discussed with a particular focus on establishing safety, remembrance, integration and mourning, and reconnection. In these stages, it is recommended that the victim concentrates on self-care in the present, daily cycles of sleep, eating, exercise, avoiding drugs and alcohol, and basic health care. Physical self-protection, secure living situations, and engagement in work or study are seen as essential stages in the recovery process. Throughout the recovery stages, it is indispensable for the victim to pay attention to the past: telling the trauma story, uncovering proceeds in small steps, careful attention to timing and pacing, and storytelling that might include all aspects of memory (knowledge, emotion, imagery, sensation), memories that evoke grief and mourning so that the victim could eventually create a new sense of meaning and empowerment.

Judith Lewis Herman M.D. is a Professor of Psychiatry (part-time) at Harvard Medical School. For thirty years, until she retired, she was Director of Training at the Victims of Violence Program at the Cambridge Hospital, Cambridge, MA. She is the author of the award-winning books Father-Daughter Incest (Harvard University Press, 1981), and Trauma and Recovery (Basic Books, 1992). She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim fellowship in 1984 and the 1996 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. In 2007 she was named a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. Her most recent book, Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice, was published in March 2023.

Araz Ahmed Mohammed is a faculty member at the Department of English, College of Languages, University of Human Development. He has been working on Dr Herman’s theories for the past six years. He has published two papers based on the studies and conceptualization of traumatic theories outlined in Dr Herman’s book Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror.