PTSD Survivors Speak: Using Poetry To Heal

Clair Itey holds a Ph.D. in Education and has published 3 books in the field. She is a mother, a wife, a professional, a poet and — a trauma survivor. In her book of poems, Substituting Dangers: A Journey with PTSD (click here to read some poems) Itey tackles expressing in words 20 years of living with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  In a few months Itey’s second PTSD related book (Yet Another Alice Fallen: Adventures in Disassociation) will be published. I asked her to share her story with us, plus her motivation for using writing to express it.

1. What, if any, relation did you have to poetry before using it as a therapeutic method?

When I was in college, at Philadelphia’s Temple University, I double majored in women’s studies and English literature.  I was lucky enough to work with professors/poets like Sonia Sanchez, who introduced me to other feminist writers such as Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Sylvia Plath. 

Greatly inspired, I began writing a lot of poetry and reading it all over the city in “open forums.”  This led to invited poetry readings at select arts organizations, which in turn led to being interviewed on WXPN’s “Spoken Word Poetry Hour”.   I also participated in a lot of interactive art exhibits which featured exhibitions of poetry chapbooks published by my own press, as well as handmade papers and artwork.

I didn’t think of it as a means of therapy at the time, but when I look back at the poems I wrote – this is over twenty years ago now – I am shocked at what they suggest and reveal about my state of mind as I grew into young womanhood.  All the signs of someone suffering from PTSD are evident in the poems  — they center on the dialectic between speaking up about childhood abuse and remaining silent, the need to have control over one’s body and the search for “safety,” as well as the ever complicated relationships between oneself and one’s family when you are, basically, living a communal lie.

2. What first inspired you to explore your trauma/PTSD experience in art form?

Although I’d always known I was sexually abused as a child, I didn’t have any direct memories of it.  When my perpetrator died suddenly, I began having dissociative episodes.   They ranged from a few minutes to several hours where I was not aware of what I was doing or saying.  Needless to say, they were and are terrifying.  I think as a child disassociation is how I survived the abuse; now I need to find a more healthy way to integrate and process those memories as an adult. 

Poetry has always been a very satisfying way to do this.  I can write about what happened to me without being too literal; I can use imagery, metaphor, and the words of other poets and trauma survivors to create a word-based “collage” of my experiences, past and present.   I don’t have to “name names” yet I can say what I really feel and think.

3. In what way do you feel using artistic expression has furthered your healing?

Last fall I was so depressed and anxious that I spent two weeks in the trauma ward of a major east coast hospital.  It was a truly amazing experience.  The staff were all explicitly trained in treating PTSD (as opposed to other forms of mental illness), and the other women and few men in the program greatly inspired me with their courage, compassion, and support.  We did a lot of journaling and artwork in the program as part of the therapeutic process, and I realized that it had been a while since I had written in this form.  [After college I went on to get my Ph.D. in Education and published a number of academic books about urban school reform and educational equity.  This work was greatly satisfying but I realized I missed writing in a more "creative" genre]. 

I began looking back over my old poems from college, and integrating them into new work, as my consciousness of what had happened to me and what PTSD is grew.  Today, I write poems and do artwork (in many genres) almost daily.  Even if no one but me sees it, it is a great release of tension and opportunity to merge the past with the present. 

Moreover, as abused children we are warned not to “tell”; this is my way of “telling,” and saying “What happened was wrong.  I cannot continue to remain silent about it.  I can’t live this lie.”

4. What’s the single most important benefit you’ve discovered from expressing your trauma this way?

I think it is that, through poetry, I can share my experiences with others in a widely available format.  This not only helps break the taboo about PTSD specifically, and mental illness more generally, but it challenges others to be more compassionate, aware, and perhaps more actively involved in recognizing and preventing future child abuse.

5. What have you learned about healing by filtering it through art?

That there are many different ways to express oneself, and that sometimes what you are afraid (or even ashamed) to say in an outright manner can still be communicated and documented.  One poet I like very much wrote a book called “Keeper of Accounts.”  I like this phrase very much.  When I published my own book of poems it was both to reach out to others, but also so that there would be a permanent document of what I survived, and the process of healing.  After a life-time of being told that what happened to me did not actually happen, I needed to become the Keeper of Accounts.

6. Do you have a single piece of work that you feel best embodies what you were trying to express? What elevates this piece above the others?

I have many poems that resonate for me.  There is not a single one that best embodies my experiences with abuse and PTSD.  Another reason that I wanted to publish these poems as a “collection” is that I thought when read together they were more powerful than simply reading them in different forums. 

There are, however, some lines in my poetry that stand out for me.  For example, I wrote a poem many years ago called A Strange Day which is a very surrealist poem. I talk about a young girl sharing body parts with the man sleeping next to her.  I conclude with the thought that: “He has three eyes now/Two sleep/While the one that once belonged to you/By its very nature/Keeps a close watch on things.”  Another poem, Negatives, concludes with the idea that “Someone is/All the time/Taking a picture of me/It is more than a moment’s violation/It is to never know privacy again.”  In a more recent poem, Off With Her Head, I compare my experiences of disassociation with that of Alice in Wonderland.  There are many similarities between the experience of disassociating and the vivid description of “falling down the rabbit hole.” 

Perhaps one of the most compelling poems in the volume, however, is a poem The Ritual Telling of The Dream, based on a real dream I had.  This multi-part poem explores the idea of love between women without the collars of racism, sexism, and heterosexism.  It is not necessarily about lesbianism, but about women’s relationships with their mothers, sisters, female friends, and, last but not least, their own children.  The primary theme running through the poem is the search for a way to have such relationships in the context of “safety” and “free will.”  I evoke the work of Toni Morrison and others who have written about heroines that, despite unspeakable traumas, are able to maintain their sense of self, continue to be able to love and trust others, and ultimately to create communities that are healthy and thriving.

7. What tip would you give someone who is interested in exploring the idea of addressing his/her own traumatic experience through poetry? 

Even if you are already an accomplished writer, I would suggest taking a poetry class in your community.  The experience of writing in the company of others, and sharing your work and ideas with others on a regular basis is irreplaceable. You will also, inevitably, find yourself inspired by the work of others and it will enable you to look at your own experiences and writing through a different lens.  This in turn may led to experimenting with different forms of writing poetry (e.g., It doesn’t have to rhyme!), and to branch out and read the work of writers you may not have found otherwise.  Just as people go on-line to share their experiences of PTSD, writing in the context of others in your community can be a very satisfying experienced, which keeps you focused and validates your work.

‘PTSD Survivors Speak’ is a weekly feature. To contribute please contact Michele.

(Photo acknowledgement: Scott O’Donnell on Flickr.)

Tags: art, Claire Itey, dissociation, poems, poet, post-trauamtic stress, ptsd