The Product

As of March, the product of my senior project is that I can now look at a traumatic narrative and not feel as emotionally involved with it. This is a product of both the information that I have been gathering for the past six months and peer mediation.

The research I have been doing has been helping look at PTSD as a medical problem. It is almost like when a small child breaks their arm. Of course, the child is going to be in a great deal of emotional distress, but unless someone can give that child medical attention neither the arm nor the distress will be relieved. Before looking into the medical aspects of PTSD, I could only see myself as a person who wanted nothing more but to relieve the child from the emotional distress. Now, I feel I am at a state where I want to do both, because I realized how connected they are. Peer mediation helped me get started on the idea that what may seem like something minor for me can be very important for another person. This reminded me of a video I watched about the Baby Briana Lopez story (a law-changing child abuse case from New Mexico) where one of the first responders said, "You'll either become too callous, or you'll become jello. You can't do this job well unless you're in the middle." This helped me get more to the middle. Now, I can look at a traumatic narrative and see what symptoms it may produce, or listen to people's problems without thinking they are over-exaggerating.