The definition of trauma and its long term effects can be easily defined by scientific and psychological means. In my experience, trauma and its response mechanisms are subjective for each person struggling to heal through it. One of the defense mechanisms I have been working on these past few weeks with clients is their relationship to confusion amidst the traumatic experience. The confusion and its ensuing patterning provides some sense of relief, comfort and familiarity to those who choose to utilize it as a form of self preservation. On the other end, it can also be used to further self-annihilation. When I enter into the confusion with another, I enter into it gently as the confusion many times becomes its own reality, separate from the traumatic event itself. I find that when we integrate confusion in its pervasive state of saturation to body, mind and spirit, the traumatic event we are trying to heal from depletes us of any sense of identity we have ever known about ourselves or even who we think we were during the event that traumatized us in the first place. We are then dealing with both the trauma of the event itself and the trauma created by the confusion. Overwhelm sets in, we disassociate even further from our bodies, and we spend much of the time trying to find out who we are in relationship to the confusion so we can avoid facing the actual trauma. I respect everyone’s need to heal from trauma in their own time and space. That is one of the most sacred relationships I know on the healing path. The threads between a traumatic event and our responses are both individual and multi-generational. One of the suggestions I make to clients is to find ways to feel useful while they are both in the height of the confusion and when they are more grounded. In this way, they can see that the identities they have created can shift as they feel safe in exploring their usefulness in this world. I have seen tremendous positive effects with people struggling with PTSD when they begin to see themselves as an integral part of society, useful human beings whose worth does not have to be defined by an event that changed their lives forever.