Think the unthinkable

Some things are unthinkable. We just can’t conceive of them happening. And sometimes that’s a problem.

Pastoral care Steve Midgley

As, for instance, in situations too awful for us to bear. This is what happens in trauma when someone experiences something unspeakably terrible. And because they have no words for it, it isn’t integrated into their lives. Unlike a normal memory that is processed and understood, a traumatic experience remains unprocessed – raw and disturbing. I recently heard it vividly described as being like ‘a foreign body in the psyche’.