Healing and Hypnotherapy Volume 5, Issue -3, 1 September 2020 | Page 35

killers, but it wasn’t easy to notice that all those moments and what I had
seen changed and affected my life.
At the end of 1994 the genocide was over of cially, but many of us contin- ued
to live in memories of that unpleasant time for years to come. Everything I
had seen was manifesting into nightmares as if it was happening again and
again, and for me it seemed normal even though it was scary.
Before being treated and learning how to help others using the Trauma Tapping
Technique, every night was as if the genocide was still happening. You
can imagine how my days were affected, they were unhappy days most of
them.
Healing is possible but only when you allow yourself to be treated. I didn’t
know I was traumatised. I thought having all those problems was who I had
become after living through the genocide. I was insecure, had nightmares and
got angry without reason. I thought: ‘That is how life is.’ I had no idea that it
was a kind of sickness I was suffering from. Now I know, because after
getting treated and learning the Trauma Tapping I feel completely different.”
Sometimes people need examples of symptoms, to be able to understand
that they can be symptoms of post-traumatic stress. During a TTT training in
the community of Mumosho in eastern Congo we started talking about the
symp- toms of trauma, listing them on the blackboard in the classroom, for
example problems sleeping, loss of hope, acting crazy or feeling aggressive.
The participants exclaimed:
“Maybe that’s why Mama Rose is behaving so strangely, she is running
around without clothes. She is actually traumatised.”
“Aha, that’s why I sleep so badly.”

“So that’s why my neighbour’s children scream at night.”

Somebody even said:

“Is that me you are writing about? I have all those symptoms.”

We do not measure traumatic stress or make a diagnosis apart from the
Subjective Units of Distress (SUD) scale of calibration 0-10, because in our
context we don’t and it necessary. Our definition of traumatic stress is when
an emotionally charged memory or reaction from the past keeps coming to
your mind in situations you cannot control, and makes you feel distressed in
various ways. If it does, TTT can help alleviate that distress and the negative
emotions and reactions connected to it.