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Key points
- A common trauma response can look like frantic attempts to control others and the environment.
- Like all trauma responses, there are pros and cons to such belief and behavior.
- A character from the film "Encanto" models how this trauma response can play out and what it can cost.
My daughter, like almost every four-year-old out there, loves the movie Encanto.
And honestly, I love it, too—especially the character of the grandma. The Abuela.
Why do I care for this character so much? Because she’s a perfect (albeit fictional) example of how someone might organize themselves in the wake of traumatic events.
Abuela’s story as a classic trauma response
In Encanto, we learn that Abuela endured a massive trauma. Forced to flee from her home with her infant triplets and husband, her husband was murdered trying to protect them as they fled (caveat: The film didn’t explicitly show this; it’s only implied).
So there she was – a young, post-partum mother of three with no home, no partner, and no safety in the middle of the Colombian countryside. And then “a miracle” happened and she was given and granted safety and refuge (in the form of an ever-burning magical candle) and she was able to not only raise her babies but provide a home for their babies as a community sprung up around them all.
And, as we learn minutes into the film when the first song starts to play ("The Family Madrigal"), Abuela forms an organizing belief about what will keep her family safe which revolves around hard work, community service, and self-sacrifice.
In essence, as I understand it, she believes all of it – the safety, the security – will disappear if she and her children and their children don’t show up in service, working hard and pushing themselves to “earn” that safety.
The past is still present for Abuela.
The dangers of her history aren’t there anymore, but she effectively believes the danger could be back at any moment, and all the safety and security ripped away from her and those she loves.
And so she continues to push herself and her family relentlessly toward hard work and self-sacrificing service, the very things she believes will protect them.
Like I said before: She is so relatable for many of us who come from trauma backgrounds.
Relentless hard work and control as coping mechanisms
When we endure traumatic events – be it prolonged and protracted childhood abuse and neglect and/or single incident traumas like a car crash, rape, or robbery – if we don’t have the proper support at the time of the event(s) to help us effectively “metabolize” the trauma, we may form maladaptive beliefs about ourselves, others, and the world around us and then further form maladaptive behaviors around these beliefs.
For example, a young girl who has an abusive father may grow up believing, “I can’t trust men, all men are bad.” It’s a maladaptive belief insomuch as it’s negatively biased and irrational: While it’s true that her own father was “bad” and couldn’t be trusted, there are men in the world who are "good" and who can be trusted.
Another example of a maladaptive belief is one Abuela holds: Hard work, self-sacrifice, and controlling everything and everyone will help keep me/us safe.
Abuela believes that if she can just control the people and events around her, and if they keep pushing themselves hard, she and they will stay safe.
And while hard work and control probably did keep her “safe” in the early years of raising her triplets alone, Abuela cannot see that the safety and security she currently has won’t disappear if she relaxes her standards and stops trying to control everything and everyone so much.
But there’s a painful cost to relentless hard work and control as coping mechanisms: It works until it stops working so well.
At the end of the day, all of our trauma-earned beliefs and behaviors have pros and cons to them.
Let’s go back to the example of the young woman who believes “I can’t trust men, all men are bad.” Perhaps the “pro” of this belief is that, as a teen and young woman, she keeps herself from dating and avoids possible events like date rape, being broken up, unwanted pregnancies, etc. — all risks in her mind if she allows men into her life. But possible “cons” of this belief might include a growing sense of misandry (prejudice against men) which trickles into non-functional behavior when she manages people at her first job and possible grief about ever becoming a mother because she can’t trust anyone to be a good partner to her and her kids.
All our trauma-informed introjects – the stories we swallow whole about our experiences – have pros and cons to them.
Abuela’s coping mechanisms of choice – control, hard work, and self-sacrifice – have their own pros and cons.
Pros: Hard work helped her raise her infant triplets as a single mother and showing up for the townspeople in service likely built some degree of social safety net for them all.
Cons: She’s pushing her loved ones away and (unconsciously) negatively impacting their mental health with her unrelenting standards.
Again, there are costs to our maladaptive beliefs and behaviors. And, as Abuela found out, ultimately, Casita crumbled despite the control she desperately tried to exert.
But the “safety” was there in the form of relational security which Abuela hadn’t had before (presumably it was just her and her three infants) when the townspeople came to help her rebuild the Casita and recover from the hardship.
She lost control and she was still safe.
Abuela is, for me, such an endearing and relatable character who models what coming from a trauma background can look like.
She’s not a “mean grandma”; she’s a matriarch trying to keep her family safe and protect them so that they don’t have to endure what she had to.
Her intentions are good, even though her actions are misguided and informed by the past, not the reality of her present.
That's something those of us from relational trauma backgrounds may be able to identify with.
