Prolong Trauma In Antwone Fisher's Life

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When a person experience prolong trauma, especially during childhood and adolescents it can have detrimental effects that could interfere with personal growth and development. Many times the trauma reemerge during adulthood through the person’s actions and beliefs about the world and the people around him. Without taking the necessary steps to resolve the past trauma, the traumatic events will continue to have control over the person’s life which can lead to negative consequences like physical harm to oneself or imprisonment. Author and psychologist Peter Levin once stated that “although humans rarely die from trauma, if we do not resolve it, our lives can be severely diminished by its effects” (). This quotes describes how a life can be tremendously …show more content…

Fisher’s behavior presented in the movie is consist with the DSM-5 criteria of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). According to the DSM-5, Fisher meets multiple criteria, such as, experiencing traumatic event(s), intrusive and recurrent memories about the traumatic event(s), efforts to avoid any thoughts, feelings, or memories relating to the traumatic event(s). Also, there are angry outburst such as aggression towards people, hypervigilance, and self-destructive behavior. Lastly Fisher’s behavior includes estrangement from others and persistent negative emotional states like anger (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). As a child, one may expect the adult figures in one’s life to protect one from all the dangers in the world, however when it is the adults who are the dangerous ones the child may learn new ways to cope with the abuse, while at the same time trying to find safe way to stay with the adult. Judit Herman describes the “abilities of [an child] to scan for warning signs of attack” (1992) for instance a child might be aware of an attack by the changes in a person’s tone …show more content…

Similar to how Fisher and his foster brothers knew who their foster mother, Mrs. Tate were calling for based on how she said the word nigger, and her tone of voice (Washington & Washington, Black, Haines, 2003). This is an example of how an abuse child learns to protect himself in an dangerous environment, by learning how to scan one’s environment for signs of danger. In this example, Fisher and his brothers had to learn to avoid danger by learning how to detect changes in Mrs. Tate’s voice, and as Fisher describe each brother knew who she wanted based on the way she used the word nigger. The implication of always being hyper aware of changes in other people tone of voice is that it can impair the development of future relationships. For example, in the case of Antwone Fisher, anytime he notices a change of tone of voice in another person, he might perceive this change as hostile and react in the same manner. Also, the change in tone of voice or use of a certain word might trigger a traumatic event which can result in physical altercation, for example in the scenes where he got into a fight with fellow sailor because Fisher claimed that the sailor said a racial word towards

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