Since both
@Anarchy and
@scout86 mentioned me, I obviously have to drop by :P Nah, I'd probably join in regardless. I like these discussions. :)
I THINK it was [DLMURL="https://www.myptsd.com/c/members/27340/"]@Trauma[/DLMURL] . Her first language is Norwegian and, if I remember right, she mentioned that it's easier to talk about some things in English.
[DLMURL="https://www.myptsd.com/c/members/27340/"]@Trauma[/DLMURL] found some dialects of Norwegian, more triggering than others, and found that she could communicate words in english where the Norwegian equivalent would have been a no go area.
My first language is, quite correctly, Norwegian. However, I certainly believe my understanding of the English language is pretty fluent by now. The fact that I dream in English is a rather good indication of that, as dreams are in the subconscious and unless you're lucid dreaming you'd be unable to consciously force a language that feels "unnatural" to speak.
Norway has more than 2000 dialects. They are usually roughly parted into 4-6 groups. Northern Norwegian, West-Norwegian, South-Norwegian and East-Norwegian are the most rough partings. This is very little specific. For reference I used to live on an island with 2000 habitants. It was about 20 kilometers long. This island had three dialects; you could hear which part someone were from. The difference is fainter now, but it's obvious in elders. This applies to most of the country. We used to be so few on a huge area, with nature working against our mobility (look at height maps and you'll understand why people from the West and East are like day and night when speaking). Language students commonly claim that if Norwegians were right in the head we'd have 3 languages, at least.
Anyway, I can get triggered by hearing the specific dialect from that island. That's where I lived when most of my traumas happened. However, hearing a similar dialect can also be triggering. The intonation, endings of verbs and pronouns are often similar across bigger areas. If someone says "not" the way I used to say it (it's actually "ikke" in Norwegian, but the amount of ways people manage to pronounce that is immense), I'll be confused and distressed for a couple seconds before I connect to reality. If a short-haired woman with wide shoulders start speaking a dialect form that area I'm literally scared.
The same thing applies to the written version of Norwegian we used where I lived (there are two written versions of Norwegians because we didn't agree what to do with our language after getting our constitutional law 200 years ago, but we didn't want to keep Danish as the written language because having a constitutional law was the first step in regaining independence after two thirds of the country died and the Danish took over). I feel sick from reading and writing it, but the other one is just fine. Luckily the one where I'm from is the least used after Sápmi.
Talking about my traumas are so much easier in English. The word abuse doesn't make me feel the same way in English as in Norwegian, and saying or hearing "rape" isn't as distressing as its Norwegian equivalent. The term "child sexual abuse" has never, ever left my mouth in Norwegian. Even without specific terms, I am more comfortable talking about things in English that would cause discomfort in Norwegian, even if it has nothing to do with my traumas.
I know (from Grey's Anatomy) that if a person speaks multiple languages, each is stored in a different part of the brain. I'm not making the connection yet with how this applies to how trauma is stored. Any insights on this?
I never watched Grey's Anatomy or read about this, but it's been obvious to me for a long time that when fluent in more than one language, they are stored differently. I'm slightly over-analysing myself and others. Anyway, I think this is clear if you look at the learning process of a language. When learning a 2nd language it is, in the beginning, mostly based on translations. "Me llamo Trauma aquí y tengo catorce, casi quince, años." ("My name is Trauma here and I'm fourteen, almost fifteen, years old.") is in my head based on translating. I'm really not good at speaking spanish, and the sentence structures are usually extremely close to either English or Norwegian because I translate in my head. When I was little I did the same with English, but at some point it was as if a switch was flipped and I constructed my English sentences while thinking in English and "being" in English.
I've got an English "mode" and a Norwegian "mode". The two are so separated that if I watch a film in English while chatting with someone in Norwegian, I won't get anything right. The sentences I write will turn into complete wrecks halfway between Norwegian and English and it'll take me longer to make sense of the Norwegian messages and what they're saying in the film (I never use subs unless they're from Northern England or Eastern Scotland lol).
If you think about how the human mind is merely a huge network of electric connections and associations, it makes sense that language means a lot in trauma-related issues. Language is what we think and communicate in, it'll always be connected to associations is one way or another. When I'm in the English mode my associations are different than when I'm in my Norwegian mode. In the English mode I'm more of a geeky thing with their mind full of stuff you really don't need to know, probably because I can spend hours reading articles online. My associations in Norwegian are broader, which makes sense since I use this language all the time in my daily life.
I also associate my traumas with Norwegian words. They happened at the hands of Norwegian people, I was talked to in Norwegian, and all of it was very Norwegian. I've never experienced trauma in English; my English mode has very little to do with trauma. At least it used to, now it's got something to do with the survivor part of my traumas. That's because I came here. In Norwegian I could still be that little girl who comes out when I go into regression. That little girl didn't know much English. Whenever I speak English, I feel as an older person. More mature, more reflected. I have slight changes in personality in those two, distinct to me, faint to others. I read about a study where they screened the personality of bilingual/multilingual people. They did the screening in all their languages, after spending some time talking in it. One of the subjects were angry, bossy and strict in French, and warm, sweet and caring in Portuguese.
When an entire personality can depend and be relative to the language spoken, it seems fair that there are connections between trauma and language.
Please note that I'm only throwing out my thoughts and opinions, I'm not an expert :P Also, don't confuse any of this with DID. It would be interesting to look at language and alters, though.
