A young girl was walking with friends down her neighborhood street watching youtube on this friend’s phone. A disturbing video emerged out of the algorithm. It included plastic surgery on kids, a dad being attacked in bed and done…end of story. She was too afraid to tell her parents at first, so she hid it. In the aftermath, she couldn’t sleep and was clearly more irritable. Her older sister knew something was wrong and the young client confided in her. Thus, the story emerged. Her parents took care of her and brought her to counseling. The main theme I noticed was the lack of hero in the story, not to mention the demonic storyline in and of itself. Who was saving these kids from the surgeries? Who was going to defend the dad or why didn’t the dad wake up and defeat the monster coming at him? This left the little girl frozen and without language to understand her symptoms. The treatment was simple. Use art and imagination to empower her to complete the story with the heroes she looked up to.

Trauma typically happens in a heroless story. The culprit gets away with the abuse, the natural disaster does not apologize and the neglected child is left on the floor to fend for himself. When these stories are left unanswered and incomplete, it invokes a desolate feeling. The human soul has to find a way to numb, deflect or anesthetize the pain. Beliefs ripple, ‘I’m all alone, no one is coming for me, I’m not worth fighting for.’ ‘We’re living in a post-heroic world,’ Lord Andrew Roberts of Britain stated.

‘Let’s remember the past, for no sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men,’ stated Thomas Carlyle. Below is a short synopsis of a great hero, Winston Churchill. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater…Looking at your own story, who is or was your hero? How did they impact you or how can you allow them to enter now?

It was said that he had to be held back from entering World War II as a soldier. Winston Churchill was elected prime minister of Britain on May 10, 1940, the very day Hitler invaded a large portion of Europe. Churchill knew this day was coming as his sense of destiny was in his heart as a teen when he told a friend that he would be called upon to save England. This is a man who fought 5 campaigns on 4 continents by age 40 and engaged 30 trench raids during WWI. This is a man who escaped a Boar prison in South Africa in his 20s, a self realization moment inspiring his leadership abilities. The moral courage of Churchill rested on his knowledge of history, calling out the fanatical Nazis long before other leaders, which often led to criticism and questioning his abilities as a politician. Still, he did not back down.

‘I should have made nothing if I had not made mistakes,’ Churchill told his wife before his election. He made several of them, including the Gallipoli disaster of 1915 in which he did not listen to his chiefs of staff. This led to the death of 250,000 allied forces. He course corrected throughout the rest of his career, surrounding himself with ‘no-men’ during WWII, sometimes having to leave the room because tensions were burning during high stakes decision making. This time, he would ‘Disagree and commit,’ a business term indicating a leader's willingness to forgo his own ego for the sake of the greater goal. This was a life and death matter, as Hitler was not going to stop invading.

The British Bulldog had a speech impediment that he overcame by putting pebbles in his mouth while practicing oration. He forgot a speech in 1904 and from that moment on, wrote shorthand notes in Psalm form to get his key points across. His great speech on June 4, 1940 included all but 2 old English words, one being confidence and the other surrender. His moral courage, capacity for foresight and physical bravery are something to draw off of. Many times our stories are an archetype of WWII, some sort of tyranny or evil trying to take us out or at least bury its victim into a sleeping life of unawareness. The fight for our life might not so much be the defeat of an outside enemy, but to come alive inside by doing hard things, going after dreams and getting our story straight. A good starting point might just be telling the truth.

It may not have been your fault, but it’s now your great adventure to foster the hero story. So who is your hero?

Peace,

Michael Ciaccio MS, LPC, SATP