Mindfulness for Austria

Examples of trauma induced memories
during German class

Topic Family

In many textbooks in Austria, learning is linked to the student’s reality of life. For this reason, the topic of family can often be found in textbooks, and so during German course we wrote a text together on the topic of my father. One of the students had a crying fit and left the room. Emotionally he could barely cope to be separated from his father for so long.

Increased need for communication

During German courses I regularly experience an increased need to communicate about extreme past experiences. These experiences concern either the students themselves or other people whom they can relate to. The need for communication can be expressed on various levels, for example on a lin­guis­tic level or on a visual level in the form of photos or videos.
Here are a few examples to demonstrate this:

Once, before the German course, I ran into a student in the hallway. He spoke spontaneously about his torture in Chechnya: how people wanted to torture his brother. The student helped his brother and took the torture upon himself.

During German class I asked for the time. One student seemed eager to respond by showing me the time on his cell phone. I registered the time and noticed the background image which showed the student as a soldier carrying a machine gun.

A student shared with me a disaster video on her cell phone. In it I saw a woman in a bombed-out district in Syria who, out of sheer desperation, screamed and expressed her incomprehension in English. She couldn’t understand why there was no help anywhere.

Increased nervousness

Nervousness can show in different ways, for example through an increased need for movement even during German course, through a lack of concentration and the ability to memorize or regarding learning problems in general. Specifically, this became obvious with one student as follows: He could barely sit still, often distracted himself by being on his cell phone, abruptly left the room, regularly found it difficult to follow the lessons and had problems with regular attendance. I understood how trauma led to this behaviour.

Possible loss of control

A sudden, intense emotional experience, in combination with a reduced ability to regulate emotions, is often a result of trauma. In a worst case scenario, this can lead momentarily to a loss of control. A concrete example: In the administration’s office we suddenly heard loud screaming coming out of a German course. I opened the door and saw a student standing behind his desk expressing his anger. He yelled that he was not able to follow the topic of the lesson. The teacher told me afterwards that they had dealt with the subject of „stress“, and that they were discussing the various reasons behind what triggers it in the students.