When I Woke Up Friday

When individuals are affected by traumatic events, their minds internalize these experiences due to the impact that such incidents have on them. When dealing with the effects of the trauma, these individuals must confront the issues they face as a result of the trauma and manage the effects on their daily lives, or the trauma will act as a barrier that prevents them from finding a sense of self. In her essay “When I Woke Up Tuesday Morning, It Was Friday,” Martha Stout focuses on detailing her interactions with Julia, one of Stout’s patients who experienced severe trauma during her childhood, and in doing so makes the point that Julia’s mind was not present for most of her childhood as a result of the trauma, preventing her from accessing the

These qualities seem to be completely at odds with Julia’s attempts to commit suicide. However, Stout implies that there is a great disparity between how others see Julia and who she truly is when she states, “[Julia’s] psyche was mangled by profound trauma in her past … and the consequent suffering in her adult life has been nearly unsurvivable. Should one meet her on the street … she would seem quite normal. In fact, one might easily view her as enviable. Certainly, when looking on from a distance, nothing at all would appear to be wrong and much would be conspicuously right” (423). Although others may see Julia as “quite normal” or even “enviable,” it is important to note that while she may be perceived in this manner, the reality of who she is differs from this immensely. It may seem that “nothing at all [is] wrong and much [is] conspicuously right” with Julia and her life, but in actuality, her “psyche was mangled” by the trauma she had experienced at the hands of her parents, and this significantly impacted her mind and her perception of the world, and by extension, her conception of her