Keeping moving and reminding myself “I am safe!”

We just got back from a later walk, at times its a push to get moving but when I do I am grateful. I was sharing with a friend with Complex PTSD earlier about how it was to be crushed and trapped in that car, with so much cut and bleeding and my lungs filling up with fluid from the rib puncture. He went through other forms of overpowering and immobilization, and it occurs to me that Peter Levine, trauma specialist and founder of somatic experiencing says that kids pinned down in any way or immobilized as result of traumatic procedures or abuse suffer more.. There is no way to run away in such cases and they get flooded and feel trapped.. Peter helps them later to complete the necessary running movement because he learned from animals those that are allowed to move and discharge through shaking or trembling to throw off trauma fare better than those who cannot and the legacy of anger left in a child may be too ‘hot’ for a parent to handle so they may block or punish a child for it not understanding and so doom them to a host of later problems.

My friend told me today that he was sent to an institution and sent into a bubble room, I didn’t like to ask too much about that but I know his fighting off the entrapment and burst of rage were healthy, even if he got in trouble for them. That said later in life engaging in some fear fight flight reactions can get us in more trouble.

I felt better for my walk this afternoon, even discussing all of this with a good friend stirs me up. We were saying how many dud therapists we have encountered in our time and how useless we know the medication pathway is for many.. This not a popular thing and each to their own in trauma, I can only share what works for me and I never used meds, have seen the toxic results on two sister of prescriptions for many things including lithium, though another friend claims it helped her.. But that is not the purpose of this post.. It is to say how movement is so important but also releasing and discharging with someone who understands and is safe, as with ignorant or unsafe others we may be traumatised again..

That said it is a belief of mine that our body organically knows what it needs to heal and what works, as Levine notes when we over-ride those instinctive movements we lose our way. A large part of dissociation can be about being scared of memories or symptoms that are in reality not dangerous any more, that is why more and more lately when mine come up I just remind myself I am safe and being held in love.. To think the other way arks up anxiety and reactivity… it speeds me up instead of slowing me down and often my body needs me to connect to it, rather than split off as so many of us have no other alternative but to when faced with certain triggers or re-enactments of trauma.

Understanding

Understanding came along the way

I did not expect to find even this depth of forgiveness

not knowing till now

how

those lost shards of painful memory

had to be buried

by the victims

who lived on and committing their

emotional truth to silence

were not able to tell the tale

only gave voice

in invisible ways

through silence

or a misconstrued anguish

As a child

we do not know

the twisted painful reality of things

our fore-bearers lived

and so we rebel or protest with a ferocity

perhaps impossible for them to understand

But now, it seems to me

those reactions all make sense

almost as if through giving birth to us

the truth detectors

their cells carrying forgotten memories

can be retrieved

There is a truth that needs to be told

There is a sadness that spreads its invisible cloak

over the hearts of those we loved

the depth of whose soul suffering

we never fully understood

and only the journey of discovery

that leads along that painful path of broken glass *

finally ends

in both understanding

and forgiveness

(This poem is inspired by the book The Writing on the Wall : How one boy, my father, survived the Holocast, written by the Australian journalist Juliet Riede

Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) took place on 9 an 10th of November 1938 and was the first of the violent pogroms against the Jews by the Nazis taking place in Germany and the recently annexed portions of Austria and Czechoslovakia )

How shame and the inner and outer critic prevent us living wholeheartedly.

It was shame researcher, Brene Brown who a few years back coined the term foreboding joy which is a term to describe the fear we carry into life that can protect us from embracing joy in the moment and living wholeheartedly… We see a small baby and our heart just fills with love but then fears of loss can come too and steal that moment from us..

While driving home I was thinking about a very involved and informative post Trauma Research UK recently shared on shrinking the inner and outer critic.. In fact I read it in therapy today crying at some parts as well as being doubled over with pain in my gut at others.. there is so much in it that resonates with me…

My inner child is speaking very loudly lately about how she felt in our family and how she struggled with very distant and preoccupied parents.. and about how painful it was to be sent to my room when I was legitimately angry, or hurt over some incident. In the post the writer shares that toxic parents do hurtful or neglectful things, but then also shame and silence the child’s legitimate protest, as a result the child has no alternative but to turn those feelings back inside the self and develops a virulent inner and outer critic that shames the child or seeks to protect and avoids other people who have that fear of the hurtful parent projected on to them…

Today in therapy I felt the pain of being sent to my room with all of those feelings I needed help to manage from one of my parents deep in my body while my inner child articulated it.. the feelings felt so so big… .. In fact Dad often laughed as Mum terrorised us with rage, things that hurt then being mocked is just an awful kind of pain for a child. I also remember being laughed at and shamed for being passionate and dramatic and come to think of it not hearing or validating someone’s grief for a lost loved one is a lot like shaming them for passion and deep feelings.

I will share the link to the related post as I believe it is essential reading for people who have endured relational and attachment trauma. What a painful place to find ourselves, cut off from relations in the outer world that could reconnect us all due to the fear of experiencing what we did in the past, or seeing rejection when it isn’t really there?

https://traumaresearchuk.wordpress.com/2020/08/21/the-role-of-the-inner-and-outer-critic/

I have written extensively on the protector/persecutor complex in my blog before.. The persecutor is an inner figure that goes on beating us up well into adulthood.. It may be that we experience a sense of shame and guilt for what was done to us. It was a very powerful relief in therapy today to hear my mother’s voice telling me how proud she was of me to be doing this work and how none of what went down in terms of my own neglect was my fault. In later years I saw her struggling with seeing how it brought about the ending of my marriage while at the same time wanting me to stop any focus on inner work or therapy which, at least initially she did not understand

In later years she actually came to some appointments with me and began to open up to me about her own neglect and I know she wished in some way my living sister could follow this path instead of a purely psychiatric ‘drug relief’one.

I understand my father has having endured neglect too and he ran away from Holland n 1938 leaving his family behind to save his own life.. He worked so hard to put all of that behind him but he just created more problems as neglected children of neglected parents often end up crashing and burning.. This has not applied so much my older brother who has been able to hide neglect behind enormous outer success in the world, especially financially, although his only daughter has borne the brunt of much of this. I was so sad to hear from my sister on the weekend that she had a stroke recently something my brother did not feel safe enough to share with me.. and we tried to get close many years ago (my only niece and I) but this was derailed by the family which made me cry for years…it being just more of the same old same old emotionally distant family pattern.

I notice at times I can attack people in the outer world who want to get close to me.. I am more aware of the pattern lately.. In fact on the weekend I had to own some of this with someone I care for deeply, luckily ours is one of those relationships able to hold the paradoxical feelings of hate and love, longing and fear and he never ever ever shames me.. Something I cry deep tears of gratitude for. As a Complex trauma survivor I need these kind of relationships in my life, as I am still healing and very raw with grief lately.

Much as we say we need to do our own healing work alone, sometimes the Complex PTSD ‘warrior’ defence may work against what Elaine Aron calls ‘linkages’, bonds that we try to establish as adults.. The outer critic can function to try and cut these bonds by seeking that ‘worm in the apple’ I have mentioned that those of us with avoidant attachment so often go looking for in relationships. Also when we split people into all good or all bad we loose the capacity for connection. A good enough relationship is one in which we make mistakes but can express our full range of feelings and be heard.. it comforts me so much when someone says they understand how I feel to me that is a strong healing balm, since as I child I was so often led to believe my feelings were wrong or made no sense at all.

Shame and fear of experiencing joy seem to be interconnected in so many ways in those of us with Complex PTSD, taking the risk to open our hearts again often opens us to old pain but that also has a purpose… so we can grow in awareness of the complex mix of feelings we can so often experience in relationships. Working on listening to all of the inner voices we hear too is ongoing work in order that we can sort out the mix of those that are helpful and life promoting and those that hinder us, keep us trapped in shame or only promote a freezing or disconnection from the heat of engaged interaction and possible attachment. There is a part of us that often seeks to sabotage our healing if we were badly hurt in childhood… those interested in this could look into the work of therapist Donald Kalsched who wrote brilliantly about it in his book The Inner World Of Trauma.

The frustration of not being heard or seen

I was grateful to have therapy today and I left the house before lunch leaving Jasper after cuddling him and crying in the garage. I asked the groomer yesterday to give him a light trim, she took his fur back so short and hard and he was very vocal after she led him back inside (she is a mobile groomer and does it outside), he’s a sensitive little one she said, with a quizzical and strange kind of look on her face, as if he was over-reacting. I now know that triggered me, the poor little guy was stressed and I let this happen to him, was crying over it in therapy…..may seem like an over – reaction to some but not if you know my own history… Kat got it this afternoon and its not the only case of my boundaries being over-run lately. Am at my wits end with someone I told I would not help who said they would ‘never ask again’ and then did and then balked when I called them out on it.. I was spitting chips earlier.. Am not holding onto it but really I did feel like murdering someone today… also got house bound with the rain and waiting for the plumber who couldn’t get here for over a week, but turned up pretty promptly this morning, the thing I love about my plumber, Chris is that he is soft, kind and gentle and always tells you exactly what he is doing very clearly….

Anyway I am learning to hold onto my boundary and trust when I am feeling angry its a sign someone is trying to take liberties or push the envelope and this tallies with the Mars Pluto aspect coming closer and the Moon squaring Pluto and Mars today too.

Kat pointed out today that frustration over powerlessness is a huge trigger for me, when young so much happened to me that I could not control or stop, boundary violations left, right and centre and I remember my older sister saying to me in the care home in the final years before she died “never, never, never, never let anyone tell you what to do”. I was reading the Al Anon Blueprint for Progress today that not being able take advice or direction is a defect, but not in all cases. Sometimes we know what is right for us to do and no one likes being pushed. To then be fed the line that its somehow God’s will that you help the individual and that they are privy to some special kind of insight into God’s plan quite frankly rankles me even more… Sorry if this upsets some readers but what other kinds of violations have been sanctioned all in the ‘name of God’? This person has Mercury squaring their Neptune in Sagittarius which could go with a kind of God delusion….I am not averse to God or prayer and am not one to push my will if I don’t think its for the best, but to be told that if you aren’t doing something someone else wants its just because you are ignorant of God’s plan somehow doesn’t cut it for me any more.

I feel calmer this afternoon anyway. I got home and finally got Jasper out for a good walk around the block he had a bit pooh stored up and must have been stressed yesterday as it showed, we needed two separate pooh bags to clear it up and Jazzie isn’t a big dog.

I will have to look for another groomer or with autumn on the way maybe I will just keep on top of Jasper’s coat myself. I wish groomers would be more sensitive at times… I don’t think Jasper over reacted, she cut him too close..Hate feeling I did something to stress my lovely companion out but its behind us this afternoon. I just know reactions don’t lie, sometimes society forces us to temper then, but they are usually pretty good guides to what is healthy and not for us.. Having these over-ridden just leads to pain and frustration.

Piercing : family curse

This piercing in my head

Hurts like hell

Especially when you speak of the togetherness

I am barred the way from

Is it my permanent curse

To be exiled

To not be able to find

A way to be welcomed in

Unless I break down the door

And yet something in me falters

Feeling I don’t belong here

While another part feels spun awry

By this feeling

Are we not family

Flesh of the same flesh

With blood ties only severed

By a death

No one ever speaks of

Lingering like a ghost

Upon the eve of Christmas

So I will sit all alone here

Remembering so much

While you drive

Not really knowing the way

Full of anxiety

It would be so easy to reach out a hand to me

But instead I will be here

Crying into my hands

Knowing the one who offered me love

Is now exiled too

Because all along

It was just too impossible

To break the family curse

How trauma and PTSD disrupts relationships

I happened upon an excellent blog for trauma survivors today. I have linked to a post from it in my previous blog post, but the following with resonate for trauma survivors like me who have struggle in their relationships. I identified with most of this comprehensive post.

http://www.new-synapse.com/aps/wordpress/?p=741

The soul in silence : reflections on solitude, trauma, wounding and healing

All the beautiful responses to my recent post/poem Trust in Silence have really got me thinking today of how important silence is to being able to be with and connected to depths of our soul.  When we are struggling or suffering often we can be abused by being told we need to ‘get out of our own heads’, “get off our pity pot!’, (yes readers I have heard this one many times in 12 step meetings) or that we are ‘isolating’ and at times there can be some truth to that, sometimes when we need the loving touch or support of others or look for the gifts or message in a painful experience,  but in world that find it hard to stomach or fathom certain truths, is it any wonder we learn to turn more and more towards the silence if we can, deep in that silence, find an inner source of soothing, calm and healing?

I know for myself the healing to be found in the warm of the sun, in sitting in a shady spot with doors open, Jasper at my feet just feeling the sense of connection with the moment that is awesome, magical, healing and mysterious and beyond words to fully describe (though I make stumbling attempts in poems).  Then there are the times when the silence is more like a deep dark indigo ocean that almost squashes me, I feel myself subsumed or I feel the cresting of a wave of anger or grief or sorrow that wants to rise up and sweep through me, possibly even sweep away some debris from inside, memories or feelings I buried long ago, and if I just allow myself to surrender than I can expand rather than contract in response to that and feel the beauty of having touched base with my soul.

And lets face it, for many of us who have endured depths of loss and trauma others do not, have not and could never know the depths of we are not going to find that recognition or acceptance and allowing of our process from most people and my personal feeling is that therapists also don’t always know the territory themselves.  I was told by astrologer Melanie Reinhardt 13 years ago after my last major accident which was a repeat of my near death one at age 17 that most therapists would not be able to fully understand the deeper spiritual dimensions of the wound of nearly losing my life as well as all the deeply Plutonian experiences that followed over the next 30 or so years for me.  She directed me towards the work of Buddhist Nun Pema Chodron and said a soulful meditative practice would be the best therapy for me.  Sadly I got into another relationship two years later with someone who saw my need for solitude as pathological.  According to him I had agrophobia!!!!  Anyway don’t really want to go back into the relationship today, it was a learning curve for me and I got some good things out of it and deeper understanding due to all the pain we both acted out on each other.

Lately I am learning to accept and validate more my need for soulful solitude.  It is where I create from.   It is where my deepest healing happens.  I don’t feel that level of connection in may relationships in the world, in some I do.  I feel it here because I feel here other trauma survivors and people in recovery are on the same page.  Just connecting with you brings me SO MUCH HEALING.  I was blown away yesterday by the love shown to me on a really tough day, coming out of a painful and challenging week.

I wanted actually to post another Thank You blog too as I was so grateful yesterday and today to open my page and see all the comments and love on here.  As well as responses to other comments of mine where I am trying to support others going through trauma and meeting misunderstanding and woefully inadequate response to their Complex Trauma.  I really see my life purpose to be as a Wounded Healer and it is what Melanie Reinhardt teaches about in her work on Chiron.  Its really only us who have navigated the depths of trauma that fully understand and since all traumas are also different in some ways we wont understand everything as we all have our own unique journeys, but in time I want to set up some kind of site to offer help.   If my journey and suffering and losses and gains can be used to help others that is what really makes me happy, it gives me a peace and feeling of wholeness that really lays so far beyond words.

But as I read this back I am mindful too that the healing for all of us lies both in connections with others, but more paramountly through the healing that comes from connection to our deepest soul.  I feel collectively we are trying too, to heal a deep split from nature and instinct and the divine feminine.   It is hard to articulate this in a post but there is a source of power that to me is Goddess like,  I don’t find the concept of a male God as personally healing in my own journey unless I think of the Frank Lloyd Wright quote in which he says he believes in God but his God is nature.   We are part of this mystery and so is our deepest soul and many of us are on a journey now to connect more to that source both within and without in order to find peace and love after years of separation, fear or trauma.  And to recognise more deeply our essential kinship with all living beings as well as the deep silence.

 

A safe calm space

As a trauma survivor also raised in a high anxiety home its important for me to find and relax into safe calm spaces where and when I can find them.  I find there is a moment of decision in which I must take the opportunity just to ‘be’, to let myself and my awareness keep a focus on sounds and then quietly on my breath.  At times my body chemicals over-ride this, particularly at the time of my two major physical traumas at others like today on my walk with Jasper this didnt happen.  We had a lovely moment sitting under the shedding acorn trees in the child’s play part where I was just in the peace of the present moment.

It’s unseasonally hot here today, but under the tree it was cool and while sitting there and enjoying the surrounds I also focused on closing my eyes and hearing the layering of sounds around us which included birds singing, a dog barking, the low hum of traffic as well as the soft sound and feel of the breeze.  I was aware of my body but for a miraculous moment there was no pain in my body and I was able to breathe a full breath which seems impossible when a trauma cascade hits me as it can up to two or three times a day.  It was so beautiful just to revel in the pleasant sounds and sensations around me, to be aware of the absence of thought apart from the soothing one. “this feels lovely” and to feel myself let go and expand in to it.

This experience of peace had come just after reading and replying to some comments on my last post about trauma, addressing where we put our focus, the experience of being in and out of it and sharing some of what I understand from trauma specialist, Peter Levine’s work on trauma about pendulation in working with traumatic events.

It also came after a period of doubt about my current therapy which is extremely affirming but at times brings up very very painful sensation when I have to re share traumatic events or experiences and reactions from the past or the past week.  For a while a while ago I was seeing a body harmony therapist who was very quick to pull me out of my thoughts about sensations especially when they were in triggering parts of my body that have undergone trauma.  Due to the numerous physical traumas there are not a lot of parts of my body that trauma has not touched but Robyn during our sessions would try to keep me entering then leaving and then shifting the focus on to something pleasant  in the room or by getting me to look into her eyes when I was in overwhelm or flashback which is what Peter Levine encourages his own clients to do.  And often an outpouring of grief would occur at these times which she would mirror and affirm.

This work is not easy because trauma can be so very magnetic and as I understand it there is also something called the trauma vortex, which I experience in my spine as a kind of spinning sensation and it can spin at times clockwise and at other times counter clockwise, hard to explain here but I sense this spin at different times of the day and when awakening at night which is accompanied by the sensation of cells in my body being fluid or silted or inundated with fluid.  (In my original near death trauma my lungs were punctured by a broken rip and the fluid poured in through the pierced pleura.) At times it is so hard to get my attention pulled away from this magentic focus which is also telling me something deeper not always accessible in words.

Today I also had the awareness of how my own reactivity contributed to the second trauma which was a bike accident triggered after doing a cranio sacral session on the original crash around the first anniversary of my husband leaving me.   I would not have had that second accident if I was not on the run from family and I would not have had it if I had not retriggered the trauma of the earlier crash in that session.  The most important insight I came away from that session with was seeing my accident from outside and how it had traumatised my father at the time who was not, like my Mum called to the scene of the crash and I think had to see me cut out of the car after a long period of being trapped.

Writing all of this today is actually retriggering me too.  My family heard about my second crash but no one bothered to come over to be with me and so I was pretty much alone and then in trouble with the family I boarded with for making their lives harder by having had it.  And so I took myself away on retreat to Glastonbury to an ashram and was not able to really get all the help and support I needed despite the fact I had made a good friend from my Dad’s home town in Holland when I was in the UK and ready to come out of hospital.   I ran from her too as I felt my trauma was really not understandable and if I think about it I also feared abandonment, so I ran back to family.  That is a hell of a lot of running.  And yet I did the best I could at the time.

All of this is behind me now, but the thought lives on when I think of connecting with my sister over Easter on the fourth anniversary of our older sister’s death.   Should I really be blaming her for a lack of empathy shown after  my ex husband left and she accused me of being a selfish little girl?  What of the fact she has undergone her own trauma since and is kinder now? What of the times she did try to help me but was not really sure how to?  How much contact to have and how come I still feel so responsible for her and long so much to connect?  Yet even as I read this back, of course I long for this sister’s love but she never treated me as kindly as my older sister did. And even that relationship had toxic elements.

I know this is a lot of questions and I dont know all the answers.  I imagine readers getting impatient with me.  But then I think of a comment from a follower last night which said to try and see the situation from outside myself and to consider how I would treat this person (me) who had been through so much?  Wouldnt I just advise her to take care of herself first, no matter how ‘selfish’ that makes me seem and keep limited contact?

What I am understanding today though is, how much that is good is really around me at the moment when I take those steps to find that safe calm space in the day in the present moment away from past trauma triggers and residues.  Trauma lies in my past, not my present and yet at times it seems to dominate my present.  I get those mixed up thoughts of love for my sister and mother while seeing things they did that also hurt me.   I think of how my sister is now very alone and isolated in her own life but I am aware too of the fact that she too is responsible for herself and maybe she finds her own quiet calm space better being on her own, than around me.  And I know a lot of the time being around my sister quiet frankly triggers me and makes me feel more anxious as memories of that horrible time at the coast where she asked my mother to choose her favourite person to be with out of her and me ended with Mum saying she would rather be with my sister who was happy not sad. Part of me feels betrayed but part of me understands, but then I was always left alone in my grief anyway just as I was left alone as a child and the end of my marriage in 2004 just opened up all of those other losses starting with my father’s death in 1985.  Those losses too are all in the past and yet they have marked me.  They have, at times, led to faulty beliefs that I didn’t deserve any better or somehow caused it all.  In the calm quiet space I can just observe these thoughts come and go.

Today I am grateful for that lovely moment I had earlier in the day.  I am grateful for the lovely lunch of quiche and home made salad I just ate while writing this, I am glad for my therapist Kat and I am glad for the ability to be able to write about all of this and to be heard, read, reached out to by others and understood.  That’s a hell of a lot to be grateful for and heading into easter, although it will always be tinged with the trauma of losing my older sister in 2014 after 34 years of witnessing her also go through trauma and abandonment I am aware that out of the crucifixion of all of our most painful experiences does come a time of entombment and then resurrection.  We go into the fire in trauma, part of us get burned up as we walk across ‘the burning ground’ but we also emerge in time, transformed in some way, deepened in some way, enriched in some way and also made more full of compassion in some way.   It’s a painful territory but one that also makes us aware of blessings as well as the depth of love which is always present in grief and in our longing and which we should pray never to fully forsake due to the pain and agony of trauma.

A wall of fire

Walking through trauma and waking up inside a nightmare that has formerly been repressed is so so hard.  I do not think anyone truly understands trauma unless they have lived trauma.  That said some therapists try and have sufficient insight, others don’t in my experience.  I often get stymied trying to explain my complex body symptoms to my psychoanalyst, Kat.   She does not know how my nights are, the struggle I go through daily and nightly as I feel I am drowning and get fixed on past imprints.  I survive as best I can by putting structure in my day and a daily connection with nature is essential to me.

That said reading of how others are also struggling to express to those they love who can sadly not understand brings back key incidents from my own struggle for recognition.  My husband got very jealous of my therapy and sided with my Mum in trying to pull me back in line, that said I know he cared for me and didnt want me to be struggling but as a trauma survivor I was and lack of empathy ended up triggering me to take flight again and smash up on the other side of the world all alone.   My by then ex husband came to the hospital but gave me no support, told me I needed to go home and he would give me no help with residency (which I eventually got alone) even though I supported him with Australian residency when we met as well as setting up his business.  He wanted back “the happy girl I married”, what was the message in that, please put all this sadness behind you if you want us to survive.  Its the same message I got in the next relationship I sadly went into 3 years after my ex husband and I separated.

To be dumped when you are already foundering is killing.  I honestly dont know how I survived.  After the accident overseas I did come home and ended up living alone at the coast for years, no therapy and that was a big mistake but by then my trust was shattered.  Luckily I have now been back in therapy for just over 4 years but only really found my last best therapist 3 years ago.

Walking through trauma is like walking through a wall of fire, it is that painful.  Along the way you will be told all kinds of shit by others who have not a clue of what you live through on a daily basis.  For me a lot of the way I coped was to pretend I was okay and put on as good a front as I could to be accepted but when I finally crashed and burned after coming home I started to get honest and yes, even scream at times, which lost me ‘friends’ but not the people who truly understood and cared.  Being deluged with trauma visions as stuff starts to uncover is fucking hard and you need support, sadly there is no way out but through it and sadly until recently truths about trauma and the body were not fully understood, apart from in shamanic cultures and disciplines and those reactions were only understood to be ‘irrational’ but they are not really irrational when you know what a soul has endured but all a part of a valid response to PTSD or Complex PTSD.  I have said it before in this blog and I will say it again.  You are not abnormal for having a normal response to the overwhelm of trauma.  By its very nature trauma overwhelms us and learning to contain that charge takes a lot of time and has to be done slowly over time with those who can help us to hold it and release it little by little by little, a lot like letting air out of a balloon.   Wounds to the soul, as D H Lawrence reminded us cannot be cured over night and they will always leave us different, marked in ways that others who have not endured trauma can and will never fully understand.

The meaning we make of things : reflections on trauma, choice, recovery and inner power

The meaning we make of things has a huge influence and power over us and then there are the meanings other influences may project or teach, such as the belief in some spiritual, new age philosophies that we ‘chose’ to be here and experience all we are experiencing for some ‘higher purpose”.  I am not as big a fan of this point of view these days although I do believe we are all being presented with evolutionary challenges all the time and that the attitude we take to our trials and tribulations does make huge difference, but this is different to being told we ‘chose’ something painful as a way to learn.  I just don’t believe that any more.

I have had the thought a  lot lately that I did not choose to be born.  My parents conceived me as an unplanned child later in life and I didnt chose to be born into a much older family where a lot was already going down before I arrived on the scene.  Later in my life and through much inner exploration I have been able to be more objective about what was happening subjectively, internally and implicitly for me as a young baby and child born into this much older business oriented family.  I was listening to an excellent programme on Tuesday on the difference between trauma memory and other memoires.  Trauma that happens to us before age of 2 is not consciously remembered as our hippocampus has not been formed yet so is encoded implicitly and is only available through sensation not as thought.  It is known too that trauma that occurs after the hippocampus is formed affects the size and influence of this part of our brain on us.

I am only minimally educated in my understanding but I remember reading in Peter Levine’s books Waking The Tiger and In An Unspoken Voice how inaccesible to thought such trauma is and how sensation focused therapy which helps us to bear with and relate to pscyho-biological symptoms (which can be both intense and frightening) is the best kind of therapy to help us with healing, integrating, self soothing and containment of trauma.  Also since trauma creates fractures in sensation and experience once such body memories are made conscious they can then be integrated into a narrative which helps us to make sense.

The other thing much on my mind this morning was how much self blame is a part of having undergone trauma.   And to be told we ‘chose’ something gives us the illusion of some kind of power or control when really we had neither at the time and often found ourselves totally overwhelmed and disempowered.  This is why Complex PTSD therapist Pete Walker and trauma specialist Judith Herman remind us how important it is that we who have been traumatised deal with the inner and external criticism and blame that can be heaped on us and how important it is that we develop good boundaries and the ability to fight back if part of the way we responded to trauma was to collapse, dissociate or go numb, or fall into a pararlysis (playing dead so as to escape the threat).  Writing the last reation reminds me of how a wounded animal naturally retreats after a wound to try and heal itself by licking the wound, this kind of ‘licking’ for humans may involve repetitive thoughts or rumination which we play over and over again but if too internalised may keep us trapped.  And then to be told we ‘chose” it, just adds insult to injury.

At the same time there is something we trauma survivors do have power and control over, that is the choices me make as to how to respond to being instinct injured or damaged emotionally.  It may take a lot of time to find any form of power or control or free choice if we remain identified as victims.  The truth is we WERE victims at the time of trauma but we do not have to keep allowing ourselves to be revictimised over and over again by telling ourselves things like “I chose it”, or “I deserve it”, or “this was all for my higher good”.  In time as Peter Levine explains trauma does give us a gift of recognising how important the spiritual dimension of experience is.  If we loose touch with the power of our spirit for life, light, joy and hope, we are disempowered, once we gain access to this power we may find an inner strength and wisdom that was lacking before.  Then we can say that trauma had a purpose but not one we chose, still one the world so sorely needs to learn about and from.   We trauma victims who have in some way recovered can then become voices for what lies unspoken in our cells and biology and may even, in some way, been inherited from our ancestors who passed it on when they chose or happened to give birth to us.

The link to the programme on trauma and memory can be found here :

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/trauma,-memory,-and-health/9547446