No matter which way we try to reframe it trauma is painful. That original rejection of the essence of who we truly are leaves us with huge scars and tears in the fabric of self. Many of us may come to resemble patchwork dolls as parts of us have to be cut away due to parents not being able to cope with the ‘fullness’ of our being. The book I am currently reading on Everyday Narcissism is making so much clear to me about how highly sensitive children, when told that their feelings are ‘too much’ that they are ‘being too sensitive” what is really meant is that the parent is unable to cope or deal with those feelings.
I wish I understood this years ago. Its taken me until the age of 57 to truly begin to get it and I still suffer from feeling bad if I do something that doesn’t suit another person or they do not understand.
Those tears in the fabric of self take some mending and some of us don’t escape without undergoing terrible traumas, accidents or illnesses. I do believe that cancer is formed when the immune system starts to be compromised as our feelings and emotions in body get split off. I know cancers also come from other causes that are organic such as environmental factors, chemicals and pesticides and some also have a genetic component but carried trauma can also play a part.
The issue of the body rebelling against abuse and trauma and burying of emotional truth converting it into problems with auto immune illnesses is something Gabor Mate addresses in his many talks as well as his book When The Body Says No. As a fully qualified doctor who has been studying the subject for many years I believe the message in his book has some powerful insights for us.
The working out of trauma is painful but it can be done, as can the repairing of the fractures if they are not too deep. It consists in understanding where the injuries were formed as tears in the fabric of being. What is torn apart may never be put back together in the same way. Some of us literally have huge chunks taken out of us. Some of us have our power stolen but one thing is clear to me. We wont get it back until we truly understand the roots of what was done to us or how we had to bury or lose aspect to authentic parts of our spirit. Spirituality should surely not be some lofty thing but a full incarnation of our authentic spirit in matter, no longer fractured, torn apart, or split off.
And this personal manifestation of dis-connection can be echoed in a collective one which began with the splitting off of God from matter which began from the middle ages on, most especially following massive deaths following the Black Plague of the 13th century. If we believe that God is ‘above’ matter (rather than incarnate within it), matter becomes lower or needs to be redeemed or subjugated. Believing that to be spiritual or Godly requires being split off from nature (eg in the idea of original sin) and impute inorganic unnatural things into people or plants or whatever else. The vast majestic creative force of this Universe created us to be who we are and to unfold in an authentic real way in a natural flow of being and growth. How that being and growth is received or contained or facilitated or thwarted can vary vastly.
Learning the part our true feelings play and learning to trust and understand then without necessarily always acting them out can be a huge task for many of us. Those of us with trauma have a minefield of triggers. And core wounds can be the underground source of layered fears and anxieties. Understanding our predicament consists in finding all the places where we had to substitute the unreal for the real, the false for the true, the inauthentic for the authentic.
Emerging From The Dark Night 