A trauma is something that ruptures the fabric of our existence and so a trauma can be something that opens us up to an entirely different world to the one we knew before trauma. Some very difficult traumas like a near brush with death, leaving a lasting injury or requiring a long period of recuperation and healing may eclipse our entire lives in some way. Then there are the traumas to early attachments or our sense of self which really leave us with a lot of challenges.
However, I also agree with trauma specialist, Peter Levine when he writes that trauma can open us up to the spiritual side of life. Many years ago the a guy called Wayne Mueller wrote a wonderful book The Legacy of the Heart : The Spiritual Advantages of a Painful Childhood which I read a while back and is organised into chapters which focus on contrasting topics, eg fear and faith, judgement and mercy, drama and simplicity. Much depends on how we deal with the legacy of the heart’s wounds and how much unconditional acceptance we can show towards our own sites of injury, for as Wayne writes “the weapon which we would use to destroy our enemy, must pass through our on heart to reach them.” So a legacy of toxic hatred, hurt and resentment or a desire for retaliation becomes in many ways a powerful poison of its own that may even be turned back upon the self in some way or diverted into other relationships in the sufferer’s life as one of the damaging responses to hurt, injury or trauma.
I have been thinking a lot lately of the concept of holding our suffering tenderly. It is a practice spoken about a lot in the writings of Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh…… he speaks of cradling ourselves when we feel scared, hurt, sad, fearful, or angry and speaking to ourselves with words of love, he also speaks of not making our fears and injuries into knots which we tie tighter and tighter as we wind our thoughts around in hurtful directions. These knot formations often occur as painful thoughts which cycle round and round, as I have experienced them in time lead to knots of both tension and contraction in our body and they can be released or loosened as we practice acceptance of, as well as opening towards what is occurring deep inside of us whilst showing ourselves acceptance and open minded curiosity, rather than rigid rejection or aversion.
Moving away from what scares us is another problem when trauma has ruptured or impaired our ability to relate or draw close. I cannot count the number of times I have watched myself move away from others just as we start to get closer. Its something that started to become apparent to me in later months and I see how withdrawing from what I really needed for years and being unable to speak of it kept me for so long deep within a prison of isolation. That said when others were not attuning to me emotionally it was difficult as it is for many of us with high sensitivity or empathy or lots of early trauma or wounding.
As Mueller writes
as we move closer to our fears, as we accept them, explore them, and examine our response to the anticipation of danger, we may begin to find that we have all that we need within ourselves that is required to feel safe and protected. When we directly face what frightens us, we often discover our capacity to survive whatever we have been given. The more we are present with ourselves in fear, without withdrawing, hiding our, or armouring ourselves, the more trust we develop in our on resources, our own creativity, wisdom, and resilience. Slowly we begin to cultivate a much deeper faith that, despite the hurts and disappointments we are given, somehow within ourselves, all will be well.
Resilience is something that comes out of facing our ruptures and tears in the fabrics of existence, seeing them as entry places to a deeper journey, ones that rather than shrinking our lives actually have the power to expand them and open us deep and wider to an experience of life, not as our minds would judge it ‘should’ be, but just as it is in the present moment. While digging ever deeper to find the gold.
Emerging From The Dark Night 