Working through original pain.

It seems to me that so many of us in this society had or have a wounded inner child. I was even thinking of Eckart Tolle in this regard when he shared during a recent talk about how he was bullied.. There can be deep feelings living inside of us that go back to earlier times, there may be a longing there for something we never got.. My own personal experience (and we are all different here) is that when I can be with that pain and make sense of it then the pain can be helped, surrendered and let go. The pain knows it got my attention and understanding (in terms of being able to link it back even to past generations.) It knows that I care about it. but I do not have to identify it as defining the core of my being now..

I can not also just say its all about ‘negative ego’ after all some of us never got much of a chance to develop a strong healthy one, and in some way we may live closer as a result to the spiritual truth of an eternal self existing beyond pain.. We dissociate in order to step away on some level and stay safe and we often take refuge in nature.. In this way we learn more and travel deeper into a kind of non ego attunement than those who never got the hard or tough knocks and feel no shame or pain but instead survived by dismissing or putting down others..

I was prompted to write this post today, after reading a portion in Tian Dayton’s book Heartwounds : The Impact of Unresolved Trauma and Grief on Relationships. Dayton came from an alcoholic home and a lot of her work has to do with the healing of that original pain that can decimate so much of our ability to be in a healthy relationship with both our True self and others. In the chapter I was reading she was speaking about how we need to re feel the pain via catharsis but not stay trapped at that level, we must also work to have positive corrective experiences in the now.. It is something Peter Levine also advocates for in his brilliant book In An Unspoken Voice. Catharsis alone will not help us to move on and release our pain while gaining insight. And it occurs to me that ongoing emotional pain catharsis is something Eckhart Tolle would call ongoing activation of the pain body with no movement or shift our or capacity to detach or observe it with a more large part of us holding us safe in loving presence..

Anyway I thought I may just share this extract with followers today as when I listen to Eckhart’s talks and he speaks of non identification with ego another part of me reminds me I need the healthy aspect of ego to be functioning well so as not to stay stuck and dis-empowered in my past trauma which must be felt and its ramifications fully understood in order for new life energy and new ways of relating and interacting to be birthed in or become a possibility for me. To be told to let go of an ‘ego’ reaction I may need to have in order to understand something deeper about not only my own original pain but that of my parents, grandparents, great grandparents and great, great grandparents would be wrong..

This is a confusion I wanted to clear up after posting the last few posts where I shared his videos… Ego can work in positive and negative ways for us.. When we have not make friends with original pain and learned to soothe and love ourselves through it so to release, understand is roots and make meaning of it (a process of doing, undoing and redoing that Tian talks about in the following quote) we often end up projecting it, acting it out or alternatively drowning under the weight of it.. none of which are helpful for us to heal or grown in consciousness and presence in the long run.

Reconstruction (of a fractured trauma narrative) is the process of doing, undoing and redoing. First, we do or feel as we did then (as a child being hurt, neglected or traumatized) we re-experience the memory as we experienced it then. Next, we undo and examine or deconstruct the meaning that we originally assigned to our early experiences. Then we redo; we reconstruct the original situation with a new awareness, insight and meaning. This allows for new, healthier learning experiences to be introduced into the symbolic re-creation of trauma so that when the memory is recalled later, not only the pain, but the healing will surface also. Introducing and creating reconstructive memories is a crucial part of the healing process so that a person does not cycle endlessly through pain (meshing with the pain body with no corrective insight or understanding). Catharsis of past pain is only part of the healing.. If we constantly process pain without introducing new nourishing experiences, we start, as Albert Pesso of Psychomotor Mind Body Therapy says, “to eat the pain instead of the satisfaction because the nourishment is not being given.” He goes on to say that the “reconstructive memory needs to be kinesthetic.” or experienced by the mind and body together.. The brain learns by doing.. According to the brain, to do is to know. The corrrective experience needs to be experienced with full engagement of the mind, emotions and body in order for the brain to learn fully. People find meaning in their own way. Revelation comes from without as well as from within.

Revelation may come at odd times for many of us, with those ah ha moments of insight that arise as we see old ego reactions for what they are while being compassionate to the original pain or fear or insecurity that lies underneath and had a good reason for existing in the first place.. These reactions do not need to be disparaged, only understood, touched lightly and then let go with a huge sign of healing energy in which we open to surrender the old psychological entrapments while creating a space for new nourishment to enter.. After crying over those traumatising events for a long long time we may even be surprised to find ourselves laughing or smiling in the face of them, as they lose their power and negative hold over us.

Tian expresses it like this.

After you resolve and integrate a trauma and pass through a process of mourning, an important portion of the solution to living well with loss becomes a spiritual one that embraces the deeper mysteries of life The key to dealing well with loss, to allowing it to be a growth experience, turning it into another kind of gain, requires a shift of perspective. Life inevitably contains loss.. It is how we relate to it, as well as the meaning we give it that is most important to our healing and integrating process.