So many who go through trauma and live with the ongoing body and inter relational symptoms can come to feel we are defective or broken when really our symptoms bear testament to the fact, not only of what hurts or shocks we endured but as well as to the fact that we are human and are alive and feeling even if those feelings are horrendously painful and make our bodies anything but calm, peaceful and relaxed or trap us in states of disconnection or inner paralysis.
The idea of a core inside of us that can contain things and is whole is something addressed in a book I have just purchased called You Are Not Broken.. The writer Sarah Woodhouse herself sustained trauma and she went through all that many of us caught up in trauma loops go thorough..She was someone who sought psychotherapy rather than psychiatric diagnosis alone.. There can be a tendency with psychiatry to see the patient as abnormal in some way, which is an issue that Peter Levine addresses in his book In An Unspoken Voice. He says that modern terminology that acts as a label can actually end up distancing others from a true understanding of the hidden life urges or suffering present in many trauma symptoms while dumbing down the powerful embedded charges of shocks sustained.. He claims for example that shell shock is a more embodied descriptive term that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a term later coined for what Vietnam Vets suffered after horrendously traumatic deployments.
A lot of the work with our trauma is about learning to understand how we were affected (across every dimension of being and experience) and also how not to judge or shame ourselves (nor accept that judgement or shame being put on us by others) for not being able to live the kind of lives or even experience the easy kind of inter personal closeness that those who have not suffered major inter-relational or attachment trauma have. It is about ending that judgement, offering ourselves and our traumatized parts empathy and unconditional understand while also learning to give encouragement to the still whole (if majorly ignored and developmentally stunted or arrested parts of us) a voice and a means of external or inward expression.
It is something I have been thinking about for those of us who were not allowed to protest our trauma or hurts by parents or other societal forces in our young lives which may lead to a banked up pile of repressed (what trauma therapist Tian Dayton) calls ‘historical’ anger and/or rage. I found myself in one of those deeply triggered places yesterday I really got myself into a crying, raging, tumultuous state later in the afternoon but when I did some dialoging with my ancestors and parents it was clear to me that what I was experiencing then had deep roots for that time of day 3 pm to 7 pm can be particularly painful for me and it coincides with a time of day my Mum was left alone as a young child as well as with a time of trauma in my Great Great Grandfather’s persona and family life related to his alcoholism and rages.. In fact in dialogue with him he was telling me how frustrated, helpless and overwhelmed he so often felt at this time of day and of the burdens of being responsible for so many children.. It made me realize that many of the reactions I have at this time to certain triggers such as the house or garden being a little bit of a mess relate to the deeply embedded fear inside my Mum that made her a perfectionist around the home and want to keep thing very organised, ordered, clean and controlled.
It is interesting that when I react in this state I am coming to believe or feel there is actually a part of me that is wiser and is not as triggered by all of this past stuff.. but it can take some time for me to stop myself getting caught up in the trauma ‘loop’ or spin, a kind of vortex of sorts.. Having experienced this kind of thing for over 15 years now I see how it affects the axis of my spin and of the spins I feel along certain lines of energy or meridian lines along my lower and upper limbs.. Add to this, at this time of day after the cranio sacral treatment on the first anniversary of my ex husband walking out and experiencing the trauma of my 1979 near death crash from the perspective of my father, I then crashed my bike and was thrown in to a very difficult place being so all alone overseas at that point.. In time I traveled to Glastonbury as I was not supported at all by the family I was lodging with who only judged me by my symptoms and did not support my need for empathy, connection or rest..They kept the living room off limits to me so I only had the kitchen, bathroom and my bedroom to use..
I seemed to hit a very dark place with all of this painful exile trauma time repeating after the concert on Sunday.. I had visions of myself in Glastonbury so lost and alone, but at least luckily at times surrounded by other people on some kind of quest that had led them outside of the mainstream, many of whom had significant childhood trauma or abandonment trauma too. I will always be deeply thankful for those who gave me empathy there, held me while I cried and tried to support me, even as my fear made me push them away.. I regret not being able too to take up the invitation from my aunt to come to be with her in Holland at that time….it was a sad thing for me when she died a few years later though we did end up keeping in touch from time to time and her only daughter came to visit us in 2010 which led to the breakup of my last relationship.
Family is on my mind too lately with Mars in Cancer.. this transit seems to be bringing up for me issues of longing for family connections and nurture (both ruled by the Moon and Cancer) as well as many floods of memories.. it was interesting that it was my Cancerian friend who invited me to the Tapestry concert on Sunday and that that triggered so much for me from the past..Mars is transiting through the 11th house of my chart at the moment and that house relates to friendship. But the message I am also getting is that at this time it is very very important that I self nurture and keep as calm and speak as positively and lovingly to myself as I can instead of pushing or punishing myself with the critic.
Today has been a better day than yesterday.. I got out to the library and the shops, my brother allowed the accountants to release me some money to tide me over until my allowance is sorted and I have all the forms filled in as well as the documentation to go with it has been witnessed to claim some of my super. This is giving me a breathing space I did not seem to have in past weeks.. and I am grateful.. I am longing to go see my sister while feeling so sad that things are dark for her but I also bought a lovely book called Jesus Calling today and that reminds me that often there is a plan and that this force of transformation and love is often working in those going through psychiatric or other forms of hospitalizations or crises.. or even those in prison. I just thought then of the case of Oscar Wilde who wrote so powerfully during his time of imprisonment for homosexuality. what a terrible ordeal to have to go through for him and yet I believe the piece of writing De Profoundous came out of it.. So even if things look dark maybe there is a lot going on inwardly..
I will keep hopeful as that is most important.. I will keep praying as that is even more important.. I will keep trusting in Jesus and God as they have not ever really let me down.. and even at my darkest times I am sure they were there holding my soul quietly within the infinite embrace of their all seeing, all knowing, all empowering love. So often humans fail us but there are transpersonal sources we can access who never will or do.
Emerging From The Dark Night 