Running away from our anxiety will never help us recover from trauma

Best ever hour or so spent listening to the first of these great series of talks by Jungian therapist Donald Kalshed.. I am going to just provide the first two videos here.

I am fascinated by what he shares about OCD defenses trying to protect a person to the point that inner anxiety and killing voices as well as fear based rituals in keeping the person ‘safe’ doom them to a state of anti life.. This explains why my sister’s life is now so devastated and curtailed.

When he shares at the start of the second video while continuing to discuss the therapy of a client with severe OCD defences against trauma that he profiles in toward the end of the first video that there is no (renewed) life (energy) without an ability to tolerate anxiety that makes perfect sense to me.. His work with this client also shows why and how in she became compliant (which pleased her neglectful mother) but kept her doomed as long as she could not begin to mobilize healthy aggression and direct it against the inner killing voices that caused her unbearable torment and anxiety.

The first video discusses in depth how splitting defenses isolate the traumatized child and the inner tyrant/protector complex tries to keep us safe by mocking and disparaging dependency, need and vulnerable sharing.. The work of this therapist needs to be more widely known.