Trauma
In recent years psychotherapists have become increasingly aware of the risk of transmitting trauma intergenerationally. By examining the impact of the Holocaust, or the experiences of Native Americans who were systematically abused by colonizers including the Catholic Church, it becomes obvious that indirect passage of depression, despair, anxiety, and damaged self-regard are but a few of the ancestral legacies of uninterrupted abuse. If, however, trauma can be passed from generation to generation without direct experience, could it also be possible for the reverse to happen?
Just as we have started to witness the reality of individual post-traumatic growth (PTG) – not just bouncing back after trauma but bouncing forward – could we entertain the concept of intergenerational growth (IG) – in other words, thriving from generation to generation?
There can be two levels at which trauma is processed. The first tier may be a time of quiet denial or the dissociation of nearly all thoughts of how painful the past was. The body feels it, but the mind does not speak it. On the second level a person awakens to the entirety of it, often an unpredicted and sudden onslaught of previously suppressed details with extensive associated pain. When trauma is reconstituted at the second level it often happens unwillingly. A person may be swept away by an awakening that seems very ugly. It feels like too much to absorb in its entirety. The result is often to feel afraid, even shattered – at first. Now with everything out in the open, what must be done with it?
At the second level of awareness, it is almost impossible to go on pretending that everything is fine. No longer can the visuals and emotions be kept submerged. One wonders, “Damn it, will I ever get better?”
Many events in life can change us, some in profound ways, others somewhat superficially. Some positively, some negatively. Some temporarily, some permanently. Let’s break it down.
With the “help” of psychology and the diagnoses of PTSD and C-PTSD, an entire trauma industry has developed. Much help has been delivered and, unfortunately, in many instances the assigned labels stick like glue and there can be difficulty relinquishing the newly imposed identity of “breakage.”
Many life events are transformative:
Dark nights of the soul as Saint John of the Cross called those long, despairing periods of our life, are never easy, in fact they are usually dreadful. They are so necessarily awful and so damn long because some of us don’t do subtlety very well. If we are open to these moments, even a tiny bit, they can serve as an internally calculated and blaring wakeup call that will guide us to solace.
John Nelson, in Healing the Split, refers to a fleeting or ephemeral sense of a higher purpose, not fully conceptualized, but compellingly near the heart. It holds answers to life’s pain but isn’t quite within our grasp…at least until the dark clouds engulf us. Then, with great staying power and inexperience matched with trust, a spiritual emergence nears surface awareness. And it always happens, as psychiatrist Stan Groff defined it, around the time of a blurry spiritual emergency.
According to author Anna Lemke, M.D., author of Dopamine Nation, “The reason we’re all so miserable may be because we’re working so hard to avoid being miserable.” In a culture with pleasure opportunities at every turn, she contends, “too much pleasure leads to pain.” Then there is this thing called anhedonia, when we no longer can feel enjoyment doing things that were once quite enjoyable. Lemke goes on, “The paradox is that hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake, leads to anhedonia, which is the inability to enjoy pleasure of any kind.”
I’m reminded of Aldous Huxley who wrote Brave New World Revisited. In it he noted our almost infinite appetite for distraction from life. It appears as though persistent efforts to insulate ourselves from pain seem only to have made our pain worse. The trick may be to stop avoiding painful emotions, to sit a spell and notice them until they naturally subside and, in the process, get acquainted with that side of life -- with us.
Along the way exorcism got a very bad reputation. Thanks, in part, to the 1973 movie, The Exorcist -- with Linda Blair’s head-spinning, projectile vomiting, levitating, and speaking in tongues -- we lost nearly all vestiges of what a real and healthy exorcism could look like. The film industry relegated the subject to horror thrillers and gave virtually no attention to its ancient origins in overcoming soul loss. Soul retrievals, as commonly observed to this day in Africa, are legitimate attempts to recover lost innocence by expelling emotional attachments from unhealthy people.
Worldwide, cultures have been concerned with possessions, spirit attachments, and soul thefts but they have commonly been thought of as illusory in the West. Upon closer examination the essence of possessions, in the language of psychology, is about malevolent narcissists and emotional vampires, individuals (and even cults) who exploit others by sucking positive energy from them.
An indigenous inspired healer, Jez Hughes, has defined trauma as the inability to forget. Certainly that could be the failure to complete the trauma cycle as described by Peter Levine in somatic experiencing trauma therapy. By observing animals in the wild of Africa Levine noted they instinctively know how to physically release pent up feelings associated with a scary situation and, in so doing, quickly return to their natural flow and wellness. An impala, following a near-death chase by a lion, may collapse to the ground (a form of dissociation) to “escape” the terror of the situation. Then, after a short time and the lion having moved on, they spring to all fours kicking, jumping, and pirouetting. This helps our animal relatives let go of the event in a demonstratively effective way.
In the aftermath of trauma, particularly relationship harm, one of the four traumagenic dynamics requiring attention is betrayal. The other three are powerlessness, stigmatization, and the physical impact on one’s physical self.
Betrayal, trickery, deceit, manipulation, grooming, and gaslighting, are usually a part of interpersonal abuse and the source of hypervigilance and distrust thereafter. When a person becomes exceedingly watchful for the “next shoe to fall” they noticeably vibrate with anxiety. In its most obvious form this can be seen as nervous shaking or, more misleadingly, as giggling laughter when nothing funny is happening.
Betrayals give rise to fearfulness, particularly regarding intimate interactions. Paradoxically, duplicity can cause people to trust too easily or to become very socially cautious and distrustful.
If a person was emotionally neglected as a child, or psychologically abused over their life-span, it would not be surprising to find their self-respect to be tenuous. It may be difficult to conceptualize what healthy self-love looks like in a culture like ours, one that is so narcissistic.
As Tricia Hersey suggests in her book Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto, it is difficult to be kind to ourselves by simply resting as that can feel indefensible in a culture that is so fast-paced, capitalistic, and performance oriented. For many of us, we can only conceive of ourselves as worthwhile if there is enough evidence – accomplishments and/or wealth – to support the conclusion.
Healing comes when we reassess some of our habitual thoughts and feelings. On the flip side of every negative experience there is a positive shadow, a message filled with insights and potential for growth. Realistically, it may take years to get to a full appreciation that all of what life presents – including sadness, hurt, trauma, and more – has a helpful message encoded in it. The responsibility we have to ourselves is to take another look at our reactivity so we can decode it and see how so-called “negativity” prompts to make some positive inner conversions.
The inner environment is often filled with self-aggression masked as anger toward circumstances or people outside of us. But upon closer examination our adversaries are usually as busy as we are seeking similar acceptance and understanding. The searching urge is commonly built on a precarious foundation of shame such that when acceptance and understanding is offered, it seems fraudulent – presumably somebody just wants something from us...