Chapter 3: Just Say No: Approaching Trauma Consciously
It is no measure of good health to be well adapted to a sick society.”-—Jiddhu Krishnamurti
Our civilized world has been built upon the backs of an unconscious, overachieving, traumatized humanity. Do we remain in the conspiracy of silence and inaction, or do we confront our resistance to the truth, and become part of a collaborative healing adventure?
.In the 1980s, during America’s campaign to reduce the proliferation of drug addiction, Nancy Reagan made the famous statement:
“JUST SAY NO!”
The understanding at the time was that addiction was a personal choice, and by reversing the “yes” that was being said to drug use to a “no”, the problem would just disappear. In the absolute, that is quite true. Our real problem as a human race is that we have had our desire to just say NO to perceived negative situations or behavior get overrun by a lack of alternatives to choose from, peer pressure, family and religious training, and our failure to develop or maintain the ability to set healthy boundaries for our self.
- Just why does not our civilization say NO to the proliferation of traumatic events and the wounding of the innocent?
- Does not society and religion have a say in this matter?
- What about the role of our family and the values that we are taught?
- Is the human race addicted to the idea that being less than loving with each other is acceptable behavior?
- Has that horrific misunderstanding become our collective “God”?
The “Golden Rule”, which states
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, or “Love your neighbor as yourself”
does not bring great hope or direction to huge segments of the human population, religious or otherwise, that are ignorant of love’s need for the release of emotional control over others, self-care, peace of mind, and adherence to collaborative and compassionate principles.
As the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu had said:
“We are made for goodness. We are greatness in the making”.
- What happened to our goodness?
- Why is our greatness not to be found right now?
- Why do so many continue to bring harm to their self, to other human beings, to animals, and to our Mother Earth?
The history of humanity indicates that, collectively, it is acceptable to pass unfair judgements against ourselves and each other, approve of the distribution of weapons of war to countries and to individuals, promote the inequitable distribution of resources and wealth with a now monetized Mother Earth’s resources, cultivate excesses and greed as aspects of positive capitalism, incite division, violence, murder, and war, continue injustice and inequity, defend racism and white supremacy, promote religious and philosophical persecution, and create and continue the conditions for addiction, and suicide. This self-destructive behavior continues, seemingly unabated.. And there are large groups of humanity who would rather watch their world burn than collaborate with it to bring a measure of healing to all.
Why Is it acceptable to bring harm to the innocent creatures of our world? Why do we promote needless suffering in feedlots and kill stations, with the traumatizing of cows, pigs, chickens, and even ocean fish to meet humanity’s need for protein? Our whole meat industry is based upon the idea that other sentient beings must die so that the human race can eat, and continue its overpopulation of the planet. And, as humanity inexorably expands its presence, natural habitats are destroyed. Many thousands of species are either threatened with extinction or are gone forever, having been traumatized and murdered by the mostly indifferent human horde. It is no mystery to me as to why it remains acceptable to traumatize each other, as the human race continues its “dog eat dog” capitalistic consciousness, where we think that we deserve to thrive, often at the expense of others with lesser physical ability, or intellectual, educational, economic, religious, and/or racial standing.
Traumatic wounding has been institutionalized and normalized within our world since ancient times. The world continues to create and spread its self-serving narrative, thus enforcing a code supporting a collective conspiracy of silence and denial around all of our responsibility towards the ills of ourselves, each other, and the damage wrought upon our Mother Earth.. The Minotaur of trauma and its effects roams free within the collective labyrinth of the human mind, and we all will continue to suffer accordingly until enough spiritual heroes find their clues for defeating the dark beast and escaping the maze of the confused and damaged mind.
Throughout my development as a growing person, like most others within our world, I was trained as to how to use my mind, while continuing to be guided by all of our so-called authorities. Knowing that these authorities, who become, in effect, our Gods, and the knowledge that they supposedly represent, are the road signs that direct and guide us on the path of life, it is important to know who is trying to control us, how they are doing it, and what is their intention, lest we will blindly drive off of the road and crash.. And as psychologists, philosophers, and theologians have found, the Gods created by our wayward understanding of our self and of life seem to be immortal, and impervious to change, even by the best human reasoning skills.
Our flight or fight mechanism is the way that all higher intelligence animals respond to threats within the environment. It operates at a nearly instinctual level for many animals, though the human response can be made more malleable, depending also upon the situation, our individual value system and cultural conditioning. What seems to separate many animals from humans is that humans appear to react not only to whatever situation presents itself, but also to their embedded memories, so we respond in an individualistic twofold manner to any threat. We tend to think before we react, and our thinking draws from hints from our biological hardware, our historical patterns of behavior, our genetics, and our training.
Society, in combination with humanity’s neural-linguistic capacity, has provided, certain mental software subroutines, or apps, that enable us to process and act upon information to not only keep us safe, but also to act in inefficient and, mostly, culturally acceptable manners. The problem is that many of these subroutines act below the conscious level and are fundamentally defective, having become habits of thought, with many perceptions being created from a dead past. Added to this are self-generated subroutines created through traumatic wounding, and it may be seen how the concept of free will may only be a concept until the self is made wholly conscious, healed and whole.
All of these subroutines become sacred cows, or golden idols, that are not only erroneous representations of truth but also are extraordinarily resistant to change. Add to this the influences from ancestral archetypes, and other unconscious influences, and we can see that we may not be the true masters of our destiny. We remain trapped within a limited radius around the whipping post of our own personal and collective ignorance, and our unwillingness to change.
The human race remains a breeding ground for violence of all types, with its traumatic impacts upon all of us. For the last forty years, the United States has created its subculture where the traumatic wounding of innocent people has become approved, normalized, and institutionalized within our culture, under the umbrella of the tragically misunderstood 2nd Constitutional Amendment… We are culturally inculcated into ignoring the distressing objects of our perceptions, by the scapegoating of others and denying our unconscious support in the very reality that we are witnessing, and, perhaps, violently reacting against… Pretending not to see, or not speaking of the evil that we see or hear results in no healing potential, FOR ANYBODY.
Several recent news articles and studies have indicated that there has been an epidemic of younger, white, middle-class men who have been dying at earlier ages than would be statistically forecast, for at least the past 30 years. There are many references to environmental causes, gun violence, to the opioid/fentanyl epidemic, painkiller addiction, heroin addiction, alcohol abuse, or poor diets as leading causal agents. There is also the so-called “white man’s despair”, an expression recently coined that encompasses a wide range of unhappy and unhealed American white male attitudes and behaviors. I have seen, and I believe at the deepest level of my being, that this disease in the mind of mankind is directly related to many of the diseases within the body of mankind.
There is a disease of the human spirit that has targeted and used masculinity for thousands of years to victimize everybody, all in the name of religion, progress, security, and economic growth. We don’t need to look too far to see that the insanity and disease around us, such as the
- mass murders,
- early deaths,
- suicides,
- drug addiction,
- alcoholism,
- rape and abuse of women and children,
- extinction of species, and
- destruction of our world’s ecological balance
will continue to a very bleak future, unless this world awakens, and rebels against the prevailing dark attitudes and resultant traumatic influences being wrought upon our dying culture and damaged planet. We have major issues bubbling up under the surface of our American society, much like the magma within an angry volcano preparing for a cataclysmic blast Our present-day political dialogue around the BIG LIE of the 45th president, and the conspiracy of silence by many from the fringes, and in the mainstream, of the Republican Party, shows just how traumatic a politician’s, and their support groups, ideologies and actions may be on the general public.
Does anybody still think that the suicide victim, lone wolf arsonist, abusive alcoholic, mentally ill person shot by a policeman, drug overdose victim, morbidly obese person, corrupted national politician and/or reality TV star, or mass murderer, is a unique being, with no relationship to the rest of the very humanity that spawned him? As a culture, we need to remember that the traumatized of our culture, the mentally ill, the diseased and damaged population, which includes the addicts and the alcoholics, are society’s “canaries in the gold mine”. Their diminished lives are direct evidence of a cultural disease, and they become part of the narrative of cultural and spiritual dysfunction.
We are all susceptible to the damages incurred by spiritual asphyxiation, should we neglect to listen to the stories being told by our most vulnerable family members. The sensitive and the oppressed of our culture define the leading edge of the journey of our own shared human experience and are indicators of our collective spiritual condition. Underground miners know that canaries get sick and die when conditions become too unsafe to continue working. So too should concerned citizens pay attention to the signs of its most defenseless ccitizens as they continue to be exposed to society’s most toxic aspects.
The conspiracy of silence is built right into the framework of our collective consciousness. Dead men tell no tales, but the nearly dead MUST continue to tell their stories, with respect for themselves and others, until our civilization finally wakes up. To not express ourselves honestly and openly results in our early demise, spiritually as well as physically. We each must penetrate the conspiracy of silence, and bring the light of a loving heart and healing words to the hidden darkness. Can we bring our sense of self, with all of our historical wounding and suffering, and look at it honestly and openly with ourselves, and others? We can then bring hope to all of the other canaries in our society who are now struggling for air.
The Christian religion is supposed to offer some sort of healing option for our damaged and diseased humanity. Yet, historically, its oftentimes wayward practitioners create further imbalances through their continuing allegiance to patriarchal values and their institution’s superstitious reasoning, fear of science, historical ignorance and continuing spiritual degradation. Awakening people, and those tired of being bullied and burned by the collective ignorance and indifference of institutions, are finally starting to pay attention to themselves and their suffering and making other choices for the community of the spirit…
The Christian church has promoted for centuries the idea that we are all byproducts of original sin, that we are sinners, and that our only salvation lies in believing that Jesus Christ died for our sins. Somehow our dirty slate is cleaned, if we only believe in Jesus and the mythology attributed to him strongly enough. Otherwise, we all share in the same shame and guilt that the rest of humanity wallows in while living a Jesus-free life. In this understanding, we are required to accept the religious world’s understanding of sins as our own, while also accepting the Christian church’s assumptions, thus traumatizing ourselves by this act of spiritual misunderstanding and violence against our innocent self. The truth here is that much of the Christian world would still set a Barnabas-type criminal free to wreak havoc and trauma upon the world, rather than let a saintly figure have free reign (see the white Evangelical movement and its controversial and corrupt promotion and support of the 45th president). Our present world situation continues to display this sad, profound reality
Religion and trauma: Pastor Mark Burns, a loyal supporter of former President Donald Trump and a Republican congressional candidate, has said that parents and teachers who communicate with children about LGBTQ issues pose a “national security threat” to the United States and added that those found guilty of “treason” should be executed. He also said that Congress should relaunch the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to hold people “accountable for treason,”
Our spiritual maladjustment to the troubled marriage of our Capitalist economic system with the Christian religion has created the perfect conditions for our population to
- traumatize each other, our sacred land and sea-based life, and upset our entire planetary balance while destroying its land, plant and animals, all in the spirit of the outdated biblical adage” be fruitful, and multiply” and
- greed fueled income stratification and the proliferation of cultural indifference paradigms, ignore or minimizing the needs of low-income households, their babies and young children, senior citizens, the disabled, immigrants, and
- practice violence against others through war, oppression, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and
- MAD-or mutual assured destruction with the proliferation of weapons of war on our streets and other unregulated firearms caused by 2nd Amendment adherent’s lies and misrepresentations
- the practice of violence against the self through repression, overeating, addictive cycles, and suicide.
We have institutionalized and normalized self-destructive narratives and fantasies, and these are most resistant to any form of collective reasoning or change. Some citizen activists become so frustrated by the lack of progress in our culture in addressing issues of inequity and injustice that they despair and lose enthusiasm for their causes. Some may resort to violence and other outward forms of chaos. Others continue the spiritual work on themselves, hoping that a new evolutionary imperative starting with each individual will eventually lead to a collective healing response. Thus is my motivation for continuing this chapter of this book, a book that has become a life mission for me.
Be mindful, oh Mankind, of all of the painful secrets that we must keep,
For, by our suffering silence, we will not awaken, but just die alone, powerless, and asleep.
Like most of us, I have suffered under the effects of patriarchy inspired intergenerational trauma. I have had many interpersonal inspired and general traumatic events in my life, thus I have first-hand knowledge of their potential and actual impacts. Trauma results in damage to, or loss of, connection to ourselves, to our bodies, to our families, to others, and to the world around us. This disconnection is often hard to recognize because it doesn’t always happen all at once but rather over time. We make early accommodations to our traumas, with the wounds, and our need to feel safer and more secure, creating spinoffs of our real selves that were designed to manage our suffering and to reduce further attacks upon ourselves. These spinoffs become aspects of our defense mechanisms and dominate our awareness to the point of making us believe that this is all that we are, in spirit and in truth. Often, the damage wrought by the original wounding does not become evident for decades after the original trauma.
I can never forget the dark feelings of abandonment as a four-year-old, the pain of a whipping by a belt from the ages of four through thirteen years, the helpless feeling of being bullied by classmates all the way into my freshman year of high school, the disgrace of being humiliated and betrayed by my father during a baseball game in which I was pitching at 12 years old, the horror of watching my first dog get run over by a car, the falling from the top of a seventy-foot fir tree and sustaining bad bruising from hitting every tree branch on my way down at nine years old, the witnessing of my great grandfather’s lifeless body as a seven-year-old, and the tortured endless nights of nightmares, and bed wetting, until after eight years of age because of my fear of getting out of bed.. I don’t remember having been a baby who was stored in a garaged car many cold evenings, though my parents and some of their acquaintances have confirmed that disturbing fact..
One of the several subroutines that my consciousness ran, or” spinoffs” of Self as I now call them, resulted from accommodation to early trauma that I experienced. This part of me was of the nature of the “savior” archetype, which was a part of myself that believed that, for anybody to ever love me, I would have to, literally, save them from death, or do something heroic in nature. This fantasy became conscious, briefly, when I was about six years old. I no longer wonder where my need to overachieve arose from, and my excessive loyalty to other damaged human beings who would not have been in my spiritual orbit otherwise. This resulted in my experience of overpowering grief and incredible guilt and shame every time I witnessed failing health and/or death in friends and family members, including pets. I also could not tolerate abuse in any form, especially when I witnessed male friends exhibiting controlling and/or misogynistic behavior towards their female partners. Sadly, my needs ended more than one long-term friendship..
Like all others within our society,, I have also been traumatized by our culture and religion in both profound and subtler ways. Trauma seems to be a natural outcome of our collisions with life-shattering events, and less intense though destabilizing experiences that we were not able to adequately process and heal from at the time of their origin. It is now known that trauma can arise through actual acts, or through the careless or unconscious omission of necessary love at strategic life junctures. Yet, some even claim that there is no greater trauma than our passage through the birth canal and that the rest of our lives are defined by our response to that expulsion from the safe womb of our mother. Trauma must be understood and dealt with, or we will be limited by our instinctual responses to its experience.
Many people within our society have lost all freedom of choice. I have much compassion for those who still struggle with the sometimes lifelong effects of trauma with its resultant suffering, and its deadly spawn of fear, indifference to others, disassociation from one’s self, mental illness and alcoholism/drug addiction.. It is no mystery to me as to why those who still suffer choose death through suicide or continued dysfunction over an uncertain healing path. Why would any sane, or insane, individual seek for help from institutions that continue to promote the propagation of the very diseases that they are suffering from, anyway?
Fortunately, we have other places to travel to find our healing, and there already are awakening people to observe and learn from, to gain hints on how to find our way back home to our own innate goodness..
Historically, since at least the Greco-Roman times, it has been primarily men who establish the rules of mutual engagement in our world. I have deeply investigated, and, ultimately, brought indictments against, our world culture’s dominant male energy, its propensity for creating toxic and traumatic engagement with its world, and its resultant patriarchal systems of political, religious and economic understanding that maintain its status quo through a multitude of forms of oppression.. Yet the status quo remains quite imbalanced, and it continues to bring harm, even to the proponents of these systems, and the perpetrators of toxic behavior. To this day, men continue to struggle with trauma-inspired feelings of poor self-esteem, and its breeding ground continues to be our unconscious fathers, and the influences of our oft-times wayward ancestors, religions, and cultures. Unhealed and unconscious human beings in the present day keep this disfiguring system of engagement with the world solidly in place.
Women can also be the perpetrators of trauma and suffering, but the statistics are obvious as to which sex is the major perpetrator of crimes against self and others through intentional, and unintentional, traumatic assaults. Men outpace women by an almost 20 to 1 ratio, so it is not even close. Men are the primary vehicles for the delivery of darkness, and are impacted by the poisoning within their spiritual ecosystem that carrying such energy would predispose them to. Yet, both passive and aggressive males and females can both benefit from understanding the effects of trauma in their own lives, and we can all take enormous strides to bring healing to ourselves.
Let’s fly united in our potential for healing!There are several choices that most men make in their efforts to cope with an oftentimes distressing and threatening life experience.
We may fear being seen negatively or receiving a negative evaluation by those people familiar to us. We may fear being placed in an unfamiliar situation over which we have no control. We have developed a trauma-inspired brain that seeks to avoid any experience that reminds us of a time when we were helpless and unable to escape threats or discomforts. We spend extraordinary amounts of time perfecting the passive/aggressive role, where we don’t reveal ourselves directly to others but instead make our presence known through secretive behavior and hiding activities (fellow backstabbers line up here! No, wait, stand in a circle facing its center, instead! No knives out, please!)
We may participate in trauma-inspired anxiety reactions or accommodations to our wounding, such as:
- Don’t answer or initiate phone calls (after all, the phone is the heaviest object in the universe!)
- Be silent, or shut down after brief sharing, whenever in group settings, such as family events or community gatherings.(well, they didn’t want to hear what I had to say anyway!)
- Hide from difficult feelings through overeating or excess drinking of alcohol (hey, these are two prized self-treatment options, what gives here?)
- hyperactivity and vigilance around keeping a safe position, in restaurants, religious events, or social encounters (keep that exit in sight, you never know when you might need to run for it!)
- Being apologetic for almost anything negative that occurs around us, even if we are not at fault (well, it sometimes is a race to get to the victim’s role!)
- Poor self-esteem, don’t care for self, instead focus on others. Ignore the self, often to the point of masochistic emotional abuse.
- ignoring our own feelings( especially anger) and any warning signals from our bodies, and not communicating honestly with others, through avoiding difficult feelings and perceptions, and maintaining people-pleasing behavior
- excess competitiveness with others while engaging in greed and the “keeping up with the Jones’s“,
- proving self-worth in environments where self, and others, worth is disrespected, and try to fit in where we don’t belong
- stockpiling weapons of mass destruction,
- not speaking up for ourselves or for others who are oppressed for fear of being marginalized,
- over immersion in entertainment,
- not exercising, not respecting the body’s needs.
- use of recreational drugs to the point of habituation (including marijuana)
- smoking, vaping, or chewing tobacco
- using sex as a way to manipulate others, to artificially build self-esteem, or as a disguise for loneliness
- workaholism, perfectionism
- addiction to risky behaviors and activities in general
These attitudes and behaviors are guaranteed to bring poor emotional and physical health to the damaged ones and only encourage further repression and traumatizing of our self. Life certainly can be quite a complicated challenge, and our responses to it determine whether we can maintain reasonable health and a sense of joy and well-being, or collapse into a deteriorating life situation.
The possibility of bringing balance and a sense of wholeness into life must be embraced, and conscious movements toward healing will greatly reduce trauma’s burden upon us. When healing from the impacts of trauma is not pursued in earnest, many negative outcomes become possible: Some become addicted to the idea that their only function is to provide for their family, and, having achieved success or failure, they become disillusioned. Some may eventually lose their sense of meaning and direction in life with the loss of a career, marriage, or community. They may become lonely and depressed and may develop profound mental illness and/or become addicted to drugs and alcohol if not treated. Those who somehow hang in there, waiting for a better day may never see it.
What is the real back story to traumatized men (and the women and children impacted by their disease) and their lives that may not have been told to their families, to their religions, to their culture, to their employers and co-workers, and to their Gods?
- Were any of our male victims of society able to listen to themselves, and identify their traumatic wounding and their unique pain and suffering?
- Why weren’t they able to bring their suffering to the light of Love and Reason, to search for, and eventually find a newer path to healing and meaning?
- Did they just blindly follow down the well-worn path of premature deterioration and death that unconscious humanity is doomed to trudge upon?
What happens to a human being who remains defeated by his own internalized dark energy? One only needs to look around and view the effects of toxic masculinity, and its ugly spawn, toxic religion, toxic politics, and toxic capitalism, to see that repression of our feminine nature, and the Divine is built right into the very fabric of our cultural existence. The former President Trump is the perfect representation of all of the ills of our culture, and to the extent that the men within our culture practice his unholy principles of engagement with the world, and the women, and men, within it, the men also share in this culturally derived disease of mind, body, and spirit.
There are no affirmations to say or to practice that will make a defective system repair itself. For most of us, there is no healing teacher just waiting to lead us into our own unique “promised land”. When affirming a truth, or practicing 3, 5, 7, or 12 steps to achieve a goal, or changing a behavior, these practices occur within a corrupted environment, and we are only changing the furniture around in our unique prison cells. We can affirm the truth all we want, but if the conditions for its birth and nurturing have not been honored, then we are only treating symptoms, and not causes. Spiritual bypass, that pervasive misunderstanding that has plagued meta physicians and some present-day spiritual healers and teachers, is just a form of denial and avoidance of the mind’s dark corners, and nothing fundamental ever changes. Thus, the cycle of fix and failure may become built into the very system that we think that we want to repair or improve.
Our culture has a propensity for creating traumatic situations with all of the subsequent self-destructive and other-destructive mental programming adopted by its victims. Our collective cultural mindset, or ethos, was created through societal, historical and genetic predispositions. Individual and collective ignorance, and the human male’s propensity for using our reptilian brain to express traumatizing vitriolic, bullying, war-mongering behaviors. These factors are the foundation under which our house of consciousness has been built. If the foundation is failing, how can we expect the house to survive during the inevitable storms that life brings? Have you ever painted a house right before it was to be remodeled, or even demolished? The point here is that our foundations must be understood, and seen for what they are, what they provide to or for us, and where there needs to be repair and/or replacement to keep our house from collapsing.
People, religions, politicians, and writers, who promise you a “quick fix” are a part of the problem, for they make promises in the world of effect, but we must reach back into the source of our consciousness, where the real cause of our problems exists, if we ever expect to make lasting changes. If we can develop insight into it these unconscious subroutines, we can find freedom from the darker aspects of them.
I have included five quotes that capture much of humanity’s spirit when directly challenged by pain-inducing, emotionally troubling situations.
- “I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead and some come from behind. But I’ve bought a big bat. I’m all ready you see. Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!”—–Dr. Seuss
- We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”—General Douglas MacArthur “
- Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you. They’re supposed to help you discover who you are.”—-Bernice Johnson Reagon
- “The underbelly of the human psyche, what is often referred to as our dark side, is the origin of every act of self-sabotage. Birthed out of shame, fear, and denial, it misdirects our good intentions and drives us to unthinkable acts of self-destruction and not-so-unbelievable acts of self-sabotage.-“—-Debbie Ford “
- Oh shadow boxer of evil, when will you ever tire? It is the champion of a lonely dream world to which you aspire! Stop resuscitating those dead illusions with your mental pugilist blows. Your healing life will then reveal to you the One that Peace eternally knows!”—-Elisha Scott
Through these five quotes, we can see several options available to us for addressing all of the traumas, threats or attacks against us that we have faced throughout our life. As a response to each of the above quotes, we may:
- (1) fight our foes, and engage in continuous struggle and confrontation with our problems,
- (2) run away from them if we are not yet up to the challenge,
- (3) become paralyzed by them, and a passive witness while waiting for a better day to address them
- (4) deny their very existence, or make believe all is well, even while experiencing cognitive dissonance.
- (5) develop insight into them, and thus find a healing peace.. Face them directly with honesty, by seeing ourselves through the mirror of our relationships with the people who have been perceived as the source of threats to us.
These five options are not mutually exclusive, and through healing intention, they may be embraced singly, in several different combinations, or all may become united in a powerful healing synergy. The primary question derived through our reaction to quotes #1-#5 may become:
- (1) Do I have the physical and emotional capacity to defend myself against the assaults leveled against me by others?
- (2) Can I accept that sometimes falling back and reevaluating where I am can make me stronger in the long run?
- (3) Rather than remaining a passive, indifferent, or even paralyzed witness to life, can I find why I have closed down to other proactive possibilities and choices for experiencing life?
- (4) How do I stop myself from burning my spiritual house down again?
- (5) What is my responsibility for the creation, and the continuation, of whatever problems that I am currently facing?
Trauma and its wounding results in extreme contraction of our spirit. We fail to develop the capacity to move freely through our lives, instead remaining tethered to the pillories of our painful pasts, until we become willing to face ourselves, and our grief, traumas, and suffering..
“And the Day Came When the Risk to Remain Tight In a Bud Was More Painful Than the Risk It Took to Blossom.—Anais Nin
For those who may need help refreshing their memories, or understanding if healing from trauma should be a serious consideration, taking the following test may be of help. The Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Questionnaire is a 10-item self-report measure developed for the ACE study to identify childhood experiences of abuse and neglect. The study posits that childhood trauma and stress early in life, apart from potentially impairing social, emotional, and cognitive development, indicate a higher risk of developing health problems in adulthood.
Here is the questionnaire. Before your 18th birthday:
- Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often… Swear at you, insult you, put you down, or humiliate you? or Act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt? No___If Yes, enter 1 __
- Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often… Push, grab, slap, or throw something at you? or Ever hit you so hard that you had marks or were injured? No___If Yes, enter 1 __
- Did an adult or person at least 5 years older than you ever… Touch or fondle you or have you touch their body in a sexual way? or Attempt or actually have oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse with you? No___If Yes, enter 1 __
- Did you often or very often feel that … No one in your family loved you or thought you were important or special? or Your family didn’t look out for each other, feel close to each other, or support each other? No___If Yes, enter 1 __
- Did you often or very often feel that … You didn’t have enough to eat, had to wear dirty clothes, and had no one to protect you? or Your parents were too drunk or high to take care of you or take you to the doctor if you needed it? No___If Yes, enter 1 __
- Were your parents ever separated or divorced? No___If Yes, enter 1 __
- Was your mother or stepmother: Often or very often pushed, grabbed, slapped, or had something thrown at her? or Sometimes, often, or very often kicked, bitten, hit with a fist, or hit with something hard? or Ever repeatedly hit over at least a few minutes or threatened with a gun or knife? No___If Yes, enter 1 __
- Did you live with anyone who was a problem drinker or alcoholic, or who used street drugs? No___If Yes, enter 1 __
- Was a household member depressed or mentally ill, or did a household member attempt suicide? No___If Yes, enter 1 __
- Did a household member go to prison? No___If Yes, enter 1 __
If you answered more than two questions in the affirmative, you are potentially predisposed to a cluster of poor health choices, the continuing of traumatizing of self and others, suffering within the self and, in general creating a generally troubled life experience. The embodied stress of trauma causes cortisol to be injected into the bloodstream for, potentially, decades of time, causing stress and inflammation-related illness and disease.
Recently, a Canadian study was published that supported Kaiser’s research. Individuals exposed to adverse childhood experiences tend to be biologically older than their counterparts, as reported in the scientific journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.. The authors of the new study were interested in whether accelerated biological aging could help explain the relationship between adverse childhood experiences and poor health outcomes later in life. Their findings suggest that harm in early life takes many forms and can lead to health consequences many years down the road. The study showed that the consequences of early trauma manifested as perturbation to multiple biological systems. These traumatic experiences included various forms of abuse and neglect, witnessing intimate partner violence, parental death or serious illness, parental divorce or separation, and psychiatric illness of a family member. The researchers found that the link between adverse childhood experiences and biological age was stronger for more severe forms of adversity, such as physical and sexual abuse.
I scored high on the ACE test. As a child, I had several health issues, and I was restless, discontented, and suffered from a feeling of not being heard or fully accepted as a child. My parents and my culture made their compelling arguments for trying to convince me that their paths and understandings were righteous, and I just needed to pick myself up by my bootstraps and be mature enough to understand and find where I fit in this challenging place. All that I know is that the world sure appeared to be a fucked up place. And those who have successfully adapted to this fucked up place sure don’t like to be told the truth that they are also living in a fucked up place, and that their adjustments with and accommodations to the fucked up world keep the world, as well as their own puny little life, all fucked up. As a culture, we are predisposed to a spiritual version of the psycho-neurological disease of anosognosia.
Kevin Trudeau, the memory expert who was well-known in the 1990s, uses a method called “pegging” when he wants to memorize large files of information. He visualizes a body part, say the fingers, toes, or bodily organs, and then assigns new information to that body part. In this way, the “body” stores the memory, so to speak. In the mind, the information and the body part become equivalent. The same process happens in traumatic wounding. Sometimes, we internalize a trauma into a body part, sometimes within a section of the body that was most active when a traumatic event occurs In some instances this can result in repetitive injuries to, or chronic pain in the same area of the body. Sometimes, the whole body stores the trauma, with its dark essence enveloping the entire matrix of bodily consciousness and awareness. This results in a predisposition to disease, accidents, a poor body image, defensive/offensive posturing, and low self-esteem.
The greatest trauma to the human soul is the early damage to our sense of self that causes poor self-esteem, and all of the compensating behavior that occurs downstream from the wounding. Without even knowing it, we traumatize others with variations of our original trauma. If our trauma created a sense of self that is insecure and feeling unloved, or unlovable, our relationships will be held back by just that much, and will not dynamically evolve into the fullest of their innate potential. We remain pilloried to the past and lost within the unconscious response patterns of a mind trapped in the labyrinth created by that activity..Knowing now that we have been traumatized, what are our options for healing?
- Create a visual timeline. Write onto a piece of paper, a long piece of paper, the years of your life. Start with the birth year, and carry it forward to the present moment.
- Listen To Music From Time When Wounding Occured. It will open up emotional vistas, using the wholeness of the self
- Write extensively about the time in question.
- Work in conjunction with a therapist trained in traumatic wounding
- Perform a ceremony that indicates finding the wounds, and freeing them from our tissues.
- Listen to the stories from family members, friends of family, and, especially,, friends of the parents who may have witnessed aspects of your upbringing.
- Have an incredibly supportive partner, or a therapist, to watch with you the emotions that arise during the turbulent periods of the introspection.
- Decide to make amends to the world for unconsciously wounding events.
My friend Paul Zilka, during a meditation experience in the early 1990s, literally saw a small semi-human form, vaguely resembling his young self, erupt from a historical wound in his back, crawl up to his shoulder, and fly away. Thirty years of back pain disappeared through that amazing exercise, facilitated by Jerry Jones, the famous meditation teacher..
In 1987, during a profound meditation, I was also shown two complete identity matrices attached to my bodily energy field. I did not recognize them as creations from damaged parts of myself. I was ignorant of trauma and its potential impact at the time, and all I could do was to note that they were not there for my greater good, and I intuitively knew them to be “tricksters”. They stayed with me for years afterward, for I did not know what to do with the information. I did not know it at the time, but I performed a “spiritual bypass” where I was able to postpone dealing directly with them until I had the requisite insight and knowledge as to deal with them effectively.
If it weren’t for the incredible spiritual strength, and wisdom, of my life partner, Sharon White, I would not have been able to have, what some people call, the following “cathartic event”. I finally accessed one of my tricksters (hell, it might have been both of them!), and began the final process of removal It was on a Thursday morning in February 2018, and I was preparing to go to the Pilates class that Sharon and I attended each Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday at our athletic club. Typically, I wanted to get there a little early, so that we could warm up on an exercise bicycle, with a little aerobic activity that I still enjoyed participating in, since I no longer ran, having retired late last year after a lifetime of enjoyment, and pain.
It was 9:15, and I was fully prepared to leave, while Sharon remained on the telephone, talking with a friend. As it turned 9:19, I spoke to her, in my most innocent of voice, “Can we go now?” Sharon had a series of responses that I won’t repeat here, but three things that she said coincided with me entering a “spell”. I felt the presence of something so basic, so fundamental, so raw, so real, so hurt, that I raged for a couple of minutes, declaring several times:
“There is something fundamental here!”
The trapped energy of a lifetime was released. I became aware of a pain so deep, and so all-encompassing, resulting in anger from a source that I had never touched before, at least as a verbally conscious human being, Sharon and I went our separate ways for a few hours, while we both tried to understand what the heck had just transpired. Leading up to this experience, I had been intensely exploring the entirety of my life experience, having written 70 pages about my early childhood and trauma, my maturation process, and addictive and self-destructive cycles, while providing glimpses into higher possibilities for living. All of this writing had placed me, without me realizing it, into the psychic world of all of my past pain and suffering.
After a meditation, I had a realization. My wounded essence and the issues stored in my bodily tissues had cried out for the first time and I actually listened to it, without my ego repressing it as it had for 61 years. And I also saw, for the first time, the wounding process that I shared with my father. I felt incredible compassion, love, and acceptance for my father, who had also suffered immensely under the spiritually destructive parenting of his diseased parents.
I finally had experienced the most basic nameless suffering of an ignored child, or baby, and I have now given it verbal description: MY VOICE IS WORTHLESS, I HAVE NO VALUE. I MUST BE ALONE IN THIS WORLD. Sharon paid the price for a couple of hours, while I acknowledged the wounded baby within me. But, I had an insight that still informs me daily. I saw how we, as humans, keep layering ourselves and our ideas upon what somebody else is saying, rather than meeting the being where they are, and responding according to the dictates of our “heart center”, which in most people, ESPECIALLY MEN, has been scabbed over by our early spiritual wounding. Men typically inflict their wounding on everybody else, in subtle, or not-so-subtle ways. Usually, this manifests in dominating or being dominated, by others. Philosophies of oppression, and of the monetization of reality, arise out of this wounding. Women are usually victimized, or those with sensitive natures.
Trauma and suffering are not synonymous, though suffering may arise from failure to directly address traumatic wounding, and only leads to more suffering, and the unconscious predisposition towards creating new traumatic life events.. Many causes of suffering are preventable, however, and they have their origins within broken, unhealed minds unwilling to embrace the possibility of personal change. And, most of these assaults against our Spirit originate within the family, though environmental influences from corrupted societal norms and religious malfeasance also play major roles in the origin and proliferation of traumatic wounding.
It is the resistance to change and evolution that becomes the bellows for the fires of suffering and the proliferation of trauma. Never forget that racism, misogyny, xenophobia, genocide, and war are culturally generated and individually accepted activities that victimize and traumatize innocent populations. To this day these malevolent attitudes are still being promoted by powerful cultural and religious figures, and we all suffer under its oppressive weight.
Yet, our culture’s propensity for promoting its self-serving lies while supporting powerful proponents of the status quo means that we will encounter resistance as we attempt to move beyond the institutionalized and culturally conforming wounded versions of ourselves. It is important to keep in mind that the Christian religion has immortalized and institutionalized mankind’s “fallen nature”, while many sects still promote the sad, mistaken idea that we are all byproducts of original sin. If “original sin” were seen to be the traumatic influence that we exert over each other and the planet, I might be able to accept that theological contention.
My first 31 years of life reflected the internalized horror of a life suppressed and traumatized by the conspiracy of silence, a silence created by my misguided need to preserve and protect a limited, damaged image of self, and of all others. My true nature had been masked over, or silenced, through that process. A lifetime of oppression of myself and the unconscious repression of several aspects of my feeling, and loving nature had brought to me a series of near-fatal illnesses, physiological as well as spiritual. I saw how a dark force, common to all of humanity continued to live, move, and have its being enshrined within my own heart and soul. I saw how the medical, economic, religious, cultural, political, and spiritual traditions remain burdened by their limitations of understanding and intelligence.. I saw that my suffering was shared by most of the other people that I knew. I saw that those who suffer have little energy to provide emotional support for others who still suffer, as well.
Tragically, many of us have experienced great difficulties, traumatic impacts, and suffering through our relationship with our family, our family’s religion, and our culture. Some of the traumas most resistant to healing happened in our early years, or even before we became verbal as young children. And most victims go through life, never knowing the source of their chronic pain, be it physical and/or emotional, and having a name, or a conscious experience of its original collision with us.
Traumatic experiences, grief, and suffering may arise through an action of intentional hostility, or it may arise spontaneously as a reaction to the vicissitudes of life. Suffering may arise from an inability to do what is right. Suffering may arise through incurable diseases of the body, or of the mind. Suffering may arise through the trauma of witnessing horrific acts of violence. Suffering may arise from the inability to reconcile the belief in God with one’s grief and loss. Suffering may arise from becoming addicted to substances that were designed to take our pain away. Suffering may arise from the perceived inability to speak one’s truth and to have one’s voice heard in the face of the oppressive powers of the day. Suffering may also arise from contemplating the continuation of our daily pains into a distant, unknown future.
Most of us did not embark upon the spiritual path because our life was a resounding success. Even if we had attained material wealth and comfort, we only delay the inevitable distress and chaos of a life lived with a fragmented self, without spiritual relevance and meaning.. Those not satisfied with their present version of the “status quo” may have already buckled under the oppressive weight of a lifetime of accumulated pain and suffering, have heard their long-ignored interior voice crying out for change, or heard others’ voices promising release from troubles through traveling new paths of consciousness.
We know all too well where we are now, and for those who do not like their present state of awareness, we do have options. We know that there must be another way to live life, but we do not yet have a clue as to how to live in a new, suffering-reduced future. We realize that the path that we are presently on only leads to failure, yet we do not know how to enter onto new paths. We may ask ourselves or of others:.
- What is holding us back?
- What is our life’s work?
- What gets us all fired up, and will our internal fire ever burn brightly for us?
- Are we too tired to face the truth about our own life, and the life that we share with the rest of humanity?
- Will the facts that we have accumulated, and our personal and family interpretations of those facts, provide accurate enough clews/clues for escaping our pain and suffering?
- Has someone been able to find freedom from my experience of this HELL before?
- Did this someone leave a clue for us as to how to proceed?
- Is this path the only one that I can travel to succeed in attaining my release from this HELL?
If our pilot light is on, but our energy output is tethered to the lowest setting, we are not going to warm up to our highest expression of human kinetic energy. By turning our internal dials to a higher setting, we can accomplish more in our lives. If the dials are frozen in place due to past traumas and emotional wounding, we cannot adjust with fluidity and grace to an ever changing life situation.
Our fires burn brightest when we can burn with others in a collaborative and healing fashion. If too many in our community are also traumatized, and have “frozen dials”, then community resistance to any change will be high, and our capacity for collective growth and evolution will remain compromised.
I am sure that there are many blessed people in this world, yet I never have met the lucky one who had the perfect birth, infancy, and childhood. Like me, childhood was probably a mixed bag for the majority of people on this planet. And, there are a few of us who were born physically handicapped, and it leaves us to wonder why the creative energy of that being manifested itself in such a unique way. These physical handicaps are visible to all who look their way. Those who transcend their physical handicaps are honored for their courage, and their achievements in life. Yet, what about the rest of us, who may have been born with another type of handicap, a handicap of the human spirit, caused by a dysfunctional culturally inculcated consciousness?
Trauma must be recognized for what it is, which is psychological wounding as a result of a single experience, the repetition of similar experiences many times, or a combination of different experiences which have attacked one’s safety and security over an extended period of time. It is an assault against our innocence, an oppressive act, or series of actions, against our essence, and the unskilled way we have dealt with it becomes the source of much of our repressive tendencies and sufferings.
Fight, flight, and/or shock and paralysis are all instinctual ways the human animal has learned to respond to attack, and to fearful or misunderstood phenomenon. It is a behavior that is common to most of the other mammalian species, and we need not judge ourselves for having a natural predisposition towards the use of these tools for dealing with difficult objects of actual and/or perceptual reality. In our beginning strides on the spiritual path, we usually start with a motivating assumption, an assumption offered by others, yet probably also informed by our intuition and our long lost innocence:
Though we are not experiencing it now, there must be a better, or even a perfect state of being available to us. There must be a God, or a Truth, or a Love that can bring transformation to us, and release us from the suffering and sorrow of being a damaged human being. There must be a cause or reason that we are not experiencing this blissful state. Is it because of an error in our thought, behavior, upbringing, acculturation, or even a fundamental flaw in our being ?
I do not have the impramatur from the latest experts on the effects and impacts of trauma, yet my own life experience remains a good evidential starting point for any discussion.. I am sure that there are not many blessed people who had the perfect birth, infancy, and childhood, thus most of our young lives were probably a mixed bag of family love, and various combinations of social, religious, and traumatic influences.. There are a few who were born physically handicapped, leaving us to wonder why the creative energy of Being manifested itself in such a unique way. These handicaps are visible to all who look their way. Those who transcend their physical handicaps are honored for their courage, and for their achievements in life. Yet, what about the rest of us, who may have another type of handicap, an invisible handicap of the human spirit caused by a combination of personal trauma co-creating havoc and chaos within our personal ecosphere and our already dysfunctional cultural consciousness?
Virtually all of the interesting characters in history have struggled with, been entombed by, and have overcome, at least to some degree, this dark force, and it is their journey that becomes the stuff of great stories and legends. And, you and I have the potential to be chiseled out of the same marble that once entombed these heroic souls. The next chapter will cover my own childhood traumatic wounding, a wounding which encased me within an almost impenetrable block of marble. Anybody know where Michelangelo is?
Some wounds can be so deep, primal, and/or traumatic that they cannot readily be identified by the sufferers, which was the case for much of my life. On January 28, 1986 I began my search for Truth, after the Challenger space shuttle explosion signaled to me that it was time to end my life. With that day’s unsuccessful attempt at “death with indignity”, I traveled through Portland’s underworld community, seeking a light in the darkest days of my life, My life prior to 1987 was an often times meaningless and anxiety ridden journey, and had it not been for some deep need to understand my life, I would have passed away long ago due to poor health choices and their outcomes, or suicide.
My personal story reveals the level of my resistance to life, an extreme resistance that may have begun in my mother’s womb, or, maybe, it extends all the way back to the beginning of human consciousness. The start date is unimportant. What is important is my intention to seek healing, Can i join a path where my instincts, emotions, insight, and intellect may combine into a unique healing synthesis?.
The latest experts on human psychology, spirituality, and neurobiology impress all of us with the multitudes of names and descriptions for our unconscious journey through darkness, and our potential for release from it. I have looked at my traumatic wounding at the deepest level, experienced a total disillusionment with the total lie of a life that just accommodating and normalizing trauma may become, and then reawakened to infinite new possibilities for living. As a general rule of healing, if we can see the problem completely, without self deception, then the very power of that insight generates new pathways for the healing traveler to walk upon. It is time for all of humanity to also become experts in our own unique life experience, and understand the impacts of malicious and/or unskilled behavior upon all of us.
The greatest trauma to the human soul is the early damage to our sense of self that causes poor self-esteem, and all of the compensating behavior that occurs downstream from the wounding. Without even knowing it, we traumatize others with variations of our own original trauma. If our trauma created a sense of self that is insecure and feeling unloved, or unlovable, our relationships will be held back by just that much, and will not dynamically evolve into the fullest of their innate potential. We remain marionettes controlled by the past, and we are lost within the unconscious response patterns of a mind trapped in the labyrinth created by that activity.
As an important step in becoming a doctor, medical students must take the Hippocratic Oath. And one of the promises within that oath is “first, do no harm” (or “primum non nocere”). That is a very important principle to doctors, and for me. I believe that all of humanity should take the Hippocratic Oath, and continuously remind each other of its practicality and heart. There never will be peace, until each member of the human race feels that they can have a sense of safety with each other, and know that they are not going to be diminished for who they are, and that their needs are not going to be maliciously ignored.
As a infant, my parents placed a blanket around my baby body, and deposited me in a car in their garage so that my father could get at least 5 hours of sleep a night. My father was “chasing the American Dream”, and worked two jobs at the time. It is now ” common knowledge” that there are profoundly damaging effects of denying love and interactive time to a developing human being. What I might need to remind myself at times is that others, no matter what their age, or how much that I think that I know them, deserve my undivided attention, as they attempt to reveal who they are in this moment.
We all deserve to be listened to. I don’t need to remind any of my readers of the potential of the damaging impacts to our relationships with others, by merely not taking the time to listen with our hearts, to the other’s deepest meaning. We are all developing human beings, no matter what our age may be. And, we are all God’s children, and God speaks to and through us, whether we can hear the “truth”, or not. Sometimes the “truth” is so difficult to hear, that we shut down emotionally, and we either ignore what is said, or substitute our own story for what our bodies, our pain, our “God” or the “other” is trying to communicate.
Please, listen to others.
Please listen to yourself,
Please listen
I do not want a life that has been lived in vain. I also see a world where the many of us still suffer from the effects of trauma, abuse, loneliness, and grief. Denial continues to. reign supreme, though I still have hope that the “personal truth” that I have conveyed here will actually be heard, and applied by others that I care about which now includes the entirety of our beautiful planet Earth.
May the reader make their own unique journey to the center of their discontent, and find their own source of strength and healing.
“There is something fundamental here.”
My life has transformed from a trauma induced static state of distress and emotional stagnation to a dynamic, ever changing experience of life’s infinite possibilities for healing, new perceptions and enhanced spiritual experiences. I say YES to the present state of evolving enlightenment, and NO to the diseased mind stuck in the past.
It is time for humanity to just say NO to being agents for the proliferation of traumatic wounding.
Just say NO!
.
LOVE’S REUNION (poem by Elisha Scott)
I stumbled over the frozen wilderness for oh, so long!
With a hole in my heart that life could just not fill
Until I stopped to rest, and heard a gentle voice singing a long forgotten song
That promised of my release from this winter world of painful chill
Her lyrics spoke of the return of Life to freedom
And the release of shivering minds from darkness’ frozen, fearful hands
She drew me closer without any further verbal tethers
And prepared me for the walk back to Love’s now awakening lands
Her warming presence melted the icy hardness that I used to know
Inspiring within me the courage, to myself and my world, to say
That, to all of my past memories’ barren trees of lifeless knowledge, I now refuse to go
I will now accept only the lessons learned along Love’s Infinite Way
Yes, she met me while I was with the dark companion
But it was to her pleasure to take me home to share her loving lights
And give me the shelter of Love’s never setting summer sun
She changed my cold mourning into happier, heavenly nights!
By freely offering of herself and all of her sacred charms
She moves me through life’s clamorous valleys unto its silent peaks
I can now retire from a life of fruitless wanderings
To live in the Source of Peace of which mankind forever seeks
Her life is resplendent with Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty
For these are the robes with which she clothes her being
The gift of Love now unwraps before my inviting eyes
To reveal her ecstatic vision, which is now all seeing
My search for Truth and Love Sublime has finally ended
For, I now fill my empty cup from her joyous running streams
I have reunited with my eternally fulfilling lover
And, her healing waters dissolve all of my painful dreams
I only seek to remain within her all-embracing arms
While through all life she extends her ever unfolding surprise
My first waking breath each morning brings the certainty
That, from my bed, joined as one, we again shall arise
My broken heart and shattered life is finally mending
And, wedded to her life, I now call her my faithful bride
Life no longer has a fearful road ahead to travel
For, One with God, on Love’s lighted path, I now gratefully stride
