AFTERWARD – The Last Chapter in this Book

AFTERWARD – The Last Chapter in this Book

“You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?”  -Rumi

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” -Rumi

SOUL-PAIN Pain is a response, an internal expression of your hurt and wound. Pain can be hidden and create a silent suffering that no one knows but the survivor. Pain can also be revealed by the survivor in ways in which they respond to having their pained activated.  All people have a deep desire to be loved and cared for, and survivors are no different. Often chronic, debilitating pain means that the survivor has not appropriately processed what originally caused, or causing, their pain. Some survivors may be aware of their pain-blockages and can experience intense sadness and anger by their inability to do anything about it. Because of this, the lives of some survivors are lacking in warm, close bonds or a stable social network.

The histories of those survivors that experience chronic pain are typically characterized by traumatic experiences, severe enough to create a crater-in-the-soul. This soul-crater is that part of you that feels like an empty dark place, cold, alienated, and all alone. This is your ‘personal pain pocket’. While there are numerous effective tools, techniques and psychotherapies available in the field of mental health, a survivor’s pain-pocket(s) can go untouched and unhealed for a variety of reasons. Because of their intense, ongoing pain, a survivor may feel that they are prisoners of their bodies and trapped by simply being alive. Some of these survivors are high functioning individuals, who go through life hiding their invisible wound, some function below optimal level, and there are those that make their pain obvious in highly destructive ways. 

Regardless of a survivor’s outward appearance, inside, survivors that suffer with chronic emotional pain feel inferior to others and suspect that they are stigmatized for carrying such a heavy wound. Despite some survivors’ being adapted to their environment or even highly successful, they feel they must carefully conceal the nature and extent of their hurt because they will be rejected by others. This puts survivors in a predicament: participate in life and keep their true suffering and struggles hidden or reveal their pain and hurt and risk being rejected. Some survivors are unable to experience the friendship and love that they witness others experiencing, and they are left to wonder what, if anything, they have to really live for.    

Survivors who live with this kind of often-hidden pain suffer beyond words. This is obvious. Deep pain causes deep suffering. People deal with it in their own ways; sometimes they choose to seek healing and healthy expression, and sometimes they bury, deny it, and seek to numb it out. But most unhealthy methods of denying and numbing the pain only end in disillusionment due to the mind, body, and soul that are always seeking healing. At some point, a survivor may feel discouraged by their failure to remain numb and blind to their pain and are confronted by their vulnerability when they least expect it. Even though they try to change, the power of the pain and hurt, the fear of exposing their vulnerability, and the habit of thought that accompanies their coping style, leaves them stuck.

It is therefore extremely important to honor and recognize such lonely, hidden, suffering, and the accompanying piercing pain and vulnerability. This is not to be ignored. A lack of such acknowledgement renders a discussion of a trauma survivor incomplete. 

However, there is another critical aspect to a survivor’s pain that requires careful consideration and which I will explore in this final chapter. It is the aspect of pain that a survivor does have control over, and that is their thought-process. Knowing which untrue thoughts fuel his pain, takes the survivor’s pain beyond a hopeless state of affairs, to a more hopeful, positive, and growth-oriented adventure.

There are certain characteristics of intense emotional pain, which are important to discuss here. Pain, without any influence upon it, lacks the power or wisdom to shift. The original pain is stimulated by triggers, memories, additional pain, needs, unrequited longings, desire, and basic human instincts. Sometimes the pain is intensified by long-term conditioning in coping with the pain. For some survivors, their coping method of choice is by freezing the pain out of their awareness, where it lingers in the outer-space of consciousness, stuck in a dark, timeless void-unreachable by anyone, not even himself. This survivor has part of them that exists in a state of lethargic sleep. He cannot move forward in life until someone comes along and awakens him.  

Alternatively, some survivors, when they are faced with the winds of past painful memories blowing forcibly in different directions, will follow whichever wind is the most intense. This can manifest as impulsivity, compulsive-acting out, various modes of aggression, poor self-care, and various addictions to numb the pain, and other destructive means; all to tell their story. The intensity of the pain leaves little room for choosing healthy thoughts and actions and can be blinding. When a survivor responds as such, they are devoid of strength and counsel. Their resistance is based on seeking instant gratification, instead of experiencing the awakening that accompanies being in touch with themselves and expressing grief.  When the pain is awakened, it is critical to have access to it.    As the saying goes “If you can feel it, you can heal it.”  

You can immediately begin to help yourself by setting up a mental boundary-filter. From this moment on, commit to being careful with what you let in and out of your mind, by guarding your thoughts. Imagine that your mind is a vault with rare diamonds. You seek to increase your diamond collection (truthful thoughts), but also should take great care not to let any thieves come in and steal your precious jewels (peace of mind). By using a mental boundary-filter, you inspect each thought before it can get inside you and take up active residence. 

There are four stages before a thought comes alive and takes on a life of its own. Stage One is when you have a sudden or unexpected thought. You give in to this thought. (A filter would not allow a potentially harmful thought to get past the Gates of Inspection to hurt you). Stage Two is indulging in these thoughts. Stage Three is where you display your thoughts either verbally or by the actions you take. Stage Four is indicated by self-destructive or otherwise unhealthy behaviors.  

You, the survivor, may feel that when you are in activation-mode, you do not have a choice of free will in the moment. The brush of pain can make you feel like you are being suffocated inside of an erupted volcano. The negative consequence of not believing that you do have a choice in how you deal with your pain is to go to the opposite extreme. Tragically, this leads to compromised lives, not seeking meaningful pursuits, and indulging in various addictions and compulsions, including victim-blaming. It is sad when a survivor does not take care of themselves, or continually conditions to hurt themselves or others. This keeps remnants of the original trauma active, and perpetuates a legacy of shame, pain, and self-blame.  If you are seeking to heal your pain, it may benefit you to be acquainted with the both the benefits of getting well, and the challenges that are part of the recovery process. I have laid them out clearly and extensively throughout this book.

THE CASE FOR TRAUMA-TRIGGER HEALING It is my personal belief and faith that we are all here on earth to love, learn, do service, enjoy our beautiful planet, and each other. However, when you feel consistently trapped by suffocating pain, life is experienced as riding in an old, rickety, rusty open-car train, uphill, and going nowhere slowly. Existence can seem pointless, and you wander aimlessly through life feeling stuck and uncomfortable in your own body, without any relief in sight. You feel you have no control and are just living to survive or numb out your pain. However, by treating your pain responsibly, a subject theme throughout this book, you will think thoughts that are more accurate, feel motivated to seek appropriate treatment and support, and utilize the power of spirituality in your life. I refer to treating pain responsibly as Soul-Accounting. It is worth every bit of your attention, focus, and patience.   You may discover through your fact-finding experiences that your own efforts are not sufficient and new strategies are needed. Since some triggers are deeply rooted, complex, and especially resistant, your efforts alone may be ineffective. Seek competent professional and spiritual help. There are many wonderful resources. You are not alone.

-Copyright 2013 Rivka A. Edery, MSW, LCSW

Book Source: Trauma and Transformation: A 12-Step Guide. (Edery, R. 2013) https://goo.gl/o3BndU  

**Suggestion for post-exercise: be gentle with yourself. Reach for a self-soothing activity: a bath, soft music, a scented candle; anything that feels like a kind, warm, loving blanket around you. You are worth every step of this beautiful, messy, mysterious, wonderful journey! And most of all, you are no longer alone  :)

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