What does it mean to 'heal' trauma?
PREFACE
The purpose of this series is not to attempt to deliver “the” final, definitive, universally-applicable answer to the question, “What does it mean to heal trauma?” It is, rather, an effort to articulate my own current and personal understanding of the process of healing trauma, and the various ways in which what some describe as the “healing journey” might appear. My current understanding is informed by both living with the symptoms of post-traumatic stress for more than 30 years, experiencing various healing modalities for more than two decades, my own academic research and writings, training in trauma work, and my own practice both with clients and training other healing practitioners.
Upfront, I also wish to point out that there is not a universal way in which either trauma or healing is defined. Sure, there are folks and resources who might consider themselves to have the authority to offer the definitive answer; but anyone who consults various dictionaries, Wikipedia, medical textbooks, psychology textbooks, online articles, research journals, the DSM-V, and a slew of Western, Eastern, Northern, Southern, and otherwise unnamed or variously-positioned practitioners will undoubtedly see that they provide a wide range of definitions, conceptualizations, theories and frameworks for both trauma and healing.
I bring this to attention because it happens to have important implications for researchers, practitioners, and survivors alike. In my opinion, the impact and implications for survivors is of the highest priority for the simple and perhaps common-sense reason that, after all, it is the survivor’s experience of being traumatized that gives birth to any field of research, any theory, any framework for healing. The pain and suffering, along with the desire to lessen, alleviate, or eliminate this pain and suffering, fuels the entire enterprise. Understanding how both practitioner and survivor understand trauma and healing sheds light on where we might be aligned, misaligned, well- or mis-informed, vulnerable, and otherwise positioned to succeed on the intense and challenging journey that is the experience of healing trauma.
Finally, I see trauma as an energy source for spiritual awakening and transformation. I see it this way because it is how I have experienced it. It is an extremely high state and source of energy. It is not the only way in which I have experienced it, and within the arc of my healing journey so far, this perspective emerged within the past five years. Prior to that, I had not even been diagnosed as “having” trauma, and I experienced all my symptoms as severe nuisances, recurring impediments, as well as personal failures that often disrupted many aspects of my life in one way or another – be it relational, financial, career, and beyond. However, after I was formally diagnosed with PTSD in 2018, and began working with an integral therapist, what spontaneously emerged were profound spiritual experiences as a direct result of the healing work. In addition, in 2020 I read Peter Levine’s book?Waking the Tiger?for the first time. There, Levine says, “Trauma has the potential to be one of the most significant forces for psychological, social, and spiritual awakening and evolution” (Levine & Frederick, 1997, pg. 2). I felt validated and affirmed. Here was a (Western) pioneer in the field of trauma saying that trauma had significance at the spiritual level. He concludes his introduction to the book saying, “While trauma can be hell on earth, trauma resolved is a gift of the gods” (Levine & Frederick, 1997, pg. 12).
“RESEARCH IS ME-SEARCH”
This inquiry is relevant for me first and foremost because of my experience of child sexual trauma when I was eight years old. Over the following 30-plus years, I have experienced what I sometimes refer to as the “greatest hits of trauma symptoms.” They have included flashbacks, sleep issues, digestive problems, relationship challenges, struggles with addiction, panic attacks, depression, suicidal ideation, self-harm, and dissociation. Prior to my trauma diagnosis, of all the healing practitioners I worked with over the years, including therapists, counselors, and doctors, not a single one of them diagnosed me with PTSD. Instead, I received diagnoses of bi-polar disorder, panic disorder, and anxiety disorder. Each of these “disorders” were then tackled independently, compartmentally, primarily with a combination of talk therapy and medications. The most any of these folks could offer me was getting better at symptom management. There was never any discussion of a cure, of recovery, or of healing; and yet there was a deeper part of me that that continued to propel me to finding a different answer. I was restless, and often overtaken by a preoccupation and determination to get to the root of what was happening, why it was happening, and how to change it. This determination resulted in the discovery of what I now call the Three Truths of healing trauma:
The devilish difficulty in experiencing trauma is the felt sense that each of these truths is not only an impossibility, but also false; or, at best, possible for others but not for me. Thus, they are false hope. One of the hallmarks of trauma is feeling isolated and alone in the experience. One of the hallmarks is feeling as if one is broken beyond repair, beyond recovery, and that there is a fundamental, irreparable flaw in one’s nature. Finally, one of the hallmarks of trauma is believing that healing is impossible, and that the trauma will always restrict or prevent any personal change or growth.
Before I discovered these truths, I experienced the sense and belief that each of these assertions was impossible for me – I felt and believed that I would always be alone, flawed, and unable to return or go beyond some idealized way of being in the world. Once I began having experiences of connection, wholeness, and transformation at the level of the body through healing work, as well as at the level of the mind and intellect through research, study, and training did these truths begin to bubble up and offer themselves as thoughts and ideas (often in the context of embodied meditative practices such as yoga). I began to voice these truths to others in conversation and group meetings, and the response I got from other survivors affirmed that these truths are not just “true for me,” but perhaps possible and true for others as well.
BACK TO SCHOOL
My efforts to heal contributed significantly to my decision to return to school. One of the primary goals for my master’s work was to integrate what I was studying and researching around trauma with spiritual teachings in an effort to join the two and be able to offer the possibility of healing trauma regardless of and in conjunction with whatever a survivor’s spiritual or non-spiritual orientation might be. During my master’s program, I also created and articulated a new group-based approach for healing sexual trauma that I call “The Octave.” It became the focus for what I planned to explore and evaluate in my dissertation. However, in the spring of 2022 I conducted a pilot study with a small group of male-bodied men with histories of sexual trauma utilizing a simple talk-based collaborative group approach to explore the experienced of flashbacks as a symptom of PTSD. An unintended outcome of this study was the spontaneous reporting among all participants at how healing the experience was of simply being in a group of other men who shared the same experience. Given the significant gap in research with men who have histories of child sexual trauma, I began considering revising my dissertation study to instead contribute to the body of research shedding light on men’s experiences with sexual trauma and its healing, and perhaps evaluating The Octave in a post-doctoral or other future context. Regardless of the specific direction my dissertation will take, one area remained problematic for me, and that was the question of how to define “healing” more broadly, as well as what does it mean to heal trauma more specifically.
DOES ANYONE ELSE CARE?
While this inquiry may have personal significance, within a broader societal and academic context, why is any of this a relevant inquiry right now? If we consult a fairly ancient text such as the?Samkhya Karika, it begins with, “Because of the torment of the threefold suffering, (there arises) the desire the know the means of counteracting it” (Larson, 1969, pg. 255). A few centuries before this text, the Buddha had already offered his followers his first noble truth:?dukkha, or the idea that life is suffering. In other words, it is nothing new that many people experience life as being very difficult, and that sometimes the body and mind can be miserable and terrifying places to inhabit.
That recognition is not even focused on trauma. It relates to what we might think of as the universal, run of the mill difficulty that is being a human. Trauma makes this run of the mill difficulty even harder. Yet what truly makes this a relevant inquiry at this present moment is the sheer scale. If we assess the prevalence of child sexual trauma alone, we are looking at estimates that assert that nearly half of all children experience some form of sexual violation before the age of 18?(Levine & Kline, 2008), that more than half of all women experience some form of sexual trauma by adulthood (Miller, 1997), and that the abuse of children is, at least within the United States, the primary health issue that needs to be addressed (Van der Kolk, 2015).
These numbers do not take into account sexual trauma that occurs in adulthood, such as date rape and domestic partner violence, issues on college campuses, workplace harassment, rape and sexual assault, and more. These are not exhaustive of all the forms of sexual trauma, but even compiling these numbers puts the total number of people who have experienced some form of sexual trauma at more than one billion. Adding additional forms of trauma just raises the numbers higher.
While the scale alone places this as a relevant inquiry at this time, what research among other avenues continues to assert is that the ways in which Western psychology has been approaching the healing of trauma is falling far short of what is actually needed. The revolution created by body-based approaches to trauma healing has necessitated a paradigm shift in how trauma healing is being done, but the institutions that train and certify practitioners to work with folks continue to fall short in properly equipping new therapists with both the knowledge and skillset to bring body-oriented approaches to survivors in ways that will help them to unlock the entrenched patterns in the body and nervous system that continue to wreck havoc on one’s quality of life.?Dukkha?continues unabated. In addition, given some of the unique attributes of sexual trauma – for example, that the assault is experienced as a potentially annihilating event – survivors need approaches that offer them resources to re-establish safety in the body, which requires approaches that respect and value the body and its operations, desires and needs.
Finally, at risk of repeating myself I will restate the need for researchers, survivors, and practitioners to become more clear on how exactly they are defining healing, especially as it relates to healing trauma. Anecdotally, my experience has been that writers, speakers, and healing practitioners seem to mean different things when they are talking about healing. I would even offer that perhaps writers, speakers, and practitioners may not even be clear to?themselves?what they mean when they are talking about healing trauma. In addition, I have seen through many trainings and group sessions that audiences – meaning survivors – also bring their own individual, subjective understandings, ideas, and expectations about what healing trauma looks like. One might then imagine how easy it would be for there to be instances of mis-alignment or misunderstanding that can lead to survivors having certain expectations based on their subjective interpretations and understandings of practitioners who might not even be clear for themselves what is meant.
I do not claim to be able to put this issue to rest. In fact, I think this will likely continue to be the case. People often mean different things than what a listener is hearing, and perhaps that is just part of the human condition of communication; which perhaps lends even more weight to my assertion that it would be of benefit for folks to become more clear about their own ideas as it relates to healing trauma.
领英推荐
As I get closer to my dissertation, I have found it necessary to give this question considerable time and attention in order to be clearer to myself what concepts and expectations I have around healing trauma. This clarity may help with how I communicate my understandings to others, how I frame my ideas for survivors who participate in my research and treatments, and what expectations I might be setting for folks as a part of healing efforts. I might also be able to suggest to those with whom I work that they should give some time to understanding their own ideas in order to be clear as we engage in efforts to heal together.
PART II CONTINUES IN A SEPARATE POST
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