Unresolved trauma is no small matter. It can affect our behaviour, our sense of self, our decision-making, our ability to fulfil desires, our spiritual embodiment, our emotions, and our health.
Trauma isn’t just the impact of acute events like a crash or assault. Sustained stress or any overwhelming experience can have a similar effect on our physiology.
For example, we may have a strong aversion to sharing food or people taking ours. The source may be a mystery, but it’s likely because of a perceived safety threat as a child. Like food being taken away as punishment.
Experiences that overwhelm are typically of three types, though this source may not be obvious as adults.
1 – Security: the most basic, a perceived threat to our safety or survival. Children depend on their parents, so anything that affects their relationship can be seen as a threat. Parents forbidding anger, for example, or teaching through shame. As young children take everything personally, they often perceive events like the death of a parent or divorce or fighting as being caused by them. This begins the trauma-based identity.
2 – Approval: children naturally seek approval, partly because approval means safety, as above. Many kids have rough spots from lack of peer approval in school, like being laughed at or bullied.
3 – Control: if approval isn’t forthcoming, ego seeks control.
It’s also highly personal. What’s normal for one person can be very difficult for another. It depends on our history and where we have existing hurt. For example, for one person, a shooting range is an enjoyable sport. For another, guns and sudden loud noises are deeply troubling. Similarly, do we love or hate fireworks?
Trauma is also not about what happened but how it affected us and if the nervous system struggles to return to calm.
Most people have unresolved trauma remaining from overwhelming childhood experiences. In early childhood, we’re pre-cognitive. Those memories are somatic, not conceptual. When we live in the mind, pre-cognitive memories become inaccessible. For the body, we follow sensations, not stories.
When we explore our trauma, the first thing we run into is the side-effects of stress and an unsettled body.
The ego becomes involved when these impacts are sustained. It tries to suppress the discomfort so we feel safe and in control. One way it feels in control is to spin narratives to explain everything. Yet so often those stories are false. Yet when we tell them over and over to ourselves and others, we end up believing them.
Also, when the ego is involved, we identify with the stories and take them personally. The narratives become part of our identity. Then we don’t say “I feel anger”, we say “I am angry.” And then “I’m an angry person.”
But these are not the trauma itself. They’re the effects of it. While techniques like The Work can help with the false stories, trying to control the mind doesn’t help as it’s not the source of the issue.
Trauma itself has two aspects: charge and impression, the vasana and the samskara.
The first is the emotional charge. This is the unresolved energy we could not process at the time of the original event. We experience that subjectively as emotions.
Because our system naturally seeks healing, it will surface this charge periodically so it can be seen and resolved. However, when it’s part of the identity, the ego will try to avoid it being seen to “protect” us. Often, it jumps in to suppress it, sometimes adding another layer of energy, while sinking it into the subconscious again.
When a life event triggers the charge, a similar thing happens. For example, say we have unresolved trauma around our birthday because of events in our childhood. We may experience birthday greetings as unpleasant triggers and thus avoid them. But avoidance doesn’t resolve it. Yet each year, we can add further layers from the triggering and suppression of that season.
All of this can take place subconsciously and automatically, without our even realizing it’s going on. We only recognize the side effect of our aversion to birthdays.
As this layering happens repeatedly over time, healing the big ones is like peeling an onion. We peel off the layers of suppression by experiencing them, often in a wave of emotion. Then we come to the highly charged nugget in the core.
We may find layers like anger shielding us from shame. Or shame shielding us from anger. There are many combinations and adaptations that can happen because of our history.
When the core has been suppressed for a long time, it can become quite concentrated. Once this is released, that area can fully flow again.
This is where I used to stop, thinking it done. However, Matt Nettleton observes:
“Ideally trauma work isn’t [just] catharsis [emotional release], but erosion. Catharsis, by itself, doesn’t bring sustainable shifts in the nervous system, especially with developmental trauma. The adaptive qualities are deep and re-enacted constantly throughout our lives. For ongoing transformation, they need to be eroded away.”
“Catharsis can be helpful at times, but it’s the containment, the ability to stay conscious and embodied inside the physical whilst experiencing that transforms the patterns.”
This points to the other part of trauma: the impressions it makes in the body. These are the habit ruts (samskaras) in the etheric body, also called the subtle physical. This material is denser than the emotions, so can hold an impression, a bit like firm sand (hence erosion).
Those ruts guide the flowing emotions. The result is behaviour that is driven more by past trauma than the current circumstances. With a charge, we overreact, too. But even if we’ve resolved the charge, the habit patterns can remain. We habitually respond to triggers in certain ways. Because the ruts are suppressed and in the physical, we may not even recognize the triggers themselves. They have no cognitive component, as described above, so the mind doesn’t see them.
For example, a mental habit like telling jokes when circumstances become emotionally awkward is not the same as a somatic habit, like hiccuping when stressed. We can’t use the mind to follow the somatic habit back. We have to follow the sensations and watch for intuitive signals. If we’re jumping into the mind, we’re stepping out of the process. In fact, we’re observing our usual avoidance.
Unlike emotions, somatic patterns don’t flow out the same way. They dissolve, like water over a sand mandala. Matt described how: “…the containment, the ability to stay conscious and embodied inside the physical whilst experiencing that transforms the patterns.”
Further, the body is present in the now. It doesn’t know past and future. So you may have to reassure the body that the trauma is over and it’s safe to let go. All these years later, it may not have gotten the memo that the stressor is over. It’s still protecting us and using energy to do so.
In my process, I used an inside-out approach. I allowed emotions to surface in presence for resolution. However, I now see this didn’t affect the somatic content as much. As the embodiment is moving into the physical, that got called forth and this became clear.
Others may have a more somatic lifestyle, so they tackle this much sooner, with an outside-in approach: follow the contracted sensations in.
The trouble with healing the emotions but not the impressions is that they will encourage the emotions to get stuck again. Even if we heal them together, they don’t resolve at the same speed. Emotions can release in a wave of energy while the impressions get eroded.
When we bring that presence into the physical, the old impressions are no longer sustained and will dissolve.
Once both charge and impression are healed, it’s done. In many ways, this is directly related to karma, the field of action. These impressions have been steering our action and keeping us on the cycling wheel of karma. So it’s a part of liberation too.
Davidya
I enjoyed your interview with Gareth and Eva very much As I was immersed in being a TM teacher for almost 20 years. I’m very interested in this post, And I am wondering whether trauma will naturally be healed as the awakening process progresses? Is there a meditation technique we can use specifically to heal past trauma? Thank you.
Hi Peggy
It’s fun to share with people who can relate, even from other paths.
Well, this whole process is unfolding because I’ve been called to deal with it. So, yes, it will heal naturally but some of it we’ll need to participate in, to follow where we’re called. Then the circumstances are created to help it along. The body does the healing but we need to create the right environment for that.
I’m still in the theory part of the classes but observing what they’re talking about in myself, I can allow the sensations in awareness and, as needed, can reassure the body that it’s OK to let go.
From a TM perspective, think General Points of checking. I’ll have more nuance on that in time.
Thank you for this article. It appears to apply to me. While mentally I have forgiven my past, however my body is delayed in letting go. Recently I joined the super habit program designed by Dr. Keith Wallace, in collaboration with Dr. Nader. I have a bad habit , I want to eliminate, by going through that program I realized the root of this bad habit is due to childhood trauma, that the inner child doesn’t feel safe to let go. She is curled like a very tight fist, so I have a hard time with my left side. This program is helping me loosen it and realize a lot about my self with the help of my buddy in the program. Is this what you mean by somatic?
Hi Lynette
I think it applies to almost everyone. I’ve seen the Super Habit program. Happy to hear you’re getting results. That’s very clear seeing and that’s key to it letting go.
And yes, somatic means body.
I was shown one technique where you act out how you’re feeling and give it a voice. (like curling up like that) However, there’s a fine line between that and reliving it.
One thing I’ve found that very much helps recognize triggers, is to have what I call “the elevator pitch” version of my early childhood trauma. It’s a very condensed version of what happened.
Because it’s condensed it doesn’t have much charge so is very easy to access in a moment. That quick access brings quick recognition which often prevents spiraling and allows for quicker regulation.
Good one, Sharon.
Shifting to the mind/ concepts/ stories is a good way to manage the intensity. But it’s also a way we’ll tend to escape how we feel. It’s worth being alert to how we’re using it.
I’ll need to read this a few times. So much to take in. But so much resonates, especially with what I’m going through now! I’m still experiencing waves of ‘erosion’ (I suppose that’s how I’d put it now?) from that nut that popped last week. And what’s interesting now is that afterward, I’ll get ‘rewarded’ (for lack of a better word) with a different part of my body coming on line. For example last night it was my feet — after I experienced more waves of the nut burning off and that energy had settled, my feet suddenly ‘woke up’, like a weight had been taken off and they could finally breathe. It was wonderful! (And to note, all of this usually happens at bedtime when I’m falling asleep). Thank you, David 🙂
Hi Jenifer
Well, there’s erosion, but also processing the energy, and integration that can be taking place. Finding the new point of balance.
And yes, it’s not uncommon for it to happen at bedtime, when you’re letting the day go. It can even disrupt the start of sleep sometimes.
This sounds like a very major one, perhaps related to your recent identity shift?
Hi David,
Yes! The disruption at the start of sleep is happening most nights, and yes – this was a major one with the identity shift. It honestly feels like I’m integrating at mach speed, like everything I’ve worked through over the past 6 years is finally able to integrate & stabilize in a way it wasn’t able to before, when I wasn’t grounded in my identity. Funny how having that one thing in place is actually the crux of it all, and so crucial, when spiritual teachings of old (and my general inclination) was focused on having ‘no identity at all’ so to speak. Feels like less evolved past life stuff.
Hi Jenifer
Make sure you’re getting enough activity during the day. Partly as that helps process and partly as it helps sleep.
I sometimes get up and do some yoga if things are not settling. Yoga is great for helping things move out.
And yes, things move in cycles. So we can have periods of disintegration, transformation, then finally integration. And we may be in different stages of this in different areas.
Right – if there’s any denial of who you are, those connections can’t land.
There’s a difference between having an identity and being identified with it. It’s the identification that gives us trouble. We still need to know what’s self and what’s non-self so we can function in the world. What’s floor and what’s my foot? What’s finger and whats carrot? What am I capable of and what are my limits? etc. These don’t end.
Instead we come to contain them rather than being them. And there is lots of room for growth and maturation of the identity. I tend to use self and ego for this rather than identity as “identity” seems more related to “identification.”
Hi David, its great your sharing this, the opportunity to heal, as you say from the inside out. Energetically somatically in presence, here and now. Being with another that is present also assists and provides opportunity for coregualtion. We will have to get together and share conversations around this some time. Seems this is where life has taken me, to deepen healing and understanding for myself and others. I am also at the end of my course so will have more time for visits soon.
Hi Theresa
Yes, having a facilitator can be very valuable, especially if this is new territory or a big one. I’m having my first experience of the protocol later this week.
Your willingness to coregulate is part of what makes you a good healer.
And yes, I’d love to visit when you can. Congrats on completing the course – it sounds like a major accomplishment.
Worth mentioning that the hard nuts can sit quietly in there, well repressed and hidden, until their time comes. It can seem the arena is clear to ourselves but then – Surprise! – old childhood and ancestral stuff emerges for processing.
That’s a good thing. But never expect yourself to transcend your humanity. 🙂
Hi, David,
Reading through your latest posts, I´ve come back to what read from Almaas about the Point of Light (and reading Kabir´s poem (“All know that the drop merges into the ocean, but few know that the ocean merges into the drop”) in that light…maybe we are witnessing the emergence of a new unfolding of spirituality, where the personal and the impersonal, the Ocean incarnating as a drop, Being and human, is becoming a truly “human Being”…
“Inner support implies that we need to be in touch with our experience. Inquiry is not a mental exercise, disconnected from ordinary reality. We have to be rooted in our everyday personal experience and in touch with our own thoughts, feelings, body, and behavior. Inquiry does not require us to leave our body or try to reach unusual transcended heights of perception—and we will not feel our inner support by doing so. Instead, we need to become more concrete, more down to earth, by delving into our own everyday experience. It is the embodied soul that is the entry to all the treasures of Being. When you are inquiring, it is important to keep sensing your body—to stay in direct touch with its movements and sensations. This includes the numbness, the dullness, or the tensions you may feel. To ground your awareness in your bodily experience is important because your essential qualities are going to arise in the same place where you experience your feelings, emotions, and reactions. They are not going to appear above your head, they are going to arise within you. So your body is actually your entry into the mystery.”
A. H. Almaas, Spacecruiser Inquiry
Hi Jose
There is definitely a new spirituality emerging, a very applied approach. But it’s still pretty siloed, reflecting the collective.
The recent posts are exploring the nature of trauma aka samskara and about fully embodying our inner unfoldment.