There are memories that don’t work like normal memories. They seem to come out of nowhere. These memories lead us to another question we ignored in our discussion of the development of consciousness: what happens if we aren’t able to fully experience a phase? Welcome to your body, welcome to trauma, and welcome to healing.
The story of trauma
In the 1980s and 1990s, psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, who was then working at Harvard Medical School, made an astonishing discovery. Van der Kolk was working with people who had horrific memories that were more like fragments than coherent stories. During his work with former soldiers and other traumatized people, he discovered that traumatic memories are not ordinary. They are not a cohesive story about the past. They are a „literal state of the body that can bypass conscious recall only to resurface years later. “1
Often, those memories cannot be remembered consciously. Instead, they can pop up out of nowhere as frightening fragments, putting people into a state where they might struggle to deal with their normal lives.
At that time, trauma research and healing were on the margins of common science and medicine. Nowadays, this has changed dramatically. We know a lot about how trauma arises and what kind of effect it has, not only on the normal daily life of a traumatized person but also on his consciousness, and on his mental and physical development.
In the third edition of this series, we discussed the stages of development and the biological primer that governs child development. At that time, we skipped the question: what happens if mental development doesn’t keep pace with the body, and with the physical development of a child? But now it’s time to examine this question.
Whether or not the child’s mental development reflects the expectations of a certain stage, physical development progresses through each stage until its full blossom. The biological development of the child is innately prioritized, and nature doesn’t care whether mental development follows. Now, what can stop or break this mental development? As we have seen, the development of the mind and consciousness depends on two things. First, the proper development of the physical apparatus of the brain and the whole nervous system is needed. Second, the content of consciousness shapes a child’s mind, such as language, bonding, and experiences, all delivered by the context the child is living in.
Following the question of what can interrupt mental development, the first answer is simple: an inappropriate developmental context that means the child is not nourished as it should be. No one speaks with a child, and he cannot develop language properly. The child lives in poor surroundings with a lack of bonding, love, and interesting objects that might spark his curiosity. Or the child is exposed far too early to digital devices that narrow his mind and his physical movement and development. An inappropriate context can take many different forms.
The second answer is related to trauma as an experience. Trauma can be a one-time experience, a shock or an accident, or the loss of a beloved one. It also can be an ongoing experience like physical or verbal abuse, being a soldier in a brutal war, or living as a refugee in exhausting circumstances. It is not the experience itself that is traumatic. The inability of the one experiencing it to digest and properly integrate this experience into his life makes the event traumatic. The trauma is the result. It’s an undigested, unprocessed experience and the encounter of being overwhelmed. We can understand it as an energy that is stored in our body instead of being released. And we are storing it not only mentally as a memory but also physically in our bodies. If we have an ongoing traumatic experience, we store a mass of undigested energy in our body.
The effects of traumatic experiences are multiple. Some memories can arise out of nowhere, and suddenly a person finds themself in a state of total inability to deal with the normal world. These are the trauma memories that van der Kolk is talking about. Then, there are mental and physical disabilities that come with traumatic experiences. And there are illnesses like depression that can be a result of those experiences. We can understand trauma as a kind of loss of a part of our body or a part of our physical and mental ability, like we are losing an aspect of our self. We don’t have access to it anymore. The difficult part is that this aspect of self is not only attached to one experience or ability; it can affect many skills and abilities, often without a direct connection to our primary traumatic experience.
In the case of a child who is constantly exposed to physical abuse, this experience will not only hold back the child in one of its developmental stages, but it will inhibit the child’s ability to fulfil its potential in all the stages to come. It also often leads to other difficult and traumatizing experiences, becoming an ongoing and exponentially difficult experience that influences the holistic development of the child and its ability to fully live daily life.
The gift of being traumatized
Traumatized humans are gifted humans. Trauma can be a gateway to wisdom, to a richer and more fulfilling life, and to our soul––if we find a way to transform and heal it.
From this, a whole range of abilities and strengths arise. We become more resilient. We gain greater sensibility, empathy and impact as this experience leads us to a deeper understanding of how life unfolds and how everything is connected.
I was raised in a violent family. Our parents were beating us children regularly. The whole atmosphere in my family was violent. The language was violent. There was disdain and contempt; we siblings were fighting with and against each other. I developed a survival mode during this time. I was always trying to secure the room I was in by analyzing and understanding everyone there, figuring out their moods and whether they were a threat, and, if so, what I could do to limit the threat. I learned to read people and deal with many difficult emotions and situations. During my journey of healing and coming to terms with depression and my violent side, I realized my gift for communicating and working with people. But I had to understand how scared I was, how deeply afraid I was of that one exact thing I desperately sought: nourishing and powerful relationships. In this way, I realized that almost everyone is traumatized in one way or another. Trauma itself is not a personal phenomenon but a structural one in our society.
What I had to learn was that healing doesn’t mean getting rid of the traumatic experiences or the memories, but being able to integrate them, to let them teach me and help me evolve. And this healing doesn’t only lead to a resolution of blockades or a re-emergence of unknown abilities; it leads us into the beauty and richness of life itself. Coming from being a mostly isolated and lonely person, I now really enjoy being in contact, having conversations, and being able to touch people’s hearts. I lost my fear on the way to healing. And now, I’m not afraid to dive into difficult dialogues and topics.
The central gate
It takes courage to meet one’s trauma. It takes strength and endurance to pass through all these difficult emotions, feelings, experiences and memories to realize how devastated one’s life can be in places one didn’t expect. But it’s worth every step it takes to heal.
Our body stores our traumatic experiences. If we can reach out to them, touch them, and bring them into our presence, our body can heal by itself. Therapeutic approaches based on language are limited. They may reach the mind but not the heart and the body. Bodywork like yoga, qigong, or energetic medicine can help us twofold: they can help us get into kind and nourishing contact with ourselves, and lead us to greater self-acceptance. They can help us easily resolve tension and traumatic experiences without re-enacting the experiences themselves or returning to the experience in our minds. Our body is the central gate to healing.
We often associate mind, brain and consciousness. But that’s limiting. Consciousness is the whole, and by integrating the body through healing, we achieve not only a more fulfilling and joyful life but we also raise and expand our consciousness.
Carr, D. (2023) How Trauma Became America’s Favorite Diagnosis. Intelligencer,TT