Healing Trauma

Before he turned into a sly fox wearing an eternally innocent mask, Rocky was a cute little puppy. You could swear by his guileless visage. I was eleven years old and he was a little marshmallow in the first month of his existence on earth when one day I was sitting on the threshold of our house. It was winter, probably December, and it had just finished raining. The sky was twilit and a gentle but chilly breeze made it a perfect setting for an ideal evening: a man and his dog, okay, maybe a preteen and his doe-eyed puppy, sitting next to each other, observing the world as it went by.

Rocky was having a blast making an acquaintance with a previously unfamiliar world, with sparse traffic moving about. A bicycle, a rickshaw, a car, a moped, a scooter, and so on. In the process of discovering his voice, quite literally, he barked loudly at everyone who passed. Needless to mention that what he believed were confident and wild barks were rather ordinary yips and woofs. You couldn’t scare an ant with those hiccups. If anything, one might have mistaken it for Chopin playing his trills. 

Now, in that rather musical setting, when Rocky was fully focused on giving the heebie-jeebies to his unsuspecting victims, a bike with a modified exhaust zipped through at a sonic speed (read ~30km/hr). A startled Rocky toppled from his seat and tumbled into a puddle right in front, which I am sure felt like a vast ocean to him at the time. 

I picked up the soaked goofball and ran inside the house. Rocky was shivering and he was traumatized. Didi, my sister, gave him a bath with lukewarm water and I tried to pacify him but his constant whimpering and trembling had me worried. Matarani, my mother, had not been in favor of keeping a pet in the first place as she’d contended that all the extra work would fall on her shoulders but we had persuaded her somehow. For the fear of not getting too attached, she had maintained her distance. Until now. When Rocky wouldn’t stop quivering and whining in my lanky and boney lap, my elder brother took him in his but the poor little thing was unrelenting. We told our mother that he was not feeling well and that she had to do something about it.

Now, who is strong enough to ever look at a puppy in need and stay firm? No one. His eyes had reduced to mere slits at this point. Matarani immediately took him in her lap, wrapped him in her warm shawl and rocked him gently. Rocky fell asleep in practically minutes and stayed in her lap for the next hour or so. My father ended up in the kitchen that evening cooking us all a meal.

For the next several months, Rocky was scared to go near any puddle. The very sight of a tiniest waterbody would traumatize him and he would run back to me (or whoever walked him).

I could have started with a mechanical description of trauma and moved onto the methods to combat it, but the truth is that trauma is way more than just hurt. In fact, our subconscious, even unconscious, mind carries deep, vivid and lasting imprints of our traumatic experiences. Since we are often not aware of a lot of them, we are baffled at some of our thoughts and actions.  You didn’t want to feel a certain way, but you did. You didn’t want to act in that manner, but you did. You didn’t mean to say those things, but you did. When you are traumatized, it triggers a wave of emotions and thoughts that can catch the sanest person off guard.

What’s worse is that traumatic experiences shape our memory too to fit the narrative they want to tell you. Never make the mistake of thinking that your memory is simply a record of the past. Your brain will distort the actual experience, simplify it, and transform it to suit what makes sense to it and with each recollection, you may end up building memory that only deepens the trauma. A pertinent question at this point is, how do you heal from the trauma then?

1. Do Not Battle With Yourself

When you speak or act as intended, it’s one thing, but when under certain circumstances, you become someone you never meant to, it is a clear sign that you may be dealing with trauma or hurt you are not fully aware of. Please let this sink in as it’s a crucial distinction. That is, if your response to something is deliberate, while it may be influenced by numerous things, it is still a choice. But, you know you need healing when your actions, thoughts, or emotions feel out of control, as if you didn’t choose them. When that happens, don’t beat yourself up over it for doing so will weaken your self-esteem, making you more vulnerable.

2. Rule Out Nutrition and Fitness

I cannot stress this enough: sometimes, for your mind to function optimally, your body simply needs the right nutrients and adequate physical exercise. All neurotransmitters, including the happy hormones (serotonin, dopamine, endorphins, and oxytocin) essential to feeling good are made up of wholesome foods. The rule of thumb is to go low on carbs and avoid processed foods. Physical exercise is the greatest natural anti-depressant, the most potent longevity drug. So if life persistently feels dreary and there is no will to live, we must first rule out that it’s not on account of an unhealthy and sedentary lifestyle. And even if you are diagnosed with a condition by a psychiatrist, eating right and working out will expedite your recovery and healing.

3. Seek Professional Help

There is no substitute for a good psychiatrist. If needed, they will prescribe you with the right medication and refer you to a therapist. Seek professional help right away. Go for the absolute best that you can afford as it will make a world of difference. In fact, I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said that with the right diagnosis and medication or therapy (or both), your life will never be the same again. Don’t go for pseudo therapists, they will do more damage than good. What a heart surgeon is to a  patient with a heart attack, a psychiatrist is to a patient with mental trauma. Do not postpone it. Seek professional help. Quoting again (as I did that in the previous post) from It Didn’t Start With You by Mark Wolynn, here’s a real-life story:

Megan married Dean at nineteen and thought their relationship would last forever. Then one day, when Megan was twenty-five, she looked at him across the kitchen table and felt herself go numb. Her feelings for Dean were gone. Within weeks, Megan filed for divorce. Realizing that her suddenly vanishing love for Dean seemed aberrant, she sought help.

I suspected that a family story lay out of reach for her and began to probe. It was fortuitous that we did. The link Megan hadn’t made was easy to see. Megan’s grandmother was only twenty-five years old when her husband, the love of her life, drowned while fishing at sea. She raised Megan’s mother on her own and never remarried. Her husband’s sudden death was the great tragedy in their family.

The story was so familiar that Megan hadn’t even considered its effects on her. Once Megan realized that she was reliving her grand mother’s story, the sudden aloneness, the deep loss and numbness, Megan began to blink and scrunch her face. I gave her all the time she needed to let the insight sink in. After many seconds came a series of quick breaths. A few minutes later, her breath began to lengthen. She was putting the pieces together. “I feel strangely hopeful,” she said. “I need to tell Dean.” Days later she called and reported that something was changing inside her; her feelings for Dean were returning.

It’s important to restate: not all behaviors expressed by us actually originate from us. They can easily belong to family members who came before us. We can merely be carrying the feelings for them or sharing them. We call these “identification feelings.”

Megan would have been at her wit’s end for the rest of her life if not for the insight offered by her psychologist. She would have held herself responsible and felt guilty for throwing away a good life. I am not saying that our actions have no consequences or that we are absolved of our duty to act responsibly. It cannot be denied, however, that we do lose control sometimes. Even the most decorated racing car driver can have a life-altering accident on a harmless ski trip. When you feel that you are not in control of yourself, that you have tried but it’s not helping, seek professional help. They have the right tools, expertise and experience to ask the right questions.

4. Chart the Core Language Map

This powerful concept by Mark Wolynn helps you cut through the noise and get to the core issue. Once you go through this exercise, you start to see the source of your trauma that was hiding in plain sight all along. The next quote and everything else in double quotes in this section is taken from his book. “The words we use to describe our worries and struggles can say more than we realize. Yet few of us ever think to look there,” he says. 

There are four components of a core language map:

a. The Core Complaint

This is a deep issue that feels overwhelming, important, or that has been with you your whole life. ¹ In order to go to the source of it, we need to investigate the core complaint.

“Focus on a problem that’s most pressing in your life right now. It might be an issue with your health, your job, your relationship—any issue that disrupts your sense of safety, peace, security, or well-being.” 

Write it down without editing it and don’t read it as you are letting it out of your system. Look at what you’ve written. Scan the text for words or phrases that stand out as unusual, peculiar, or intense. Examine words that have strong emotional resonance.

Examples: 
I will lose this position and I’ll always be a failure. 
Everyone will be happy when I am gone or dead. 

b. The Core Descriptor

“The feelings we hold about our parents are a doorway into ourselves.”

Core descriptors are the beliefs we have about our parents and their influence on us. Mark recommends writing down the following:

My mother is/was…
I blame my mother for…

My father is/was…
I blame my father for…

c. The Core Sentence

If you struggle with a fear or phobia, panic attacks or obsessive thoughts, you know only too well what it feels like to be held captive in the prison of your inner life. The hard time you do inside yourself—the constant worry, the overwhelming emotions, the unnerving body sensations—can feel like a life sentence, yet no trial or conviction has ever taken place. Fear and anxiety shrink your world and drain your vitality, restricting the day in front of you and limiting the life ahead of you. It can be exhausting to live that way.

Finding a way out is simpler than you think. You just need to ‘do time’ with a different kind of ‘life sentence’—the sentence that your worst fear creates. This sentence has probably been with you since you were a small child. Whether spoken aloud or said silently, this sentence deepens your despair.

The core sentence is an emotionally charged expression of your worst fear. It often begins with “I” or “They” and it points to the root of your trauma.

Write down your core sentence. Something like:

My worst fear, the worst thing that can happen to me, is…
Tweak and deepen it by reflecting on it and making it crisper. 

Examples:
“I’m all alone.”
“They reject me.”
“They leave me.”
“I let them down.”
“I’ll lose everything.”

d. The Core Trauma

Identifying the core trauma requires asking a bridging question, that could you have inherited it from a family member? Who in your family talked like that or said such things? Mother, father, a grandparent, a close relative?

This will help you identify and heal the core trauma. Most of what else in your life is simply a symptom (and not the cause) of this core trauma.

5. Observe and Let it Rip

Peter Levine in Walking The Tiger says that trauma is trauma, no matter what caused it.

Trauma has distinct physical and mental symptoms. 

Physical—increase in heart rate, difficulty breathing (rapid, shallow, panting, etc.), cold sweats, tingling muscular tension.

Mental—increase in thoughts, mind racing, worrying.

Peter goes on to say that if we allow ourselves to acknowledge these thoughts and sensations, in other words let them have their natural flow, they will peak, then begin to diminish and resolve. As this process occurs, we may experience trembling, shaking, vibration, waves of warmth, fullness of breath, slowed heart rate, warmth, relaxation of the muscles, and an overall feeling of relief, comfort, and safety. ²

A loving support system will be the most potent catalyst on your journey of healing but not everyone is blessed with one. Having said that, it can be built to a great degree. After you’ve sought professional help, you will discover that you are in a better position to engage socially. You will find yourself a bit more interested in others which in turn will make you more interesting to them. As that happens, you will automatically make some friends and your circle of loved ones and well wishers will expand naturally.

Mulla Nasrudin was gaining the reputation of a Lothario and it troubled his mother deeply. He was getting entangled with a girl from a powerful family, whom she strongly disapproved of.

“Mulla,” she said to him, “Didn’t I tell you not to take that girl to your room last night? You know how such things worry me.”
“But I didn’t invite her, Mother,” Mulla protested. “Instead, I went to her room. Now you can let her mother do the worrying.” ³ 

Whatever be the circumstances, invited or not, irrespective of whether you were the cause or the victim, the fact is that every incident we go through leaves an imprint on our consciousness. Undesirable events remain like weed in a lawn and if you don’t pull them out, they start multiplying. Extraction of that rogue grass is painful to the turf but if you want to protect it, it’s got to be done. In between, there is a waiting period of sorts, a kind of void, from the moment you take out the weed until the time it is filled by the grass. That is when the healing happens. It looks unsightly until it’s finished. (You may want to read erasing psychic imprints, a post I wrote more than a decade ago. Here and here.)

Sometimes, for no discernible fault of ours, we land in the puddle on a cold winter evening. It’s overwhelming and we don’t know what to do other than curl up and whimper. At that time, in fact every such time, we need someone to give us a warm bath and swaddle us in a fluffy blanket. We need the loving lap of a mother as she rocks us gently while her assured hand strokes us. 

This is precisely where developing a spiritual consciousness can do wonders. While you are on the journey to heal yourself, forging a deeper connection with the universe, with divinity, makes you an embodiment of love. As that happens, you start attracting the right kind of people into your life and Providence begins assembling a support system of caring individuals around you, like scaffolding on a building under repair. 

Gradually, you outgrow the world around you and nature then puts you in the role of a giver so you may hold the hand of someone in need and lead them through the forest of darkness. You will know what to do because you’ve been through it before.

That is the whole point, you see. You are more than the sum total of what didn’t go right. In the end, it is about expanding our persona so we may be a refuge to the weaker ones one day. Falling in a puddle then won’t feel like drowning in the sea. If anything, a mighty ocean of adversities will seem no bigger than a puddle.

Until then, come, let’s sit on the threshold and watch the world go by. There’s nothing to fear.

Peace.
Swami