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May 2008 
Trauma and its effect on society
Posted on Jul 6th, 2007
by 
Malcolm
Malcolm
In my last post, I described Riane Eisler’s partnership and dominator models of society and suggested that trauma is the reason we are stuck in the dominator part of the spectrum. In this entry, I will try to clarify what trauma is, and explain how it may lock us into a dominator way of being.
What is trauma?
What exactly is trauma? The following description is based on several sources including: wikipedia, MedicineNet and the Institute for the Study of Peak States.
Trauma is often used in medicine to refer to physical injuries, but this is not the sense in which it is most often used today. According to MedicineNet, psychiatric (or psychological) trauma, is “An experience that is emotionally painful, distressful, or shocking and which may result in lasting mental and physical effects.” A traumatic experience may be a single event or an on-going or repetitive situation. It usually involves a feeling of complete helplessness in the face of an actual or perceived threat to the life, body or sanity of the sufferer, their loved ones or community. The experience overwhelms the person’s ability to cope or to integrate the associated thoughts and emotions.
Trauma is a normal response to extreme experiences. It results in emotional memories stored deep in the brain and body which cause measurable physical and chemical changes to it. Individuals vary greatly, so that events that cause severe trauma in some will not significantly affect others.
Slightly different perspectives emerge from the work of The Institute for the Study of Peak States (ISPS). In his writings on peak states, Grant McFetridge describes how the way we respond to the original traumatic event becomes stored in the body, and this ‘memory’ is replayed like a tape whenever similar sensations are evoked in the present. In other words, we develop an unconscious, automatic survival response to any event that is identified as similar to the one which caused the original trauma.
From a rational perspective, such automatic responses may be quite inappropriate to the current situation, and may even lead to fresh trauma. A good illustration is claustrophobia in which an extreme fear of any enclosed space may originate, for example, from being locked in a cupboard as punishment as a child. Another is terror of all strangers, perhaps sparked by a frightening encounter with an unknown person in infancy.
Many traumas are individual, but others may be collective, arising from events in family or community history. These might include an unconscious memory of famine that creates a tendency for a community to overeat or hoard food. Or a ‘race memory’ of an atrocity that lingers as a fearful or angry reaction to anyone from a particular country or religion. Such memories often go back centuries, being kept alive by stories and rituals, and they fuel many modern conflicts such as Northern Ireland and Bosnia.
Healing trauma
Turning now to healing: What does it mean for a trauma to be healed? And how can this be achieved? A healed trauma loses its power to affect the present. Conscious memories of traumatic experiences may be recalled and thought about at will, but cease to be associated with any positive or negative emotional feelings or bodily sensations. In other words, the emotional ‘button’ that used to be triggered by a certain kind of event disappears. The person becomes free to respond rationally and appropriately to such events.
Most trauma therapies rely on remembering and re-experiencing the trauma in some way. Indeed, McFetridge claims that traumas are events that haven’t been fully experienced because we ‘leave’ our bodies and dissociate from the physical and/or emotional pain. Hence, healing requires that the event be lived through again in memory – a process that may be very painful. Unfortunately many therapies produce only partial healing – the symptoms may be reduced but not eliminated, or may return after a time.
ISPS researchers attribute partial healing to the presence of ‘trauma stacks’. Imagine that an early trauma causes a dysfunctional response to all similar events in future. Each time we respond in this way, we create a further trauma that is connected to the root trauma. Most trauma healing deals with traumatic events one by one. So if I have lots of events linked to a particular root trauma it may take many sessions before the healing is complete. However, according to McFetridge, if we can get back to the original trauma and heal that, the whole stack of subsequent traumas will also be healed at the same time.
Mainstream trauma research and treatment focus mostly on events in childhood or adulthood, such as abuse, rape, torture, wars, disasters and accidents. Alternative therapies often stimulate regression to unconscious memories, and are thus able to tackle birth traumas, which are often severe, and experiences in past lives. However, McFetridge believes that many of the traumas that create our deep emotional patterns and ‘buttons’ happen before birth, at key development stages such as conception and implantation in the womb.
Effective trauma therapy is difficult because we lock the memories away securely in the subconscious to protect ourselves from the pain they evoke. This applies particularly to in utero and birth traumas which predate the development of normal conscious memory. However, it is also true of many traumas that occur after infancy. A variety of new therapies are increasingly able to unlock the doors to these memories. This is not the place to go into details, but they include Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), Tapas Acupressure Technique (TAT) and Whole-Hearted Healing (WHH). Other approaches that ISPS recommend as effective include The 15-Minute Miracle, Psycho Energetic Auro Technology (PEAT) and biofeedback of brain waves.
Trauma and dominator societies
So what has all this stuff about trauma got to do with switching from a dominator to a partnership society? My answer is: Everything. I believe trauma is the reason why the dominator model took over from partnership, and why it has remained dominant for the last 6,000 years. And until we do something about trauma, we will remain stuck in a dominator civilization despite our best efforts to promote reform.
In The Chalice and the Blade, Riane Eisler wrote (p.xvii): “the original direction ... of our cultural evolution was toward partnership but ... following a period of chaos and almost total cultural disruption, there occurred a fundamental social shift ... to a dominator model ... At this pivotal branching, the cultural evolution of societies that worshipped the life-generating and nurturing powers of the universe ... was interrupted. There now appeared on the prehistoric horizon invaders from the peripheral areas of our globe who ... worshipped ... the power to take rather than give life that is the ultimate power to establish and enforce domination.”
What Eisler describes as a period of chaos and total disruption was clearly a time of intense social and personal trauma. And this trauma resulted in the switch in cultural evolution towards a dominating power hierarchy that we are still experiencing today. Once that switch had occurred, the violent system persisted because it creates on-going trauma, generation after generation.
I believe it is impossible to live within a dominator society without suffering trauma at some level. The ISPS claims that most people suffer significant trauma. Much of this may well occur before birth due to the experiences of the mother, but I will focus here on the more obvious childhood and adult traumas. Imagine (or remember) growing up in a dominator society. From infancy, you learn submission to the authority of your parents, teachers and other adults. Perhaps you learn the hard way that disobedience or talking back will be punished. You observe how the male of the household is boss, that men hold most (if not all) positions of authority in your community, and that men are tough and often violent. You are taught beliefs, whether religious or secular, about the nature of reality and the way of the world that reinforce these experiences. In this way, you deeply imbibe the ideas that you are somehow bad or inferior, that children deserve to be punished; that men are superior to women; that violence is ok and the way to deal with conflict; and that a hierarchy of power is the natural order of things.
Even in the rich world, trauma is ever present - in domestic violence, crime, accidents, rape and illness; in fear of strangers, terrorists and the opinion of others; in workplace stress and money worries; in loneliness and homelessness. Even our modern materialistic, mechanistic worldview is a source of psychological trauma, leaving us without meaning or purpose for our lives. Now imagine how it is for many in the majority world, perhaps facing starvation and chronic thirst; or living in the midst of war, never knowing when their family, home and community will be shattered by violence; or being a survivor and refugee from terrorism, famine, flood, earthquake or tsunami.
Trauma begets trauma. We naturally tend to bring up our own children in much the same way that we were brought up, and to pass on the core beliefs in which we were raised. And our responses to the world are shaped by our traumas (see diagram). Trauma shatters trust in others and the universe. Out of fear, we may become timid and submissive, carefully planning our lives to avoid fear, and thus tacitly supporting the continuation of the dominator system. Similarly, we may take out our repressed anger at the way we have been treated on those who are weaker than us, particularly our partner and children. Another common response to fear is action, including aggression – getting in the first strike as a way to reduce risk, or pushing others out of the way to meet our own survival needs. Similarly, we may seek vengeance for the wrongs we have suffered, or simply become the tough, bullying male who physically or emotionally beats up anyone who opposes us. Hence, in one way or another, the violent system perpetuates itself.
Basic trauma model
Trauma theory and creating the future
This theory that trauma is a major cause of the patterns of relationship and forms of society that lie at the heart of the human condition raises as many questions as it answers. Amongst them are:
• Is there direct evidence that trauma results in dominator relationships and societies?
• Are there cases where the reverse has happened and cooperative partnership societies have emerged from traumatic circumstances?
• How does the trauma model fit with other explanations of humanity’s predicament?
• Is it human nature to form male dominated, hierarchical and violent societies, or can we be different?
• Does the theory enable us to make any verifiable predictions that would validate it?
• What are the implications of this theory for creating a sustainable future?
• What can the theory tell us about key leverage points for achieving fundamental social and institutional change?
• What evidence is there that humans can heal their traumas and live permanently in peak states of consciousness?
Many of these questions cannot be answered unequivocally. But I will devote several entries to gathering together some of the available evidence. It’s worth the effort for the insights and wisdom we may gain towards creating a better future.
In my next two entries, I will explore how this trauma theory can explain the transition from a peaceful partnership civilization to a violent dominator culture thousands of years ago.
Access: PublicTagged with: trauma, emotion, memory, therapy, healing, infancy, birth, war, dominator, partnership, culture, society, relationships, ADHD, bi-polar disorder, fear, creating the future
This blog touches on many of the things that I am working with on a daily basis, I don't really talk about this side of me much here on Zaadz, for several reasons. One is that I regularly get the oportunity to discuss, research and experience these issues in “real life” and so I don't feel the same urge to explore them online. I can get very passionate about how we treat babies both before and after birth, and I am always thrilled when I get the chance to work with pregnant women, and newborns. I am trained in CranioSacral Therapy and it's off shoot, SomatoEmotional release, which works very much as you describe here, with body memories. When we are working the body is very much the guide, and we highly respect the inner wisdom of the body (using the word in it's broadest meaning). I actually did my advance training while 5 1/2 months pregnant, which was a very enlightening experience indeed. As a patient then my body has taken me back to birth so many times, that it is an area I have had the priveledge to explore from many different angles. It is obvious to me, that so many of our trama patterns, start before or during birth. One of the many fascinating things that I have learned is about the many purely physical ways in which a child and mother interact before birth, that really opened up my perspective is that the child experiences many of the “emotional” chemicals and hormones that are produced by the mother. Think for example about the more well know ones such as endorphins or adrenaline. Prebirth children, experience emotion on a very phisical level before they have any means to understand and therefore deal with them. Whatever the mother is feeling is transmitted in ways that sensitise the infants body to any particular emotional response, and it appears that the child makes no destinction between it's mothers emotional state, and it's own. So many of our responses are hard wired before we are even born, or develop the ability to really process any given experience. And don't even get me started about modern birthing practices. I am not against medical intervention, but I am passionately against unnessesary interference, and strongly feel, that standard modern medical proceedures have a lot to answer for. A baby should emerge into what is essentially an alien environment, with huge support, love and respect from those around him/her. So often it is series of proceedures, carried out by people who are thinking about protocols rather than the mirracle in thier hands, and the impressions that they may be passing on to this new person. So many of the drugs given to releave pain in the mother, strongly interfere with the production of natures own chemical sollutions, which are also a large part of the bonding experience for mother and child. (I have given birth to 3 children, the first one I had gas and air, the others nothing at all. It is possible, it is bearable, it is amazing, and while in some cases then medication is nessesary, then not in nearly as many cases as it is used). A woman in labour should be relaxed as possible, and feel as in control of her environment as possible. We are making strides in this direction, but we have a way to go yet. I was really lucky the second time I gave birth, the midwife sat reading a book, and occationally asked me what was happening, rather than telling me. She did perform the occational internal exam, gently and respectfully in the beginning, but once it was clear that things where progressing naturally then she respected that it was my body and in the end, I was aware of far more than she could possibly be. Having been given permission to listen to my own body, then I found it astonishingly easy to relate to her all the important stages of the delivery, and it was a textbook easy delivery (there was pain, and it was not rediculously quick, which is not normally ideal for the baby). He was properly squeezed by the delivery canal as nature intended, and therefore all his important reflexes where stimulated, which is a very important part of a child's developement. The upledger institute in America has recently developed a class “CranioSacral Applications for Obstetrics” (they have run a peadiatrics program for many years) They have been assisting births, (from conception through to post natal) and have gathered a great deal of impressive data, and are now ready to pass their knowledge on, to experienced therapists. I am exstatic that this and other programs exsist, and I hope that more and more babies will begin life hardwired in joy, gratitude, welcome, and love.
Thanks for the comment, Rachel. Great to have your support, and great that you've shared your passion.
I'm more and more convinced that trauma lies at the heart of the human predicament, and will be exploring more aspects in several blog posts that I'm working on.
Malcom, I think this is an important insight and well stated. I look forward to your future posts on the topic of trauma. I apologize for the scattered nature of these comments, but bulding a conceptual framework for a cultural model of trauma seems like a huge undertaking. I'm not sure you fully addressed this, but I think that trauma can also create issues of codependence and identification with the aggressor, which take on lives of their own and can perpetuate and spreads trauma in subtle ways.
In my own experience, including my own policy work on this topic and work with people who are attempting to heal from trauma, our media are a key transmitter and perpetuator of trauma for many, many people. Stereotypes, images of violence, poor personal boundaries and unfounded judgments are rampant in popular culture and hundreds of thousands of people earn their livings by presenting these on the public airwaves.
Alcohol and caffeine also facilitate violence, exploitation and fear. One of my sons wrote a research paper on the endemic use of psychoactive substances (including hallucinogens, alcohol, speed, tobacco, etc.) throughout the history of warfare - in order to maximize aggression while calming combatants and habituating them to the fear and violence surrounding them. Of course, we are becoming more aware of the inherent traumatization of people in the military, police and first responders - even when their behavior is honorable.
Caffeine, in particular, is a massively consumed drug in our society which stimilates the sympathetic nervous system and helps maintain high levels of stress and “fight or flight” anxiety. Yet, if we forcibly remove it from the market, we will have chaos.
I would agree that trauma lies at the heart of the human condition, and that it has a cyclic nature. Yet, it is part of our nature. We push limits. We get carried away with everything. And we are not uniform. One person is traumatized by powerlessness and another by relinquishing their power over others. Boys, who are at least partially raised by women, receive their share of trauma, resulting in their sometimes being less emotionally aware (dissociative) and more physically confrontive. A “partnership society,” as we figure out how to get there, will have less trauma, but our culture is so intense that I'm not sure how we can move very strongly in that direction without creating massive conflict and trauma. It is a long, long process. I see “partnership society” as a journey; not a destination. That quest is worth a great deal of effort.
i think it's great to raise awareness about psychological trauma's permanent impact on the brain. thinking about all the trauma that goes on in the world can make us feel helpless, but we can work on ourselves as individuals and that is one positive step.
Thanks, Earon, for your insightful comments.
I didn't really set out to create “a conceptual framework for a cultural model of trauma”. I just happened to get into it when a few ideas started to link up. Yes, a big undertaking that threatens to fly off in all directions at once! But I seem to get caught up in big issues and can see a book emerging from this one. My last book (“The Science of Oneness: A worldview for the twenty-first century.”) was also ambitious.
There are many issues around trauma I haven't addressed, and probably many I never will. Codependency and identification with the aggressor are two. I just have to see where my thoughts and background lead me. I agree that the media have much to answer for. I hadn't thought about the use of psychoactive drugs in war, but it's an obvious thing to do.
Interesting that you should mention caffeine. I'm in the process of withdrawal from coffee - not for the first time! It sort of creeps up on me when I get tired and busy. And then eventually I recognise the jittery state, and the way it suddenly cuts out on me. I know I'm better without it, but get sucked in.
You say: “One person is traumatized by powerlessness and another by relinquishing their power over others.” I find myself wondering if these are symptoms of trauma rather than trauma itself? It seems to me that there may be two basic responses to a traumatic event and associated fear. One is to become fearful and submissive, and hence powerless. The other is to become aggressive and powerful - at least in the outer world. Both reactions reinforce the dominator culture.
You mention your own policy work on trauma - I'd be interested to learn more about that. In future entries I'll look at climate change as a cause of the shift from partnership to dominator cultures thousands of years ago, explore if dominance is part of human nature, and outline an approach to partnership child-rearing. Not sure where after that. I'd welcome your comments.
For many years I've been interested in utopian ideas. And I came to see utopia as a journey, not a destination. So I completely agree that partnership society is a long-term guiding vision, a process, and a journey rather than an achievable goal.
Hey Malcolm - A partnership society IS an achievable goal, though I agree that the journey is a long and interesting one. You mention climate change as a causal factor in a shift to a dominator society, this caught my attention, as I have often pondered (as have others) whether what we need to shift in a more possitive direction is a major global “disaster” The current environmental issues, could possibly be the wakeup call to many that we really are, in so many practical ways one, and perhaps to shift relatively rapidly we require a fairly impressive catalyst, and perhaps that is what we are currently offered? (the difference being that this time we have a more effect communication system in place)
That is the question, Humanly Possible. Well done. Catalyst or cataclysm? Jared Diamond's book, “Collapse” is a great chronicle of how cultures learned to adapt or perish. He writes that the difference between the two is often whether the leadership is in touch with real life. The more insulated they are, the longer it takes to notice that the world is changing in ways that are not sustainable for the present mindsets. Leadership that hunkers down in the old reality makes is more difficult to adapt to change, even in a partnership society - which devolves into a dominator culture (or decentralizes and dissolves) when institutional structures fall apart.
I've developed my own grandiose meta-solution to our cultures' corrupted thinking, which is waiting to be birthed as a book. Divine Primates: How Human Nature got us into - and can get us out of - our global crises. The main idea is that we need to develop species awareness in order to be able to see what we are doing to our planet. As long as we act like we are divine beings very close to perfection, we seem to miss the obvious fact that we are primates, with most of the same traits of other primates regarding ego, curiousity and getting carried away with everything. Humans are a barrel of monkeys - but that curious George dude is scary - because in the hands of us primates - a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Back to my work on trauma, I've come to some of the same awarenesses you mentioned, Malcom. The Chalice and the Blade was a breathtaking achievement and it moved me into some of the same directions as you are writing about.
I do think that trauma is ubiquitous, and does not always involve moral culpability, so we benefit from letting go of some of our judgment and outrage. If we do see trauma as part of human nature, this is supported by the pecking orders and competition within other primate groupings - which still exist in “partnership” societies. And, if we process trauma with less terror, we may be able to limit some of its symptoms. As humans, we often over-react to trauma by becoming fearful and even violent, unable to differentiate between the situation that caused our trauma and non-threatening situations and cues which trigger our traumatized symptoms (ptsd).
As you stated, illness (and disability) are huge aspects of human trauma. Same with birth trauma, possibly. And sibling rivalry. And bullies in the schoolyard. And, if you've raised any teenagers, you know how traumatic a pimple can be - or distorted body images - or being ignored by someone we like - ad infinitum. So it isn't just dominator society that is to blame for trauma - although there clearly are patterns of excess that we need to do a better job of extinguishing.
Breast cancer is an amazing example of trauma that somehow becomes acceptable to a culture even when it is known that our toxic chemcial lifestyle greatly contributes to it. Breast cancer (and other forms of cancer, obviously) traumatize many of us daily. Women often live in fear of death - and the loss of parts of their body - especially parts of the body that involve our identities as nurturing and attractive. Men feel this pain and fear, also, if we allow ourselves to be open to the women in our lives. And yet very little is being done to prevent breast cancers from establishing. Instead, our culture focuses on treatment - which is wonderful, but is locking the barn door after the horse is stolen. In a sane culture, I think there would be a huge march and a general strike over this issue. Our focus on helping people already ill is warranted, to be sure, but the traumatization involved with this process seems to keep us stuck, as people are terribly afflicted, one by one.
We also live in denial of the harmful effects of our saturation of the earth with various forms of nonionizing radiation. There are few refuges from cellular signals and satellite penetration, but we don't want to know about excess brain tumors and potential links between surveillance and communications technologies and nervous system problems. This may be another source of hidden trauma in the world. And it may be a co-factor in our inability to accept the fact that human are altering our planet in ways that are not sustainable.
Trauma or symptoms of trauma? There are immense realms of detail in that question, but I suspect that need to keep focused on the larger issues. Can we separate traumas by degree? How do we define trauma? Is trauma always to be avoided? Do “partnership” societies promise a complete absence of trauma?
Sorry for the scattering of thoughts, again. This is fun, but difficult work.
Malcolm - May I humbly suggest a pod, to allow these discussions to branch in however many directions they turn out to? Your blogs are valuable in that they represent an intelligent, and roughly singular point of view (I hope you understand what I mean by that!). I suspect that you will spark a great many “side discussions” that would be more suited to the format of a pod.
Earon - I like that you term this work as fun. One of the ways in which humans respond to crisis/trauma is to almost celebrate the negative. My work as a therapist often involves working with a part of a person that has a vested interest in holding on to the event and it's emotional impact. Reasons for this are varied, but good examples are: 1. If I really really remember this event then I can prevent it from happening again (this is false logic, but is very persuasive); 2. I get alot of sympathy/attention because I suffer from X,Y,Z; 3. I am not culpable for my life, because who could expect a tramatised person to act rationally, I could go on, but you get my point. There are many reasons why people choose to hold on to a negative mind set, and to me it is obvious that people with a positive mindset get more done, they are more motivated, and more equipped to deal with inevitable set backs. “You MUST do something” is surprisingly unmotivating to most people, whereas “Look at the rewards for acting THIS way” Is far more likely to produce an positive response.
Unless we evolve far beyond what we are now, then trauma is inevitable, BUT it does not take such an evolutionary jump to learn to deal with trauma in more positive ways, and we would all benefit from much more “fun, but difficult work”.
As always with this kind of subjects then there are many of your points which deserve a response, but for the sake of brevity I will finish on one final point. Current human nature is to find some-one to blame, it seems to be a huge intellectual leap to accept that sometimes “shit happens” We would indeed benefit from “letting go of some of our judgment and outrage” And let the fun begin!
HumanlyPossible - I have worked with “victims,” in various contexts (lawyer, advocate, bodyworker, etc), so I definitely agree that secondary gain is a common obstacle to healing. However, there is often a fine line between enabling codependence and blaming the victim. I often just didn't know whether the individual was holding on to their trauma because they didn't want to let go - or because their limbic system triggering simply made them incapable of feeling safe (e.g., hypervigilancev – ptsd).
I think our mental health services may be getting more sophisticated and flexible in dealing with trauma. I have read some of Sandra Ingermann's work as a therapist doing shamanic healing for trauma - and also have seen energy work being very useful - family systems therapies, etc. What do you think?
Perhaps my most intense experiences in this vein have been working with massage clients who eventually reveal that they are working on abuse and trust issues. If they aren't in therapy, they sometimes manifest poor boundaries. However, I currently have a client who is objectively working on abuse issues - and who is in therapy and consciously doing that very difficult work. I am so impressed with her courage - and hard work. What motivates her is the desire to be healthy and have a full life.
Earon - Malcolm has also pointed to the dangers of “blaming the victim” in one of his previous blogs, and I could not agree more. It is very tempting in the therapeutic world to put any apparent failure of progress down to the patient, I have encountered, and fallen into this trap in the course of my carreer. Sometimes I go round in circles with myself, because ultimately it is the patient that does all the real work, and acknowledging that can be very bad for the ego! The fact is though as you point out creating a safe space for a person to be able to explore “stuff” is a skilled job requiring a great deal of experience and “work on self” by the therapist. There is a saying “Good therapists, need good therapists” I am also fascinated with the way that brains (and the rest of the body) are wired, and purely physical work is a must if we are to truely work holistically. If people have the ability to miraculously “heal” themselves then they simply do it, and they have no need of therapists. Yet I would be the first to argue that they do have the ability to miraculously “heal” themselves (and I am am talking about a return to health not some sort of unacheivable perfection) BUT that that ability is buried, and they require help to find it again. This is NORMAL, we do not bury our self healing mechanisms for fun. I can get seriously annoyed by sactimonious speaches about “denial” or “resistance”. Both of these mechanisms, at at least one point in that persons life ALLOWED THEM TO COPE. Allowed them to survive an event that was overwhelming. So called reisistance, is a natural defense mechanism, and we should all be grateful to have it in our tool box. I find it admiral that we have developed in ways that mean we can endure the most incredible trauma AND STILL GET UP IN THE MORNING. It is an indescribable honour to be in a room with some-one who has found a place safe enough to reveal, explore and release such overpowering events.
I am a closet energy worker, as in I have a great respect for the energy field of the body, but am not always so respectful of some of the therapys that deal with it exclusively. We are bringing a wonderful man called Tom McDonough, to Denmark again this year to present his class Energy Integration. He started out in more physical therapy, and then deveolped a therapy system which for me connected the energy to the physical in ways that make sense when viewing a system (the body) rather than a collection of parts. His follow up workshop Energy Integration 2 (which I have yet to attend) focusses on the larger systems of family, communitys and other groups. I have often worked with several family members over a similar time period, and my experience shows me that this is a very efficiant way of working. Many times when we are treating children, we will end up working with the parents.
I have also experienced (as a patient, and as an observer) “Heart Centered Therapy” which (amongst other things) acknowledges the entire family tree, and often traces trauma patterns back through generations. I have been impressed by the results I have observed so far.
Finally. I origionally trained in massage, the training for me was wonderful, in that I discovered my fascination with the body, how it is formed (love embriology!) and how it works. It was also a major healing step for me, I was (mildly in comparrison to many stories) sexually abused for a period of time as a child. This interfered very much with my ability to touch people. I was very confused as to the line between affection, sexuality and normal interaction. I have been accused of “being like hugging an iceberg”. This was simply because I was terrified that some-one would think that I was sexually atracted to them, and so I would go as far as I could in the opposite direction without physically leaving the room (or in some cases, I would sexualise a situation far to quickly because then again I at least knew exactally where the line was, even if later I could look back and wish I had stayed on the other side of it!). Learning massage was an amazing therapeutic journey, in which I was allowed to touch people (and be touched, as we practiced on each other), within clear boundarys, and with a very clear intention.
Trauma often interferes with our ability to touch, or be touched, simply because kind touch stimulates us to open up, and our protective mechanisms have alot invested in keeping us shut down.
Humanly Possible - thanks for those wonderful insights. Those of us who have worked on our own traumas sometimes emerge as wounded healers with profound wisdom and patience and boundaries. What a marvelous journey. Your clients are blessed.
Here's an image I'd like to share with you - related to trauma and society:
I wish that “global warming” was actually the process of thawing people and cultures who have been frozen by trauma and fear. Imagine the balanced decisions we would make, the opportunities to exploit other people species and resources we would simply decline, and the respect we would have for our amazing planet. In this process, the global warming would be reclaimed by our hearts - where it belongs - and not sent to the atmosphere, ice caps and glaciers, where it doesn't belong.
Wow, Earon and Humanly Possible! I turn my back for a day and you write a book! Actually, I had a day off for a routine colonoscopy that found all normal in the depths of my bowels.
So many points I'd like to respond to… Quite a few of which I'm addressing in my next few posts.
Perhaps first, the question of a pod. Before I started my blog, I thought about the alternative of setting up a pod. I chose the former as a way to break writer's block. I find I have very little time and energy for following pods and so am reluctant to start one. On the other hand I can see their value for the kind of interaction that has started here. How about one of you two taking this on? Or two or three of us somehow cooperatively? Any thoughts on title and purpose? Someone recently started a pod called Fearless Eco-survival with a strong focus on the importance of fear and overcoming it. Virtually nil response.
Is a partnership society achievable, a goal or a journey? By calling it a journey, I didn't mean to imply it's unachievable. But in my reading and thinking about creating the future I came to see the 'perfect' society as undefinable in any detail - we're too blinkered by our own culture and limited knowledge. At any time we can see positive directions to head, but the ultimate goalposts keep shifting. And if we ever arrive at what we think is the destination, we're likely to see a new set of goalposts out ahead. That's what I mean by it being a journey.
Yes, climate change is a wake-up call. It will take a crisis (= opportunity) to awaken humanity from our collective dream. And Earon, I love your alternative meaning - global warming of the heart. That seems to be a powerful image to work with and promote.
Yes, Earon, we are a barrel of monkeys. And yet we are so incredibly malleable that we can become almost anything we choose with the right upbringing and healing. Being aware of our evolutionary origins is vital, but we should not get caught in the ideology of sociobiology that tries to explain us away as nothing but the product of our genes.
I agree that in most cases there should be no blame or judgement attached to trauma. Shit happens. And shit will continue to happen even when we're all beings of light. I think the key is to accept the fact of trauma, become aware of it, and find ways to heal it in 'non-attached' way. If I am still angry, veangeful, judgemental then I'm not fully healed in my view. But being healed doesn't mean I become unaware of the causes of my trauma.
If shit happens, then the dominator society cannot be the cause of all trauma. But perhaps it lies behind more than we think. Earon, you mention the pimply teenager rejected by peers, and sibling rivalry. If we had a more loving, partnership society then the pimples might not matter, rejection might be tempered by empathy and caring, and family relationships might minimise sibling rivalry. At least that's the dream! Even the trauma of breast cancer would be greatly reduced in a society that did not put such store on external appearance and sexuality, and which had a more open and accepting attitude to sickness and death. (See my earlier blog on Death)
Humanly possible, I fully agree with your comments about denial, resistance, the value of survival defense mechanisms etc. For most of my life I was sort of aware of having surrounded myself with reinforced concrete, but was unable to break through. It was simply to scary to come out of my bunker. This isn't a matter for self-blame so much as gratitude that I am breaking through to deeper and deeper levels now.
Thank God for all the wonderful new therapies that are appearing. We 'just' have to work out how to reach billions of people!
Thanks for your great contributions. With love and blessings.
Malcolm - “We 'just' have to work out how to reach billions of people!” I am not sure that we have to work that out, I see more and more people who are more and more willing to question life, the universe and everything, and step outside of the box of past preconceptions. I see this process as already very much underway. The kind of work that you, and many others are doing, is an important part of that process, and I am not arguing for sitting back and watching it happen. It is a great joy to be a part of a process, such as this.
Malcolm, I admire your clarity and vision, and we are blessed that you have chipped away at the concrete (I've needed to do some of that work, myself) and moved into the role of engaged gaian elder (not that you are old, of course.) Thanks for your kind words. As for a pod, I'm new to zaadz, but it may be sustainable, possibly fun.
The image of global warming of the heart was partially inspired by your writings on trauma. I am so fortunate to come across your writings on that topic, which is generally neglected in “spiritual” writings. I do believe that there is a direct correlation between stress and overconsumption - resource waste. So, when our hearts are closed, cold and fearful, we are driven to “create” and consume more and we hold less connection and value for being here and now. Literally, as we bring the warmth back to our hearts, we will release less destruction to our planet.
As for humans as primates, I agree with your caution about sociobiology. My approach, in Divine Primates, opens with the statement that “I love the human race.” I don't see us as “merely” primates, but as the most amazing, wonderful creatures. In that way, I offer a model that is compassionate, nondualistic and nonmechanistic. The old model for human nature that seems to prevail is that we are divinely inspired caught between good and evil. We aspire to transform into divine beings of light, and we sometimes see great progress, but then things seem to fall apart and we feel ashamed and guilty as failures. The shame and guilt, of course, make us more anxious, disconnected and impulsive.
My model holds that we have predictably impulsive qualities that are driven by our animal nature. I agree that we can create any reality we can imagine, but I'm not convinced of Riane Eisler's notion that the human race was headed for full partnership living until it was sidetracked into a dominator mode. That may, indeed, have been the case, but once humans are exposed to dominator memes, which is inevitable, it may well be that our “monkey see - monkey do” nature brought those traumatized memes deeply into our unconscious minds.
My own suspicion is that humans, like other primates, are a mixture of domination and partnership qualities. I see us as being a dynamic species whose perceptions are tied into whatever reality we experience (including media). We get bored very easily. We get bored with our successes (e.,g. Camelot) just as much as with our failures. When we get bored, we seek stimulation in the form of adventure, ego, sex, building towers of babel, new technologies, etc.
I see this as who we are. And that is not a matter of good or bad. This is where spirituality, connection with nature and the opening of the heart through safe touch come in to help maintain reduced stress levels and increased social cohesion. The calibre of spirituality needed is what you write about in “The Science of Oneness” and I might describe as “interspirituality” (I haven't read it yet - but have ordered it).
As for having a more loving, supportive culture, it may be difficult to build that as long as we have media serving primarily as a means to motivate people to buy stuff to make them more sexy, attractive, popular, intelligent, etc. The numbers of whole, intact teenagers seeking, and receiving, cosmetic surgery are increasing. Riane writes about the problems in our economic priorities in The Real Wealth of Nations, but we are talking about a major paradigm shift - which is what we are all working towards. So, this is a complex process and it is great to be among people who understand it - and are able to help support each other.
Earon “I do believe that there is a direct correlation between stress and overconsumption - resource waste” Both malcom and I have stated this fact previously in different ways, and I believe that it is one of the most fundimental messages that “we” need to “get”. I find this to be a very possitive message, as it points out very clearly what “I” (as in every I) can do, rather than getting depressed and disempowered by the larger picture. What is ultimately good for every individual “I” is good for all of us.
I am also very much attracted to Malcolms world veiw because it is looking at things from a more practical veiw point.
The media is a very important part of “all this”. It is a little bit “chiken and egg” however. Will the media change because we change, or will we change because the media changes. I lean more towards the former, but the reality will be more mixed. (there are adverts on here by Dove advertising “real beauty” as in normal body shapes, sizes and colours, while I would 100% applaud their aproach I do 100% applaud their direction, likewise macdonalds is beginning to advertise the quality of the farms that their produce come from. I am sceptical about the reality of their claims, BUT they are aware that that is the kind of issue that the public is increasingly interested in, to the point where they are investing in it)
One thing I caution against is focusing too much on negative change. The human race has changed extraudinarily fast in recent history, and I find this a possitive example of how quickly things CAN change. You only have to go back 50 years, and racism was socially acceptable, if not expected. While racism is still around, there is less and less acceptance of it. Women in Swizerland gained the vote in 1971! I advise any-one to really look at our recent history, and see that rapid change is a process that we are already in. Like any process of change however it is bound to get messy. The boundaries are shifting,and people are exploring to discover what “works” and what doesn't. There is bound to be a time (like now) where there are wild undulations in peoples behaviour, until ultimately it “settles”. There are things we can all do to offer people a point of view that may help them settle quicker, but even then somethimes I am cautious. A healthy question to ask ourselves, is who am I to decide the correct direction of the human race? Sites like this are a wonderful tool in this direction. If we display our ideas and ideologys then we are forced to see the reaction, and this is an important part of avoiding fanaticism, and obviously of learning. No one person can ever “see the whole picture” but working together, using the talents of many, then we have a chance to influence the world, and some security that the big picture includes all the colours nessesary.
This discussion gets better and better! Thank you both for your clarity and wisdom.
As you say at the end of your comment, Humanly Possible, “who am I to decide the correct direction of the human race?” In one form or another, this question is constantly with me, tempering what I write with 'maybe's', and posing questions rather than providing answers.
Actually, I don't believe there is “a” correct direction. Our species, civilization and planet will evolve in complex interaction and our “task” is to nudge the process in what seem like positive directions.
I think consumerism/materialism is a 'short-circuiting' of Maslow's hierarchy of human needs (to use a convenient simple model). As a culture, we've somehow got stuck at the levels of material and security needs. We neurotically seek love, belongingness and self-esteem through the material, and barely know what self-actualization means. Breaking out of this cycle means opening our hearts and moving to a society in which relationships are primary - with ourselves, other humans, all beings. Seeing ourselves and other beings as “Thous” in Buber's terms. And when we do that, we will heal the planet as well as ourselves.
We humans are indeed amazing, wonderful creatures. And we embody both the yin and the yang, the dark and the light. Above all, we need to learn to accept and love ourselves, warts and all, shadow and all.
I agree, Earon, that trauma is a powerful feedback loop that locks us into dominator ways of being. We can reduce the creation of trauma, and heal trauma but we cannot avoid or eliminate it completely. So our society will always have that shadow of trauma-created dominator behaviours. Perfection is not possible. We must live with the duality, the polarity of yin and yang. But we can shift the fulcrum back towards the balance point of harmony.
The media are indeed a stumbling block. And they are controlled and fed by corporations whose narrow economic interest is served by maintaining the status quo. Yes, they would change if we - their customers - truly changed, but they use all their power to prevent that. One way to erode the system is via the web. There are lots of wonderful, transformative things on the web, like Zaadz. And there is a dark murky shadow of pornography, exploitation, harrassment, violence etc. - a reflection of the state of our society. I have often thought that the brighter the light, the stronger the shadow it casts. So perhaps we can expect things to get darker at the same time as they are getting lighter.
Yes, Humanly Possible, we've made amazing progress in lots of ways over the last century or so. And there's still a long journey ahead.
Blessings
Humanly Possible and Malcolm, I am honored to be in your company here. I am a newcomer, to be sure, and am just learning. But I am struck with how little there is in your writings with which I don't fully resonate.
The notion of examining our own “right” to be speakers and leaders is so valuable. I have been struggling with that on my own, of course, with writing a book that purports to better describe human nature, and that is what led me to Zaadz. In our tribal pasts, we had elders around, wise people with whom we could discuss and present our ideas. Frankly, I've been having a difficult time finding those wise elders. (And when I do, in a sense, they may be teenagers.) In the world of publishing, the “elders” are “literary agents” and possibly a publisher who accepts unsolicited manuscripts.
Are my ideas and synthesis, which seem so fascinating to me, any more likely to lead to increasing the amount of kindness in the world? Or, are they just adding to the universe of blah, blah, blah, blah ramblings? Worse, is there a meme in my work that will contribute to seriour problems in future generations?
I agree with the use of Maslow's hirearchy - and would also add Kohlberg's stages of moral development into that mix. Maslow, as you know, did early work with nonhuman primates, and I suspect that knowledge of these close cousins helped him find his wonderful clarity in understanding human nature.
Above all, I fully agree with the need to remain positive. I worked on my ideas, and weriously worked on my traumas, for several years before I found that I truly loved the human race with all of its shortcomings. At that point, it felt like it was time to put my ideas out there. And I can read that sort of altruistic outlook loud and clear in what is posted on this oasis.