The Psyche-Phobic Psych World
The Psyche-Phobic Psych World
(Fear of the abreaction)
Only seeking healing in the consciousness
Will produce true healing
DeRohan
Wake up Psychology world! We are in the midst of a paradigm shift, a shift to a higher level of consciousness-a new dimension. You are psyche-phobic with regard to the treatment of trauma. If you haven’t noticed, the Universe is not allowing humans to deny anymore. Blocked off trauma is manifesting in horrendous behavior reenactments. Just watch the daily news. The release of negative energy in individuals, groups, and cultures is a manifestation of this paradigm shift. Just as an individual must release negative energy before moving on, so goes the planet. However, we need to have therapeutic settings that allow the safe and tolerable release of unresolved trauma and stress so that inner harmony can be achieved. Otherwise the dissociated trauma will continue to manifest in self destructive and aggressive behaviors. It has been estimated that 70% of those who seek mental health treatment have unresolved childhood problems.
You have allowed one study on conscious memory –which has been rebuked-to stifle the use of HYPNOTIC/ABREACTIONS in the healing of dissociated trauma. Do you realize that conscious memory is different than traumatic and emotional memory? You have allowed political correctness and the insurance companies to dictate your treatment processes. Trauma victims are seeking help through acupuncture, psychics, massage and reiki modalities. Individuals are listening to that inner voice that is crying out for a deeper healing process. I have had teenagers that tell their parents that they believe that they need hypnosis. Talk therapy and medication have not and will not be the answer for resolving trauma and restoring psychological and spiritual balance. Can you believe there is talk of developing a pill to cure PTSD? What will that do for the negative energy in the chakra system? I currently have clients who need an in-house treatment setting that doesn’t exit. That setting would invite hypnotic/abreactions within a safe, monitored and controlled environment, always being careful about retraumatization. The goal of integration would come from the balance of uncovering traumatic experiences and ego strengthening. Even the psychiatric hospitals that profess to PTSD specialties don’t appear to be doing the abreactive work. Juvenile residential treatment centers should be prime settings for the deeper work because adolescence is the developmental stage at which time the unconscious mind begins to release the earlier blocked off material. This is why teens are so symptomatic. Again, the “fear of the abreaction” probably prevents this from happening. Instead, you label them bi-polar and pump them up with medication. It’s time to move beyond treating the symptom to addressing and resolving the underlying source of the symptom. Symptoms are telling us that there is something deeper that needs to be healed.
I believe that many therapists suffer from the “fear of the encounter” syndrome with their clients. The old school objective approach is not efficient in working with trauma. Watkins (Hypnotic abreactions in the Recovery of Traumatic Memories-1995) describes the need for a “highly intense relationship in which the therapist is willing to co-experience the pain and horrors with the patient.” The hypnotic/abreaction is not a technique, not something you are inducing in the client. The hypnotic state plugs the client into their power and resources. The Mind then can prepare and set forth the abreaction. The therapist becomes the external helper for the client. Be ever so humble. Also, if you can’t handle the abreactions, then get out of the kitchen!
Breton and Largent write in the Paradigm Conspiracy-1996; “we can’t wait for science whose premise is to discount the invisible unmeasured to support and validate a spiritual psychology.” The psych-world is struggling against the paradigm shift in its effort to remain secular and scientific with its “evidence based” acronymic techniques. Any technique that neutralizes, suppresses or tries to banish blocked off trauma is still denial. As Jesus told Mack in The Shack, “Some folks try with all kinds of coping mechanisms and mental games. But the monsters are still there, just waiting for the chance to come out.” How about some D-S-H-deep soul healing! Certainly, NLP techniques can assist with cognitive restructuring only after the primary emotions of the trauma have been diminished. Have you forgotten that psychology was grounded in the belief that symptoms and manifestations were related to repressed or blocked off traumatic experiences and that through the hypnagogic state, the trauma could be accessed and healed? Come on, Pierre Janet understood at the turn of the century that if the dissociated material was not integrated, it would continue to be repeated as a contemporary event. Without a doubt, the Dissociation research out of Harvard is unparalleled in understanding trauma on behavioral, emotional, and neuro-biological levels. For over two decades, I have been concerned that this incredible research has not trickled down to the therapeutic community. Hopefully it is starting to at some level. My only criticism of this research is that it seems a little wishy-washy with treatment modalities, although they do report that hypnosis has been effective in treating trauma.
For thousands of years, the Shaman healers have used altered states of consciousness for restoring balance. They prefer a model of health versus a model of disease. In Africa, they understand that healing the pain of abuse and loss requires a “radical ritual” to release the negative energetic debris. Scientists are recognizing the importance of the trance state. Bruce Lipton (The Biology of Belief-2005) promotes clinical hypnotherapy as a tool that can “dig to the roots of our fears and uproot them quickly.” John Jay Harper (Tranceformers-2006) speaks of utilizing trance to clear the emotions trapped in our chakra system.
As I discuss in my book, Beyond the Violation of the Self, my use of hypnosis connected me to an inner realm of guides helpers, protectors and carry over energies. I have aligned with a Transpersonal/Spiritual Psychology which combines psychological healing and spiritual growth, a perspective that will certainly have to take the fore- front during this shift in consciousness. Any model of healing will have to be about restoring balance to the mind, body, and spirit. The therapist will encourage the client to take responsibility for all of themselves. The goal is oneness, completeness, and balance.
The intellect does indeed do harm to the soul
when it dares to possess itself of the heritage of the spirit Jung
I read your interview in the Nov 2009 Inner Realm. In the past 5 years I have experienced profound release from a childhood trauma at the age of 2 and 1/2 that was no one’s fault. It was quite beyond the reach of ordinary therapies because it was pre-verbal. And it did not conform to the model of victim/perpetrator. It was simply a tragedy that left its profound mark on me and our entire family. I could never find it because I had no words, I was not a victim, and there was no perpetrator.
Through the practice of yoga my Soul slowly and gently took my system (me) “within to find [my] purpose, mission and vision.” That is absolutely the correct way to represent what happens, for each person.
One night I found myself on a gurney going to the hospital with symptoms mimicing a heart attack, and since cardiac disease runs in our family, I had every reason to believe this was my problem. But I had no cardiac disease. It was PTSD.
Disease–being ill at ease. All these things have profound meaning if we would but look.
I do support your findings, that there is a state of mind where these experiences can be brought up, experienced, and released, creating a new space within dominated by freedom, peace, and love.
You call it trance. That could be scary word for many. Hypnosis is another word than can be scary. Both a little wierd, with an implied sense of loss of control.
But when approached from the standpoint of meditative prayer, you own this place and are never out of control . You are the one making the examination of what lies within you. You are the one who has brought a good friend there (the therapist in your case) to help you.
You are the one doing yoga asana and opening yourself to all the dimensions of human existence, of your life.
I can further support that many friends do come in spirit to help.
This too can sound strange, but in my experience, they can include relatives or friends who have gone on, that you already know and trust, or spiritual figures from the religion of your childhood with whom you resonate, in my case, Jesus and Mother Mary, and new friends, perhaps from new schools of thought that you are engaging in, in my case, Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. Benevolent friends, alive in the present and very far away in distance, can come–even without exactly knowing it! Animals can come to help, such as eagles, horses, deer, cats. Trees and flowers can help, through direct experience or images.
We call these experiences shamanistic, but what they are is experiences of ourselves which our culture repressed and in some notorious cases oppressed, even drove to extinction.
Forget the labels. Go directly to what is coming in to help you.
I want to stress that you take yourself there at the direction of your Soul. Or you do not go there at all.
The one word you used that I would quarrel with is force. The Soul does not use force. It repeats experiences dispassionately until you yourself stop using force on yourself to deny ownership of the content and to deny the inward journey itself.
The ego is the agent of force. It enslaves the unconscious to its bidding, in an act of violence.
The Soul does not judge these experiences. It is ruthless in its repetitions, to be sure, but it is not forceful. It wants to bring you to what you need to learn and understand. It just never gives up–on you.
Everything I allude to here is found in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. which is a technical manual of not only the emerging consciousness in humankind but many realms beyond. I am a mere beginner, an amateur. There are 8 limbs to yoga, 7 beyond asana, and originating in ethics. Two ethics we know from Gandhi, ahimsa, non-violence, and satya, truth.
Wake up indeed. Quiet time is just a step away, and each one of us must take the step. Each and every moment.
I enjoyed your article very much and I hope you will succeed in your efforts to influence the direction of your profession.
You are only pointing the way. That is what the best teachers and the best therapists do. I do hear you, that you are above all about serving the process of healing.
When you have a fully dimensioned yoga you do not need a therapist. You do need friends, always. We can bring these into our lives in whatever manner works best. Fee for service can be fine and most efficacious. For me this could not work.
Regardless, I am writing to encourage your perspective. It is rightful.
I am also writing to add that it is actually even better than this, because in the end, all we really need is our Souls, carrying us to the Mind in just the way each individual needs to go. We need to become comfortable in this landscape, with our own prayers, rituals, friends.
Wherever each of us is in Life at present, we must carry this message, always more deeply within first, ever in connection with others in kinship.
Thank you for your work.
Posted by Mary Anne Burns | December 15, 2009 4:32 PM