# On Making the Darkness Conscious and Healing Trauma



## David Baxter PhD (Sep 7, 2018)

*On Making the Darkness Conscious and Healing Trauma*
by Therese Borchard
September 6, 2018

 “There is no coming to consciousness without pain,” remarked the  Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung. “People will do  anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul.  One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by  making the darkness conscious.”

 Having started therapy a month ago, I can appreciate the pain about which he speaks.

 Although I’ve seen different counselors on and off for 30 years, I  hadn’t, until this point, fully delved into the trauma of my childhood  and teen years – identifying where the pockets of pain still reside in  my body. Previously, we concentrated mostly on cognitive behavioral  therapies, mindfulness exercises, ways to untwist distorted thinking. We  steered clear of the really ugly stuff.

 Perhaps I wasn’t ready.

*Trauma and Illness*
 “It’s good to turn over the rocks, and uncover the pain that’s at the  source of disease and illness,” a friend said to me the other day over  coffee.

 He told me about his cousin who experienced trauma as a young boy  and, probably as a result, developed a stutter that contributed to his  being bullied in college. After sessions of intensive psychoanalysis,  his stutter disappeared. (I realize that some stutters persist despite  different treatments.)

 In her book _Scared Sick: The Role of Childhood Trauma in Adult Disease_,  Robin Karr-Morse demonstrates how chronic fear in infancy and early  childhood progress into common diseases in adulthood. She connects  psychology with endocrinology and immunology, explaining that if our  innate flight-or-flight system is overworked when we are young, the  persistent stress can trigger conditions like diabetes, heart disease,  obesity, depression, and addiction.

 “The brain’s most essential role is to ensure survival,” she  explains. “So if, through sensual perceptions or chemical messages, the  fetal or newborn brain [and I would add child or adolescent brain]  chronically detects that the world is aggressive and hostile or that  survival depends on vigilance, his or her very plastic brain will shape  itself accordingly, sending chemical messages to the endocrine and  immune systems to prepare to survive such a world.”

*My Emotional Stutter*
 I have been emotionally stuttering for as long as I can remember.

 “I I I I ammmmmmm Thhhhereeesssa … ” That’s what my inner voice  sounds like. The syllables and consonants blend together in a  nervousness that suggests a lack of security, a shaky ground, an absence  of personal power. Try as I might to assert myself and communicate, the  words sometimes get stuck and I can’t articulate the message.

 Much of my stuttering, I have learned, is rooted in past trauma.  While I have acknowledged and processed some of the painful events that  transpired during my grade-school years, I hadn’t - until four weeks ago - touched the experience of sexual trauma when I was 17.

 I buried that memory for 30 years, mentioning it once briefly in all my counseling sessions over the years.

 When I speak about it today, I shake, like an antelope after being  frozen in panic to escape a predator. A symptom of post-traumatic stress  disorder, shaking allows our body to release the energy that has been  trapped inside for a period of time - decades, in my case. So I sit on  my therapist’s couch and let my body contort and flinch in strange ways,  to begin to loosen all the gunk that has been stuffed inside.

*Sexual Trauma and the Brain*
 According to research that was published in the _American Journal of Psychiatry_, childhood emotional and sexual abuse affect specific areas of women’s brains.   To cope with experiences of distress, the brain alters patterns of  signaling from different pathways, and the connectivity of specific  brain regions are reduced, leaving those regions underdeveloped. What  you have, essentially, is a brain that hasn’t evolved in the same way as  a person not exposed to trauma.

 At times, then, I’m making decisions with a 17-year-old brain, a  primitive set of neurons incapable of nuanced and logical thought. When  certain life events unconsciously trigger the alarm and trepidation I  felt at that time, I revert back to an insecure teenager desperately in  need of approval from others. The cry for acceptance can be so piercing  that I can’t hear much beyond its panicked messages. I turn to  addictions and fleeting sources of security to fill the hole.

 I lose my sense of self.

*Dissolving the Pain-Body*
 In his bestseller _The Power of Now_,  spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle describes what he calls the  “pain-body,” a residue of pain that you have accumulated in the past, or  a negative energy field, that becomes lodged in your body and mind. We  all have this pain-body, although it may mostly lie dormant in some  people.

 Anything can trigger the pain-body, explains Tolle, particularly if  it resonates with a pain pattern from your past in any way. The way it  survives is by getting us to unconsciously identify with it. It then  becomes us, is fed through our thoughts and actions, lives through our  words and deeds.

 Per Tolle: “It will feed on any experience that resonates with its  own kind of energy, anything that creates further pain in whatever form:  anger, destructiveness, hatred, grief, emotional drama, violence, and  even illness. So the pain-body, when it has taken you over, will create a  situation in your life that reflect back its own energy frequency for  it to feed one. Pain cannot feed on joy. It finds it quite  indigestible.”

 The pain-body depends on our unconscious identification with it, and  our unconscious fear of facing the pain that is buried beneath it. If we  don’t face it, if we never bring our consciousness into the pain and  explore its layers, we will be forced to relive it again and again. We  free ourselves from the pain by simply observing it directly and seeing  it for what it is. By bringing our attention to it, we break free from  its dominance over us.

*Building My Foundation*
 In the 1978 film, _Ice Castles_ (remade in 2010), a talented figure  skater (Lynn-Holly Johnson) is close to accomplishing her dream of  becoming a champion skater when a tragic accident renders her blind. She  has to learn how to skate all over again. Especially poignant is the  scene of her first competition as a blind skater. The crowd throws roses  into the rink, and she needs the help of her boyfriend to pick them up.

 Building a solid foundation or a sense of self is like that, especially if you have experienced trauma in your past.

 Today I sit on my bedroom floor with a few magazines, a pair of  scissors, a glue stick, and a sketch pad. I create a collage of images  that represents my pain-body, or protective structure – the people,  places, and things I have depended on for a sense of identity and  security, many of which worked for a period of time but ultimately left  me even more vulnerable and exposed. I have cut out pictures of laptops  and briefcases (workaholism), trophies and ribbons (perfectionism),  nicotine gum, and shopping bags.

 My therapist said the exercise allows a person processing trauma to  visualize her structure in order to begin to tear it down - to remove  pieces of the scaffolding one by one as she turns her loving attention  to them and hears what they have to say, listening to their stories  without judgment. Only then can she start to build her new foundation,  replacing the deep-seated memories of abuse, exploitation, and lies, and  the false security items with things that provide unconditional love,  self-acceptance, self-compassion, emotional resilience, and peace.

 By turning over the rocks or dissolving our pain-bodies, we can quiet  the demands of the primitive brain, the static noise responsible for  sending us down rabbit holes of distraction and anguish. By making the  darkness conscious, as Jung said, confronting our trauma, and processing  our deep-seated pain in a responsible and loving way, we can begin to  build the foundation required to experience the freedom and peace that  is already ours.


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## Daniel (Sep 7, 2018)

Reminds me of Michael Eigen:



> In my twin books, _Toxic Nourishment_ and _Damaged Bonds_, I describe how people are poisoned by what nourishes them, damaged by bonds that sustain them, that give them life. You mention a rhythm I describe in _The Sensitive Self_, a basic rhythm. Therapy supports or tries to jumpstart a rhythm of coming through injury, defeat, megalomania, a rhythm one goes through over and over, a rhythm of faith.
> 
> Faith and Disillusionment: An Interview with Dr. Michael Eigen


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## Daniel (Jun 11, 2019)

From _Toxic Nourishment_:



> We need room for what is wrong.  We need to be able to feel how painful it all is.  We need time and place to feel terrible, cry, grieve, or scream (just as we need allowance to be silly or ridiculous).  This is more than being able to take time off from ourselves and our lives, important as that is.   The parts of society that we find ourselves in and that make our lives possible need to make space for the sense that something is wrong.
> 
> The sense that something is off or wrong has been voiced by literature and religion through the ages.  Hamlet's utterance about something rotten in the state applies, in one or another context, to all levels of life, from individual soul to cosmos.


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## Jesse910 (Sep 1, 2019)

Borchard's article resonated with me as it helped me understand the things I experienced in childhood and how those initial experiences caused me tremendous pain and made me feel isolated, afraid, and eventually suicidal because my self-worth was damaged.  Even though this article was written nearly a year ago, the clarity that good emotional health comes through collective support systems and our willingness to trust, forgive those who hurt us,forgive ourselves for our own fears and guilt, and acceptance that we are in control and have the power to overcome the complexities within our lives.


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## David Baxter PhD (Sep 1, 2019)

@Jesse910

This article related might also be of interest: How Adverse Childhood Experiences Affect Relationships


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## Daniel (Feb 15, 2020)




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