How to Build Trauma

It has always fascinated me how masochistic humans seem. The famous alcoholic in every Transylvanian village. The love-hate relationships we see on TV. The average Chelsea fan. All these actors know they should do better, yet they succumb to the familiarity of their suffering. Why could that be?

Simple organisms, like reptiles, can only react instinctively. If a reptile senses danger, it will run away and that’s the end of it. The energy of the impulse is used up immediately to get the animal to safety. But this is only a short-term solution. The reptile might survive the encounter with the predator, but starve the next day because it missed out on essential food.

Through some mutations, the action of certain species was decoupled from the impulse (Maybe because of reptile dysfunction?). In dangerous situations, they became more alert. Their senses were heightened to soak up incoming data. This fear state fuels us to act fast and appropriately.

Thinking before acting is wise and it’s the better long-term strategy. We also teach patience to our pets and watch them proudly as they resist the urge to eat the cookie off their noses. But until we actually take action, the energy from the event accumulates in us, which might be harmful.

The emotional depth of an organism can be measured by how long certain events influence its being. Humans, of course, took this to the extreme. We’re capable of holding a grudge because a cat bit us at age 10 — to hate them until I’m 25. We are also capable of planned suicide, which is unique in the animal kingdom (apart from some weird phenomena). Our emotional capabilities outweigh our rationale.

During our childhood, everything was interesting and we could get lost in the minutiae. Without a definite sense of self, we accepted all the incoming stimuli and reacted to everything immediately. Through feedback from our environment, we learned what is acceptable. Sometimes we crossed a line and got reoriented. The emotions these events stir up and their associated meanings create our value system.

We go through life trying to live up to qualities such as honesty, kindness and power. We are drawn to them because we experienced them or their opposite, and labeled the event as pleasurable or painful. The emotions tying us to these values are magnetic and their effect is picked up by the inner compass we use to navigate life. The needle points towards the direction we feel we should be going, based on the cumulative force of our emotions.

In low-emotional situations, the needle is relatively stable. We can make rational decisions conforming to our values. When the stakes get higher, we become more likely to act and sustain action — that’s why having a strong reason behind our values is key to living according to them.

These give our compass a clear direction. If our life events are integrated, they guide us. Some events are easy to accept into ourselves. The smile of a son. The purr of a cat. Sex. Some events burden us so deeply that we don’t want to admit even to ourselves they happened. When we felt ashamed not having met others’ expectations. When we felt powerless being beaten. No sex. Such memories can be categorised as trauma — unaccepted, unintegrated, or distorted events, that don’t reflect the reality we want by hindering our functioning.

Traumatic energy is like a black hole in our psyche. It overwhelms the compass. If we discover it from a distance, we can navigate around it. But once we’re past the event horizon, there’s only one direction we’re going. And in life, we can rarely predict when we’ll be triggered.

For me, this black hole also had a magnetic effect on food. Whenever I indulged, inhaling the 10th biscuit with the third litre of milk, I would hear myself scream at me. I saw myself locked in a cage, desperately trying to get out of it, bending the bars, squeezing out between them. But I was too fat to do so. I protested with every argument, but nothing worked. I had to watch the whole movie, all over again. The narrator’s voice came from outside the hole, it had no power over me.

By trusting our compass we’re letting the past dictate our present. This can be problematic if the story of our past is detached from reality. We’re bound to repeat our behaviour for the umpteenth time whenever we approach this energy. Our pent-up emotion draws out the same from others through their mirror neurons in a self-sustaining cycle. What we experience is the reflection of our beliefs — like attracts like. While we avoid the void, we’ll keep finding confirmation of its truth from the outside world.

Uncategorised heaps of energy lie below the level of our consciousness. They’re like a paper cut on our soul.

The first days after getting injured the physical wound is all we can think about. After a week we get used to it and can block out the constant awareness. Inevitably, we’ll drop our phone on it on day 10 though, and the pain overwhelms us rather quickly. Later in life, the scars on our bodies will only be mementos we greet with a smile.

To suffer an emotional wound, the experience is identical. Initially, there’s no agony, only fear and confusion. Once we get some distance from the event, we start piecing together what happened. Slowly, the suffering will grow until we have constant tension in our abdomen, heart, neck, or other stress points. The dread follows us everywhere. The world will seem littered with signs that remind us of it. In a few years, we’re back to living our everyday lives.

Throughout everyday life though, we encounter people who rub on us the wrong way or we are frightened by something. This opens up the old wound, and pus runs out. We blame the knife that cut us. We cuss and scream and blame the grand design.

Mislabeling events causes a detachment from reality. We want to fit in, so we try to appear less ambitious. We are ashamed of feeling aggression and defend ourselves by projecting it as anger onto someone. It’s not that we’re too sensitive, it’s the other person who’s annoying. The reflex is to be outward-focused when emotional. This pleases our ego but blinds us to what’s going on inside.

If we don’t change, we never allow for a different outcome. For that, we need to heal the wound, to focus inward.

When tension rises, we resist the urge to lash out. We take deep breaths. We focus our attention on our thoughts and emotions. We ask ourselves questions to find a piece of our souls we never knew existed.

We don’t observe with judgement. Judgement is the reason we repressed the emotion in the first place. The hurt part of us is shy, it needs to know it can come out safely, and that it will not be hurt again. We listen to ourselves patiently.

What every emotion wants is to be felt, to be recognised. Nothing shows this better than the still-face experiment. Babies are bubbles of emotion. Back then, we had no control over our behaviour, we let every emotion animate us. We dissipated the energy we felt.

We need to do the same with dormant, frozen energy. We need to listen to it. Ask what it wants, what We want. Be present with it and talk with it. The light of our attention melts it and lets it flow and dissolve. Then we can channel this energy to meeting our needs.

The issue with trauma is not that it happened, but that it still haunts us and distorts our worldview. It’s excess energy we store, like the fat we carry on our body. If it were possible, we’d love not to have gone through the trauma. But the best option at our disposal is growing from it.

By mapping out the unknown, we’ll create a clear signpost that can be trusted to guide us. We will be aware of an emotional need we have but repressed. We’ll know how to tell if we don’t get it. And we’ll be confident to stand up for ourselves if it’s violated.

To act on our emotions is to cut the umbilical cord to our misery.