Why Me?
The sharpness of psychological trauma in mind and body often results in emotional and cognitive confusion for many years. It can lead to behavioural difficulties and can be the foundation of addictions and avoidant behaviours. The memory of the trauma is often trapped in the body (as in the absence of the ability to process it we push it down into this physical level in an attempt to get it out of the mind and escape the unpleasant feelings in the body). Also, it can be trapped in the emotional centres of the mind, as memories that retrigger high levels of emotion later on in moments where there may be some form of unconscious or conscious perceptive reminder of them. These triggers often take the form of sensory inputs (sights, sounds, smells, special awareness etc.), that the primitive parts of the brain recognise as a threat and retrigger the original trauma before the intellectual mind has any say in it. This is highly destabilising. Fortunately, very powerful and safe new psychotherapeutic techniques are available to deal with such traumas of the mind relatively quickly (including the Human Givens Rewind and EMDR and NLP). What is left is often a longer-term physical reminder in the body and the need to rebuild psychological strength and use the experience of these awful events to learn and grow and not stop the natural flow of a healthy life. The healing of these aspects can be accelerated greatly by understanding that the context of our self lies in our awareness or consciousness. We all understand our lives in context. This provides us with meaning which provides psychological stability. It’s much easier to get from A to B if we have a map of the terrane. This map gives us the psychological security we need to see that we are heading in the right direction even though we may not be at point B fully yet. Understanding the context of traumatic events is critical to healing from them.
Though life is not personal, there is nothing more personalising than trauma. This may take the form of material or relational trauma. Both can leave severe scars, literally physically and emotionally, resulting from those dreadful moments where we feared for our survival in one way or another. This is, of course, highly subjective. No two people will experience trauma from the same events in the same way. Furthermore, the emotional scarring of trauma is collectively remembered and highly transmissible. Arguably our entire culture, including the films and other metaphors we tell ourselves as humans are a response to trauma. No one is immune. Possibly, on one level, the whole of human life comes down to the ability to heal and overcome trauma in one way or another.
Understanding the context of our ‘self’ that is in reality an impersonal existence is a critical step in seeing the bigger picture of trauma. From this impersonal objective perspective, we are more empowered to reconnect to a far broader sense of self than the very narrow sense of self that trauma incites. We can summon up a sense of wholeness in the face of the psychological fragmentation that trauma creates. We can psychologically meet this fragmentation, which is nothing more than a contracted form of consciousness, with the fundamental wholeness and overtime heal and dissolve any residues of this psychobiological remembering. The instant we step into the understanding of our essential infinite nature healing takes place and it feels like the tension of any bodily remnants of trauma dissolve. Clearly where a physically traumatic injury has occurred some of the physical scars remain, but we will be more resilient to these emotionally.
Understanding and, more importantly, experiencing the impersonal nature of our existence is at the heart of non-duality. As we locate our identity in and as the awareness or consciousness that we naturally constantly experience but often overlook, we find the broadest possible context for living and the firmest platform for healing. We can find the answer to the question “why me?”.
