Not many years ago, a friend of mine who was teaching at a high school in California was complaining about a new habit that had suddenly become prevalent at her workplace. Very often students would refuse to interact with some material in the curriculum because of trauma that theyexperienced in the past. They claimed — for example — that exposure to tragic stories would trigger their trauma, that is, re-traumatize them.
My friend was quite unhappy that the school principal by and large agreed with the students. She argued that in such an environment she was not able anymore to do her job properly—that is, to expose students to the masterpieces of world literature, precisely for the purpose of training them to understand and perhaps withstand the tragedies of life.
She also said that mixing up the small traumas that her students might have experienced with the serious trauma undergone by people living in war zones or through a famine was a questionable and ultimately childish behavior on her students’ part.
I understand my friend. I also agree with her that using one’s trauma as a protective cocoon is not a good idea, and that conceiving of school just as a protective environment does not really serve the best interest of students. However, I sense that there is a good purpose in the rising of consciousness about trauma that I see around me. A transcendent purpose which might help our species to make a step forward in our evolution.
It all started with Otto Rank’s daring assertion that birth itself is a trauma, and that we may spend our lives working on it. Today, the distinction between small-t and capital-T traumas has become common in discussions on the topic — meaning more or less what my friend meant with “small” and “serious” — with the intent of properly distinguishing them but also honoring both kinds.
The 2022 book by Gabor Maté and Daniel Maté (Gabor’s son) titled The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture is just one of the recent publications for the general readership which are raising consciousness about the pervasiveness of trauma in our lives, not for the purpose of finding excuses to our lack of action, but with the intention of marking a path toward collective emancipation.
The Maté father and son — their coauthorship being itself a teaching for our fractured society — make use of the available contemporary scientific literature on trauma. They quote Peter Levine saying that all traumatic events are stressful, but not all stressful events are traumatic, thus effectively deflating the notion that one can be easily retraumatized. They point out with Bessel van der Kolk that trauma is when we are not seen and known, effectively showing the quasi-universality of the experience of trauma. They deploy, following Candace Pert, the notion of bodymind to emphasize that trauma happens to the whole person, leaving traces on the inseparable unity of body and mind that the person is.
The book is long and filled with true stories of suffering and healing. If you don’t like stories, don’t read this book. The deeper thread beneath the meandering is represented by a word which does not appear in the title of the book though perhaps it should—that is, emotions. They are the true active agents of the book itself, as they are activated in the reader by the healing stories that the book retells.
I have come to realize in life that it is completely pointless to compare individual traumas. We are called to work on our individual inner situation, expressed externally through our body, as it has been shaped by our individual trauma, as Otto Rank very perceptively intuited a century ago.
In order to heal, we all need to recognize — for a start — that our typical responses to stressful situations are directly dependent on our childhood experiences. It took me many years to recognize that the way I feel and react in different circumstances is dependent on my history and yet can be changed—not at will, but through constant attention and experiment.
Spiritually, this is part and parcel of the love for my bodymind, or my bodymindspirit which I can’t presume God experiences if I refuse to experience it myself. In other words, self-care for my physical/emotional health — not to be confused with self-centeredness — is the bottom block of my everyday being in the world. Caring for others without working at healing myself is a mistake. In Creation Spirituality language: there is no Via Transformativa without Via Positiva.
Can we put aside self-healing for a time because the times are bad and political action is urgent? On the contrary, if we look deeply, we realize that unheeded trauma is the principal reason for the cruelty that seems to be taking over the world. I believe that by working properly on our personal trauma we are indeed at the center of the healing activity that the world needs so badly right now.
Banner image: A toddler cries. Photo by Zahra Amiri on Unsplash
Queries for Contemplation
What is the connection that you see between healing trauma and spirituality? Are they one and the same perhaps? Or how do they interact?
Related Reading by Matthew Fox
The A.W.E. Project: Reinventing Education, Reinventing the Human
The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times
Audiobook (Digital): Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic–and Beyond (Digital audiobook)
Meister Eckhart: A Mystic Warrior for Our Time
Wrestling with the Prophets: Essays on Creation Spirituality and Everyday Life
Charles Burack, ed., Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
3 thoughts on “The Trauma of Life”
Healing trauma to me is intimately, paradoxically, and mysteriously related to spirituality because suffering and compassion are intimately related and universal human experiences. The Healing Divine Love Is Always available within and among Us since birth to be experienced and deepened throughout our life spiritual journeys with All its unique challenging and creative experiences with one another and All of Co-Creation, including all physical/nonphysical spiritual dimensions/Beings, in Our Evolving Humanity, Beautiful Mother Earth Nature, and Cosmos in the Sacred Process of the Eternal Present Moment….
To me, recognizing the connection between spirituality and healing trauma or, to use less extreme words, between spirituality and melting/resolving frozen feelings is a most crucial step in the development of our human potential. The name “emotion” is a clue: an e(x)motion is a “motion out of.” When we “emote,” we are “moved” temporarily out of our center. In a healthy emotion we quickly return to our center, but when we move too far away in trauma or when our early-life environment is emotionally crippled/dysfunctional, unresolved emotions become cumulative one-way shifts with no return, we remain frozen and stuck away from “home.” To survive in such a remote and painful exile, we build artificial centers called addictions (to chemicals, obsessive/compulsive/ritualistic behaviors, food, sex, sport, money, toxic approaches to work or religion, etc.). “Out of ourselves,” we cannot experience the breath of Spirit. Recognizing that connection and undertaking a patient thawing of my emotional iceberg has been a second birth to me. Otto Rank’s assertion that birth is a trauma could be toned down because that patient, and at times painful, second birth is anything but traumatic. For that reason, I reacted strongly to the title “Life is a Trauma.” Trauma can be part of life and can be healed, but life is definitely not a trauma, it includes trauma, pain and suffering, but it is a mysterious adventure that also provides inexpressible moments of joy.
My biggest problem with trauma is when people use it as a weapon to manipulate their environment. “I have trauma which you need to respect and accommodate.” No. I don’t. It’s yours not mine. Some people make a career out of this.
Others are completely unaware of how trauma guides their daily activities, including their spirituality. I think trauma may actually block spirituality until it is consciously addressed. Trauma is like dragging around an anchor that significantly slows progress.
And there is generational trauma as well – which many of us struggle to overcome.
But what is “trauma”? Isn’t it just when something “happens” to us? If so, then aren’t we all traumatized? Is trauma an essential part of life? What would it mean to never experience trauma?
The thought of trauma being “when we are not seen and known” rang like a bell for me. It feels like that may describe all of my past traumas. I want to be seen and known. I want to feel connected. Maybe this is the key to healing and moving past trauma?