HISTORY IS RIDDEN WITH TRAUMA

If we continue to stick with our definition of trauma as an overwhelming event that poses an existential threat to our identities and bodies, then, life on earth is the story of an ongoing trauma. I always need to keep this in mind when I counsel someone. There is history behind them, and there is environment all around, and for the most part, these are not forces of nature we can change the direction of.

Trauma as a Generational Ripple Effect

Think of the dinosaur's loss of supremacy just as they were hitting booming growth! When we look at the history of not just mankind, but life in general, everything that lives on it seems to end up being overwhelmed by some event or other at some point or other. 

Take my own story as an example. My grandmother was overwhelmed by the death of her husband. He had had an embolism, had fallen into the snow and was found frozen dead the day after. My grandmother never recovered, and that caused my own father, at age six, to become not only fatherless, but also charged with relational responsibilities that were outside his developmental capacity. When I was his own age my father replayed his own trauma on me and his wife cutting himself off emotionally, and causing in us major confusion. My mother ended up killing herseld, and I ended up never having children of my own, replicating in my own way the cut off between a child and a father. What overwhelmed my grandfather's physical health that night, continues in essence to overwhelm my family three generations down the line in some major progressive way! 

The Taoist Perspective on the Natural Order

My story follows a kind of 'natural order of things', but as I reflect on this I cannot but remember the teachings of this little Tao tale: 

Once there was a shop owner who wanted to put up a sign in front of his shop to bring him the kind of luck that would assure his prosperity for generations to come. So as it was typical of those days to deal with matters of fortune, the shop owner went to the local temple, and asked the monk in charge to write for him a sign that would sow prosperity across his way. The monk agreed to it, but asked the shop owner to come back the day after, for indeed it was no easy demand. The shop owner agreed, left, and punctually returned the following day, but when presented with the sign he was struck in disbelief. The sign read “First father dies, then son dies, and finally grandson dies". Enraged at the mentioning of death on a sign that should bring prosperity to his family, the shop owner screamed for an explanation as to why he'd be cursed in this manner? The monk, holding his calm in his breath, replied: “This is no curse to your family. When I say "First father dies", I mean that no father should face the unberarable grief of losing his son. When I say "then son dies" I mean that your son too should enjoy the prosperity of heritage through the fortune of a son, for this would bring great joy to the grandfather. And when I say "finally grandson dies" I mean that your prosperity and happiness should endure across generations by following the natural order of things. It is therefore no evil curse I make onto you, but a great blessing to your family. That your family matters should follow the natural order of things

From the point of view of the Taoist wisdom the loss of life in the 'unnatural' order of aging is the most deeply traumatizing event of all, an observation we blatantly forget when young men and women are sent to die shooting or bombing others in wars and conflicts decided by the older folks. These young men and women who are parents, sisters, brothers, children, friends and acquaintances of so many others. 

At this level of our actions, we might perhaps wish or act in such a way as to maintain as close as possible the 'natural order of things'.  As the Dalai Lama puts it:

Most of us have been conditioned to regard military combat as exciting and glamorous, an opportunity for men to prove their competence and courage. Since armies are legal, we feel that war is acceptable. In general, nobody feels that war is criminal, or that accepting it is criminal attitude. However war is like a fire in the human community, one whose fuel is living beings. No soldiers want to be wounded or die. None of his loved ones want any harm to come to him. If one soldier is killed, or maimed for life, at least another five or ten people - his relatives and friends - suffer as well. We should all be horrified by the extent of this tragedy, but we are too confused. We have been brainwashed to think this way, we do not consider the suffering of individual soldiers. War is neither glamorous nor attractive. It is monstrous. Its very nature is one of tragedy and suffering.

If we were to step in the position of a scientist thinking systemically about the increase in stress in women's lives, a factor correlating strongly with higher levels of cortisol in their wombs, we would be inclined to ask "What do we expect finding in the psychological make up of the next generation of children?". When we note that in the USA gun access is increasing, neo-Liberal economic dictates continue to grow in strength, and only 200 years ago the US government built itself up through inhuman treatements of native people, genocides, repetitive betrayals, unjustifiable misappropriations, and, to this day, ongoing denial and mistreatement of their rights, we are legitimate in asking if the epidemic obesity we are concerned with in the same country, has anything to do with the larger ecosystem of laws and philosophical discourses. 

How much of the obese person's destiny has been dictated upon his or her birth in their times and place  alone?

I am beginning to believe that we marginalize the issue because it does apply to us. We'd rather be sick. But the single most important thing that we need today is the courage to look this problem in the face and say, this is real and this is all of us.

As we think of trauma and how to heal, let us then remember often the forces we are dealing with, holding onto an humble conception of what we might wish to achieve.

Wishing you Well,

Your Shrink in Bansko