Healing Spiritual Injury
By Pat Bastani
Lately the media is filled with research on new disorders. Children with everything from attention deficit disorder to hyperactivity and sensory deprivation disorder, adults with bi polar, depression, aggression, panic attacks; every week psychology pins down a new disorder. Trauma appears to be pervading society at every level.
Pat Bastani, process oriented counselor and researcher has spent the last twenty years researching trauma and the resultant breakdown of society. It is heartbreaking to experience society breaking down across the globe with so little awareness of how to deal with it. What we are witnessing are serious spirit injuries that have traumatized the soul both collectively and individually.
Many years of consulting individuals, communities and corporations has led her to in depth research on why society is experiencing such trauma. In this leading article she explains the origins of what she calls spirit injuries.
A spirit injury is an injury in which the physical body, the soma, might show signs of normality, but the psyche (the spirit) is greatly disturbed. The healing of our spirit injuries may well rank as the most important work of modern times if we are to live in a world not dominated by fear and uncertainty. The world seems devoid of a safe haven and where our work begins is on an emotional and spiritual level. As the ancients have always said, the answer is within us. But for most of us, its not that easy. We lack the ability to translate the inner world and to find concrete solutions that move us forward in growth and development.
This article introduces approaches to spirit healing based on the works of famed psychologist Alice Miller; Arnold Mindell's Process Work and Family Constellations theory. It is based on recognizing negative feelings as the key to understanding the language of the heart. These negative feelings I refer to as Negative Truth which I believe is the missing ingredient for true health and healing. When we acknowledge negative truth we find balance and understanding of life and reality.
Negative feelings are our clues to the origin of trauma. They tell the story of the soul and are the keys that unlock all that has been endured and repressed from injustices experienced during lifes journey and particularly during childhood. The roots of our problems tend to be back in time, created by circumstances in our childhoods that we had no control over. When children are treated unfairly, especially when speech is largely undeveloped, they have no recourse but to repress their experiences. Without an experience of unconditional love and support, hurtful memories never get resolved and remain ingrained, sometimes buried in the unconscious. Over time these repressed emotions cripple the emotional development of the individual. In the delicate environment of a child, hurtful memories that are seemingly insignificant in an adult world; may be momentous to a child. Parents may not even realize that some of their actions can be experienced as traumatic to children.
Throughout Alice Millers books she speaks about going back to the scene of the crime (the places where hurt or injustice is experienced) and acknowledging that what was done by the caretaker was wrong. Acknowledging the damaging events, comments or experiences and saying it out loud by an empathic witness will impact that buried wounded part and allow it to heal and begin growing again. Finding these marginalized parts of our childhoods is the key to balancing our adult lives.
Mindells model centers on Polarity theory, the balancing of opposites. It is the clash of opposites that brings change and transformation. For example, in healing childhood trauma we see the adult as one pole and the child within us as the opposite. Each pole needs to be equally represented otherwise one side becomes dominant and swamps the other which manifests in stagnation and atrophy. Most of the time, we feel more at home and familiar in our adult persona and tend to give very little space to the inner child. How often do we self nurture and make time for rest, relaxation and play?
Mindell identifies the key to problem solving as making space for the part of us that is marginalized. We find that part by creating a structure to examine our problems so we can map them. This structure creates us an objective view of ourselves and allows us to see where we stand in relation to the problems we face. In this structure we see two parts of ourselves; the first we call the known which is recognizable, closer to our awareness and easy to see. The second part is the unknown, this is a part that contains behavior and feelings we dont recognize or dont see in ourselves. Mindell calls the known the Primary Process because it is the one we operate out of. The Secondary Process or unknown he refers to as the creator of problems because it isnt as easy to see. When we extend ourselves to find the secondary process, and we are clear about what is not being given breathing space or recognition in our lives then we have the pathway to solutions and understanding. This is the part that we marginalize. In adult life it is usually the child pole that is neglected. Because it is neglected and has nowhere to go it is often given a life by displacement onto our children, who then carry it as a burden.
Family constellation sees this dynamic as a situation where children then become too big and parents too small. This creates serious psychological problems that plague our lives, oftentimes for years on end with no resolution. Restructuring this wrong order and bringing things back to equilibrium involves balancing the opposite aspects of ourselves. Just as universal laws have a structure and order, we are subject to right order that comes from these universal laws. If we are out of alignment with this order we cannot receive the gifts that life contains. For instance, love energy contained in the universe has specific dimensions and orders that the soul cannot receive unless it lives in the order life places it in. Over four thousand years ago Buddha spoke about being in right order, this is precisely what family constellation work focuses on.
Resolving childhood injuries allows us to live more fully in the center of our inner being. Our primary process as an adult is to be mature and responsible. The secondary process is the child and the childhood within us. Since time is relative, we must go back in time and pick up the parts of ourselves still in childhood, left there because of the negative experiences that traumatized us when we were young. When there is a lack of support and positive affirmation we are not able to grow past unpleasant experiences and so parts of us remain stuck, back in time, with a huge part of our potential not being able to grow and develop. With healthy support these parts can start growing again.
When we visit these parts and initiate emotional growth we experience our feelings as being at the exact developmental age we were at when the spirit injury took place. Because we are a mosaic of personalities at different stages of development we have to go back many times to rescue the injured parts that are frozen at different developmental ages.
There are various situations that cause feelings to become traumatized. It could be an abusive environment that created them, homes with a stifled emotional atmosphere, a highly stressful situation; perhaps a health crisis, difficult economic situation or family breakdown. These feelings, which are parts of our personality, are left back in time and frozen in those experiences. If enough personal energy is held back it creates an inability to function in healthy, normal ways in present life. This situation impacts on relationships and family life.
The key is to give those parts support by going back to the scene of the injuries to acknowledge those injured feelings so they can grow again. This is done by validating them through positive affirmation and recognition. It requires a great deal of personal work. It also requires an acknowledgement of the Primary Process (the adults we are in present time) and from this point, honoring both parts; the inner child and the adult. Our natural tendency when we find undeveloped parts is to dislike them. To us, they appear weak or pathetic, they embarrass us; they look too childish. But, as adults, we cannot abdicate responsibility for these parts. We have to make an attempt to honor both poles regardless of how incongruent they seem in relationship to each other. To live fully in present time without interference from damaged child parts can only happen to the extent that these two poles (adult/child) are balanced. In fact we can only progress as adults to the extent that these two parts are living in balance; without this balance, either pole can hold the personality back
Growth is guaranteed to take place in the balancing of opposites. This is what transformation is really about, its about opposites being in balance; a principle the ancients called alchemy. Life, in its entirety is about the balance of opposites. The problem is how to do this. Clearly each pole whether it is adult/child, male/female, or negative feelings/positive feelings, is about support rather than judgement. It is not about labelling one as being right and the other being wrong. The problems we all face are more around imbalance than trying to be positive and productive. Solutions to our problems are found in areas that are marginalized. Using marginalized parts actively is known as the anti-style because it is not our usual behavior. Conscious use of our marginalized parts over a long period of time brings deep change and transformation of our lives in powerful ways.
In our makeup we have a dual nature; part of us belongs to the animal kingdom and part of us is human. These two parts are connected to different aspects of our being. Science has now discovered that our feelings live in our bodies and when repressed can create somatic symptoms which manifest in both physical and emotional problems. We also have a brain known as the neo-cortex that separates us from the animal kingdom and allows us to think rationally, make choices and use our will power. If too many negative experiences are emotionally repressed our neo-cortex cannot function as a regulator and is overwhelmed by emotions that it can neither process nor control. The individual generally blames either themselves or others since the feelings that are generally negative, are uncomfortable. The person feels bad and over time crystallizes into a negative self image.
How freeing it is to be able to find a way to process these feelings and move forward with our lives! This approach to healing offers a toolkit that not only works but is functional and so easy to understand. Even children can benefit from this approach by being able to visibly map and understand solutions to their problems.