Trauma:Visceral,
Cellular, Sensory
“An abnormal reaction to an abnormal
situation is normal behavior.”
—Viktor Frankl
*
Trauma is visceral, sensory, and cellular. It’s a soul wound that impacts the very core of who we are, what we believe about the world and our place in it. We experience trauma with all of our senses: taste, touch, smell, sound, sight, and our sixth sense, intuition.
We weep and wail, cry, tears streaming, chest heaving, gut wrenching, brain exploding overwhelmed with visual images, sounds and smells, our whole being in turmoil. That may be the extreme of a trauma response, however, our body, mind and spirit, the whole of how we experience and respond to the world, can also appear rather benign if you don’t know or ask What is happening to me now?
The website www.medicine.net defines viscera as “the internal organs of the body, specifically those within the chest (heart or lungs) or abdomen (as the liver, pancreas, or intestines). The American Heritage Science Dictionary, describes the sensory cortex as the somatic, sensory, auditory, visual, and olfactory regions of the cerebral cortex. And finally, according to Luis Diaz in “Cellular Memory Release,” on the website www.cellularmemory.org. “cellular memory is a complete blueprint of your history, your existence. It is an energetic expression of you as a holistic being.” Cellular memory release is a process of releasing toxic body memories.
To understand trauma responses we must understand that we are holistic beings experiencing our lives with every cell of our body, mind, and spirit. Trauma healing cannot happen by “talking through it.” Trauma healing happens by “feeling” through it, i.e., completing the flight, flight, freeze, acquiesce cycle.
So What is happening to me now?” is a vital question because unless we clear or detox our whole viscera and cellular memory of the trauma effects, we won’t resolve our pain. We’ll continue to respond to loud, angry voices; banging doors; certain smells or tastes or texture; and we’ll continue to re-experience the trauma in our relationships. Then we continue in soothing survival behaviors that no longer protect us.
Our body records everything that ever transpires in our life; the smell, the taste, the sound, the feel, and the sixth sense that intuits and translates the events for our mind and memory. So consider the impact and response to the following:
• Smell of garlic on the breath or cigarettes on clothes
• Sweet aroma of a favorite meal
• Sound of angry voices, slamming doors
• Gentle cooing of a mother’s voice
• Jingling of change in the pocket of a critical, punishing parent
• Sight of a little girl wearing red tights
• Sound of footsteps as they come to deliver punishment or abuse
• Sound of a door opening as an abuser slips into the room again
• Loving touch of someone who comforted you in times of sadness or terror
• Taste of food that was forced on you
• Taste of food that was offered with love and caring
• Sight, smells, and sounds of a hospital or doctor’s office
• Smell of wood smoke
• Noise of a car backfiring/gunfire
• Feelings a church, temple, or synagogue evokes if there was humiliation, shame, or abuse, or comfort and love.
This list is endless. Each person who carries trauma has their own experiences that remind them of the time they were traumatized or the time they were comforted.
When Grief Came Knocking
Here is a seemingly simple assignment: at the top of a blank page in your journal write:
“When Grief Came Knocking.” This is an assignment I often use in group therapy sessions.
Now sit quietly and breathe. Contemplate that sentence and then begin to write. There is no right or wrong, good or bad. Just write what comes to you; the format doesn’t matter. A wonderful and extremely talented therapist, Cheryl Bailey, introduced me to this assignment. Seems simple enough, almost benign. Hundreds of clients have presented this assignment and there are never two with the same somatic responses. I've seen this technique, for instance, release a thirty-year-old memory of being held hostage. The client screamed, "I'm alive! I'm alive!" That memory was held in her body, and truly held her hostage but now she was free.
I watched Ben, a stockbroker, read his grief assignment. It appeared that he had no emotional connection to the work, however, when you looked more closely with trauma-trained eyes, you could see that Ben’s clothes were drenched in cold sweat. He was shivering (though he was not aware of it); his eyes were dilated, and his breathing moved only to his throat. Ben’s emotional experience was enormous. A peer put her hand on Ben’s and, with that loving touch, he finally let go and sobbed and wailed, falling to his knees.
That began a process of trauma healing that astounded everyone who knew him. Friends had thought Ben was “a little bit Asperger’s.” The reality was that from his early childhood Ben did not feel safe showing emotion in a family that was numb and without connection to each other. Being emotionally numb was great for a stock-broker, but it impeded every personal, emotional relationship that he’d had, except with his son Chris.
After the exercise there was an immediate change in his affect and his perceptions; suddenly, his body and emotions began to be in sync. Ben had lost Chris to suicide. Ben had adopted Chris, and he felt safe with him and was protective of him. He was able to guide and love this young man in a way his biological family could not, and this was one of the only relationships in which Ben had allowed himself to experience a real emotional connection. Chris’s suicide was devastating on so many levels, from survivor’s guilt, to pain and remorse for not “doing enough” to save Chris. Because he believed he was responsible and was filled with shame, Ben had a moral injury. Although Ben repeatedly spoke of the suicide, until this assignment, Ben’s heart and spirit were locked down. Although he was racked with pain, his body had been numb, holding all of the pain in his viscera, his cellular memory. He was able to recite the traumatic events of his life like a shopping list because he was numb. But when he became aware that his body was tightly holding on to the grief and he allowed himself to “feel” it, he was able to grieve and place his son’s memory in his heart.
Another woman in the group, Rose, had lost her sixteen-year-old son due to a medical issue. When she read her grief assignment, her whole body heaved with sobs as she re-experienced the loss of her son, finally being able to give voice to the overpowering body memory. Every cell of her being held the pain, and finally putting voice to the loss and allowing the body to discharge the existential grief was tremendously healing.
Rose was a Latina and had a wonderful, expressive personality. She was very in touch with her feelings, but was unable to just grieve and find a place in her spirit to let go of the deepest pain. This also meant she was unable to be available for her other children. Two sides of the same coin: grief!
We speak about the insides and the outsides not matching. Many of us have not truly been connected to our body or to our emotions; we’ve been numb most of our lives. Our goal is to become congruent, when our body, mind, and spirit are truly one. So our spiritual commitment can be to integrate those parts of us that have the various elements of who we are—into one being.
As you experience and celebrate survivors and their rewritten stories, you may find a path and hope to rewrite your own trauma story. Remember, our behaviors always make sense when we unravel our trauma story!
Sometimes the layers of traumatic events become confused, overlaid in time and memory, and create a subtle misinterpretation or perception of those events. Time frames may be confused, events rolled together, places intertwined, and those are the overlays of memory.
However, our perception of the events of our life are exactly how we operate in the world, how we make choices, decisions, create behaviors—solely based on our perceptions. That is our truth. Interestingly, that means there are many truths.
I often say, “No right or wrong, no good or bad, just what was.” And what is or was is our perception within the framework of the non-negotiable facts. If there are four family members experiencing an event, there will be four different perceptions of the event. Each perception will be the truth for that individual; that was the way that person experienced the event. This means that from that moment until the perception is changed, we can only operate from that belief.
Healing trauma is an exercise in unraveling. It’s a mystery and we must gather all of the data. It’s also like a puzzle, finding the pieces and slowly building the final, completed picture. The “Aha!” moment comes when that final fact or puzzle piece is assembled, and all of the behaviors, feelings, memories, and flashbacks fit into place, and make sense. Making sense of the pain and behaviors associated with the trauma events gives us a sense of relief when we finally understand, “We are not bad people trying to get good; we are wounded people trying to heal.” Many trauma survivors feel a depth of guilt and shame about what happened, as though they were responsible or caused it to happen. Those feelings can finally be relieved with the last puzzle piece.
You may relate to my experience. As a child, I felt strangely socially confused. I felt introverted and extroverted. I could easily spend time with friends and neighbors and family, and seem very social and extroverted with lots of friends from a myriad of different backgrounds. In the fifties and sixties I was very much a bright and cosmopolitan child/adolescent/young adult. I could fit in anywhere and be a chameleon. But what looked okay on the outside was not a reflection of what was going on inside. I spent a good bit of my life, even up to today, trying to figure out what was the secret that everyone else seemed to know about; just exactly how to be and feel.
That’s my place of introversion, where I have to fill my spirit with the drama of books, movies, theater, and music, without the interplay of people. This essentially means I need my alone time, too, in order to replenish and to sit back and marinate with my emotions and sort out what I’m truly feeling—what’s mine and what’s yours. My saving grace is that I can adapt if I can figure out what is expected of me. Movies, music, books, and theater became my teachers.
I was a voracious reader. My mother would stand over me and yell, “Judy, Judy, Judy!” I was so immersed in my world of books and films that I was truly dissociated from my surroundings. Movies, especially old classic movies, were a wonderland for me. They taught me how to behave and feel and speak and dress and so much more. I studied the characters’ faces; I studied their expression of emotion. I observed everything in any new surroundings, proper etiquette, which knife and fork to use. Through voracious reading and watching movies I created my bucket list; what I wanted to do, where I wanted to go visit, whom I wanted as friends. I had a huge and wonderfully rich fantasy world—much of which has been achieved.
One day when I was visiting London for a conference, several friends and I decided to take the Chunnel over to Paris for the afternoon. I was giddy with these experiences: seeing Buckingham Palace, changing of the guard, going to Parliament for a meeting to discuss addiction, and then an afternoon in Paris, standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, and feeling déjà vu, as though I had been there before. My dissociation with books, movies, music, and theater have given me a rich and juicy agenda to fulfill while I am on this Earth.
When I was young, I always wanted to write and did much writing until my addiction intruded. Interestingly enough, I remember quite clearly thinking I needed to experience more of life to be a truly talented writer like Hemingway. I thought to myself, How can I write about what I haven’t experienced? I haven’t been to jail, or done drugs, and a myriad of other insane thoughts. Well, I managed to experience a whole lot of life that has awed, amazed, and horrified me.
I waitressed a good bit of my life, and I’m really good with people because I’m selfish. I want to know everything about you and to remember your story and what makes you special. It's selfish, because knowing you makes my life richer. Being in jobs of service helped me to be a really good therapist because I love people and I celebrate our ability to not just survive but to flourish in the seemingly worst of circumstances. Of all the things that make me a great therapist, though, perhaps the most important is that I have “walked in your shoes.” Our history, our story, can be the greatest blessing of our life. I would not exchange anything that has come into my life because at my core my life and spirit have been enriched by the good, the bad, and the ugly. I would like to bring you into just a bit of my dissociative world of movies. Films can bring us to a safe place to experience our own emotions through someone else’s story. Get the popcorn, pull up a comfortable chair, and just allow yourself to breathe and be.
In 2014, I gave myself the gift of watching almost the entire list of Academy-Award nominated movies. And I had the most extraordinary revelation. Every one of those beautifully made, emotionally driven movies was about trauma in the lives of ordinary and extraordinary people. The effects of these stories impacted generations and their messages—pain, sorrow, and triumph—were universal, which is why we are so drawn to movies, theater, music, and art. Those gifts of the visceral, sensory, and cellular reach to the centers of our soul.
Dallas Buyers Club brought me back to the horror of the AIDS epidemic in its earliest days. Desperation and despair walked with bigotry and hatred and the LBGTQ community suffered immensely as death and dying ensued. Many, many of my friends and their families continue to experience the pain generations later. As the LGBTQ community continues to fight hatred and bigotry, we can re-experience and remember through this masterpiece of a film. We can celebrate the ability of young men and women coming out of the shadows with less fear. And in 2016, with the long-fought-for approval of same sex marriage, and our armed services and government being integrated with the LBGTQ community, the raging battle of the moment is bathroom rights for transgender folks.
Lee Daniels’ The Butler, 12 Years a Slave, and Mandela provided that same emotional catharsis for the victims of slavery, segregation, apartheid, and hatred. Through the intergenerational trauma created through more than five generations we can have clarity and find a safe place to revisit the reality of what is inflicted by humans on each other, and by natural disasters. One of the raging battles recently is the proliferation of young black men being killed by other black men and the police; the rise of black lives matter and blue lives matter. In each case the landscape of violence creates impulsive and deadly trauma reactions, hatred, bigotry, and the inability to recognize the underlying intergenerational trauma reactions.
When we consider even the most benign or loving experiences in our life, every experience we have in a lifetime is imprinted on our senses, on our spirit, and on our soul. Trauma events have a huge and lasting impression on the viscera, as do the joyful, life-affirming events.
Understanding the signs and symptoms of PTSD is understanding this concept. Trauma survivors experience flashbacks, dreams and nightmares, disturbed sleep, dissociation, body memory, somatic issues, and a diminished sense of self, low self-esteem, despair, hopelessness, and a myriad of other sensory symptoms.
The movie Philomena is a riveting example of how those flashbacks and memories remain in our viscera for decades. The title character attempts to find her illegitimate son who was torn from her and sold for adoption by the Catholic Church. The long-held secret affected Philomena’s relationships with her daughter and husband, and impacted her vision of herself. She had lived in trauma shame for decades. In her search for her son came trauma resolution, even so many decades later.
Healing trauma must be visceral, sensory, and cellular, and must heal the soul. In treatment, we must create a safe place to utilize experiential, sensory, and somatic modalities which are incredibly effective in processing trauma resolution. Trauma healing is a process of pendulation: going into the trauma story, experiencing some of it, coming out and building more resources, going back in deeper each time and then building more resources.
I was also riveted by the Academy Awards as Spotlight was awarded Best Picture. Spotlight told the story of the Boston Globe’s extraordinary work exposing the depth and breadth of the clergy abuse in Boston all the way up through the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Over the years we’ve worked with multiple archdioceses as well as every other denomination and faith to help the healing of survivors of clergy abuse. After the movie was released and after the Academy Awards ceremony, many survivors picked up the phone and came out of the shadows to seek help. Clergy abuse engenders in many the feeling of betrayal by God. This heightens the difficulty in the healing process until the individual can make peace with these thoughts.
I also watched Room, an incredible story of a young woman kidnapped and held as a sexual hostage for seven years in a shed that she called “Room.” She had a beautiful boy who is five as the story opens. Their life in Room, their relationship for those five years after his birth in captivity, is total dependence on each other with no connection to the outside world and constant fear and abuse from the kidnapper. The story of their escape and their struggles with PTSD and relationship to the world is nothing short of genius, and is a stunning and inspiring tribute to survival of the spirit. Movies create a unique opportunity for us to experience our emotions, pain, and joy from a safe distance and yet, at such a visceral level that renewal can happen.
My favorite thing to do with my grandchildren is to watch animated films. Happy Feet is the story of bullying, betrayal by your tribe, triumph over differences, and transformation. What a safe place for children and adults alike to relate and recognize the differences and similarities! Kung Fu Panda is a story of adoption and building a tribe, fitting in, and survival. Up is about attachment and relationships, and love’s healing properties. As my grandchildren are growing older, we have added Harry Potter, The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy. As a therapist I ask them, “How is this like your life?” and I’m astounded at the honest answers; honest because it’s a safe venue. These kids teach me more than I could ever teach them. There are so many other movies that move us and help us relate to our own lives. Watching movies together is a safe way to check in with people you love and care for.
By utilizing cinema therapy and other experiential, sensory modalities, the trauma survivor is provided a safe distance to process a very cellular experience that can help to bring them catharsis and resolution. What movies, music, plays, or books create catharsis for you?
One of our therapists, when he finds himself shutting down from the depth of the trauma stories, goes to his office, puts the Do Not Disturb sign out and watches Steel Magnolias, which taps into a deep well of emotions in his spirit. He cries and snots and embraces his emotions again; then he’s renewed for the next wounded clients who come into his life.
Experiential therapies create the environment for this process. For instance, psychodrama becomes a safe vehicle for engaging in observation of a trauma event. Amazing healing happens in this process. Peter Levine’s model of somatic experience is a modality that we use as well as hypnosis, dialectical behavior therapy (DBT, which assists survivors raise their level of emotional and cognitive regulation and control of emotional stability), EMDR, art and music therapy, grief work, equine, and adventure therapy. All of these modalities should be available; there are many ways into the spirit.
Of absolute importance in trauma work is for clinicians to recognize that substance and process addictions and self-harming behaviors are coping mechanisms that are often created by trauma events. Our staff at my first treatment center were trained in all of these modalities. We also had several certified sex addiction therapists, and eating disorder therapists. Everyone is trained in trauma and addictions, and each clinician and ancillary staff are encouraged and provided opportunities to do their own healing work. I believe we cannot ask clients to do what we haven’t done. I advocate for all clinical professionals to be highly trained in trauma treatment. Chances are, most clients you work with have experienced trauma events and protect themselves with coping behaviors that no longer serve them.
Here is a gift from a very talented and special heart-centered grief therapist.
Cheryl’s Story:
CONTINUING TO DO MY OWN WORK
AS I LEARN AND GROW AS A THERAPIST
My professional career began in the back wards of a state hospital before deinstitutionalization took place. Over the years I worked in community mental health, emergency services, and then thirteen years with hospice. There I discovered that I had a passion for working with people who were grieving, especially those who were experiencing traumatic losses.
I came to work with Judy Crane in 2008, not without some trepidation about working in a residential treatment center. Working with addictions was new for me although I got sober in AA and had thirty years of sobriety under my belt, as well as years of working on my own issues. However, when I was in graduate school in the 1970s, PTSD was a relatively new concept and we were not taught about how to treat trauma. It was a steep and challenging learning curve for me as I began reading about concepts and research that were new to me such as trauma bonds, trauma reenactment, how trauma is stored in the body, and the many experiential treatment modalities used at Judy’s treatment center. I began reading Patrick Carnes’ The Betrayal Bond, Peter Levine’s Waking the Tiger, Bessel van der Kolk’s work, and other similar material.
At that time, several therapists, myself included, stayed in cabins on the property during our work week. As I read and absorbed this new knowledge, I was stunned to find the pieces of the puzzle of my own life beginning to fit together and make sense at long last. I vividly remember many nights sitting on the porch of my cabin rocking and sobbing as I finally grasped why I had done the things I had, and understood the emotional pain I had experienced for so much of my own life. My emotional life began to make sense to me for the first time. This was a priceless gift for me, but it also gave me invaluable insight into the pain, trauma manifestations, and resulting addictions of the clients I was working with. Never had I encountered a treatment center where the clinical staff were allowed, even encouraged, to be “real” with clients. I began to see how what I had been through in my own life was something I could transform and use in my work with others. I came to love the power of the group in healing. Most importantly, I experienced how integral compassion is in the healing process.
How many times did we hear Judy say, “We will love you until you can love yourself” to our clients? And we did.
I continued to do my own work as I was learning and growing as a therapist. It is my absolute belief that we cannot take our clients any further than we ourselves have been and are willing to go. We have to be able to sit with and bear witness to the shock and pain from the often-horrific experiences people have endured as we help them realize they have survived, and find a way to release the effects still held in their bodies.
As part of the training to learn Somatic Experiencing I volunteered to be the client in a demonstration of working with inescapable assault. As I recounted some of my experience to the instructor, I trembled and shook violently. When my body finally stopped shaking, I opened my eyes and the instructor asked me what was happening. What came out of my mouth was a startled, “I’m alive!”
“Yes,” he replied. “You are alive. Say it again louder.”
I said it again and again realizing that there had been a part of me that did not know until that moment that I had truly survived. I had expected to die that day over thirty years ago. This and other powerful experiences showed me how cellular trauma is and why we must include the body as part of therapy. The other critical thing I learned was the importance of educating clients on how trauma affects the brain and body. Shame is often part of the aftermath of trauma and thus the more knowledge we can give about how this works, the easier clients can begin to let go of it.
I am grateful for my experience working with Judy. It has not only made me a much more effective therapist, but it has been instrumental in my own healing journey.
What follows are three extraordinary collages of Cheryl's journey. This brilliant work was done in her limbic brain, the part of the brain that feels, experiences, and translates our trauma experiences.
For much of life I had no real idea of who I was. I distinctly remember walking around my various apartments and living spaces studying the pictures on the walls, the furniture, and objects on them, trying to see them through the eyes of others in order to see who I would appear to be. With people, I was whoever they wanted me to be. In other words, like a chameleon I would change myself to blend or fit in.
When I was younger I would joke that I couldn’t have a party and invite all my friends at the same time because I wouldn’t know how to act. I didn’t understand why this was and I didn’t do it intentionally. I really didn’t have much sense of myself as a solid person and I certainly didn’t think anyone would want to be around me if I was myself—whoever that was!
The Chameleon
The collage is pretty obvious, but there is an image in the center of a figure walking away from a mask on the ground. This symbolizes me finally coming into myself. This was a direct result of the work I did while in the forest.
My Addictions
“My Addictions” collage is a general snapshot of my years lost to various substance and process addictions. There is an actual photo of me at age eighteen in there on a road trip to New York where the drinking age was then eighteen. I was primarily a whiskey drinker, nicotine addict, and pot smoker, although I dabbled in whatever was available. I had my first blackout at seventeen. During those years, I struggled with depression and ever-growing shame. I sought relief any way and anywhere I could. It led me into some very dark and scary places.
Rising from the Ashes
“Rising from the Ashes” is about getting sober and finding a program of recovery. I was waking up out of a dark and despairing landscape. I had been to the depths of hellish emotional pain and at times wanted to end my life.
Here is a journal entry from 1978, six months before I stopped drinking (now thirty-nine years sober):
I am in my office. This day will never end. I am sick—hungover. My body is poisoned, my brained soaked. How much longer can I go on this way? I have to admit I am an alcoholic. I have lost control over my drinking. I’m ashamed and embarrassed about my behavior last night. I don’t even know how I got up and made it to work. The hangover didn’t even hit me bad until lunchtime. Now I feel dizzy, nauseous, and shaky. I really hurt. Beyond the second drink I have no control—cannot stop, not until I get sick. I had a quasi blackout last night. The last two hours are vague and patchy. I can remember glimpses of what I did. I remember hanging on the toilet trying to be sick. I passed out the second I hit the bed. Don’t remember setting alarms, undressing, don’t remember the ride home—thank God I wasn’t driving—surely would have killed myself or somebody else. I did this two Fridays ago also. And I’ve been starting drinking earlier in the evening every night. No matter how much I promise myself not to, every night I drink. This is it: rock bottom. I’ve missed one day of work from drinking last March. I’ve known I had a problem for years but guess I haven’t really admitted the full extent. This is it. I have to stop now. I feel that this is going to be the toughest battle of my entire life. Somehow, I have to muster the strength to do this.
As much as I wanted to stop drinking, I was fearful of living without being numbed out. Recovery was like the proverbial phoenix rising from the ashes. I was blessed to find an amazing group of women with whom I could identify and who were smiling and enjoying life without alcohol and other drugs. Thirty-eight years later I can still remember the hell I lived in but now it seems like another lifetime—or a very bad nightmare from which I finally awoke. Six months after I stopped drinking, I quit smoking cigarettes. I got into therapy and onto a spiritual path. I now feel grateful for every step on this amazing journey.
Isn’t this the therapist you want for yourself and your family? A clinician who is genuine, authentic, and continues to grow as a clinician and as a trauma survivor, who will not ask you to do what she hasn’t done herself. A person who will be available, hold space and witness for you, (just being there for someone in their trauma without judgment or putting their own experience on it, and witnessing without trying to fix it) who will walk through the fire with you, and never give up on you or your loved ones.
A Rubik’s Cube, a labyrinth, a jigsaw puzzle: trauma resolution is very much like trying to solve a jumble of puzzles. Working with the human condition is like trying solve all of those puzzles.
Our behaviors always make perfect sense when we unravel our story. Each piece of the puzzle that we discover adds to the story and ultimately allows us to understand ourselves and others. We can become congruent like the Rubik’s Cube, matching in color on all six surfaces. We find the center of our spirit just as we walk a maze to the center, a place of peace.
The most exciting part, however, is putting together that big jigsaw puzzle. Remember laying out all of the pieces with the excitement of making the picture whole? Maybe a puzzle of a simple block pattern or a more challenging Statue of Liberty. Some lay out the outline, others try to start with linking pieces that are most obvious and gathering them together. There is no right or wrong way to complete the picture. There is no good or bad, just the chance to understand the whole. The truly skillful trauma therapist has a multitude of modalities and interventions in their tool bag for exactly this reason.
The truly skilled therapist continues to explore and heal their own wounds, and maintain resources and supervision for themselves. Trauma therapy is not for the faint of heart and everyone has a story.
I think to discover the who and why along with the what and how of our life is a journey that takes courage, resilience, compassion, desire to change, desire to understand, and willingness to stop the pain, despair, confusion, and sadness. The most difficult part of this path is that you often must experience those events again, sometimes in great intensity. You can’t take this journey for anyone else but you, and you must be clear about your reasons for taking the first step. There will be surprises and disappointment and angry spaces as well as despair for a time, but there will also be relief, understanding, excitement, joy, and resolution. And perhaps peace, and perhaps an exciting path of discovery. With each piece of the puzzle our behavior makes sense.
You may also discover that you can’t or won’t do it alone. Many of you have been trying for a long time to understand the void, chaos, or insanity, or any of the myriad of places you have gone with your pain. People need relief from fear, numbness, and pain so when we find something that will soothe us it becomes a lifeline.
Those of us who are genetically predisposed to addiction will find relief with drugs, alcohol, sex, food, shopping, gambling, and many other destructive behaviors. Why? Because at the time of fear/trauma we believed we were going to die, even though logically as adults we know better. For children from conception to early childhood through adolescence, fearful and traumatic experiences can be a very different experience. Truth be told we are fighting for our life, our survival. Whatever will soothe the fear or terror of the moment becomes our lifeline.
For many of us, mood disorders, depression, anxiety, or other mental health behaviors become a comfortable place after a time. At first trauma takes us there, but if we continue to experience the ongoing trauma reactions these behaviors become the place of uncomfortable comfort that we know. They become a kind of solace.
The story of Hannah is a powerful example of intergenerational trauma. She found the puzzle pieces falling into place through the experiential process of writing poems about pain and triumph. The poems eloquently explain how the behaviors make sense when you understand the trauma story. I have worked with six members of Hannah’s family. One by one, they’ve begun healing the loss of a son and brother, the ravages of addiction and divorce, and have come together creating a family of hope and joy. The grandbabies will have a space of safety and love and nurturing to grow. It’s a joy to watch the healing.
This is a family of trauma, addiction, grief, pain, and triumph. As a result of the intense work each member of this family did on their trauma, the family is more intimate, communicates with each other, has healed old wounds, and three of the grown children now have babies of their own. The intergenerational cycle of secrets, addiction, and trauma is broken. The new parents are in loving, open, honest relationships, and are amazing parents. Therein lies the triumph.
Hannah’s Story:
THE HEALING VOICE OF FAMILY
If you know my family’s story, I feel like it explains mine. I was just a bossy little girl trying to cope with a chaotic life I didn’t understand, and take care of my little brother when others failed us. I was so angry at everybody for so long and internalized everything because I wasn’t allowed to be the one to break. I had to be the good student, the perfect daughter, the exceptional homemaker, the chauffeur, etc. and always knew it wasn’t fair. Once I left the nest and had no one to take care of but myself, I realized how inept I was at taking care of someone like me. Substance abuse and self-harm seemed like appropriate coping mechanisms, so I participated and became everything I was embarrassed to show my friends all those years.
After a couple years of failed college classes I decided to leave Ocala and try to make a brand-new life. After two more years of dragging around baggage, substance abuse, self-harm, and an abusive relationship, I finally started working with a therapist. She was a great help along with people who actually loved me and didn’t just say they did. I finally got to become the strong competent woman I strived to be.
Now here I am with my first baby on the way, a great job, a loving man, and a wonderful family who has my back no matter what!
There once was a lovely couple married in 1983, two beautiful, generous loving spirits; let’s call them Matt and Suzanne. They are blessed with three perfect, beautiful, bright and shining lights; let’s call them Ryan (born in 1984), Mark (born in 1985), and Paul (born in 1987). The dilemma was that this lovely couple had a “drinking problem,” which created havoc. Life was tumultuous and divorce was inevitable.
Alcoholism and addiction is surely in our DNA, but the debate on nature versus nurture continues. However, alcoholism and addiction have been considered a disease by the American Medical Association (AMA) since 1956. These are the facts, but the emotional and spiritual destruction created is more powerful than any of the “facts” of alcoholism. And the facts could not save this family from despair.
Ryan, Mark, and Paul were three, five, and six years old when this painful divorce took place. Ultimately Suzanne remarries and has two more children, David and Hannah, and a few years later divorces again. This family is rife with grief and loss around the divorces. The children have their own individual ways of reacting and coping, and in varying degrees and in multiple forms the children find solace, relief, soothing and numbing, or dissociating from the layers of trauma. The parents also continue in their alcoholism until, one by one, they find twelve-step recovery and separately begin to slowly, very slowly, heal some of their wounds.
That’s important because the “disease” of addiction and the trauma monster was not through with them yet. What followed was chapter after chapter of events and consequences that once again tore the family’s spirit apart.
The youngest son’s girlfriend was murdered in 2006 and Paul saw it happen and was powerless to intervene. All three boys were in and out of jail for various drug-related activity. And then in 2010 Paul and his current girlfriend were murdered in a horrible, highly publicized shooting. At the time, Mark was in jail, and Suzanne and Matt in recovery. Matt keeps the family together and ultimately he and Suzanne take to their sofas for years, each in their own home, as despair sets in.
However, this family is blessed. Mom and Dad in their individual recovery through their despair, Mark finds real recovery in jail, Ryan follows. Both of those boys marry sensitive, loving women who are in recovery and both couples have the most warm and loving children.
So Mom, the three oldest boys and their wives, all individually come to treatment for their trauma and find some peace and resolution, and find real joy in their life. Mom gets off the sofa and finds purpose in her life working with wounded trauma survivors, helping them heal. Actually, Mom, her two oldest sons and her daughter-in-laws all find a real purpose in life working with wounded people, helping them to heal.
Healing is different for everyone. However finding and having a purpose for your life is an imperative and these members of the family found a purpose and a solution for their pain by helping someone else who suffers into the light.
David flies under the radar, joins the armed services, and travels abroad to guns and war. We all have our ways of coping in the world. David’s return home was a glorious celebration of life.
Hannah finds her own way along this journey, and she is the family member who helps to tell this story. What follows are the heart-wrenching, healing words she wrote which were instrumental in her healing process.
Learning How to Breathe
Learning how to breathe,
I never thought it would be this hard. My lungs are dry,
My lips are cracked,
My throat aches with the screams I never allowed myself.
My ribcage betrays me as I try and suck in the warm air that
is supposed to give life to my frail organs.
Even my tongue,
a muscle I always deemed sharp and strong,
lays flat and unmoving in my arid mouth;
afraid to orate the fear of attaining knowledge
so easily bestowed on others.
How is it that I, a grown woman,
have yet to know the feeling of taking a breath not saturated with rage.
My body has been on fire for so long, starved of oxygen,
that there is nothing I fear more than losing that pain.
That pain has kept me alive.
But what a life I have lived. No more.
I brace myself,
white knuckled in this unfamiliar place, and I breathe.
I breathe and cry like shards of glass are ripping apart my insides.
I breathe my first real breath of change.
I breathe through this new pain.
The embarrassment of such a crutch
That used to make me hurt so much
Makes me feel so ostracized
Like there’s no truth behind my eyes “I’m fine” I’d say like nothing new
And always smile right on cue
Pull down my dress to hide away
The bloody mess I’d made that day
Each little cut so harshly placed
My leg, my arm, my chest, my waist
Couldn’t speak the violent pain
I fought with every day in vain
Why did I maim my tender skin
As if that white-hot ache within
Would cool and heal by sharpened knife
And give my dying heart new life
Blood had become a form of tears I never cried over the years
My cherished marks were only mine a secret behind every line
I hid this so no one would know
Made sure my scars would never show
For who would love this damaged soul
With a body that’s much less than whole
I beg my mind for mercy still
And struggle with a waning will
Just for today I’ll love myself
And put my knife back on its shelf
I crave the sting like a lover’s touch
A familiar friend I miss so much
But bright red lines are fading white
The longer I put up the fight
Skin will heal and scars will fade
As I pay for the mess I’ve made
—Every demon I’ll outrun
Just by trying means I’ve won
*
Getting Off the Sofa
And then there was one . . . This family came together and begged Dad (Matt) to go to an intensive to heal the enormous grief and loss that continued to numb every part of his being. It was clear the family struggled to move on into their own light and joy, for fear of leaving him to die of grief on his sofa. And Matt made a decision to try to move on and allowed himself to take a leap of faith that there might be life after all the death and loss.
Dad came to the intensive where a group of eight other trauma survivors had gathered to do their own healing. The question I always ask at the beginning of our intensives is, “What would you like to happen or be different at the end of this week?” Dad said to his group, “I want to get off the sofa and back to my life.”
The group process is so very powerful. The group asked Dad to burn the sofa to short circuit the isolation and immobilization. Several members of his group and most of the members of his family, including grandchildren and myself, joined him on the beach to bear witness to his process of letting go of grief, sadness, and despair. It was magnificent! Dad marinated with this for a few weeks and gradually moved back to his life. Now please understand that this beautiful intervention is not recommended for everyone. This was a unique and grace-filled intervention. I invite you to look for those moments when making just one change, one shift in behaviors can change the whole direction of life and provide healing. This family has come together in such an extraordinary process of individual and family healing. They can speak freely about their pain and celebrate each other.
Most medical schools and universities that train therapists do not provide training in alcoholism, addictions, mental health, or trauma. That’s truly unfortunate because our patients and clients are often not served well as a result of practitioners not knowing what we don’t know.
However, there are many professionals who are highly qualified as a result of on-the-job training and personal experience. Dr. Doug, as we call this special man, is one of those extraordinary people. Dr. Doug had his own struggle with addiction and a traumatic life. That is his power! He “knows what he knows,” has lived and breathed the life of being humbled and brought to his knees by addiction, and consequently raised himself up into a spiritual life of recovery. He has walked the walk and lives in integrity and compassion.
The gift of having a doctor like Doug on board is that clients and staff trust and believe in him. Dr. Doug spends endless hours being a great doctor but even more time as a model of health and healing. He practices what he preaches. He has my utmost love and respect for the lives he has saved and enriched. Namaste, Doc!
Dr. Doug’s Story:
HE KNOWS WHAT HE KNOWS
I “Sufentanilled” my way out of an almost half-million-dollar-a-year career as an anesthesiologist on a cardiac surgical team in late 1998. I got four months of solid treatment and a decent foundation in twelve-step recovery at Talbott Recovery Center (TRC), although looking back, nothing too deep regarding grief and loss or traumatic experiences that I had encountered in my life.
Back home I slowly woke up to the fact that although TRC cleared me to return to anesthesia, the universe had other plans. After sixteen months of grappling with returning to the OR and working on my recovery, Dr. Ken Thompson and Dr. Mark Gold offered this phoenix a suitable pile of ashes from which to rise: a slot in the addiction medicine fellowship at the University of Florida. Again some solid training, but looking back, something was missing. I was fortunate to be offered the medical directorship at a community-based addiction treatment facility and poured everything I had into helping people heal from this life-destroying disease. But a few years into my addiction medicine career I was beginning to flame out. “Why aren’t people getting better?” I’d whine, forgetting, as Lois pointed out to Bill W. decades earlier, “at least the work seems to be keeping you sober.”
About that time, several things happened: I juiced up my self-care program immensely when my bride catalyzed my discovery of hot yoga; and I met an Irish-Canadian fellow (Murray Kelly) who introduced me to the concept that all therapy is basically grief work; that we experience transgenerational brokenness, delivered in the form of a vast array of traumas, and we operate in a wounded state stemming from our disconnection from ourselves and from the larger family of mankind. Medicating this condition with alcohol, drugs, and—perhaps most insidiously of all—tobacco, now became perfectly understandable, and it opened me to the fact that given the depth of treatment we were offering to patients, it was no wonder that our recovery rates were what they were.
And then the call came—Judy Crane wanted me to take a look at her treatment center. I may have been primed for this career move, but I still had a lot to learn. I remember a family-week group that I sat in on shortly after I arrived, where all the patients were introducing themselves and saying why they came to seek treatment with Judy. I heard much that was familiar, “I’m addicted to this,” “I’m addicted to that,” but then also a few adding “self-harm, sex addiction, gambling” or, even more jarring to my ears, stating that they were in treatment solely “for trauma.”
What Judy slowly showed me was that the traumas we experience are the core drivers of our pain, of our dis-ease with life, and that it bubbled up as addiction to substances, but also addiction to processes that the brain finds rewarding or at least numbing (sex, overeating, gambling, video gaming, et al.). There can seemingly even be addiction to mood states and things classified as behavioral disorders. Judy showed me that, unless you understand the trauma that is foundational to the pain that drives all those behaviors, your chance of changing them is frustratingly small indeed. I love that Judy reframed for me the highly shaming diagnosis of “borderline”1 as so often being unresolved trauma in disguise.
What working in the house that Judy built has done for me has deepened the clarity that I have in seeing that we’re all connected, we’re all really the same. I’ve still got a ways to go but I’m sure that it’s made me a better son, a better brother, a better husband, a better father, a better coworker, and a better doctor. It taught me what Fred Rogers (of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood) had learned: that there isn’t anyone you couldn’t learn to love if you just knew their story.
Reflective Sketches
*
1) Think of the sights, smells, tastes, sounds, and sixth sense that you can recall that represent your life events. It might be the smell of the kitchen when your mother baked chocolate-chip cookies; the smell of boiled vegetables while visiting your grandmother’s nursing home; the smell of mothballs at your favorite childhood caretaker’s garage apartment. It might be the sound of a truck on the highway on a quiet summer night; the sound of a voice raised in anger. It might be the sight of a little girl in red tights. You get the idea.
2) Where do you feel these “senses” in your body? What memories come to the surface? What are you feeling?
3) Close your eyes and imagine your safe place, where you felt protected. It could be the ocean, deep in the woods, your grandmother’s kitchen, your grandfather’s garden, or even a Bruce Springsteen concert. Notice the feeling in your body; notice your breathing. Journal about these.
4) Think of the movies that you relate to, that represent your life or events in your life. Write a movie screenplay of your life or an event in your life. Choose the actors to play the significant people in your life and yourself. What movies heal you? What movies make you anxious? Explore through journaling why this is.
1 Note from Judy: Borderline personality disorder has shamed clients for years with the prognosis of never being able to heal when, in fact, this and all of the personality behaviors are weapons to give protection and relief to the wounded. The signs and symptoms of personality behaviors can be recognized as the armor that a survivor dons for protection, which also interferes with the ability to be in healthy relationships. When the armor becomes so entrenched that a therapist can’t find a way in, then the behavior becomes a personality disorder.
I invite clinicians to compare the signs and symptoms of trauma and PTSD with personality disorders and contrast and compare. Which came first? If it was trauma, then we may have the opportunity to help our clients heal, if we are willing to do loving battle with the armor.