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I think that ultimately we all long to rest in our True Nature. Some of us want that so desperately that we throw ourselves into spiritual practice with gusto, and often with a lot of faith. You are not alone if you did this, and it hasn't worked for you. When we have a trauma history or significant nervous system dysregulation, waking up requires a more nuanced approach. The maddening reality is, spiritual teachings and practices are often sending us in the exact opposite direction of where this stage of our healing lies.
When we engage with the teachings as they're written, we can easily end up spiritually bypassing to try to get away from the discomfort of our wounds. We can end up facing overwhelming emotions that don't abate with practice. We can end up more numbed out and disconnected, more restless, more disempowered, more disoriented, more self-hating, or more codependent.
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When the teachings themselves leave us suffering more, we often need to do something that feels radical - we need to go in the opposite direction.
For example, meditation encourages stillness - observe what's arising and if reactivity occurs, take a step back into stillness. But if trauma has left us in a state of freeze, the lack of movement and lack of responsiveness to the present moment that we are cultivating with meditation can reinforce the trauma state we are used to, leaving us more stuck.
Because freeze (or self-hatred, or depression, or fear, etc.) is what we're used to, we often don't recognize that we are recreating our habitual reality through our practice. It took me years of practice and a lot of unnecessary suffering to understand what I was doing to myself.
This is not to say that we can't experience both benefits and downsides from our practice at the same time - this was my experience and it was a big reason it took me so long to see that I needed to change my approach.
Because freeze (or self-hatred, or depression, or fear, etc.) is what we're used to, we often don't recognize that we are recreating our habitual reality through our practice. It took me years of practice and a lot of unnecessary suffering to understand what I was doing to myself.
This is not to say that we can't experience both benefits and downsides from our practice at the same time - this was my experience and it was a big reason it took me so long to see that I needed to change my approach.
Awakening with Trauma Symptoms
Let's explore some other examples of how spiritual practice can reinforce, rather than heal, our trauma and other wounds.
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The teachings ask us to surrender. Surrender requires us to give up control, to give up our sense of agency - but when we didn't have a sense of agency to give up in the first place, attempts at surrender usually leave us in freeze or powerlessness, not in a state of genuine peace. We are left with trauma because our survival responses - our power - was not able to be acted out in the moment of the trauma. When that's our reality, surrender just reinforces the unconscious beliefs we adopted due to our trauma - 'I'm powerless to change things.'
Genuine surrender is a state where we own our agency AND our lack of agency. For whatever reason, the teachings don't recognize the former, they assume it to be the case. We must re-empower ourselves, encourage action and movement, rather than stillness and acceptance, to heal trauma. You may have heard the saying "you have to have a self to lose a self." Well, the same is true about power. How could we expect our systems to relinquish power that we have never owned? |
Restoring access to our frozen impulses restores a sense of inner safety and shifts a deep body/mind trauma story of "I can't" into "I can." From a place of "I can,” seeing "I can't" in the way awakening asks of us becomes possible. Surrender becomes natural.
The teachings also tell us to transcend: to accept, to disidentify with our body, to let go of form. But these teachings were put down in a completely different time and context than our own, at a time when people were overwhelmingly already embodied. Going beyond the body was thus a natural step.
For us, in trying to go beyond the body before the body and mind are linked, we simply dissociate, and we lose access to a tremendous amount of wisdom. Our awakening, to the extent that it’s present, is brittle, fragile, and lacking in intelligence and direction.
We also struggle with self-hate in a way that's relatively new, globally. In fact, it's still true today that cultures outside the West don’t struggle with self-hate in the way that we do here, though that’s sadly changing as the West’s influence grows. And the more trauma we’ve experienced, the more self-hate we typically have - we blame ourselves for what happened to us.
We turn to the teachings and they tell us the ego is illusory, imaginary, irrelevant. Our own unconscious self-hate is so happy to pick up that mantle and wear it like a banner: ‘Thank god, I’ll just see the parts of myself I hate as imaginary. Then I won’t have to deal with them, own them, or admit to them.’
Needless to say, this strategy doesn't work forever.
For us, in trying to go beyond the body before the body and mind are linked, we simply dissociate, and we lose access to a tremendous amount of wisdom. Our awakening, to the extent that it’s present, is brittle, fragile, and lacking in intelligence and direction.
We also struggle with self-hate in a way that's relatively new, globally. In fact, it's still true today that cultures outside the West don’t struggle with self-hate in the way that we do here, though that’s sadly changing as the West’s influence grows. And the more trauma we’ve experienced, the more self-hate we typically have - we blame ourselves for what happened to us.
We turn to the teachings and they tell us the ego is illusory, imaginary, irrelevant. Our own unconscious self-hate is so happy to pick up that mantle and wear it like a banner: ‘Thank god, I’ll just see the parts of myself I hate as imaginary. Then I won’t have to deal with them, own them, or admit to them.’
Needless to say, this strategy doesn't work forever.
The clear seeing necessitated to awaken is much harder to access when we are seeing the world through so many unconscious lenses and biases.
In making conscious and healing some of these unseen biases, we become clearer, less desperate, less invested in our views. This opens space for us to finally see things, as they are.
In addition, the awakening process causes disorientation as we move out of one perspective and into another. Our entire energetic system dis-organizes so that it can reorganize itself based on the new perspective. It literally learns to operate in a completely different way. Our brains unwire so they can rewire. Even without much trauma, the experience of this can be quite confusing and unsettling. People with trauma tend to struggle with this aspect of the process because trauma causes an internal experience of chaos and disorganization.
When we lack some sense of internal stability, control, organization, and differentiation, our system will fearfully contract away from any experience that induces more of the kind of experience we’re already having. And so again, we need to do the exact opposite of what the teachings recommend: we need to cultivate internal and external orientation such that we experience more stability. Instead of surrender, we need to cultivate influence over our internal state such that our sense of intense helplessness is relieved. We need to organize our experience so that we have more of a sense of internal safety. From this place, surrendering into chaos, disorientation, and undifferentiated being becomes possible.
In addition, the awakening process causes disorientation as we move out of one perspective and into another. Our entire energetic system dis-organizes so that it can reorganize itself based on the new perspective. It literally learns to operate in a completely different way. Our brains unwire so they can rewire. Even without much trauma, the experience of this can be quite confusing and unsettling. People with trauma tend to struggle with this aspect of the process because trauma causes an internal experience of chaos and disorganization.
When we lack some sense of internal stability, control, organization, and differentiation, our system will fearfully contract away from any experience that induces more of the kind of experience we’re already having. And so again, we need to do the exact opposite of what the teachings recommend: we need to cultivate internal and external orientation such that we experience more stability. Instead of surrender, we need to cultivate influence over our internal state such that our sense of intense helplessness is relieved. We need to organize our experience so that we have more of a sense of internal safety. From this place, surrendering into chaos, disorientation, and undifferentiated being becomes possible.
Ultimately, I hope you'll understand that awakening with a trauma history is absolutely possible. You will find, in fact, that your trauma makes some parts of the path easier, because of what it cultivates in you. It just means we have to use a more balanced, fluid approach that is sensitive to the evolving needs of our nervous system and of our psychology.
I will not be able to do this topic full justice here, so please enjoy some free talks I gave to our Full Circle Spirituality Sangha on this topic.
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Here's a condensed list of how what spiritual practice asks of us contrasts with what’s needed for recovery from trauma, PTSD, or CPTSD:
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- Instead of relinquishing control of our internal state, we need to cultivate healthy influence over it such that we experience greater levels of agency and inner stability.
- Instead of opening to the disorientation of the shift into the awakened perspective, we need to cultivate inner and outer orientation.
- Instead of letting go of the impulse to move towards what we desire or what feels pleasurable, we need to encourage and to learn to follow those impulses and to cultivate the skill of savoring pleasure and goodness.
- Instead of moving towards selflessness, we need to cultivate a seeing of, a loving of, an understanding of, and an appreciation for our relative selves, along with a willingness to take care of ourselves even if it means we say no to what someone else wants or needs.
- Instead of seeing our feelings as empty, we need to learn to treasure their wisdom and value their goodness.
- Instead of endeavoring to always be present, we need to teach our attention to be flexible, to move between simple presence, more intentional focus, and spaciousness.
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And so on.
We will never feel internally safe through trauma work or ego work. That’s why the teachings exist. There’s no such thing as safety from an egoic perspective. My point here is that we need *just enough* of this work so that we can allow the awakening process to unfold in the way the teachings discuss. With just enough empowerment, orientation, self-love, enough capacity to do what we need to do to take care of ourselves, enough stability, enough inner safety...we can fall into disempowerment, disorientation, instability, selflessness, surrender, and so on. We can let go of our sense of self, our individuality, our egoic desires and aversions, our egoic orientation, our egoic desire for things to be the way we want them. This is the challenge facing us today that did not exist 2600 years ago. Of course paradoxically, from here, we come back to the relative world and are able to value the human perspective as much as we value the Ultimate perspective. It’s not an easy path . . . but I know it’s still the only path for so many of us who have long heard its calling from somewhere deep inside. |
For more on recovering from trauma, visit my Somatic Therapy for Trauma page. And for support for an awakening process without trauma, try my Spiritual Support page. If you are experiencing Spiritual Emergency or a spiritual crisis that goes beyond trauma, please go to my Spiritual Emergency page.
Book Recommendations:
*Unfortunately, there are no books out there right now that address these topics in as specific a way as I would wish, but the ones I’ve listed here are all supportive of trauma-sensitive meditation practice and balanced and grounded spirituality.
Spiritual Bypassing, Robert Augustus Masters
Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness, David Treleaven
The Stormy Search for the Self, Christina Grof and Stanislav Grof
The Path is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You, Matt Licata
A Healing Space: Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times, Matt Licata
Falling in Love with Where You Are, Jeff Foster
You Were Never Broken: Poems to Save Your Life, Jeff Foster
Grounded Spirituality, Jeff Brown
*Unfortunately, there are no books out there right now that address these topics in as specific a way as I would wish, but the ones I’ve listed here are all supportive of trauma-sensitive meditation practice and balanced and grounded spirituality.
Spiritual Bypassing, Robert Augustus Masters
Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness, David Treleaven
The Stormy Search for the Self, Christina Grof and Stanislav Grof
The Path is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You, Matt Licata
A Healing Space: Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times, Matt Licata
Falling in Love with Where You Are, Jeff Foster
You Were Never Broken: Poems to Save Your Life, Jeff Foster
Grounded Spirituality, Jeff Brown
All Photos this page by Katherine Savage
