Got Trauma? Usually we take that to mean something terrible and catastrophic has happened to you. Usually the thing that happened is viewed as a horrible event that you would erase from your experience planet if you could. Usually it is something we would have avoided if we could have, and we would like to forget, but can’t.
When working with children who have been sexually abused, I often hear the parents, in deep shock and grief, say things like, “She’s ruined now,” or “He’ll never be able to have a normal relationship after this,” and it breaks my heart. Knowing what I know about cycles of abuse, it’s difficult not to fear for these children in the same way their parents do, but also knowing what I know about being a therapist, if I follow the parents into the vortex of despair, I will be no help to them.
In our dualistic reality we tend to separate things into positive and negative polarities. We categorize things into good/bad, safe/dangerous, delicious/disgusting, etc. We do it with food, we do it with emotions, and we do it with life events. We are conditioned to think in duality from an early age, and most of us do it without even realizing it. It is so automatic and socially accepted that to suggest something otherwise is often met with confusion, and even outright hostility.
For example, most of us would agree that it’s “good” for a child to get straight As and participate in extracurricular activities like basketball. We would probably also agree that it would be “bad” if that same child were to have his lunch money stolen by a bully, or fall out of a tree and break his arm. If I were to suggest that the straight As were not so good, and the bullying not so bad you might think I was a bit nuts, yes?
But what if the bullying ends with said child standing up for himself and becoming a hero in the eyes of a whole cafeteria full of children? What if the fall out of the tree inspires a life long interest in emergency room medicine? Alternately, what if that child were getting straight As because anything other than As gets a beating from Dad? What if the basketball coach is actually a child-molesting pedophile? Can we still make the same assessment of good and bad so easily?
The point is, we don’t know what will come from seemingly horrible events. Heavens knows many of the most inspiring, paradigm shifting, community activists have suffered tragedy and unspeakable sorrow on their way to becoming the change agents we know them to be. In fact, it is often these tragic events that motivate these individuals to commit their lives to making a difference. If Dr.Martin Luther King Jr. had not been outraged by his own experiences of racism in rural Georgia as a boy, would he have become the great leader he was?
Obviously there are certain things that will hopefully remain in the collective consciousness as “bad,” (ie: racism, genocide, sexual abuse, etc.), and I’m not advocating trauma as a requirement for greatness. However, I will advocate for an attitude of non-duality, a suspension of judgment, and an openness to the idea that each one of us has a destiny in life to fulfill, with a promise to humanity to contribute to the evolution of consciousness out of our own life lessons. That way, when a grief stricken parent tells me their child’s life is over because they were sexually abused, I can hold out for the possibility that this child, this parent, and this family, may actually be made stronger by the experience, that greater awareness will come to them, and that we can all move beyond trauma into greater wholeness because of it.
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