1 Yoga Studio

[Free Event] with Wim Hof Join Sounds True founder Tami Simon and special guest Dr. Gabor Maté for a conversation about his newest book, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture.

Much of our wounding occurs prior to the acquisition of language and is not able to be healed through the questioning and reorganization of patterns of thinking. In other words, we can’t think our way out of trauma.

When our capacity to process unbearable terror, panic, shame, and rage is overwhelmed, undigested pieces of experience are held subcortically and in our cellular circuitry, unreachable by thinking which is a layer removed from the fires of the alchemical body.

Encouragement to “just get over it, that’s totally irrational, you can’t really believe that, you know that’s not true” and so forth is experienced by an inflamed nervous system as the activity of violence and aggression.

It’s like an autonomic form of gaslighting and reflects a deep misunderstanding of trauma and the workings of implicit memory, and only contributes to re-traumatization, in personal, cultural, and collective networks.

In addition to shattering and unendurable experience – which is painful and terrifying enough – there is a profound sense of aloneness that goes with this, the sense that no one can understand, that there is no companionship into the dark night. I am alone in this. This is devastating to the soul.

When that raging alive little boy or aching little girl cries out longing to be held, to be known, to be felt, to be heard, to be remembered… peeking their little heads out as if to say, “Is it safe now? How about now? I’ve been waiting for so long for a companion and friend. How about now?”, they’re really not all that interested in our clear cognitive analysis, rational inquiry, powerful spiritual insight, and thoughts on the matter.

They’re yearning for something else… for you, for your heart, for your holding. To know that you will stay near, that you will not abandon or shame them, that you will do your best to provide sanctuary and safe passage for them to come Home, to be allowed to come out of that frozen state and live once again.

In this way they don’t even want or need to be healed, but to be held. And to feel safe.

Photo by Lisa Runnels

While trauma occurs in separation, healing happens in relation.

Usually when we speak about parts of ourselves that we have disowned and placed into the shadow, we're referring to less desirable material such as jealousy, rage, selfishness, and shame. Usually, the shadow is seen as the dark repository for all the so-called negative aspects of ourselves, i.e. our unhealthy dependency, unacknowledged narcissism, unmet hopelessness, and the entirety of our unlived lives.

But it is not only negative aspects of self that we dissociate, split off from, and locate onto others. Many of us have lost the capacity to access and embody more “positive” experiences such as contentment, pleasure, creativity, empathy, and intimacy.

Some of us have even disconnected from the simple experience of joy, a spontaneous sense of elation at being alive. I’ll never forget the first time I realized that we could split off from the experience of joy, in the course of some work I was doing with a man who was suffering from depression.

What we discovered during our time together was how unsafe it was for him to express joy, how the experience of simple delight became tangled in his nervous system with danger and the likelihood of incredibly painful rupture with critical attachment figures in his life.

During our sessions, there were times we would become aware of this very simple, childlike, causeless joy coming to the surface as he was speaking about some experience he had, and how inevitably some (subtle) panic or anxiety would be cultivated in response: he would quickly change the subject, generate some sort of conflict between us, “leave” the room and go back into a prior conversation, bail out of his body into some seemingly unrelated fantasy, or even just close his eyes and start to meditate.

After this happened a few times, we became curious about what was going on and were able to explore it together. As he was able to go back in and access and articulate the thoughts and associated emotions and somatic material, he remembered early experiences of how his father reacted to his joy and excitement, becoming aggressive and enraged, demanding that he “grow up” and stop acting like “a baby.” And how in response to all that, his mother shut down and turned away from him to avoid the conflict. He felt so lost, unseen, unheld, and utterly confused.

He came to see how he had equated feeling full of life and natural states of delight, interest, and enthusiasm with being judged and rejected. Over the course of our time together he began to unwind this organization and was able to slowly re-embody to this spectrum of experience and touch the natural joy he had disconnected from at an earlier time in his life.

While the term has a negative, darkened connotation and imagery, it is not only “negative” experience that we place in the shadow, but any material that has not found a home within the relational field. To retrieve the lost joyous little boy and girl is an act of love, really, not only for one’s self but for all of life.

WHEN YOU TRY TO FIX ME

“When you try to fix me, when you play the infallible ‘expert’ or ‘guru’, you unconsciously send a signal to me, to my nervous system, that there’s something wrong with me, that I’m broken and do not have the inner resources I need. That I can’t hold what I’m holding, can’t bear what I am bearing. That I am smaller than you, weaker, needier. That I know less. You play the expert to my beginner, the guru to my disciple. Even if you have the best of intentions, which I know you often do, when you try to fix me, and give me your answers, you treat me like a child. You don’t listen. You don’t trust. And that’s scary. I feel more alone than ever when you try to fix me. You split us in two.

Yes, when you try to fix me, you don’t trust me. But I am stronger than you know. I can bear more than you realise. I am more capable, more wise, more courageous than you give me credit for. I am shocked by my own courage!

When you stop trying to fix me you give me the space to grow. You give me the space to feel, to hurt, to tolerate and to process that hurt, to move through my pain into a deeper healing.

When you simply hold space for me, I can relax to fill that warm space. I can breathe more freely, held in your safe and loving arms. I can touch into my deepest trauma, find my courage, push myself a little bit into the scary places, start to tolerate the seemingly intolerable, bear the seemingly unbearable, and survive the intensity of the moment. I can start to prove to myself how strong I actually am.

When you simply stay present with me, I can move through my healing crisis, I can fall and be caught, break and be held, and I can learn to hold myself too.

When you simply listen, I can better hear myself. I can learn to trust my deepest intuition, my authentic feelings, my own body - and fill even the scary places within me with loving awareness.

My words are not drowned out by yours. My feelings are not replaced by yours. My dreams become clearer. My gut learns to speak up for itself. When you drop all your clever concepts, philosophies, answers, advice, fixes, and you just love me, I can learn to love myself, and trust myself, and hold myself as you hold me.

When you stop trying to fix me, I actually start to feel less broken! Here is the paradox of love, and the paradox of healing - two sides of the very same mystery.

So stop trying to fix me, and please, love me instead, be present with me as I heal…”

- Jeff Foster

✨E V E R Y T H I N G ✨