This is difficult for many men however, because it goes against all our conditioning from birth. Men are the least likely to express themselves verbally, and the least likely to seek counselling, psychiatric care, or a doctor’s assistance for physical illness.
At the Chiron Centre (Liverpool), our safe space is a necessity for any acknowledged traumatic experience(s) to be witnessed with unconditional positive regard, congruence and empathy. Instead of avoiding trauma with obsessive compulsive behaviour (e.g. alcohol or drug addictions), we encourage men to travel through the pain to become a wounded healer: a man in touch with his suffering, who is taking the steps to heal. This man will then have the tools to break the cycle of abuse: he can protect himself and others from further pain.
We are born dependent. When our primary needs are not met, we will spend the rest of our lives, consciously or unconsciously, trying to fill those gaps.
Many people who have experienced trauma cannot remember that trauma. Some people may have experienced trauma from the moment of conception. Indeed, for some people, their moment of conception was traumatic. Many people cannot remember their childhoods.
A traumatised person is also more likely to take mainly three courses of action:
Unresolved trauma issues - consciously or unconsciously - will remain, festering, affecting that person’s behaviour, mental and physical health.
Western psychotherapy can provide useful tools for getting in touch with and articulating strong emotions in a safe manner. These tools are to be encouraged for assist the difficult process of coming to terms with unconscious feelings.
However, not everyone needs to train to become a qualified general psychotherapist! Even basic counselling skills are invaluable in all interactions with other human beings. Mind you, before the invention of television, everyone knew how to listen.
Ultimately, there are six factors that shape the whole character of each human being, which need to be taken into account as part of the healing process:
(Adapted from Restoring the Balance, by Dr. Akong Tulku Rinpoche,
www.tararokpa.org)
Although making sense of what happened, telling one’s life story, can be a therapeutic process, it can take years, and is still only dealing with the tip of the iceberg: childhood.
Western psychotherapy tends to remain cerebral and is therefore limited. It tends to ignore the body, which has its own intelligence. Also, psychology negates to explore the impact of lifestyle and diet (which can be measured) and the person’s spiritual wellbeing (which cannot).
The conscious mind (7% of human consciousness) may forget trauma, but it will be remembered unconsciously. Unconscious memory is in the person’s emotional gut feelings (23% of human behaviour), and in every cell of the human body (70% of human behaviour).
In order to go to the root of healing, one needs a holistic approach that embraces the intellectual, emotional, physical and spiritual elements. As Dr Pema Dorjee said,
“Heal your spirit, heal yourself” (Heal Your Spirit, Heal Yourself).
Finally, although it is possible to feel overwhelmed by the depth of post-traumatic stress disorder, when one embraces a Higher Power as part of the healing process, what appears like a mountain can be transformed into a molehill? The following AA prayer highlights our need for humility, in the long, slow, often
painful process that has the potential to transform a soul wound into gold:
“God grant me the serenity,
To accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.”