The burden of pain

What do we do with the pain and hurt that we carry on our back? How do we manage to endure it. You may have been beaten up by someone unknown, on the way home from a party? Or raped on your way home from a date. Perhaps you have been hit and seriously injured. Some have been mistreated badly as children, possibly also abused sexually. Experiencing constantly rejection or discomfirmation, the feeling of not being seen, heard, listened to and recognized for what you are, will most likely build up a childhood trauma inside of you.

So there are both sudden or acute traumatic experiences, on one side, and the slow building up traumatic day to day experiences, even a mixture of both types involved in psychological traumas. Common to these traumas is that they most often change your self-perception and behavior, and your relation to your own true self.

Is our partner mentally or physically violent, or do we have a boss who seems very threatening? There are many good reasons for carrying heavily on what we can call life’s backpack. This burden we cannot simply throw away. Its not like a real rucksack hanging on our back. Instead its burdening us from the inside and out.        A to heavy burden for a young woman

What do we do with this pain, that can be felt both strongly mentally and physically? I will highlight three different ways we can relate to such pain. Of these three alternatives there is absolutely one better and two not so good solutions. The third alternative being even very bad, even though the person in pain is in some way relieved from it, -temporarily.

Good and bad solutions

When the totally unexpected hit you.

Alternative 1: The Best solution.

The best way to deal with it is to be allowed to react with all the emotions that emerge in in connection with these experiences. That can be everything from anger, rage, despair, sadness, powerlessness, self-blame or anxiety.

Under such circumstances we need to have the opportunity to live out all these different feelings with someone who won’t fail to accept them. We need to be allowed to scream in rage, cry in self-pity, show our vulnerability, and be welcomed with care and understanding by someone in which we have great confidence.

  Get it out, –  preferably with a  person you trust at hand.

We need time to be exactly where we are in the still unsolved process, before we pull ourselves together and gradually begin to return to some kind of normal life. If the police are working on our case and there are chances of a legal settlement, it can be difficult to unwind from all the negative thoughts and feelings. Here too it is still essential that other persons are close to us with their comforting presence.

 Words are not always necessary

If we have no access to such people, we have to seek professional help. In some countries that’s expensive, and outside reach for most people. Then there are nevertheless in many countries some free short-term post-traumatic programs. This is because national health authorities often know the total cost for the society, with too many untreated trauma-patients.

And the fact is that most traumatic reactions in the population are old and untreated. They most likely, stem from our childhood, and add up together with a later incidence. Therefor we might call them chronic traumas, or re-traumatization of older traumatic experiences.

These symptoms we must take most seriously, and as mentioned above seek help in order to cure. Even with good help, the healing process, might take time. Thus we need to have patience with ourselves. And reactions we do not like, often emerge in this process, in the form of flashbacks.

Group having trauma releasing excersises.(Bercelis TRE)

Then we sometimes also need to derail ourselves from our thoughts and feelings, and push them at a distance. But the best is yet to allocate time. Time to release the feelings, almost let them grow in us until they there and then crumble by themselves, and leaves room for other emotions.

Paradoxically, emotions that we almost allow to blow themselves up inside of us, will usually slowly shrink by themselves, after a short time in focus. An important lesson I’ve done as a therapist is the following. If we after blowing up an emotion, let ourselves implode, that is; falling into ourselves and “the abyss of locked emotions”, we finally come to an inner space of peace. Yes, after falling through some inner layers of emotion, we finally feel at ease. It sounds incredible, but it is actually true. (See Brandon Bays. 2004)

     If you run from the feelings you fear, they will most often fireback on you double in strength.

I think the mechanism in this procedure that I call “blow up-implosion method” is that emotions are like hands waving for attention, or children cry- outs that we must recognize and interpret, in order to satisfy them. If we avoid emotions continually, they will emerge unexpectedly and create panic.

Not so good

Alternative 2. A. Introvert solution:

A rather bad solution is to close the door to the pain and all the feelings we have in relation to the traumatic experience. If we basically are furious at the person or incidence that has caused us all this suffering, but anyhow unaware of this, these originally constructive feelings may easily be suppressed and directed inwardly back on ourselves. In that sense it remains inside our bodies, often revolving around in our head as well. We are pondering and ruminating, not infrequently full of self-reproach. It seems like this will never take an end.

       “I really don’t want to be reminded of it, I will forget everything”

In this variant of some kind of solution of the trauma, we use very little of our surroundings to help and support us. Instead, we walk around with it all alone. Or if we are so lucky as to get support from others, we are not able to utilize it. If we can’t let people’s sympathy and affection sink in and affect us deeply, it is most likely because we are not in contact with our real emotions.

       If I play the “everything is ok, game”, I can blend in with the happy ones.

In the long run this way of dealing with unsolved pain, will make us mentally and physically burned out, and ill.

Alternative 2.B. Introvert solution with acting out of the trauma:

Some people are acting out this intro version with alcohol, pills and drugs, even sex. This is an effort to get some quiet moments without feeling that hurting pain. Unfortunately, the pain will backfire double in strength the day after, and new doses of drugs, alcohol or sex are necessary to create a kind of new balance. But as we all know, this makes no lasting solution, just a numbness and temporary fog around the originally evil experience.

“self medication”  with alcohol

Very bad

Alternative 3: Extrovert solution. Transmission of pain through acting out.

The worst solution regarding psychic pain from traumas, is to get rid of it by acting it out on others. That is to ease ourselves by emotionally and physically creating the pain we carry in others. We can do this by creating situations that release our tensions by transmitting our unconscious mental and physical pain to others.

Psychologically, we might say that through this “method”, we are virtually living out our unsolved feelings vicariously through others. We do this by producing in others an equally painful experience like the one we are unconscious of in ourselves. We then almost rejoice over others misfortune and suffering. Worse we may oppress and abuse others.

          I love to see you suffer the pain I once did, but never managed to deal with. “Come on be my unreleased cry of help, my broken heart, my worst fear, my death as a human being”

Like this we can end up being the boss from hell, the odious abuser and the wife- beater. We can also develop to a tyrannizing man-bothering wife. Or we can simply develop to a cynical politician and statesman who constantly incite to war, and rarely accepts ceasefire agreements. Worst we can become violent and kill.

Untreated war-zone traumas are a big threat to personal health and international balance.

Political conflicts

On the international political level these last scenarios are typical in war-torn areas with overwhelmingly many untreated traumas. Without taking political standpoint in this article, I consider both the people and leadership in the Palestine regions, and the people and leadership in Israel to be severely suffering from old and newer untreated traumas. This does peacemaking extremely difficult and makes reconciliation even harder, because of long term mistrust and paranoid fear of each other. Even entrenched hatred.There are different types og hard-core traumas on each side of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Here I think it is mostly up to the international power state leaders to identify with the weakest part and less powerful nation. At the same time, they must understand the more powerful oppressor’s pathological fear of losing control. Then the parts in the conflict must see the advantages of peace and solution as better than the present situation.

Through generations of war and untreated traumas we see similar reactions and difficulties in peacemaking as well in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Columbia.

Columbia however, have managed through wise leaders on both govermental side and FARC, to come to a Peace agreement after over 50 years with civil war. For this effort, the Columbian President Juan Manuel Santos received the Nobel Peace Price of 2016. Such wise leaders should be models for the Middle-East region too!

Acting out the pain or passing it on to Your surroundings

This acting -out alternative both on the personal and political level, gives no solution to the problem. On the personal level it means absolutely no recognition of the psychological pain that is the origin of the evil behavior. Instead it offsets the pain and places it onto people in the environment.

In this way also the environment may suffer lasting traumas. Unfortunately, many of these individual trauma cases, have formed lasting personality structures, called personality disorders.                  For these people, empathy and consideration for others have perished on the way.

And those of us who have it so, do not experience suffering. It is the people close to, or with relations to this person who are hurting. Unfortunately, it is very rare that these people seek help. The result is that the acting out of the original pain and trauma will be repeated again and again.

It then becomes a sort of negative, – “pass it forward”, with a great risk of spreading around like a contaminating disease.

If we as people, populations, and nations shall manage to climb up one level, in the ultranew realgame delivered from life on earth itself;  “Game Of Life on Earth,” we must start with our traumas.

(Coming up: The positive forms of emotional transfer. The “Pay it Forward” and passing on of care, sympathy and love.)Pass it on,-today!