Trauma is not the event itself, such as an accident, psychological or physical assault, act of violence, war or natural disaster. Trauma is a complex internal survival mechanism that enables us to survive such an event and go on living.
Trauma is essentially a single illusion. It is the illusion that the devastating threat still exists. The fact that the danger is over, that I have survived and am now safe, has no reality for the trauma.
We have seen how trauma works physically, how illusion plays a fundamental role in this process, and how the soul itself traumatises us through our consciousness (‘I am’). Trauma comes from the human soul and it is also from the soul that it can be healed. Let us therefore look at the phenomenon of ‘spirituality’ as a general code for accessing the soul, the inner side of our aliveness.
Not only do we have a soul, but the soul also has us, in connection with all that is. It shapes us and our lives and seems to want us to become whole within ourselves.
You accept your parents by leaving them. It is both a letting go and a finding. When I, as an adult, give up all internal and external expectations of my father and mother, two things happen at once: I begin to realise my true freedom. At the same time I realise that I am alone. I am completely with myself. I find myself. Just as I am.
I accept my mother and father as they are, without expecting anything more from them as parents. For most people this sentence would simply be a call to betrayal, to betray their own ideals. That is what it is, and it is necessary. Without this ‘betrayal’ of one’s ideals, without the inner step from the ideal image to the reality of life, no one can grow up inwardly.
We cannot see the real people behind the image of our parents as long as we maintain the ideal of them, both in terms of their ‘good’ and ‘bad’ qualities. Nor can we see ourselves, because the ideal of our parents is always linked to an ideal self. Nor can we see the world, at least not as it really is, because our ideal of the world is naturally shaped by our ideal of our parents. One cannot exist without the other. Read more …
I accept myself as the child of my parents, just as I am now, without wanting to be different. First of all, I’m not writing here about how to get rid of your ‘patterns’. That’s not possible. And that’s not what this is about. Letting go’ and ‘getting rid of’ are based on the illusion that you can effectively work on yourself. For adults, however, the time for ‘working on yourself’ is over, both in your personal life and in therapy and counselling. Working on yourself is working against yourself. This is about letting yourself be, including your ‘patterns’.
1. You did not choose to enter into your relationship. You will not decide when it ends. 2. If you are suffering in your relationship, it is because of you. Your partner is suffering in the same way, only with himself. 3. …
Victim status is like a prison cell with the key inside. It works like a time machine: inside the prison cell is the past, when the devastating experience took place. Outside is the present, where we are safe. Often there are many years between the present and the past. It is important to be able to feel this distance. Read more.
When faced with an existential threat and neither fight nor flight is possible, panic triggers the last survival mode our reptilian brain has in store for us: paralysis or impotence. This gives us an additional chance of survival. However, this mode comes at a price: it freezes those parts of our existence that are affected by the devastating threat. This frozen life later rears its head in the form of all sorts of symptoms, demanding to be thawed.
Being a victim means I am powerless. I am therefore incapable of acting and therefore innocent. During the constellation work with the stages of life (time in the womb, childhood, adolescence and adulthood) I came across an astonishing parallel: the childhood experience, as shown in Wilfried Nelles’ Life Integration Process, corresponds very closely to the inner dynamics of the victim status. In the following I will therefore examine the victim state of childhood as a stage of life and consciousness, and how the connection to the present can work.
The Life Integration Process (LIP according to Nelles) is completely focused on the here and now. It is no longer about solving problems, but about completing the external process of adulthood that comes with age internally (emotionally) and truly accepting the inner freedom that comes with it. It has a deep and lasting effect, bringing resolution and strength.
