Why I think Trauma might not be possible to heal at all

[Javfly33]

And why this doesn't have to be 'terrible' news.

After spending easily the last 10 years of my life trying to 'sort it out', and I´ve tried practically fucking everything, I´ve come to the conclusion, or at least the possibility of this being the conclusion about trauma/emotional pain:

It might not be possible to eliminate it/heal it 

Trying to heal it and eliminate it might be more entanglement onto the trauma story, you might never get out of it.

So the 'solution' might be to accept that is always going to be there. Under the hood. Certain trauma-Thoughts or energy trying to catch you. And is your responsibility of Freedom to not get entangled with them, to accept is always going to be there, like a barking annoying dog, you just close the window and let it bark until it gets tired.

And why do I say this? Well, thing is, trauma might be just memory.

As there is mental memory and physical memory, there is also energetic memory, genetic memory, ...etc, in the Yoga tradition they speak about more than 6-7 types of memory your system is carrying and handling it.

Taking into account this, the trauma or emotional pain that you might be struggling now, might not be the result of just one single even on childhood like some people affirm, but just a whole chunk of memory, not just of your whole childhood, but of your ancestors, from first single ameba, you are carrying an enormous amount of Karma.

So you unless you brute force yourself to 'clean' or 'purify' this memory (which, honestly, I don't know if its even possible to do), this memory will always be there. Our freedom might be in knowing how to handle it, put it in a bag, not carrying it on our shoulders, but like in a suitcase with wheels, so it can't touch us, so we know the pain and those thoughts is not us, is just memory.

Excerpt from sadhguru:

Quote

If you try and sit for twelve hours a day and meditate, initially it will look like a great fortune, but within a month you will go nuts. If you cross that madness, you will cross everything, but most people give up when the madness arises within them, because it is not easy. This is a primal cry of your father, your grandfather, your forefathers and the goddamn bacteria. All of them will scream to find expression. They will not keep quiet. You can obliterate all of them, but it is a hard path which needs a lot of sadhana. Or you can distance yourself from them – let them scream but you are not bothered because you don’t hear. These are two different ways, but you cannot ignore them because they throb in every cell in your body.

 

Edited October 20, 2023 by Javfly33

[An young being]

10 minutes ago, Javfly33 said:

 

And why do I say this? Well, thing is, trauma might be just memory.

 

The whole point of meditation I believe is to stop reacting to memories. What is called as thoughts arise from different kinds of memories like some names you have specified. Some have the gift of forgetting quickly, which is widely thought of as a disability. They could easily forget all the memories, including trauma. For those who can't, meditation or mindfulness could be a great tool. 

How do memories get etched in our mind? I don't know the scientific reason, but based on my observation, we all know that the intensity of an experience, the most joyful and the most traumatic, are the ones which get etched strongly in our minds. But, most of us have the ability to forget as time passes, but what makes some people remember it deeply while others could forget it easily?

It's the reaction to the thoughts that arise in your mind regarding that memory. The immediate thoughts on the trauma spontaneously arise in our mind from our memory and we can't avoid it. But, what we do is that we react to that memory, recalling the suffering you had gone through, which makes it a new and stronger memory. We keep doing it forever. In order to forget, we have to stop reacting, and that's where meditation and mindfulness can help us. Just learn to observe the memory and let it pass and it automatically becomes silent with practice or the mind moves on to a new memory.

Another way meditation can help with trauma is preventing the creation of new traumas. When you practice your mind to be still, you become unreactive to the surroundings. This helps in not getting affected by significant events to or around you.

A problem for people who meditate with strong traumatic memories is that these memories keep resurfacing on a deeper level during meditation. That's why it is important to have a proper teacher+ psychologist to guide you in being mindful. One of my suggestion will be to practice mindfulness in nature, either physically or through natural sounds and videos and keep them as meditative objects, so that positive thoughts fill up the mind. After regular practice, we can move to face the traumatic thoughts at our own pace.

[Bazooka Jesus]

@Javfly33 @An young being

Well said, both of you.

I agree that trauma will never one hundred percent be 'dissolved'; in a way, this whole reality is one giant trauma. Dissolve the trauma/karma and you dissolve yourself!

But you can definitely make it lighter, less dense, more transparent. That is the whole point of the game of life.

57 minutes ago, Javfly33 said:

Our freedom might be in knowing how to handle it, put it in a bag, not carrying it on our shoulders, but like in a suitcase with wheels, so it can't touch us, so we know the pain and those thoughts is not us, is just memory.

Great analogy. 👍

[Felliks]

Quote

If I could erase trauma, I'd erase me

This exactly. From experience, I see the careful use of psychedelics as the #1 method of removing trauma. We must distance ourselves from that self to alter it, otherwise, I must change I, which doesn't happen often, if ever.

[Hojo]

I dont think you can just because your identity is created from trauma. you will have to give up your existence. the only reason we think we exist is cause god got traumatized in some way, then it dissociates into something that has a preference of not that.

Edited October 20, 2023 by Hojo

[AerisVahnEphelia]

everyone is born of trauma, our existence is a trauma.

 

[PurpleTree]

4 minutes ago, AerisVahnEphelia said:

everyone is born of trauma, our existence is a trauma.

 

But can it be healed?

[Felliks]

Quote

But can it be healed?

Is Leo healed?

[Razard86]

Rather than concluding, explore and discover. 

[gettoefl]

18 hours ago, Javfly33 said:

 

Excerpt from sadhguru:

Quote

If you try and sit for twelve hours a day and meditate, initially it will look like a great fortune, but within a month you will go nuts. If you cross that madness, you will cross everything, but most people give up when the madness arises within them, because it is not easy. This is a primal cry of your father, your grandfather, your forefathers and the goddamn bacteria. All of them will scream to find expression. They will not keep quiet. You can obliterate all of them, but it is a hard path which needs a lot of sadhana. Or you can distance yourself from them – let them scream but you are not bothered because you don’t hear. These are two different ways, but you cannot ignore them because they throb in every cell in your body.

 

awareness IS obliteration ... it is about rewiring your relationship to thoughts so that when they come you see them and feel them but don't jump aboard their madness and thus delight in their recollection ... thoughts need a firm hand and to be put in their place ... eminenently feasible to undertake this though only a rare one will fulfil it

[SeaMonster]

Trauma itself isn't the problem, in the sense that something once happened to me and now I experience negative emotions in certain situations (or generally.)

The problem is how you ADAPTED to that trauma -- how you COPE with it.  That is usually a bad habit of some kind.

If you understood the mechanism of how the trauma has twisted your behaviors, you could change your behaviors and the trauma would no longer be an issue.

 

Edited October 21, 2023 by SeaMonster

[SeaMonster]

13 hours ago, Felliks said:

Is Leo healed?

In order to heal from trauma, you need to seek genuine understanding of your own psyche.

I don't see Leo focusing on that much -- frankly, because I don't think he wants to change certain negative behaviors he partakes in.  He is in denial that a lot of things he does are harmful to himself.

[Bazooka Jesus]

20 hours ago, Vibes said:

.And I know you guys don't like when people bring psychedelics into the conversations, but I think psychs can help you erase the traumatized person temporarily and as you do it more and more, this last layer of identity weakens and you expand to something beyond, beautiful and healthier.

Psychedelics can definitely be helpful... but just like any 'agressive' spiritual practice, they are a double-edged sword. They don't provide a shortcut around the pain but rather put the process of burning through it into hyper drive; and experciencing ten times more suffering in one tenth of the time it would take you otherwise is not always the best strategy. It can lead to dangerous imbalances and all kinds of spiritual delusions, so it's really crucial to find your own personal sweet spot between proactively grabbing the bull by the horns on one hand and allowing the process to naturally unfold in its own sweet time on the other. When in doubt, always err on the side of patience... and don't hesitate to seek out professional help, even (or maybe especially) if you have trust issues with therapists.

Slow and steady wins the race, as Leo used to say... even though he hasn't exactly given the most stellar example, lol.

[SeaMonster]

LOL.  Doing psychedelics over and over is the very definition of self-destructive behavior.

People who advocate that really don't understand themselves or the psychology of spirituality.

Psychedelics put a great responsibility on you to make changes in your life based on all the insights they provide.  Usually it doesn't take many trips to figure out what needs to change.  It isn't rocket science.

If you do psychedelics without making changes based on those insights, you're just inflating your ego (spiritual narcissism.)

This results in more self-delusion than you began with.