Anamchara: Online Consulting Services

Hopefully the previous posts have shown that childhood trauma activates the ego into a reactive and defensive state that activates the psychological defense mechanisms of the infant. However, the egos defensive strategies rather than defending the Authentic Self begin to repress aspects of Self that are believed to be the cause of the trauma. These strategies begin to create a personality or person that the ego believes will be more successful at maintaining the Unity of mother and child and therefore the survival of the infant. This manipulation of personality creates a deviance in the path to individuation. This deviance or diversion is the source of all deviance later in life. The greater the trauma in infancy the greater the deviance later in life. The greater the childhood trauma the greater the interference is by the ego and the more the personality is distorted as more and more of the Authentic Self is repressed into the unconscious. The Authentic Self does not die it is merely imprisoned deep within the cellar of the unconscious where it continues to be grow and develop unconsciously. The repressed aspects of the Self do not die either but remain active in the unconscious in an immature state, this is often referred to as the dark side of ones personality or Shadow side, that part of ourselves we like to deny and keep hidden from view. However the Shadow is active   or shall we say reactive and can cause much suffering in life with its outbursts. An obvious example used frequently is anger. When an infant perceives that it’s basic emotional needs are not being met it feels a disconnect from the We causing fear, the infant cries out for attention hoping to get its genuine needs met but instead is met with disapproval, causing more stress and more frantic crying. The ego quickly intervenes and decides that this emotional outburst is unacceptable to the mother and begins to repress these displays of frustration and represses the emotional feeling into the unconscious. Over time these repressed emotions become more and more powerful and will break out when stress or frustration levels become high enough. These emotional outbursts will be childlike because they are immature. Repression prevents the infant from maturing their emotional experiences and incorporating them into the process of individuation, the journey towards wholeness and completion. 

The personality created by the ego is a deviant personality, deviated from the truth and life’s path of individuation. This false self by its very nature is fraudulent, it’s entire existence is dependent upon its creator the ego. Therefore the very nature of the false self is egocentric. This created persona by its very nature is maladaptive, an adaptation to childhood trauma. Being maladaptive, egocentric and possessing a very dark and powerful shadow side full of repressed emotion the false self is doomed to suffer. The false self is false, it is fraudulent, it is an artificial construct, it does not belong. How could it not suffer?

You are not you.  The you that you identify with and present to the world, is not you, the real you lies buried within and does not suffer, suffering is confined to the surface of life and has no permanence or depth. Suffering is always attached to the egocentric self and none of this is your fault. The deviation began in infancy, an infants response to trauma or unmet needs. You cannot blame yourself as an infant for infantile responses, remember the prelinguistic infant lacking words cannot think, it can only react at the emotional level. Thinking is totally language dependent. Try thinking without using words. It cannot be done even by an adult. Infants and children rely on the functions of sensation, feeling and intuition to navigate life. Rational thought does not exist yet and begins to develop at around two years of age. Your personality is well developed by the time you begin to think and has been entirely shaped by your earliest experiences of life, all of which were beyond your control. Your ego did its best to ensure your physical survival but at a great cost to your emotional and psychological development and to your Authenticity. 

The more you are able to bring into consciousness the fact that the suffering you is not you, the more you can detach from your ego and the false self, the less suffering you will experience now. Your ego controls your thinking and it is your thinking that causes suffering. There are painful experiences in life for sure, but pain does not cause suffering. It is our egos response to pain that causes suffering, suffering results from our thinking. If you could silence your thoughts even for a few minutes your suffering would cease during the silent period and only return with your thinking. 

If you are suffering now just distract yourself from your thinking for a few minutes and focus your attention to your breathing and just breath, ignoring your thoughts for a few minutes and see how you feel. Meditation is not about stopping our thoughts, it is about just ignoring them for a time, not getting caught up by them and interacting with them. Learning to meditate and faithfully practicing it can be very helpful in ending suffering and help along the path to Individuation. 

My current favorite book on meditation which has replaced my old standby “The Cloud of Unknowing” is.

Cynthia Bourgeault: The Heart of Centering Prayer: Nondual Christianity in Theory and Practice

The Authentic Self is richly imbued with intuition, understanding, empathy and compassion. All the wounding that seemed so traumatic and painful for the ego was absorbed into the Self and used to develop the necessary and essential qualities of the Authentic life which are empathy and compassion. True Wisdom arises from the understanding that empathy creates, leading to compassion and an ever expanding We consciousness, necessary for psychological and social well being. 

While the ego reacted judgmentally and condemned our pain as bad and in need of fixing the Self intuitively knew that pain was essential for its growth. “No pain, no gain.”  The Authentic Self intuitively knew that on its journey of individuation overcoming life’s obstacles was essential for growth. The Authentic Self instinctively knew the meaning and purpose of life was individuation, to become complete, to become whole, to transcend the vulgarities of the material real. This was the true meaning and purpose of life. It was not as the reactive ego believed to win affection, esteem, approval, significance and security externally but to develop these aspects within itself through difficult, challenging and often painful worldly experience. The Authentic Self was born with a deep sense of Unity and belonging, the tribal feeling is pre programmed into our DNA. The infant fully believed that “I and my mother are One”. This is the Unity experience that actually transcends the sense of belonging, since belonging implies separation, or duality and not singularity. 

I believe that this Unity experience existed before the child was even conceived. The primordial Unity experience transcends time and and is the original conscious experience of all life, a conscious experience that is the very foundation of Creation, when the Creator became conscious of Himself life began. 

The way out of our suffering is the way back to Self, the inner journey towards Authenticity, integrity, individuation and Wisdom. The journey begins with the recognition that you are not your ego and it’s created sense of self, the self you now identify with. In other words I am not I, but I am that, that which is buried deeply within my unconscious. We begin the process of overcoming the ego and it’s associated persona through dissolution and disassociation, and the rigorous practice of expanding empathy and compassion. Empathy and compassion can be brought into our conscious life by actively guarding ones heart from all criticism, judgementalism, and condemnation. Whenever one notices these types of thoughts they forcefully stop themselves and reject these thoughts and try very hard to understand the person or situation from the others perspective. Why are they behaving this way, what are they feeling, what wounding in their life underlies this behavior, how can I help them. In other words we walk a mile in their shoes, we see life from their perspective and we try sincerely to empathically understand their woundedness and then we act with compassion. 

Try to imagine who you would be if your life was compassion based, and keep in mind that compassion is one of the key components of authenticity as it builds community and the Unity or We experience. Now imagine a society based upon compassion and not money. Which world would you rather live in. In which world would their be less suffering?

The journey to end suffering continues. 

The purpose of the ego is to act as an interface and buffer between the Authentic Self of the child and the material realm. It is who you really are and were always meant to be. Most people spend much of their adult life trying to figure out who they really are, their amorphous personality is capable of so many roles and identities, we are very chameleon like, ever changing our persona to fit the external circumstance. But who are we really?  Who you really are is called the Authentic Self and it is within you buried deeply within your personal unconscious, buried beneath layer upon layer of the ego and the false persona it created in infancy.  This is a direct result of childhood trauma.

The most damaging aspect of childhood trauma is the repression of the Authentic Self and the development of the false self. This separation from the Authentic self is the source of all suffering. We are disconnected from the life force within us. We have rejected and abandoned our true self in order to develop a false self that is more capable of getting its needs met by our mother. In short we have rejected, abandoned and betrayed ourSelf and suffer as a result. 

All infants are hypersensitive emotional beings easily wounded by the slightest perception of rejection or disapproval. Remember the child’s life totally depends on its mother’s attachment to it. If she leaves the child dies. The infant must maintain this bond at all costs, even the cost of its true identity. the infant must maintain the “We”, the experience of Unity or a morbid sense of dread results. 

Infants are very needy and demand almost the undivided attention of their mothers unless they are sleeping, thankfully they do sleep a lot. However our materialistic, capitalist society does not provide women nor their families the support they need to raise children successfully. It takes a community to raise a child, not an isolated mother left to cope on her own. The needs of an infant combined with all the other socially induced stressors on the mother can and often do overwhelm her. Her stress can make her emotionally unavailable to the infant, she can become upset and frustrated by the infants constant neediness and detach or worse lash out at the child verbally or perhaps physically and spank the child. The hypersensitive, emotionally attuned infant is very sensitive to its mother’s emotional states and easily wounded by them. If she is upset, angry or depressed the child is immediately aware of her emotional state and senses that their bond is weakening. 

The infantile ego of the infant now comes into play. The situation needs fixing, the infant assumes responsibility for the situation and wants to fix it, the infant feels it is at fault and must take corrective action. The ego uses infantile defense mechanisms to maintain the sense of the “We” experience without any capacity to consider the long term consequences of its defensive actions. The well intentioned infantile ego begins to develop a persona or personality that is more capable of maintaining the Unity experience, a personality that is more acceptable to the mother. The defense mechanism of repression is one of the most preferred and simplistic strategies employed by the ego. The ego simply represses any aspect of the true Self it perceives as unacceptable or upsetting to the mother into the unconscious  The ego begins to develop adaptive strategies to fit its perception of the external reality. These adaptions produce an ever changing personality designed to win the approval, acceptance, affection, significance and esteem of the mother. If the ego is successful the sense of Unity and belonging is restored and the fear is relieved for the moment. 

Now that the ego has been activated in a defensive role life for the child will never be the same, over the years the ego will react with short sighted strategies designed to defend the We feeling, the sense of belonging is paramount in the ego’s world view, even the Authentic Self is sacrificed in the pursuit of the Unity experience.  The ego over time creates a persona an actor on the world stage that it feels is more adaptive to the harsh realities of life. We as adults live our lives out of this false self and continue to pursue affection, attention, esteem, significance and security at all costs, without regard to who we really are and meant to be. We often feel lost, because we are lost to our true Self, we feel alone, because we have lost the Unity experience and this produces a sense of impending doom or fear. Cut off from our true Self we search desperately in the material realm to fill the inner void. We may even be somewhat successful, accumulating great fame and fortune, but when alone the inner emptiness returns and more adaption is required as we continually move farther and farther from the truth. 

The truth is the Authentic Self is alive and well, passively waiting our return. The Unity experience, the deep sense of belonging is alive and well, although incomplete without us. We will continue to suffer until we turn around and make the internal journey back to our Authentic Self. We suffer as a result of the infantile defensive reactions of our ego, we have become egocentric and thankfully it is only our ego that suffers. The Authentic Self was never at risk in infancy, the ego judged emotional pain as unacceptable, where as the Authentic Self merely absorbed it and used it to develop empathy and compassion. The ego has no capacity for empathy or compassion, they are perceived as incompatible with survival. Only the Authentic Self is capable of empathy and compassion. If you experience either of these qualities then you know your Authentic Self is alive and well. 

Next I’ll take a look at the way back. 

First the basics.

The human infant is the most dependent creature born on earth. The infant is totally dependent upon its mother for its survival for the first two years of life. While still in the womb a very powerful biological bond is formed with its mother, this bond is so powerful that the child does not see itself as a separate entity from the mother. In other words the process of individuation does not begin until after twelve months of age. From the infants perspective mother and child are one, a “We”.

Fritz Kunkle wrote extensively about childhood trauma in the 1930’s and 40’s and he called it the “Breach of the We”, if this powerful bond between mother and child is damaged in any way a breach of the “We” occurs and the individuation process is upset. Fritz Kunkle is the founder of trauma theory. much of what you will read here is based upon his works.

The entire psychological and emotional development of the infant is totally based upon this powerful biological attachment to the mother. Psychological and emotional attachment quickly follow and these bonds must be nourished, protected and maintained for the first five years of a child’s life. Even the child’s auto immune system is developed during this period at the mothers breast.

Infants are pre-rational and much of their experience is based upon the perceptions of an infant, being pre- rational and pre-linguistic there is very little rational thought of any kind. Thinking depends upon language and an infant doesn’t have language until the second year of life, its entire experience is emotional, and emotional trauma is the foundation of all trauma. An infants emotional experience must be carefully guarded in the first two years of life. The powerful biological, emotional and psychological bonds must not be damaged or weakened in any way.

Infants have emotional needs that must be met if healthy psychological development is to follow. Children need love, affection, acceptance, attention, tenderness, and a deep sense of acceptance and belonging. If any of these basic emotional needs are lacking the infant feels it’s very survival is at risk and this fear is overwhelming for the pre-rational infant. This is primal fear, laid down in the memory with no associated language or thoughts, it is an all powerful gut feeling that radiates throughout the entire body. All negative emotions in the future will anchor to this primary emotion of fear. That’s why people say there are only two emotions love and fear, they are the two primary emotions of an infant. The infant loves its mother through the process of attachment and fears death if it feels neglect, abandonment or any sense of not being fully accepted as it is. Emotional trauma in infancy causes great suffering for the infant. All future suffering will attach to this primary experience of suffering. This is why one must fully understand their childhood emotional experience if they are to make sense of their suffering as an adult. in other words you are suffering now because you suffered then, and the two are directly related.

In part 2 we will look at the role of the ego in childhood development, especially in the wounded child.

We suffer because of our wants, desires and attachments. We want things to be different than they are, we want things to change, to be different, to be different than they are. Our current circumstance is unacceptable and we lack the power to accept things as they are, not as we would have them be. If only we had the power of acceptance we would feel so much better, but we try and we cannot succeed. The anguish, the pain and suffering continue. 

Perhaps it is attachment that lies at the root of our suffering. Something or someone we love has been taken from us, and their loss is heartbreaking, we are devastated by the loss and we can’t seem to “just get over it”, to let go, no, we are totally consumed by the loss and it seems our suffering will not end. 

When suffering, we worry, we ruminate, we play the tape over and over in our mind, if only I had done this or that, if only this or that had been different, I wouldn’t be suffering now. 

Suffering just seems to be part of the human condition, so much so that Buddha said “life is suffering”. But why”? do we have to suffer or is their another option on the journey from cradle to grave?  The answer is yes there is another option. Suffering is an unconscious choice, made by very powerful unconscious forces, rooted in our past, and seemingly beyond our control. Our suffering is not a result of the things that are happening now, no matter how tragic they may be. Our suffering rises up from the past and attaches to the present circumstances. All of us have suffered in the past, as little children and especially as infants. It is here that we can uncover the roots of our suffering. Everyone of us has suffered as an infant to some extent and it is the degree or extent of our suffering as an infant that determines our current state of suffering. You may have had the most loving parents, but being human they made mistakes, and their mistakes were wounding to the child, we are all wounded to some extent, we are all the wounded child. Unfortunately for some the wounding is profound and perhaps even deliberate, these traumatized souls are the most broken, the most wounded in our midst as a result of their childhood abuse. So all of us exist on a scale of wounding, ranging from very mild to extreme. The extent of our wounding or abuse, our childhood trauma determines our adult symptomatology or our pathology. Our childhood trauma is the source of our current suffering. Deeply rooted feelings, values, beliefs and expectations are  rising up from our wounded child and attaching to our current situation. By journeying within and back to our childhood we can uncover the root causes of our suffering, but we must understand that this is not a blame game, blame, judgement and condemnation have no place in life let alone on the healing journey. In my case my parents grew up in England and survived World War 1, the Great Depression and World War II. They were both heavily traumatized people who then had me, and as a result of their trauma I too became traumatized. Understanding, empathy and compassion leading to forgiveness are the essential elements of healing.  Many of you, like me may not have many childhood memories, our pain resulted in repression and our memories were deeply repressed into the unconscious as part of a psychological defense strategy employed by our ego. Do not be afraid that you may not be able to heal as a result of the lack of childhood memories, our symptomatology is sufficient for healing. 

In my next piece I will examine and attempt to explain childhood trauma and it’s affect upon all of us