Healing
Trauma
“I
had learned that all the greatest and most important problems of life are
fundamentally insoluble…They can never be solved, but only outgrown.”
Donald
Kalsched, Ph.D. (Jungian Analyst)
Dr. Donald
Kalsched is an American Jungian Analyst who’s written and lectured world-wide
on the lasting effects of early childhood trauma. I think a lot about children
in war zones, and in refugee camps, and in confinement on our own southern
border, and I wonder what they will carry with them into adulthood. Since this
is Father’s Day in America, it may be a good time to ponder that. I won’t
attempt to recap Dr. Kalsched’s extensive research, but one of the fundamental
understandings I got from delving into it, and from my own experience, is that
when trauma happens to us at an early age, when we cannot understand much less
incorporate it, it records in our psyche as a blank spot. The protective nature
of the mind simply hides it in a place where it cannot be found except in
inexplicable emotions and baffling responses to things that tweak its shadow
memory.
Here is an example from
my own history: I was born in the 1940’s with respiratory problems—as a baby my
airways would simply close in response to certain conditions, cigarette smoke
being primary among them. Because I lived in a tiny hamlet in the Smoky
Mountains that did not have a hospital, my parents would drive me to St. Joseph’s
Mission Hospital in Ashville and leave me for extended periods of time. There, I
was given oxygen until things got better. Of course, since that happened in my
first two years of life, I have no memory of it except fleeting glimpses. However, in
the 1980’s I went to have some dental work. The dentist put a face mask over my
nose and mouth to deliver anesthesia, and the next thing I knew, I was in the
hallway shaking like a leaf in high wind. There was muscle memory of that
feeling of suffocation triggered by having a mask clamped over my face.
On this Father’s Day, I
think of all the good fathers in this world, the ones who shape their children
with love and guidance, who play with them and teach them, and help them to marshal
and channel their considerable energy. I also remember those kids who are
separated from fathers either because of war, or because the rules changed, and
they are caught in the breach. We need to understand that those wounds do not
easily heal; that the trauma inflicted upon them is, as Dr. Kalsched says,
insoluble. We cannot go back and change what has happened to them. Just as with
our African American and Native American children, we cannot change their
history. What we can do is change their future by recognizing that they are
wounded and why; and then doing everything possible to help them heal. Healing
is an inside job, but we can all be Good Fathers, and provide the space and the
opportunity for healing to happen. We can encourage them in such a loving way that
they will outgrow and incorporate their trauma. That will be a gift not only to
them, but to the whole world.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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