While pain is never pleasant, it often has a positive energy. There is an analgesia that comes with the shock of trauma, whether physical or emotional. It’s a numbness, usually a disbelief about whatever has happened, a cognitive dissonance – an incredulity between what you thought was true or valued or permanent, versus the facts in front of you.
When the shock wears off, it’s usually followed by anger, a rage even, born of loss and grief. Sometimes it’s a fury about the injustice of the shattering of what you held dear, or maybe it’s the wrath that demands a different outcome. Either way, for me at least, anger can have a helpful energy. There is a propelling strength about it, an agency for change, or at least for survival. Arun Ghandi, grandson of Mahatma Ghandi, said, “Anger to people is like gas to the automobile—it fuels you to move forward and get to a better place” (The Gift of Anger). It’s the energy of climbing out of the pit, or eventually, of climbing the mountain.
The drop into grief after this energy of anger is often harder, unexpected. Grief can be vicious in its ambush, with undulating waves of painful emotions. But grief is also the internal dullness that becomes a weighted blanket for the body. It can be a weary tedium of “going through the motions,” a dreariness and drabness of the spirit, an analgesia of the soul.
I learned about these typical stages of coming to terms with life’s challenges when my entry into healing from trauma and addiction was fueled by a near-insatiable appetite for helpful material. I devoured books about family systems, sexual abuse, and eventually sexual addiction, all of which helped me make sense of my past and then-present struggles. With sobriety, I eventually started a clinical training program as a marriage and family therapist, and both avenues informed me well about normal phases of processing trauma. What no one talked about, however, was the on-going, even life-long repetitions of these cycles.
For over thirty years, I would be somewhat surprised every time I was plummeted once again into a pit of pain. Almost immediately a harsh internal voice would ask, “Haven’t you dealt with this before? Why are you so upset again? What happened to all those gains in therapy?” (Yeah, she’s a vicious one.)
Cognitively, I knew someone is never “done” with the healing process. I understood about triggers and cumulative pain. I accepted that some trauma is so extensive that its effects flare without warning. Spiritually, I thought of this ongoing process as being akin to the spiritual walk, which is a life-long journey of deepening commitment to and relationship with God. I believe that’s true (and good theology). Yet that comparison felt insufficient. It didn’t quite fit the disorienting distress of feeling a dreadful pain that was historically familiar, yet astonishingly fresh.
I knew (and was immensely grateful) that I had, over the years, accumulated considerable knowledge, tools, perspective, and perseverance that helped navigate those times and episodes that felt like reversion to a past level. But I didn’t have adequate language to describe the disappointment, sometimes even the shame, of revisiting old issues. I needed a new paradigm.
Surprisingly, it came in an illustration about playing video games, which is something I know almost nothing about, other than that my grandsons (and their dad) love them.|
The analogy came from a woman with a history of long-term healing after attending a Bethesda workshop many years ago. In a recent email exchange, she detailed her distress at dealing again with some family-of-origin issues, along with the guilt of not fully trusting her gut about a difficult situation. This former participant found a helpful paradigm in the process of playing video games.
She shared that when you advance to a further level in the game, you’re not reverting to the starting point. You just face new and tougher obstacles, which makes the environment as challenging as when you were a novice of the game. But you also have the skills and tools you’ve acquired in earlier stages, and a more developed, experienced you emerges to slay new dragons. That reframe prompted a deep exhale of self-compassion.
Similarly, she added that when it comes to personal healing, you can trust God and the healthy instincts of prior experiences that God has grown in you. Plus, every time you navigate the obstacles of a new level, you advance to a higher one with more rewards as well as challenges. Success builds on success; growth builds on growth. You also reach a point where you can help others who are a level or few behind you.
In an interesting development, I sense that I’m becoming something of an elder stateswoman, a sage who is invited to share about long-term recovery, about extended healing. It’s a curious thing, because I consistently feel myself still fully immersed in that process, not someone who has “achieved” some higher state. I am, though, sixty nine years old with almost thirty-five years’ worth of journeying through and beyond multiple enormous life shifts.
I’m also once again finding myself in a new stage of grief at an advanced level. I am facing the reality that some core dreams are unrealistic for me at this point. I have given up any expectation of their fulfillment, certainly, and I’ve also relinquished any hope that they will be realized. Yes, there is a sense of loss in those choices, but there is also peace. In this letting go is a deeper opportunity to focus on the now, on all the present joys and serenity. Less emotional energy goes toward the negative of what isn’t true for me, which frees more internal space for gratitude and contentment.
If you find yourself revisiting some old painful landscape, perhaps you might view it as a step forward into deeper healing, into broadened acceptance. You’re not regressing; you’ve moved upward to the next level.
Marnie C. Ferree
Bethesda Workshops’ Founder