I was deeply troubled by Robin Williams’ suicide –– as much for myself as for him. Because in recent months, I too, have found myself grappling with entities that can take hold of our weak spots & tip us over into not wanting to be here. My antidote has been to talk, reveal, reach out & teach what I can about this.
Our witnessing of one another’s authentic & messy inner lives is strong medicine.
So, here’s another layer of what’s been happening for me lately: I’ve been shown that I’ve hit a “spiritual glass ceiling” under my present emotional/psychological reality. I’ve taken all of my spiritual practices & understandings as far as they can go without dealing more fully with the emotional wounds still festering from my childhood. Now it’s time to descend into the unglorified muck.
Yup, this means good ole therapy.
Again. This time, more of the veils are coming off, more of the pain is arising. There’s a revisiting of old horrors in a new key, a coming more fully out of denial about how the traumatic events and conditions I’ve experienced have affected me.
Coming Out of My Denial about Trauma
My brand of wounding includes parental death & abandonment when I was 10 years old, followed quickly by enforced separation from my elders & community of friends, emotional abuse & neglect by new caretakers, bullying by step family members, and the witnessing of similar abuse suffered by my beloved siblings.
Behind all that was generational trauma caused by feudalism & poverty in the southern Italy of my ancestors, combined with immigration to an alien land & deep suffering here in America. Layer upon layer upon layer. My trauma has been worse than that of some, milder than that of others.
Regardless of its measurement on the Richter scale, regardless of whether it is the result of karma or whether our dramas are all illusion, I have had to stand up and say: This is MY trauma and it has caused real emotions, real issues in my life, real repeating patterns & real suffering.
Yes, there may be worse horrors are going on in the world, but I realize it is my duty & birthright to give myself permission to feel the feelings about this postage stamp called My Reality. I deserve to feel. I deserve to cry. I deserve to heal. I deserve to not be strong sometimes & get off the mill of healing others while neglecting my own healing. I’m encouraged to take responsibility for acting out of pain, become more conscious about how I affect others & choose actions that create greater harmony.
This, Too, Is Spiritual Work
In fact, the psychological is also spiritual. I find the therapy room can become a holy temple where the relationship between client and therapist can create a web of synchronicity, mystery & meaning that can lead to the deepest kind of catharsis possible.
And it can lead to planetary healing. Indeed, it may well be the only thing that does. I’m coming to the conclusion that the world’s ills will be solved one person at a time as we each admit & heal our own wounding and trauma. We can try as much collective action as we might, but it will not stick if each of us is still acting out of our own unresolved & deeply personal pain.
Responses to my personal disclosures of late indicate that the more I share, the more others feel as though they, too, have permission to express their own emotions. I have noticed several folks reaching out for help because of this. Of course, there is the occasional comment that such personal revelations are “inappropriate.” But I see such responses –– usually by people associated with academia –– as indicative of the very problem I’m trying to resolve: the institutionalized repression of our real lives, real feelings, and real needs.
I know many of you have already been through a great deal of personal healing and growth work. Thank you for doing this sacred work on the planet.
IMAGINE –– Resolving the Inner War First
All of this has led me to imagine people in the conflict zones of the world doing emotional healing work. Imagine instead of mobilizing to repress, silence, manipulate, or kill others when things got tense people sat themselves down and said: Hey, I’m getting triggered. Why? What trauma is getting activated? How much of this is in the past instead of the present?
How can I truly feel safe on the planet without resorting to violence and violating others? How is my own shadow operating in all of this & how may I do things differently?