The culture we live in is full of extreme contradictions and paradoxes. While there are more and more possibilities for gaining access to information and resources all over the world, we are growing more and more isolated from each other physically and emotionally. "Connection" has become what your modem can offer through the world of the internet and e-mail. Relating face to face is becoming more archaic as busy people just don't have time to be together regularly or frequently. The tasks of daily life — doing — have taken precedence over being in most of our lives.

While some of us are lonely and depression has become a more familiar topic in the mainstream media, it is sometimes scary how well we have learned to "do it alone" in life. The modern lifestyle seems to be inculturating loss or at least delegation of primary relationships away from their biological or familial roots from the beginning to the end of life.

A dad of a three year old I met this morning at Drumlin Farm made a chilling comment to me. "What has our world come to," he asked, "when the two tasks we used to take most for granted as the main purpose and function of the family — childcare and eldercare — have been taken over by industry so fully that both childcare and eldercare industries are burgeoning?" He knew the chilling feeling well. His three year old had been in daycare from her earliest days, and his newborn daughter, just two weeks old, has another month before daycare will be her five day a week destination.

While perhaps we have more structures and options to provide for our material needs, our emotional, spiritual and relational needs have become secondary. Trauma, isolation, numbness and despair have become commonplace in modern life. Somewhere along the way human beings as a species have lost touch with both the needs and the importance of the soul.

"The Guided Self Healing" work influenced by Judith Swack and developed by Andy Hahn, and Terrence Real's insightful book, I Don't Want To Talk About It, offer powerful windows into the root cause of our common experience of trauma, isolation, numbness and despair.

The body does not distinguish between psychological and physical trauma. Ramsay Coolidge, a Guided Self-Healing practitioner and teacher notes, "Both become an energetic wound that sets a template that then becomes the basis of responding to future experiences, even after the original event is forgotten." Trauma is a layered energetic pattern consisting of emotions — shock/fear, anger/rage, sadness, hurt/pain; mental beliefs — who is at fault, trust, power and powerlessness, safety and responsibility; and physical experience — boundary violations and pain.

"Birth trauma reveals to us the newborn is far more than a conscious mind and body. The newborn makes crucial decisions and chooses values to live from for its life. The infant is open to all of life and accepts all experiences as a way of organizing beliefs and values about how the world works." Ramsay told a story of a client she worked with whose dad did not attend her birth. To compound this, the doctor who attended her birth was late for some event he wanted to get to, so as soon as she was born, he took off. As an infant, she took in and imprinted that experience as part of her multi-level beliefs about life. Her experience formed the belief, "Men don't want to be around me and don't show up for me." Deeply held beliefs like this color our experience in life. It is no surprise that this woman had difficulty in relationships with men.

"The choice point only lasts a moment," Ramsay explains, "but freezes there and forms the underlying beliefs about how the world works. You are like a deer in front of headlights, caught and frozen in time. Imagine jamming the reception on a radio and the annoying static that follows. From this traumatized place, reception of the subtle messages of your deep intuitive knowing is dose to impossible."

Scientist and clinician Judith Swack has noted the experience of "neglect trauma." While most traumas have recognized events, neglect trauma is the result of a non-event event. Neglect trauma typically occurs during infancy, from conception to eighteen to twenty-two month of age. It occurs when the infant or baby is totally dependent on the caretakers for food, shelter, love, nurturance and safety.

For example, Ramsay cites ideas from standard pediatric practice during the 1900's through the 1940's to let a child cry it out so they would not be spoiled. It was also advised to adhere to a regular feeding schedule not determined by the child. These practices neglected the baby's real needs. "Finally in 1946, Dr. Spock reversed the pediatrician-recommended trends that neglected babies, wherein a baby's cry for help (love, food safety or nurturance) would be met with the absence of parental response. This inflicts incredible pain, bringing on increased, crying and screaming which is further ignored and leaves the baby in more pain. After a long period of screaming, the baby becomes quiet and docile. The parent believe all is well. All is not well. Infancy is a foundational ego developmental stage when the baby learns to form hope and an enduring belief that one can attain one's deep and essential wishes," Ramsay notes.

When a baby is deprived at this level, they initially show less distress at being separated from their mother or being alone. They are less able to form emotional attachments and bonds with other people later in life. They have learned to live with a degree of isolation from self, family and life which becomes the foundation for relating all through life.

Ramsay notes that neglect trauma symptoms in adults are identified primarily as not being able to get what you need, especially with intimate partners. "There may be also the formation of compulsive, independent and self-sufficient behavior which is derived from a person not believing that s/he may ask for what s/he needs." Our world operates with and perpetuates a model of excessive self-reliance, sometime to a degree one could call pathological self-reliance.

Swack's concept of neglect trauma parallels Terrence Real's concept of passive trauma. Real differentiates active trauma — usually boundary violation of some kind, a clearly toxic interaction — and passive trauma — a form of emotional or physical neglect. In his book I Don't Want to Talk About It, Real notes, "Rather than a violent presence, passive trauma may be defined as a violent lack - the absence of nurture and responsibilities normally expected of a caregiver, the absence of connection." He takes this further. "In the instance of active trauma, a boy might come home with a badly scraped knee and torn, bloody pants only to have his father scream at him for ruining his clothes. In an instance of passive trauma, a boy would show up with a badly scraped knee, and the father would promise to be there in a moment only to stay on a business call for another ten minutes while the boy waits beside him, bleeding."

Real cites that most domestic violence experts estimate passive trauma occurs at least twice as frequently as active abuse. Richard Gelle a pioneer in violence research, estimates that one in eleven children —4 to 5 million each year — suffers from some form of extreme neglect.

Real takes this a step further, "I think not touching a child for decades at a time is a form of injury. I think withholding any expression of love until a young boy is a grown man is a form of emotional violence. And I believe that the violence men level against themselves and others is bred from just such circumstances."

Both violence and neglect are central to the socialization of men in our culture. The resulting coldness, emotional numbness and rejection set up a template to bounce the call of neglect and isolation back and forth between male and female genders and from one generation to the next. The disconnection and isolation so characteristic of life today reflects the results of neglect trauma or passive trauma being passed down through the generations.

Terrence Real entitles a chapter of his book "Perpetrating Masculinity." The words are chilling and real. He notes that little boys and girls start off with similar psychological profiles. They are equally emotional, expressive and dependent, equally desirous of physical affection. "At the youngest ages, both boys and girls are more like a stereotypical girl. If any differences exist, little boys are, in fact slightly more sensitive and expressive than little girls. They cry more easily when frustrated, appear more upset when a caregiver leaves the room. Until the age of four or five, both boys and girls rest comfortably in what one researcher has called 'the expressive-affiliate mode.' Studies indicate that girls are permitted to remain in that mode while boys are subtly —or forcibly — pushed out of it." Real makes a powerful point: "If traditional socialization takes aim at girls' voices, it takes aim at boys' hearts."

In many homes, violent fathers pass on active trauma to their sons as if toughness were a gift, a necessary initiation. Yet Real notes, the key component of a boy's healthy relationship to his father is affection, not "masculinity." "The boys who fare poorly in their psychological adjustment are not those without fathers, but those with abusive or neglectful fathers."

There is pressure on mothers to let go of their sons too early before the son is ready. Psychologist William Pollock defines the 'mother wound,' not as "the wound of the stereotypical mother who won't let go, but the wound of the mother who, in compliance to society's fear and rules, lets go too early."

Real makes the important points, "the true meaning of psychological separation is maturity, and we humans stand a better chance of maturing if we don't disconnect from one another...What maturity truly requires is the replacement of childish forms of closeness with more adult forms of closeness, not dislocation. There are virtually no images in this culture representing close, mature ties between men and their mothers. Maturity and connection are set up as choices that exclude one another."

Boys live under a social mandate that instructs them to turn away not just from the mother, but also from intimacy itself, and from cultivating or even grasping the values and skills that sustain deep emotional connection. A boy's rejection to the feminine in him leads to rejection of expressivity and rejection of vulnerability.

Unfortunately, once a person is traumatized in this way, it impacts his behavior towards himself and towards other people — men and women, children and adult. The desensitization that comes with traumatizing boys in their passage toward manhood leads to insensitivity and neglect or traumatization of all those who become close to or dependent on such men.

"Recovery is linked to opposing the force of disconnection and reentering the world of relationship. A man cannot recover from either overt or covert depression and remain emotionally numb at the same time. He cannot be related and walled off simultaneously; he cannot be intimate with others before establishing intimate terms with his own heart."

Trauma creates a dissociated trance state for the trauma survivor. The trance state becomes the lens through which the trauma survivor responds to and experiences life. Ramsay notes, "the true root cause of a trauma must be found to clear it. Otherwise, the patterns or symptoms resulting from the trauma occur repeatedly like a bad grade B movie. Unless the root cause of this pattern is found, one is merely working on the ripples of the trauma and not the location where the stone landed and no lasting relief is achieved," notes Ramsay. Conventional therapy may work towards the goal of finding the root cause, but the model is extremely limited "due to engaging only the conscious mind and memory." The root cause can be accessed through the body at a soul level.

Body-centered and energetic therapies are essential for gaining access to and working with the root cause of trauma. In the case of neglect trauma, body-centered psychospiritual therapy can also provide the missing experience of what the neglected child or adult really needs.

Present day body symptoms — a pressure in the chest, a sense of numbness or feeling nothing — in Ramsay Coolidge's words, "are connected and are the fuel of the time machine that take us back to the root cause." Trauma survivors often experience a variety of physical and psychological symptoms that have roots in their traumatic experience.

Terrence Real tells the story of a client he calls David whose father was violent and abusive with him as a boy. David suffered from both physical and psychological difficulties whose roots could be traced to the trauma and abuse. "In an attempt to escape his own depression, David let himself sink into behaviors — like irritability, dominance, drinking and emotional unavailability — that pushed away the very people whom he most loved and needed. He could not sleep without sleeping pills. He was bothered more and more by stomachs and backaches which his internist chalked up to stress."

Terrence describes some critical moments in David's healing process where he reconnects with the experience of the scared, angry young boy who was emotionally and physically abused by his father. "Deep inside his bullying and drinking, lay that little boy. The depressed part of David, the unacknowledged child, waited in darkness, resentfully, for its moment in the light, wreaking havoc on anyone near. When David courageously allowed the pain he had carried within him for decades to break through to the surface, his vulnerability drew the people he loved back toward him." While Real does not discuss this, I would not be surprised if David's emotional and physical health also greatly improved as he accessed, released and healed some of the roots of his pain.

It is sad and sometimes overwhelming to see the impact of neglect trauma on us both individually and culturally. Yet, the evolution and growing availability of body-centered and energetic approaches to healing offers hope both for those of us living today and for the next generation. I sincerely hope that more and more of us find the healing tools that both release us from decades of buried pain and allow us to be more loving and compassionate to our children, friends and co-habitants of this planet Earth.

____________________

Linda Marks, MSM, has practiced heart-centered, psychospiritual body-centered psychotherapy for sixteen years.  She is founder of the Institute for Emotional-Kinesthetic Psychotherapy in Newton, and author of LIVING WITH VISION: RECLAIMING THE POWER OF THE HEART (Knowledge Systems, 1988).  She has taught and spoken nationally and internationally, and has been a leader in the emerging field of somatic psychology.  She lives in Newton, MA with her four year old son, Alexander.  Linda's new book EMBODYING THE SOUL: DANCING INTO LIFE is due for release in the spring of 2001.  You can contact her at (617)965-7846 or LSMHEART@aol.com

Click Here For Special Profile

This article was originally published in Spirit of Change Magazine—not to be confused with OfSpirit.com Holistic "Internet" Magazine & Resource. We thank Spirit of Change, New England's Premiere Holistic "Print" magazine, for allowing us to give new life to this article and share it with OfSpirit.com visitors for education, entertainment and empowerment.
Click here for more information on Spirit of Change.