Trauma And Separation

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Under traumatic impact (explicit or latent), as we know, Self disintegrates, is divided into parts, one of them is demonic, aggressive in nature, to protect another, more vulnerable figure of the inner child, trauma becomes the glue between them. She fills the resulting voids.

In my opinion, a person who has been subjected to traumatic influences does not just dissociate, defending himself from injury, another consequence, no less difficult, is the loss of meaning. A traumatic event or a series of similar events does not occur at the will and consent of the person who was subjected to it. Therefore, such stories, for the bearer of trauma, may seem like a meaningless and merciless experiment of someone who has more power and strength, and the only meaning may be the desire for revenge, which also does not find resolution, since the offender is always more and more terrible and the desire to find support in salvation from loneliness and pain, and it is impossible to find it, because you cannot trust anyone who is more than a traumatized person.

Protection, by the type of dissociation, allows the personality to adapt quite successfully in the external world, the aggressive part of the Self, well hides the inner, traumatized child. But life is built on the principle of proof and constant response to offenders from the past, trauma rises like a banner, filling a person with pride in wearing it. At the same time, the semantic side of life is devastated, the personality seems to freeze in search, but rather in anticipation of new meanings. They can also become, as I said above, endless, looped experiences of pain and a thirst for justice and revenge. Even when the external traumatic influence ceases, the personality remains captive to its meanings distorted by the trauma, since the inner experience continues to overwhelm the personality.

Jung speaks of this as sensually colored affective complexes. This is how Kalshed describes it in his book. The inner world of trauma:

The external traumatic event ceases and the associated upheavals can be forgotten, but psychological consequences continue to overwhelm the inner world, and this happens, as Jung showed, in the form of certain images that form a cluster around a strong affect, which Jung called a "sensually colored complex." These complexes tend to behave autonomously, like frightening "creatures" that inhabit the inner world; they are represented in dreams in the form of attacking "enemies", terrible evil beasts, etc

As a result, the personality of its own life, and everything that fills it is perceived through the prism of these very traumatic complexes, through the meanings of revenge and suffering.

The split-off inner child finds himself surrounded and captured by a traumatic experience, building through it a relationship with the world, as well as building a relationship with this very suffering, as if with an inner object.

Thus, trauma becomes not just an experience, it becomes an internal object of the personality, introjected directly by the traumatic event.

… Also, the traumatic affective complex becomes a mediator between the external world and internal experiences, dictating their own reflections and vision of the external world.

James Holis in his book "Pass in the middle of the road, how to overcome the crisis" describes 4 stages of personality development, each of which determines the personal identity of each person. The first of them is children's, in which the Ego is completely dependent on the physical and psychological atmosphere in the family, created by the parental figures, all the subsequent ones relate to building relationships with the outside world, with society and oneself, gradually building relationships along the axis of the EGO-SELF …

Let's return to the child's identity, which primarily forms the personality, becomes the basis for all further actions and experiences. If at this stage of development, the identity is distorted by trauma, the personality is formed as if under the influence of a toxic substance, as this will further affect the formation of the personality. Psychological defenses, working very powerfully, will make it possible to experience age-related crises, gradually adapting to external reality, but the Ego-Self Axis will be formed on the basis of a distorted perception of the Ego, under the influence of a traumatic toxin

We can see a similar example in the film "The Sworn Virgins" directed by Laura Bispuri. An oath virgin (Alb. Virgjineshtë) is a woman who voluntarily accepted the oath of celibacy (complete renunciation of marriage and sexual life) and takes on the male role in the family. After taking an oath before the village elders, the "sworn virgin" is treated like a man. She wears men's clothing, leads a masculine lifestyle, and has a say in the governance of the community on an equal basis with men. One of the reasons that prompts a girl to take the oath of celibacy is her reluctance to enter into a marriage imposed on her by the community and the lack of women’s rights to live without a man. Another major motive may be the absence of men at the head of the family. In such a situation, women in the family are unprotected and do not have a representative on the community council. And only in the case when one of the women takes over the role of a man, the family has a defender of its interests in the council. The girl has a false ego. In this case, the trauma of identity does not allow being either a woman or a man. And healing becomes possible only through the death of a false identity, the destruction of the distorted Ego and the formation of the true I. acquires new meanings and desires.

Also, in a conversation with colleagues, the idea was born about the collective or transgenerational nature of the trauma. Trauma, as a family, ancient heirloom, can be inherited from generation to generation, or it will be a traumatic tradition that defies comprehension. Then, before those who want to change this algorithm of things, there will be a very difficult choice, and separation will have a collective process. Separating from a family scenario or custom will pay a high price in the form of first being expelled from the system, and then building your own new space.

As a result, the trauma is introjected into the intrapsychic space of the personality, filling the voids between the split self. She becomes a highly charged, destabilizing, very painful inner object capable of changing the reflection of reality.

It splits the personality into an aggressive protective part, which builds relationships with the outside world, through the prism of a traumatic event, and also becomes the environment of the inner child, forming his mental structure and filling him with painful meanings, the search for justice and the desire to endlessly compensate for the resulting emptiness.

As we know, this function, given the norm of personality development, is performed by the mother's figure and forms relations with the world and the internal state of the child.

My assumption is that trauma can fill the personality so much that it displaces or distorts all other internal objects.

Therefore, then, all further development processes will go through the traumatized internal objects.

In the norm of development, each person undergoes such a process as separation from the mother's figure. What does not imply the termination of relations with a real mother is building up one's own inner and outer space, while maintaining emotional ties with a real mother, accepting her and forming a qualitatively new one.

What happens if the inner space is filled with a traumatic affective charged experience that distorts the psychic optics and meanings of the personality?

In my opinion, until the moment of unconscious experience of trauma, a person does not actually build his own life. Life is subject to trauma, even if it is repressed or suppressed as an event and experience. An important stage in the life of an individual is the stage of separation from trauma, as from an internal object that fills the voids for a long time and fills the whole life of the individual with meaning.

Such an experience in an adult personality causes an internal conflict, and if, as a child, he did not have the opportunity to change the circumstances surrounding him and being in complete psychological and physical dependence on parental figures, identifying with the family. Then in the second half of life, with the formation of a new identity, a person is capable of transforming events. But the possibility of forming a different identity is presented only through the death of the previous, family one. Here, a person faces an important internal choice, the death and birth of a new one, or the continuation of holding the old traumatized space.

These experiences are accompanied by fear of betrayal, the collapse of illusions, which is very painful for the personality itself, but is an integral part of the separation process and building one's own self.

James Holis writes in the pass in the middle of the path:

The feeling of betrayal, the collapse of unjustified expectations, emptiness and loss of the meaning of life, which appears at the same time, gives rise to a midlife crisis. But it is during this crisis that a person gets the opportunity to become an individuality, overcoming the determining parental will, parental complexes and socio-cultural conformism. The tragedy of the situation lies in the fact that regressive psychic energy, with its submission to authority, often keeps a person in strong dependence on these complexes and thereby inhibits his personal development.

In my opinion, the following stages can be distinguished here.

- Meeting - the moment of awareness and recognition of the trauma as an event or a series of events that took place a long time ago that strongly influenced the mental structure of the personality. When the introjected experience is found to be settled against the will and desire of the individual, at this stage, there is an awareness of a different path and the possibility of other meanings, besides revenge. A new opportunity is given to oneself. This is the stage when the unconscious ceases to be called fate.

- Dialogue, one of the very long and difficult stages in the separation and subsequent individuation of a person. This is where pain and worries come out. The personality meets with its own shadow material, which may have kept it until then in the aspect of traumatic experience, parting with what brought meaning, building relationships, without the prism of trauma, without its projections. This is not just a meeting with the Minotaur, this is a dialogue with him about why I was looking for you? Why did I live with you for so long?

Acceptance or acceptance.

The currently popular concept of recognizing or accepting trauma and the objects associated with it distorts, in my opinion, the true meaning of these concepts. Acceptance is not just consent supplanting aggression, pain, and the desire for justice and punishment of the offenders. It contains a much deeper meaning, the recognition of a place for pain, not shared resentment for the whole world, desires for revenge and rage caused by trauma. Allocation of space in the intrapsychic world of the individual, where this or that trauma is stored, be it loss, violence, not love. At this stage, the personality learns to live with what has happened or has happened, without making these events and the experiences associated with them their own norm of life, here the optics of the personality turns to new angles and possibilities, while the experience itself is not expelled, and events do not try to be supplanted and be forgotten. The psyche, discovering a black hole in itself, which once absorbed all possible resources into itself, now becomes just a space, it is no longer served. The personality becomes capable of talking about it, but not through it.

At this stage, thinner layers of traumatization are rising, since the adaptation period has already passed, and it would seem that the person has built his own life, but without recognition, this life will be like a mouse running in a wheel, since everything that a person does is dictated by emotional hunger and desire not to notice this very hunger. In my opinion, such changes are not just a course of random events, they are an internal conscious choice of a person who has decided to develop in his own life.

Transformation.

When there is justice and the need for events that traumatized earlier, there is no more space left between the split-off parts of the self, all parts will unite into a whole, and a new meaning and space of personality is acquired or formed, without destroying the previous experience.