Healing From Trauma: The Power of "BeingWith" (Part 1).

 

 "Suffering begins with pain but becomes suffering because of our isolation and powerlessness in its presence." Curt Thompson

This is a fantastic episode on The Place We Find Ourselves podcast. Today, Adam Young is talking to Curt Thompson in an episode entitled: Healing From Trauma: The Power of "BeingWith" (Part 1). 

Adam said that for trauma to become embedded in our body, we must have (1) powerlessness and (2) abandonment by potential caregivers. 

If pain is not immediately resolved and we can't do anything about it. We know if we cut our finger, we can't solve the problem right then. But we know within ten days, we will feel better. But we can't see that when we have marriage issues. Cancer. Trauma. 

As humans, we reflect on the past with gratitude and plan into the future with hope. But our brokenness and trauma take us out of that realm and we look into the past with regret and our future with anxiety. And that's where suffering lodges. 

What about the traumas we have that leave scars that means we need to talk about this for a long long time? You will get tired of this and you will leave me. And we suffer due to the isolation. What if Job's friends could sit with him willingly and just be with him for as long as it takes. 

In his book, Thompson tells us that we may not suffer less but we can instead suffer differently. 

In the Bible, Paul and Jesus and Peter all write about suffering and talk about it matter-of-factly. They don't talk about it as if it is to be avoided. They talk about it as if it is to be expected. They are to join in Christ's suffering. This is what is bringing us connection to Him and to others which will lead to hope and joy. This is counter-intuitive to any other story the world offers. 

If you are willing to be your suffering into a community that is the body of Jesus Christ. We can then suffer without feeling we have to fix it. Instead, if you are with me in the suffering, at some point, I begin to pay as much attention to you as I pay attention to my pain in the moment I am experiencing it. But suffering, if we can name it and allow it to be, it will deepen our sense of connection, my sense of being loved and cared for, at the very point when the suffering is in my life. 

This means that the pain doesn't stop but instead now I am feeling felt. I am being seen. And if I will begin to talk about that experience, it creates curiosity in other people who will then talk about it with you. Crucifixtion if Jesus saying, "I am with you." This will take when is meant for evil and will deepen our sense of being loved and cared for. Our very perception of suffering begins to transform because we start to see it as a vehicle to being loved!

It is a real thing. 

How will you respond to it? 

And how will the story of the gospel help us understand this suffering? 

We can only give love to someone else if we have it to give. We want people to love us! Until they actually try to. We are less capable of receiving love, then we are of loving others. All of our music talks about how much we want to love. But when they try to, as soon as the patient walks in and sits down, they want to protect themselves against you. The parts that bring a person into the doctor's office, are the parts that are actually very afraid when it gets closer. 

Have you ever seen someone who gets overwhelmed by people loving them? Maybe at a funeral or after a surgery or tragedy? They will stop wanting to make eye-contact. It is hard to receive love. These are the things that a newborn has NO defenses against. A newborn is looking to absorb being loved. But our traumas teach us that allowing us to be loved is a life-threatening proposition. 

Confessional Communities are groups of people that sit alongside you and listen to you as you are learning, grieving, working through your grief. This work is SLOW. But it is DURABLE. We don't leave stones unturned because of shame. You get the opportunity to get soothed, seen, safe, and secure. In these communities, your vulnerability becomes transformational for other people. And part of his healing becomes his very witness to how his vulnerability is a process of healing for others.

"My simple desire is to remind us that the way forward is through suffering, not around it, but all within relationships," writes Curt in his book. "Reintroducing ourselves to the nature of relationships in the context of suffering can transform not only our relationships, but our experience of suffering as well."

There is a way in which the human heart and mind and right limbic brain operate. This part of the brain heals via relational interactions. The presence, comfort, the transforming power of the holy spirit. It is mediated through the body of Christ which is to say other human beings. After the second page of the Bible, everything is human-mediated. It is no longer just God-mediated.

We are exceptional at surviving ourselves. If a child is suffering from brutality in their young life, they will develop coping mechanisms. Some people are not so good at this and they end up in drugs or alcohol or terrible coping mechanisms. We are capable of paying attention to certain things and blocking other things. We can build walls to turn off ourselves to things that are painful and turn it on to things that we need to cope in the world. It's a crap-shoot to say why some people cope in "more healthy" ways. One person is on drugs. The other person's brain and body are keeping track. And at some point, the brain-body matrix will come together and say "I'm done." If I ignore a sprained ankle, it will eventually say, "You can't avoid paying attention this anymore." Because it's too painful. We don't do this because we are stupid. We do this to survive. 

Newborns survive through co-regulation. They borrow the brain of the parent. So when they are in distress, they are not alone in their distress. The parents, by their very presence, helps the child see that they are not alone. A newborn is suffering. But their parent is with them in co-regulation. But, if we don't have that experience as a child, there is no way out from it. What if you are nauseous all the time but never throw up? That would be awesome. You'd have to just ignore it. 

But then there are these symptoms that come out of your body. And you can longer ignore those symptoms. The curiosity of your counselor is going to start bringing the stuff out of their body. If someone is with you, that changes anything. 

This is just part 1. I will be writing more about part 2 very soon!