My therapy group had a retreat this past weekend. We traveled a few hours, stayed in a house, ate well, and processed a lot of grief. The two therapists (a married couple) who facilitate the group are licensed social workers and have a spiritual orientation which feels comfortable to me as well as, from what I can tell, a few agnostics in the group.
The six members of the group started by pairing up and sharing with his/her partner what "story" each wished to work on over the weekend. My story had to do with my social gesture; how I am, in a basic way, with other people. There are at least two traumas from my early life which affect my social gesture significantly.
First is the sexual abuse I received at the hands of a 15 year old female babysitter, over the course of several months, when I was five and six years old.
Second is being abandoned by my dad when I was six.
What I communicated to my "partner" and the group as a whole is that these two traumas affect my interaction with any human being I meet. When I meet a woman/female there is part of me which experiences fear because I subconsciously wonder if she is going to sexually attack me. When I meet a man/male there is part of me which experiences fear because I wonder if he is going to abandon me.
I am able to conduct myself passably in social situations. At times people have even told me that I have skill and strength in the social realm. I think that my higher self carries this strength but that my lower self, the deeply wounded me inside of me, keeps me from connecting with others. I can connect on a relatively surface level but hold up an inner barrier to others (my wife excepted) in terms of developing any deeper connection.
What I am feeling really good about is that this "story" I've just laid out started to get shaken during the retreat. I was given an opportunity to tell my story, do a lot of crying, and process the trauma using a technique called "Body Centered Psychotherapy" (BCP) used by the two facilitators.
The idea behind the BCP used in our group is that, being human, we each store the feeling signature of trauma in our body. If we can access the buried emotions stored in the body, in a safe and supportive environment, and express them, then we can free ourselves from what happens when we bottle them up.
As I was talking with the group about my grief over being molested and having my father abandon me I started sobbing. I came to a realization that I had been a bright and radiant little boy as a young child and much of that vitality inverted as I was getting slammed by these traumas at age five and six.
I believe it is accurate to say that I went from being a radiant child to being a wounded child between the ages of 4 and 7.
As my sobs began to slow down one of the facilitators asked if I would be open to working with the trauma in a more physical way. I agreed and we went to the next room where there was a large, cube-shaped cushion and a mattress-like cushion. Everyone sat across from me, so I could see them, as I stood in front of the cube-cushion.
The therapist gave me a tennis racket and invited me to hit the cushion with it in a rhythmic way and vocalize as a way to access the buried emotions. I looked at my friends in the room and they looked at me with great caring and compassion. Some of them had tears streaming down their cheeks as they deeply empathized with the pain and anguish I was expressing. I felt deeply cared for.
My emotions are very buried but nevertheless began to come up as I struck the cushion. My energy for it let up a bit and at that moment the therapist took the mattress-like cushion and put it between me and the others in the room.
The therapist said, "this is the obstruction between you and these people--what are you going to do?" He asked me if I thought the people in the room cared for me. It was obvious to me they did. He and another strong man stood on the other side of this cushion and provided resistance. I pushed and pushed, feeling like a wounded and sad soul. He kept encouraging me to find the feelings that were there and express them.
Suddenly, I felt a connection with the feelings and began to push against the cushion such that the two on the other side could not hold me back. My strength was much greater than it had been. I had made a breakthrough.
If I had stopped with sitting on the chair sobbing I would also have processed some of the emotions. But my experience I carried forward from that moment would have been of being a very sad and wounded person. Because I brought my body into action with the subsequent exercise, I was now becoming the hero in my new story. The new story is that I am able to reach into my grief and process it so that I can develop deeper connections with the people who were in that room at that time. I can build on that.
My part of the session ended as the therapist asked me if I wanted to lie down and ask others in the room to physically support me. I asked someone to cradle my head, to hold my leg, to hold my hand. All seven people in the room held me as I lay there, feeling very supported as I processed my pain. It was like I was lying on a cloud of human warmth and caring.
My old story has been about suffering trauma and then not being able to tell anyone about it (or telling people but not having it be acknowledged). In recent years my wife has been a wonderful friend to me and has helped me bring out parts of my pain in order that it might be healed.
My therapy group is taking this process to the next level. And as I make progress I can build on the work I have already done.
Having been home for a few days, going back to work, etc. I have felt very tender. I caught a cold for the first time in several months. The group facilitators told us that as we went from the "expanded" state of the retreat to being back home, we would likely start feeling more "small". They reassured us that it is about the "breathing" of the healing process and that we should not feel alarmed.
I feel like a weight is coming off of my shoulders; like the little kid who wanted to scream as he was getting hammered now could let out the pain and be supported and cared for in a way he never was before. It is safe now. I can heal the little guy who has been so hurt for the past 35 years.
I know this healing path will take time, most likely years, to release and properly grieve the traumas which have, for so long, colored the lens of what I think of myself, how I express myself. It seems like my higher self is going to have more room to grow now that all that pain, all that is so deeply connected to my lower self, is coming forward for healing.
This is not easy. But it's all I can do. To refuse to do this work would be to negate myself. And I am done with that.
Your comments are welcome.
Warmly, Ben
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