THE WHITE TIGER: THE TROUBLE WITH TRAUMA
A Radical Risk
Diving into Deep Water
There was a rising concern, while writing Willing Enslavement, Entrainment, and Forgetting and Remembering, that the world was not ready for such radical honesty.
This concern was unfounded, as the published Posts resulted in new paid and unpaid subscribers and shares. Apparently, a nerve has been struck.
It seems, perhaps, the door has been opened to allow deep honesty to rise from the depths and break the surface at last. We are about to find out how much.
The White Tiger is willing to wade out deeply into this water to find the answer.
Deep breath! The dive begins…
The Trouble with Trauma
Trauma has been a word carefully, thoughtfully, most deliberately, avoided in the writing of The White Tiger. The number of times the word has been used has been kept at the absolute minimum. It may not exceed five times, if that.
Trauma has become a word assigned GREAT meaning. Almost all aspects of psychotherapeutic interventions are now “trauma-informed.” This word has been given great Power. Hence, the Radical Risk of the perspective on offer.
Trauma is a word driving a great portion of an allopathic practice. It logically follows that all practices generate revenue, or, of course, they would not exist. By definition, allopathic practices, collectively and in their silos, are industries. Medicine, in all its forms, including psychiatry and psychology, is an industry. Surgical practice, in all its arenas, is an industry. Pharma is an industry. The whole ball of wax, the Healthcare Industry. Collectively, allopathic medicine, in all its forms generates billions upon billions of dollars annually, psychiatry and psychology included.
Industries become their own hungry beasts that develop a voracious appetite that must be fed. Anything that serves as fodder for food will be propagated. By its very nature, it must generate money to stay alive. The more legitimized, the more research papers, the more embraced by the practicing community - the more it becomes a guaranteed source of revenue. This is just a simple fact.
This legitimized practice is then released into the practitioner community. Distributed to all providers, without regard to skill set. Free to be wielded as it will be, by individuals and groups.
And legitimized means GOOD, right???
We have arrived at both the Power and the Trouble with Trauma.
Framing Perspective
Before we swim out into even deeper water, this is a good place to frame some perspective.
First, what is about to be explored has nothing to do with severe and deeply complex traumas. It has nothing to do with the trauma of war. These are the two instances where the context lends credence to the use of the word. These are not the subjects of this discourse.
Second, The White Tiger is in the midst of a discussion about Vertical Time. (Vertical Time 1.0, 2.0, 3.0) Although Willing Enslavement, Entrainment, Forgetting and Remembering, and this Post may feel like a sidebar, they are not. All are integral to the discussion of Deprogramming. Deprogramming frees The Mind, removes the chains, and releases the Psyche to think and process in a completely different way, a way called Vertical Time. If you can follow this progression, you will see that the conversation about to be had is a critically relevant one.
Third, this is a discussion of the use of “Trauma” as a starting point for psychotherapeutic engagement and the resultant applications and implications, not the use of the word in the broader perspective.
Fourth, this is not a conversation intended to diminish anyone’s individual suffering. It is an objective assessment of how, from a Societal and Cultural perspective, we navigate the implications and outcomes of that suffering.
The subject matter The White Tiger addresses is the suffering of the Human Psyche. Almost everything before the Post titled Root Cause is an exploration of the etiology of the suffering, everything after – the antidote.
BIG breath! This dive will be very deep…
An Analysis of the Word
Words are symbols. Symbols are assigned meaning. Words mean things. Words carry power. Words carry energy. Words TRANSFER energy. This was discussed and demonstrated, in real time, for the reader in the Post titled “First, there was the WORD…”
With this understanding as the background, let’s consider the Word, “Trauma.”
Repeat the word “Trauma” to yourself ten times. Notice what happens in your body-pay attention-closely. Whatever you feel happening now is happening at the level of the 90 percent every single time you use the word! Repeating it ten times just brings it into the ten percent that is your conscious awareness. Your response to the word is ENTRAINED.
Trauma is a word that comes directly from and induces FEAR! It is a FEAR-BASED WORD!! Trauma is something we, collectively, try very hard to avoid. It is a very fearful thing. Imagine Trauma, metaphorically and in any form, being glued to you or following you around all day every day – what is going to happen to your body? What is going to happen to your perspective? What is going to happen to your mental health?
A Good Label
Psychiatry and psychology love a good label. It is deemed necessary for the revenue that it drives. It is used to justify the services rendered - no label, no services – no services, no revenue. We have a whole book of labels to choose from and assign to each and every client that we see.
To be clear, Trauma is not a formal DSM-V diagnosis. There is a category for “Trauma and Stressor Related Disorders.” However, the psychotherapeutic community functions in a culture of labels.
Standardized tests greet clients coming in the door to assess the measure of their sustained traumas. The conversation around trauma begins before the client crosses the threshold. Conversations among providers, regarding client care, centers around the type and degree of the client’s traumatic experiences. It is the topic around which many, if not most, psychotherapeutic services are now centered.
The rhetoric used in the context of the delivery of these services is interesting as well. We talk to clients about “your trauma.” Words mean things. This is the language of ownership. It solidifies the assignment of the Trauma label onto the client. We just stamped onto their forehead, “Traumatized.” We then proceed to discuss “their trauma” in every session, driving the stake more deeply into the ground.
Very recently, I had a client state, “Well I have…(listed their 3 trauma and addiction related diagnoses) and that’s why I turn to carbs - to make myself feel better.” To note, this client has been in therapy for years. Have we served this client well?
Trauma as Identity
What happens when you give the Human Psyche a label?
“You have trauma”...sounds like an intractable disease. It is “your trauma.”
As with the client above, so effortlessly, so insidiously, like being wrapped in a warm blanket…the label becomes the Identity.
Trauma as Identity...becomes Trauma as Conditioned Belief.
Trauma as Conditioned Belief
Of all of the species on the planet, only human beings ask the question, “Why?”
It is what drives empirical science, is it not?
Why do we need to know the “Why” of everything so much and so voraciously? We have an innate intolerance for the unknown. If you read The White Tiger, you know Fear of the Unknown is one of our seven fundamental fears.
Now what is soooo interesting about the Human Psyche is that the answer does not really matter. It just needs to be accepted by the individual psyche as a good enough answer to sate the nagging question.
Let’s say the nagging question is, “Why am I screwed up?”
So, if I give you an answer like, you are screwed up because you are a sinner; and I follow with the rationale for how I arrived at that conclusion, that actually, to many individual and group psyches is mind-blowingly acceptable. It meets criteria for a good enough answer to sate the nagging question. Is that not stunning in contemplation?
So, I give you this fear-based label – you are “Traumatized” - this is the “Why” of you. This is who you were, and who you are now. The question becomes: Have I laid the foundation for a Conditioned Belief that you will forever hold and orient your life, thoughts, and actions around?
The natural response of the Human Psyche when exposed to Trauma is to seek help, is it not? Trauma = HELP! This help that is being sought, must, by definition, come from outside of the Self, correct? The implication and understanding being, you cannot navigate this by yourself.
Interestingly enough, labeling you a “sinner” has the same implication and understanding, does it not?
If you cannot successfully navigate something on your own, the Power, YOUR Power shifts away from you. It is given away to an outside party. You are now dependent, ie. no heaven for you if you do not depend upon the designated god(s).
You gave away your power voluntarily, because you were told that navigating your issues lies outside of your purview. It was a good enough answer that sated the nagging question, therefore, you accepted it and your fate.
So, what have we done?
We have given you a label that identifies you and we have facilitated you taking ownership of it, assimilating it into your psyche. This fear-based label carries the natural implication that outside help is necessary, therefore, you are helpless and powerless, in a small or great degree, to overcome this great problem without our help.
We have created two things – a Conditioned Belief and an Annuity.
The Conditioned Belief
What lies at the foundation of the Conditioned Belief? - learned helplessness. We can now tell you what you need. You are not in a position to know if it is going to help you or not. You just have to blindly trust that we know what we are doing.
(In the writing of this post, I am continually struck by the correlation to organized religion, which was not foreseen or planned.)
You need this therapy or that therapy. That therapy did not help? Try this therapy. You need medication. Take this medication. This medication did not help? Try that medication. That was not a good therapist? Try this therapist. That was not a good Psychiatrist? Try this Psychiatrist.
Society is so primed for this, so neatly programmed. It is Conditioned Belief – learned helplessness. “I am broken, “you all” have verified that for me. I cannot fix myself, I have tried and failed. Help me. Fix me. That is the purpose that you are to serve, is it not?”
You are stuck on this hamster wheel for a single reason. You have been Conditioned to Believe that Psychiatry and Psychology are the primary, if not only, “legitimate” resources available. As far as you know, your only other option is to just abort the process and live in your perpetual discomfort.
What If?
The White Tiger explored The Trouble with Trauma, as indirectly as possible, in the Post, A Pillar of Salt. The intention was to be innocuous and indirect so that the message did not become overshadowed by this conversation, which would have been premature.
It is the habit of The White Tiger, in the exploration of all areas of the Human Psyche, to take the approach of asking questions. The answers will find themselves. These are The White Tiger’s questions around how we approach the difficulties, challenges, unpleasant, and ugly aspects of human experience.
What if we pulled our clients/ourselves out of musty attics and moldy basements - rummaging through, and choking on, dust and mold filled trunks of rotten moth-eaten clothing?
What if we stopped calling the things that happen to us names and simply discuss life experiences? Always recognizing, never diminishing or minimizing, the pain woven into those experiences, however they are experiences nonetheless.
What if we stopped teaching/entraining our clients/ourselves to focus on their/our trauma? (A Pillar of Salt)
What if we taught our clients/ourselves how to change their/our lives by One degree? (One Degree)
What if we taught everyone how to State Change? (Rescue Me!, A Simple Morning Meditation, A Super Simple Way to Soothe your SELF, Holding Peace)
What if we taught our clients/ourselves that the words that are thought and spoken become their/our life and energy? (First there was the WORD…)
What if we taught only the lessons of The Three Critical Keys: Intention, No Question of Worth, and No Judgement -Neutrality? (Total Control, Use Your SUPERPOWER!, New Templates, The Law of One, The Stepping Stones Part 1, 2, 3, 4)
What if we taught our clients/ourselves how to use Vertical Time? (Vertical Time 1.0, 2.0, 3.0)
What if we taught food as medicine, not just for physical health, but for mental and psychological health?
What if we taught that food can be used to treat depression, anxiety and ADHD?
What if this was the curriculum for the Human Psyche? How many psychotropic meds would we need then? How many visits to therapists?
What if we taught an entirely new way of looking at the experience of the Human Psyche, minus all of the lifelong, standardized, sanctioned, legitimized programming?
There are No Chains
After my mother made her best effort to take my life, I realized that I had arrived at a point of Homicide or Suicide. I also had the option of curling up in a ball, in the corner of some psych ward somewhere, and just tapping out of the game. I just could not choose any of those options. I chose my life.
In the act of choosing my life, at the level of my Psyche, I had chosen not to be ruled by my past. I found that, as ungodly, unspeakably, hard as it was, I could find my way to freedom, no matter how great the cost. I was willing to pay it. In the paying of that cost, and it was significant, I made choices that released me into a space unconfined by my past.
I was told - “You cannot leave your family. You will always be blood. You will always be one of us.” I left every member of my family, and it saved my life.
“You cannot change your name; you will always be a so and so (family name).” – I have done it – twice. I am so not a so and so.
There are no chains. We are bound to nothing except to what we choose.
Suffering of the Human Psyche, when thought about, not as something done to you, but as an experience, even of the most ugly and unpleasant nature, can be survived. In the surviving is the opportunity to utilize this experience as a catalyst to change the way you want to live your life. You live in a Universe that holds you subject to nothing and to no one. Why does no one teach that?
Abandoning Trauma
If you wait for the world to change, if you wait for the world to “get you,” to recognize your suffering and accommodate it, you will die in that posture. If you want to change how the world perceives you and interacts with you, then you must change; subsequently, the world’s response to you has to, must, change. It is a principle of the laws of System. If you change one thing in a System, the entire System must change. It is not the same System. The world is a System. Change your own perspective of yourself, and the rules of engagement with the world will automatically change.
Begin with Deprogramming. Abandon the Societal and Cultural dogmas and Conditioned Beliefs. Abandon the concept of “Trauma,” embrace what is, in truth and in fact, lived experience - as uninvited as it is or was. Abandon the Conditioned Belief that you do not hold the answers. You hold ALL of the answers.
Forgiveness is a Construct, birthed in the cradle of Judgement. It is one of the greatest barriers to abandoning Trauma. If there is No Judgement, there is no need for this great cumbersome challenging distraction. (A Pause, A Reflection and the Path to Psychological Freedom)
It is impossible, or nearly impossible, to navigate the human experience without difficult and unpleasant experiences. As stated in A Pillar of Salt, they begin at birth. As stated in A Pillar of Salt, the predominant source of these experiences are the humans that we are born to, related to, and interact with on a daily basis.
Everyone is free to live the life that they choose. Just know that you can always choose a different one - one lived in Neutrality, where the breath flows easily, and The Mind is peaceful - in Vertical Time.
Growth does not occur in the Past. Growth does not occur in the Future. Growth can only ever occur in the Present – in Vertical Time.
Now inhale deeeeply. We have arrived back at the surface. Breathe…easily…
