The Essence of Trauma
Disclaimer: I am not usually one for content warnings; however, I feel obliged to state that this post contains material that some people might find disturbing, including depictions of unusual bodily discharge due to years of serious self-infliction.
Trauma is the psychosomatic imprint that life-threatening or terrifying incidents carve into their victims. Far-reaching and systemic, trauma affects the lives of all people housed in our global ecosystem. It has become a pop-culture reference point, applied so broadly that its genuine meaning is sometimes lost, floating aimlessly in the vastness of information. My hope is two-fold: 1) to expand the base of understanding around trauma and its complexities to then narrow the specialized focus onto what is critical, and 2) to nurture in my peers a sincere interest towards trauma, both in the physiological implications and spiritual plausibility. The subject is often too gut-wrenching to address directly—those who are able must work to open up a compassionate channel of inquiry that reaches deep into the hearts of those who suffer from it. Trauma suppresses valuable systems and segregates them, choking the color and vitality out of once flourishing contours.
Thomas Hübl, modern mystic and resident expert in spiritual traumatology, has been a fierce influence on me in recent years. His latest book, Attuned, is a brilliant foray into the ethereal facets of trauma, simplifying the process of traumatic indentation to the constriction of energetic flow. He presents a threefold ideological framework to capture the high-level implications of trauma, which includes individual, ancestral, and collective trauma. My aspiration is not to regurgitate what Hübl has already theorized; instead, I hope to offer fresh descriptions and hypotheses based loosely on what has stuck with me from my exposure to his work, amplified and refined based on my own lived history and logical analyses.
Individual trauma is most commonly understood — the internal change that occurs when something tragic happens. Hübl’s metaphor is apt — envisioning the healthy human form as a constant influx and outflux of energy, trauma acts to narrow the flowing conduits of information, so much so that entire areas are isolated from the universal source.12 This results in symptomatic display — anxiety, numbness, absence, nightmares, illness and more. During traumatic affairs, a self-protective mechanism is activated that delays felt sensations which would otherwise be overwhelming. We literally shut down and shut off, and only through being truly seen can the healing process begin, ideally in a safe setting where deferred feelings can be released, explored and integrated.
Speaking experientially, I have observed trauma slithering inside my body and mind—an active agent suppressing positive affect and productive output. I have felt it built up within me, literally, pressurizing regions of my face, throat, chest and stomach. This is a somewhat contrasted explanation compared to Hübl’s—rather than acting to modulate existing energetic structure and composition, trauma causes the addition of a subtle, sinister energy that occupies the tiniest corridors of the body, compounding analogously to arterial plaque.3 The release of this energy, whatever it actually may be, is a challenging act of pure catharsis. Many days were spent possessed by this dark essence, feeling like a force other than my own was in control. It was sometimes unbearable, as if there were something screaming inside of me and begging to come out yet at the same time clinging dearly to its host.
This line of thinking is derived not only based on feelings that I encountered—on multiple occasions I actually expelled a strange thick liquid, one with remarkable fluid properties. This mysterious goo became both a joke and a matter of deep contemplation as its production and expulsion continued—for awhile I believed it to be ectoplasm as it felt alive, conscious, eerie. When probed with my finger the white, viscous substance would “latch” on, pulling itself upwards onto my skin, against the pull of gravity. Partly driven by madness, I even went so far as to save a specimen, freezing it with the hope of one day performing a laboratory-based inquiry; sadly, vials were lost in transition due to the generalized chaos of my then addictions.
Throughout the process of removal, I would experience a distinctly odd feeling of solid movement through various parts of my body, usually corresponding to a disjointed sensation—as if something were travelling through a channel far too small for its load, forcibly—a rather uncomfortable setting. Further, to assist the process I would squeeze and distort different regions of my body, aiding the unnatural flow of what would soon enter my mouth to be dispelled. My general postulation was that heavy buildup of traumatic energy/matter was moving through my lymphatic system.4
In regards to the exit pathway of this strange liquid, I cannot yet say with certainty—without having an advanced understanding of anatomy it is rather hard to decipher. The feeling is so bizarre and so unlike any other bodily process that I would intuitively claim that it was coming from neither of my windpipe or my esophagus. This would infer that there is some micro-sized conduit, perhaps undiscovered by modern science, which has an exit located somewhere around that of both the respiratory and digestive tract entry-points, in the throat. My honest experience would thus indicate that the lymphatic network includes some sort of purge line which exits into the mouth, probably meant only for gases or micro-solids/energy but in my case being traversed by a relatively large quantity of mystery trauma-liquid.
This may seem ridiculous; however, the felt experience is undeniable and the fluid type is completely foreign, relative to anything I have ever seen in terms of behavioral profile. To support this, the somatic trauma that I put myself through for nearly a decade, through insanely heavy binge-drinking and the inability to puke any of that up, was astronomical and would, if anything could, warrant an unprecedented amount of stored toxic matter and/or energy.5 Combined with a variety of interspersed incidents causing severe psychological trauma, I sometimes wonder if my God-gifted path is to become intimately and viscerally familiar with trauma and its more esoteric intricacies. A lot of this is obviously speculation—a unique topic I would love to research properly—for now based fundamentally in personal anecdote. I know with absolute certainty that my body and mind felt unbelievably more whole after the excretion of this toxified waste.
Catalysts for elimination were usually drug-related, typically due to hallucinogen usage—psilocybin mushrooms and LSD, for example. Under the influence of these substances, I would always have peculiar psychosomatic occurrences—some positive and some not—leaving me perplexed and seeking answers from a theoretical standpoint. It is an interesting link—revered in ancient cultures for their spiritual powers, it would make sense that they initiate the removal of foreign toxins, mystical or not. I warn anyone reading this to tread very carefully if attempting such an experiment—despite their potential in inducing a healthy purge, they can be dangerous. Twice I ended up in the ER in my early days of psychedelic trial, before I had the appropriate awareness to target a specific goal. Having no wherewithal to rid myself of this traumatic matter yet a large agglomeration naturally trying to separate, my body resorted to total system shutdown and I nearly lost my life.6
Moving outwards from individual trauma, we come to the idea of ancestral trauma—something far more abstract, asking us to look back through generations of hardship which actively play a role in in the present. Conceptually, ancestral trauma is also described as an energetic dysfunction — essentially, it is the superposition of centuries of unhealed, unintegrated suffering that has been transmitted through conception, both spiritually and physically. This does not only create a retroactive footprint. Undigested trauma of past and present is passed along to future populations, imagined by Hübl as a vertical axis travelling up and down through an arbitrary person, extending into times past and coming.
This brings about an intriguing pondering—how far back into the future are we afflicted by in the now? Eventually, at the bottom row of lineage we all merge—a singularity—making every single person the product of ancient fleshy source material. We now exist as an incredibly complex tree comprised of billions of living people and an estimated 105 billion souls who ever existed. Envisage the sheer magnitude of serious trauma that has gone unheard and unseen, left unresolved as each soul left its body. One could speculate that the mechanistic workings of ancestral trauma lie in the spiritual realm of soul, which could somehow “hold” onto the traumatic imprint between incarnations. This leads to another angle: past-life trauma. Assuming the soul and incarnation to be real, true concepts, the soul’s lineage, different than our conception-based ancestry, could provide a more accurate, or at least different, succession of unintegrated trauma. The people incarnated by one particular soul would generally not be related through direct lineage, and thus the idea of “ancestral” would change. However, applying the original definition of ancestral trauma to all living people would encompass the same foundation of past trauma as would the new definition, making it an interesting but ultimately redundant label.
Hübl lastly puts forth the societal component of trauma — genocide, school shootings, and natural disaster all generate what he coined to be collective trauma. These globally experienced events impress psychological damage on those directly affected and also cast a massively dark shadow on the collective psyche. Picture our global community as an organic entity, one that shifts and evolves in reaction to happenings within its boundary. Devastating cultural incidents strangle the energetic pathways which unite healthy communities, rendering them divided and torn. In order to once again flourish after such events, people of all nations must create and maintain a holding space within themselves, one where the dark aspects of humanity can be directly witnessed, at least to the degree that they are able. Doing so cumulatively theoretically would allow for strangled sectors of energy in the collective consciousness to reunite with the lifeforce—the source of goodness, creativity and brotherly love. To be meticulous in such an act is ideal—a utopian striving point, of course, where no residual wounds are left open in the populated framework.
Combining these three aspects, it becomes blatantly evident that trauma is far more expansive than many may think and is, in fact, not a strictly personal issue. Hübl claimed another term—IAC (individual-ancestral-collective) fluidity, referring to the interconnected, entangled nature of the different realms of trauma. For example, someone directly impacted by the 911 tragedy is clearly afflicted in their own way but simultaneously, the incident reverberates through the communal structure and into the lives of all future descendants, even future inhabitants of the city. This could be applied on a smaller-scale also—a person’s unhealed trauma is not only detrimental to them but affects the entire social fabric, perhaps in a minor way taken alone but when aggregated, the effect is massive.
I knew trauma viscerally well before I did intellectually. Something was always lurking beneath the surface, spring-loaded and waiting to erupt should it be triggered. Even the rudimentary idea of mental health was totally alien to me until my mid-20s, when I finally decided to do something about the unsustainable pain eating away at my insides. This is a commonality between many, no doubt, and should not be the case. Something so profoundly widespread should be common knowledge. Countless families must operate under the haunting guise of legacy pain, impacted wholly by wrongdoings that happened long before they were even born. Whole cultures are attenuated by hidden, sinister forces, heritage sins constantly pushed out of eye’s view, left to fester and grow.
There exists a deeply-rooted stigmatization in our culture, regarding trauma, that is seemingly starting to loosen yet still pervasive. Addiction and trauma are natural correspondences—many fall into destructive patterns of substance abuse to minimize the felt dimensions of unhealed trauma, often without any awareness of the connection. In a society so intimidatingly large and busy, the common person easily gets lost in the noise, plagued by a nameless, invisible monster that lives both inside of them and around them, rendering them anti-social and lethargic. It is near impossible to understand this dynamic well enough to help oneself while living deep within it. Trauma keeps a huge proportion of our population stuck—helpless and unproductive to the pressing issues facing our species. I would venture a guess that we as a whole operate well below our capacity, and this is largely due to unseen traumatic manifestation and resultant addictions.7
What can we do? Such a daunting problem seems impossible to solve. Our generation may be unsalvageable in some ways, by large — infested by trauma so deeply permeated that even our most noble efforts may make little difference. Healing is possible on an individual basis but that subset is definitively a minority group. Sadly, culture is built upon traumatization—if we truly want to make a dent on major societal issues, we need to attack the problem at its origin. We must be future oriented. Humanity depends on our ability to transfer trauma-informed knowledge and practices into the torch-carrying hands of our youth. The sickness of unhealed trauma injures every area of reality — it coats the foundational matrix of civilization like viscous oil in porous media. I propose here three simple steps that anyone may undertake, which, if done on a large-scale, would negate the otherwise inevitable detriment to our future society:
Mass awareness of trauma — individual, ancestral, and collective — and its systematic assault, perpetuated through compassionate teaching to anyone who will listen and especially so to children;
Personal commitment to the reconciliation of both self-trauma and familial cycles of traumatization, eradicating patterns of outwardly-invisible or obvious destruction; and
Creating genuine space for those around us — havens of depressurization that allow those who enter to become heard, seen and unburdened of parasitic trauma and its manifestation—inclusive of collective trauma to the point that is manageable and feasible for each unique person.
When I write of Hübl’s metaphor here, I mean more so that it is an unproven, abstract concept, not something purely metaphorical necessarily. Where we are presently in regards to societal understanding of spirituality, Hübl’s theory is probably classified as metaphor.
The “source” here could refer to God or the spirit of the universe. In Attuned Hübl talks of vitality-providing life force that trauma cuts people off from. “Source” could also refer to something intrinsic to the person, like their soul/spirit.
Both these viewpoints could also be true or even complement each other—different ways to explain the same process. My theoretical understanding of these details needs to be fleshed out further, however, and this acts presently as a means to start doing that.
I also pondered at times if this movement was through my energetic system—through meridians, should they exist. That said, there are parallels between the lymphatic systems and the hypothetical energetic “highway” system, and I wonder now if there is possibly an overlap, understanding-wise. The latter looks similar to how artists render the meridian system.
For clarity, there was a substantial amount of bodily abuse during my entire 17 year career of drug and alcohol usage, but the first 9 or so years as a binge-drinker were orders of magnitude more extreme than the latter half, even though the latter had some periods of extremity.
There is a great deal of context involved in the story I am referencing here, where a bunch of other drugs were ingested, which is best left to another post.
Unfortunately, a substantial amount of this trauma is likely born out of childhood. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) presents frightening statistics around adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and their link to illness, poverty and death. ACEs include: physical and emotional abuse/neglect, bullying, community violence, parents with mental health problems, divorce/separation, parental incarceration, witnessed domestic violence and others. After collecting data from adults in the USA from 2011 to 2020, the CDC predicts that 1 in 6 people experienced 4 or more ACEs as children and nearly 2 of 3 experienced one, painting a jarring reality. The CDC also found that marginalized, uneducated and poverty-stricken people were more likely to have experienced ACEs than the majority of people questioned.