by Matt Licata
Trauma, Integration, and Healing
Before we go too far into integration, it’s important to address one of the common ways in which the term is used (along with the word “healing”) that has led to some confusion. It is essential that we reenvision words such as “integration” and “healing,” for they can so easily lose their meaning, magic, and life force. Before we know it, these concepts can become further tools of shame, blame, and self-abandonment. We must breathe life back into these ideas in an imaginative, grounded, and creative way.
Often what people mean by “integrating” or “healing” trauma is that one day we will “get over it,” “transcend” it, “outgrow” it, meditate it away, or otherwise purge it from our psychic-emotional-somatic being. As if the trauma were some sort of actual “thing” that exists inside of us, a common view is that we can get in there and remove it through some sort of procedure. In my experience, this view of trauma is in large part inaccurate, aggressive, misguided, and at times even dangerous and violent. We will never “get over” some things that happen to us, and this would not even be an appropriate goal or lens to use in approaching the sacredness of human experience.
But if what we mean by “integration” is discovering a place inside where we can hold and contain our experience, make sense of what happened in new ways, bring together and tend to the shards of dissociation, and discover deeper meaning, then these concepts can come alive again. Slowly, over time, we can begin to bear that which has been unbearable, providing sanctuary and safe passage for the pieces of the broken self to reorganize.
As we train ourselves to reinhabit our bodies even in the face of profoundly disturbing experience, we can begin to weave a more “integrated” narrative of our lives, reauthoring the sacred story of who we are, what has happened to us, and how we are being called into a future not yet known. We can gather the pieces and begin to trust in the validity of our experience again.
The goal, then, is not some fixed, “cured” state in which we have successfully purged an aspect of our experience from what we are, as if it were some wretched foreign substance. Rather, the invitation is to find a larger home for it within us. Slowly, we can allow what has become frozen and solidified to thaw and become flexible. Perhaps, when all is said and done, self-love will soften the wounds of the body and the heart, for they will never unwind in an environment of abandonment and aggression. It’s just not safe or majestic enough there.
In this way, perhaps we can salvage the concepts of “integration” and “healing,” at least for today, reenvisioning and reenchanting them with the force of an uncompromising and unapologetic compassion, slowness, patience, and care of the soul, as we open into the mystery together.
Alchemical Integration
Through the alchemical process of separatio, we differentiate the material we are working with, in this case our various layers of here-and-now experience, so that we can attend to each layer on its own. If we try to approach our inner world all at once, we can become overwhelmed and not sure where or how to start. How do I deal with this depression, this anxiety, this heartbreak, this hopelessness? These huge psychological concepts are general and abstract and cannot be approached until they are first broken down into their component parts, into bite-sized pieces of immediate, lived experience. Although it is difficult to wrap our minds around and approach “depression,” it is possible to tend to specific, repetitive thoughts that life isn’t worth living, a blackened empty hole in the heart, a feeling of nausea in the belly, or an impulse to hide so that no one can see us. In this sense, there is no such thing as “depression” in the abstract. We can’t work with that. It’s too vague, too monstrous, too overwhelming, too theoretical, too much. We can’t find it in the vessel, grab ahold of it, and heat it. Therefore we cannot come to know its qualities, essences, and meanings. It’s just too conceptual, too clinical, too experience-distant. From an alchemical perspective, the way we make “depression” experience-close is to first separate out the component parts into smaller, more precise, more manageable pieces that we can then warm with the fire of curiosity, awareness, and compassion.
Not only must we separate the layers from each other—core beliefs from emotions from sensations from impulses and so forth—but also we must “separate” ourselves from the material so we can gain some perspective on it, are not overly identified with it, and can reflect on it without becoming fused with it. Often, we remain embedded and enmeshed within our experience, not realizing that thoughts and feelings come and go and are not objective “facts” merely because they appear. Just because we think or feel something does not mean it is an accurate reflection of reality. Although this assertion might seem obvious on the surface, to allow in the implications of its experiential realization can be life changing.
This capacity to reflect upon our experience—in analytic literature referred to as “mentalizing”—is essential on the path of healing and transformation.4 We can distinguish this capacity of reflection upon the content of our experience from meditative awareness, which is not as focused upon the content but rather upon the nature of any arising thought, feeling, or emotion or upon the context in which it arises and passes. In this way, psychological reflection is concerned with unpacking our immediate experience and exploring its qualities, implicit and relational meanings, historical associations, why it has come, what it needs, and where it is leading us. We’ll look at these two modes of inquiry—content and context—in more detail in chapter 6.
We all know what it’s like to step back and reflect on a difficult situation in our lives, or a feeling, or a limited belief we have about ourselves or another. We also know what it’s like to merge with the experience, lose perspective, and fall into it, unable to find any space between ourselves and the challenging material that has come in a moment of activation. At times, before we know it, we are completely identified with the thought or feeling, have fused with it, equated it with objective reality, and no longer see it as temporary, passing experience. In this state of embeddedness, it is not possible to engage with the material with clear perception because we are caught within it. It takes practice to separate from charged inner experience so that we can gain perspective and reflect upon it while not separating so much that we move into dissociation, denial, or disconnection. We must discover the nature of this middle territory for ourselves, what it feels like in our bodies and minds, in the fire of our own direct experience. The invitation is to come close but not so close that we merge with the thought or feeling and lose the ground underneath us. It’s a delicate balance, somewhat like learning how to use the pedal and clutch together while driving; at first it can feel awkward and clunky, but over time, with practice, it can become second nature.
Separating the Layers of Our Experience
To undertake this process, it can be helpful to have some basic skills in mindfulness that help us to apprehend the moment-to-moment unfolding of our present experience, nonjudgmentally and in an environment of spaciousness and warmth. Although the awareness or clarity side of mindfulness is often most emphasized—and in some sense, this is for good reason—in my experience it is equally (if at times, not more important) to underscore bringing acceptance and compassion to what we experience. What this looks like for each of us will be different, and we must discover for ourselves what it would mean to “be kind” to a painful feeling, belief about ourselves, or sensation in the body. How would we “open our hearts” to an emotion, image, or series of repetitive thoughts? It can seem a bit abstract at first, but over time we can come to an experiential understanding of what it would be like in any given moment to infuse our present experience—even incredibly intense and challenging experience—with kindness. In other words, the practice becomes as much a “heart” practice as one of increasing clarity and awareness.
During a moment of activation, it can seem as if we are drowning, as if an enemy were coming at us from the outside. Slowing down and beginning to differentiate th
e layers can help convert the experience into “bite-sized” pieces, more approachable than an undifferentiated mass of struggle and confusion. The alchemists referred to this unworkable, undefinable, unmanageable nature of inner process as a massa confusa, a “confused mass,” difficult to relate to and handle.5 We cannot work with it directly but must apply the proper heat (awareness and love) so that it can be broken down into its component parts, separating them out so we can attend to each in turn. This process of differentiating previously linked aspects of our experience allows us to isolate the prima materia, the specific substance that wants attention now, focusing us on what most needs tending in our lives in this moment. This differentiating process doesn’t happen in some abstract, generalized way distant to our experience but in close and intimate, concrete, and specific ways.
If we attempt to relate to our experience as massa confusa, we will likely get overwhelmed, flooded, and lost. At that point we seem to have no recourse but to fall back into historical, conditioned strategies to take us out of the fire and back to safe ground. It’s as if there’s a monster we’re being asked to confront, some huge entity that has come into our psychic space, and we have no perspective from which to engage it. There is no space between us and it, no possibility of standing back and making sense of this material in our lives; instead, it’s as if we are embedded within it in a way that can feel claustrophobic. Whether the monster takes form as rage, shame, depression, jealousy, fear, numbness, or confusion, there’s a sense that it’s just not quite workable; we can’t relate to it in its current form.
The Importance of Separation and Synthesis
First, as always, we must recognize that we have become hooked into and embedded within our experience and have lost contact with the spacious awareness in which the cascading thoughts, feelings, and sensations are coming and going. Rather than react to this recognition with shame, blame, and self-attack (“There I go again, I’m never going to get it right, I’ve failed again,” etc.), we can be grateful that enough awareness has been constellated to allow us to slow down and open to the possibility to befriend our experience in a new way. This one moment of recognition cuts into billions of prior moments of repression, rejection, resistance, and unconsciousness. A moment of grace, insight, self-compassion, and self-care. Yes, it might appear that a monster has arrived, the massa confusa in one of its infinite forms, but the veil has pulled back a bit. With clear seeing, attunement, and kindness, we step back and reflect, gather some perspective, and catch ourselves before we totally fall into old patterns. And even if we’ve already fallen down the rabbit hole, we can use this awareness, this pause, this compassion to step back out. From this ground of recognition, slowing down and seeing that we’ve been caught or hooked, we realize some material is asking to be tended to, heated up, embraced, and befriended.
This brings us back to the processes of separation and synthesis and the subtitle of Jung’s major opus, “An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy.” As indicated by Jung’s subtitle, these two concepts are useful metaphors as we imagine what a process of “integration” might entail. Both are required and essential as part of any integrative process. There can be no integration without conscious tending to each; one without the other does not allow for a complete integration to occur.
One of the phrases often put forth as a summary of alchemical work is solve et coagula, dissolve and coagulate.6 Dissolve/coagulate, separate/synthesize, differentiate/link—these are some of the core images that point to this process of recognizing, slowing down, and exploring the material that comes in charged emotional moments. As part of this exploration, we break up the mass of confusion into its component parts, only to relink them at a later moment after we’ve met and attended to each on their own, synthesizing our experience in an integrative way that reveals the workability of even our most challenging thoughts, feelings, impulses, and sensations.
In order to accomplish this, exploring that which most needs our attention in a given here-and-now moment, we cycle through the different layers of our experience, differentiating the “confused mass” into bite-sized pieces to which we can tend with greater awareness, perspective, and compassion. We’re no longer attempting to work with “sadness,” “anxiety,” “depression,” or “jealousy” per se—generalized, abstract, clinical concepts—but with present, embodied experience, unique to us in this moment, particularized, and concrete. We can begin with whatever layer is calling our attention, with no particular agenda, though ensuring that at some point during our inquiry we touch on each of the four primary areas: mood, belief, sensation, and impulse. By doing so, we weave a tapestry of the here and now, separating the individual components and then allowing them to come back together in a way that honors the multiplicity—as well as the oneness—of our lived experience. This linking of differentiated aspects is the essence of integration, or in Jung’s language, the synthesizing of separated parts.7
A Meditation on Integration
Find a place where you can be alone and undisturbed for fifteen or twenty minutes (you can also do this meditation over the course of two to three minutes after you develop some experience with it). Allow yourself to relax as deeply as you’re able while at the same time being as aware as you can of what is happening inside and around you, with your senses open and curious. You can do this meditation with eyes open or closed. It might be helpful to experiment with both.
First, slow down and fully arrive in this moment. Take a few slow and deep breaths; feel your feet or bottom on the ground and the earth supporting you. You are already held by something larger, without having to deserve it, change first, shift, transform, or heal. Allow yourself to feel held. It is causeless. Give yourself to this moment. This meditation is an embodied practice, meaning it is important that your body be a part of the meditation, in each phase. Use your awareness and your breath to stay attuned to your body as you go through each of the steps, remembering that body awareness is a critical aspect to integration but often left out or underemphasized in a lot of psychological and spiritual practices.
Mood. Start by bringing your attention to the overall mood you are experiencing. Open your senses and allow yourself to connect with all the subtleties of the mood—its texture, color, and fragrance. How are you feeling in this moment? What is alive within you? What is the overall felt sense of the environment, inside and around you? Are you aware of any emotions? See if you can touch this global mood without using any words to describe it, at least at first. After you have made a connection with the emotional tone present, play with a word or two that describes your mood, spontaneously and flexibly allowing language to mingle with the felt sense but not allowing words and concepts to overtake your primary connection with the mood itself. Rest your awareness in the core of the feeling and observe as it moves, dances, unfolds, and changes. Allow the emotion or mood the space to express itself as best you are able.
Belief. After you’re attuned to the general mood present—the overall felt sense of your immediate experience—open your awareness and allow it to fill and touch and expand into the entire space you are in, no longer focusing on the mood per se, while at the same time perfectly open to return to it should it ask for more specified attention. In moments of activation (but not limited to these times only), when we are triggered or thrown off center, one or two core beliefs usually underlie the mood, are woven into the feeling, or are otherwise related to the overall emotional tone in some way. You might experience these beliefs as “supporting” the mood or vice versa. Allow yourself to remain in a state of not knowing about this; there’s no need to figure it out or resolve which comes first. Stay curious and open.
What core beliefs have accompanied you for so long, forming the lenses through which you see and imagine yourself, having journeyed with you as a kindred traveler? To uncover these essential narratives and images, ask yourself: “When I am feeling sad, jealous, hopeless, ashamed, confused, angry, scared, bored
, unsafe, flat, or [insert feeling/mood here], what do I believe about myself, about others, about the world? What core beliefs are circling when I am activated in this way? What habitual thoughts and fundamental perceptions seem to underlie these emotional states?
For example, if I’m feeling shame or despair, do I believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with me, that I am unlovable, that I have failed, that no one will ever want to get close to me, that no one will ever understand me, or that I’m not okay as I am? Do I believe that the world is unsafe, that I can’t depend on another, or that others are out to get me?
Allow the beliefs to present themselves—including any accompanying images, memories, fantasies, or further feelings—without any sense that they need to be changed, transformed, or healed. Provide a safe place for the beliefs to reveal themselves. It can help to write them down if you feel drawn to do so.
For the purposes of this meditation, we are not working to change these beliefs or replace them with others but only to shine a light into and through them with as much awareness, presence, and compassion as we are able—to illuminate the lenses through which we have come to perceive ourselves, others, and the world.