Ch 8 - THE NATURE OF THESE TRAUMAS & HOW TO GET THEM OUT

CHAPTER 8:

THE NATURE OF THESE TRAUMAS
& HOW TO GET THEM OUT


Now, as I've said, 'underneath' the memories from middle and late childhood is other material that's not very accessible with the usual release therapy techniques. I say it's underneath because it usually comes out after the later events. When we reach inside ourselves, the more recent episodes usually appear to consciousness first.

Somehow, none of us remember much of what happened before we were three or four. The experiences that happened to us in our early childhoods do not come to consciousness with the necessary verbal, intelligent information when we use only Reichian, Bioenergetic and similar methods. Structural Integration Bodywork also doesn't provide this part of the release. Yet the early episodes usually contain even more powerful fears and scarier traumas than those that happened later. Some of us do remember one or two very traumatic events from ages one, two or three, and it's very important to clear these.

What's important to understand in these episodes is from whom are the words and feelings coming from. In early childhood episodes, we ourselves are primarily feeling emotional terror, physical tension, and some other sensations, perhaps the hands of the traumatizing adult. We are also feeling frustration at not having our needs met.

In these episodes as well as those around birth and in the prenatal, the words that come out of our imbedded experiences are other people's words. They're the words of the adults around us at the time. At these ages, we had not yet learned to speak. The adults are also feeling emotionally upset, otherwise they wouldn't be hurting and/or scaring us, or having to stand back and watch us be hurt or scared. While the outer expressions of these people are aggressive and attacking, their inner feelings are those of frustration and even fear, and occur at the same time we're feeling our own frustration and fear. What they say, think and feel will include what we might have said and thought if we could speak at the time. After the major confrontation, the adults often feel guilt, sadness, and even further frustration and self-criticism.

A Netherton process involves seeing the pictures of those past events in our minds eye and verbalizing out the words that other people said as we physically feel the energies of our own past experiences. This frees us from those command statements that were what the adults were thinking feeling and saying out loud. The words are part of the form in which the trauma is stored inside us. When we speak the words as if we were the other people, the energy of our incompleted experiences leaves our bodies. The spoken words are the vehicle for processing out the trauma. And just like in adult upsets, a major purpose of the therapist is to get us to objectively handle the emotions. In this treatment, that handling actually eliminates the original tapes. Then, as I keep saying, our adult experiences of a similar vein won't be as overwhelming.

The beginning of the session involves defining the problem. You work with the therapist to get in touch with your most predominant experience relating to the issue you've working on. You may start with what's been going on recently. You identify the most significant behavioral patterns or kinds of situations you've been running into, along with the emotions you've been feeling and the words that come out to describe what's been happening.

If a person can be stimulated by the therapists' purposeful emotional confrontation, some therapists may use this technique. But I don't. Just the current experiences of everyday life and the large amount of past material seems enough to work with. However, I am very open about pointing out to my clients all the facets of their patterns including the subtle ways we manipulate, demand and control others.

This is surprising to many people who identify with the unsatisfied victim role. They need to see that they are dissatisfied because of the way they keep control of all the power in their relationships, and that this compensating behavior is really driven by their underlying fear and neediness. Eventually, with a combination of processing and awareness, this becomes evident to them and they are 'big' enough to own it and continue releasing its causative material and conscious attitudes.
The release process involves grounding the person in the past incident by using their physical sensations, emotional feelings and the words they've been exclaiming. You lie down on your back, or sit relaxed in a chair, close you eyes, and focus on the words, saying the statements again and again, usually three times, on the cue of the therapist.

As you bring more of this energy to the surface, you can be asked to identify if you are sitting, standing or lying down; are you inside or outside; alone or with somebody. If it's childhood trauma, the words might be coming at you, from the front, back, left, right, or above you. In birth, where are you the baby in the birth canal? In the prenatal, what position is Mother's body in, etc? What is the other person doing? What would be causing you to feel confused, a blow to the head or something else? What outside item would be physically causing the tension you feel on your arms? As Mother hits you on the left cheek, say the words her angry expression is saying, whether or not she said it out loud at the time. As you strike out in battle, what would your feelings be saying? Say now what you couldn't say before. As you cry, speak the words that your tearful emotions are saying.

When stuck at an "I don't know," say them a few more times and complete the sentence. While Mother is saying this, what are you the baby doing? When a person is dying in a past life, which part of your body do you leave first? What are the words that accompany that feeling? If these same words were coming from another person at the scene, from which direction are they coming, and who is it? If you get stuck and there are no more words in the immediate expression of the person, what happens next? Whose feelings are appearing stronger for you right now, yours as a baby, or Mother's?

You work through the episode with the therapist's guidance a number of times to get out all the material, down through the layers. At the end of the session you may be asked to reflect upon the experience of this past episode that is now out of your body, and the situation you've been dealing with in current life. You'll be able to see how the past words, feelings, and circumstances were transferring themselves through you onto the present. After the session, additional material may come to the surface, stimulated by your current life and available to come out because you cleared all the stuff on top of it. This can come up as words, feelings and even situations with others you hadn't had in years. These can be processed out in the next appointment, or perhaps worked out by yourself as you get experienced with the technique.

Netherton's therapy is unique because it can reach back further in time' than most other releasing processes. And it always brings out all the intelligence of the belief statements, as well as the trauma that is bound up with it. Besides past life events, it very easily accesses the events of infancy, birth and the pre-natal periods that I've mentioned. It also handles serious adult events that happened quite recently. All the time frames are equally accessible because each episode is written into our sub- conscious minds just like computer programs and data records are written on a storage disk. There is no chronology to either; they are simply located at different places in the storage mechanism. The events, and the computer information, are both all available to be 'read' at any time. You just need to know the subject matter and the name of the 'file.' Then the computer's internal mechanism, or our own internal mechanism, finds the material and brings it to consciousness. Netherton practitioners are trained in how to 'address' the mind so it will do this.

The factors that determine which events come out are the type of issue a person is working on and what event is on top of the stack for that issue. As I've mentioned, as a general rule, the more recent events of this lifetime are on top of the stack and the earlier events are underneath them. However, many past life experiences are immediately accessible because they are located more in the energy field. Events from this lifetime are more embedded in the layers of our physical flesh. This is why Structural Integration Bodywork helps Netherton processing so much.

All the events, from all the times, are always present, but just at different locations in the body-mind. The Netherton method of access is what allows this treatment to seemingly work farther back in time.