~ Traumatic experiences cause the psyche to split as a way of managing and surviving the experience.
~ The emotional experiences of the trauma are split off and buried in the unconscious and the person develops his survival strategies as if the trauma event was still active. Over time this forms our personality.
~ These survival strategies have as their primary function keeping of the unresolved and unexpressed trauma experience out of consciousness. They are, in the first instance, life saving. However, over time they can become restrictive and debilitating, leaving us feeling fragmented and disoriented.
~ A traumatised mother (or father) has difficulty in the bonding process with her child, since to feel love also stimulates the unresolved trauma feelings; so love and terror may be fused within her, and bonding with her child may be a re-traumatisation for her. It can also be disturbing, even traumatic, for the child who, in the beginning, depends on his parents for his survival.
~ In the bonding process between mother and child, and between father and child, the child absorbs the state of his parents’ soul (psyche), including their split off trauma feelings. The child therefore replicates in himself these split psyches, along with his parents’ developed survival strategies.
~ This is how unresolved traumas can be passed on down the generations, often resulting in debilitating psychological, emotional and physical symptoms which seem to have no discernable cause.
~ There is of course a part of us that is healthy, what I call the Integrating Soul. This part of ourselves holds the fragmentation within us while constantly endeavouring to move towards integration.
~ Working with Trauma Constellations shows the traumatised field, and allows us to reclaim that within us which has been lost and entangled in this trauma field, allowing movement into a more integrated state of being, becoming more truly who we really are.