People have always used drugs to deal with traumatic stressed. Each culture and each generation has its preferences—gin, vodka, beer, or whiskey; hashish, marijuana, cannabis, or ganja; cocaine; molly, lean; opioids like oxycontin; tranquilizers such as Valium Xanax, and Klonopin. When people are desperate, they will do just about anything to feel calmer and in more control. However, drinking and drugs are not the answer. Mainstream psychiatry follows this tradition. Over the past decade, the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs combined have spent over $4.5 billion on antidepressants, antipsychotics, and antianxiety drugs. A June 2010 internal report from the Defense Department’s Pharamaceconomic Center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas USA showed the 213,972, or 20 percent of the 1.1 million active-duty troops surveyed, were taking some form of psychotropic drug: antidepressants, antipsychotics, sedative hypnotics, or other controlled substances. 

However, drugs cannot “cure trauma; they can only dampen the expressions of a disturbed physiology. And they do not teach the lasting lessons of self-regulation. They can help to control feelings and behavior, but always at a price—because they work by blocking the chemical systems that regulate engagement, motivation, pain, and pleasure. Some of my colleagues remain optimistic: I keep attending meetings where serious scientists discuss their quest for the elusive magic bullet that will miraculously reset the fear circuits of the brain (as if traumatic stress involved only one simple brain circuit). I also regularly prescribe medication. Just about every group of psychotropic agents has been used to treat some aspect of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) such as Prozac, Zoloft, Effexor, and Paxil have been most thoroughly studied, and they can make feelings less intense and life more manageable.  

Patients on SSIRs often feel calmer and more in control; feeling less overwhelmed often makes it easier to engage in therapy. Other patients feel blunted by SSRIs—they feel they are losing their edge. I approach it as an empirical question: Let us see what works, and only the patient can be the judge of that. On the other hand, if one SSRI does not work, it is worth trying another, because they all have slightly different effects. It is interesting that the SSRIs are widely used to treat depression, but in a study in which we compared Prozac with eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) for patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), many of whom were also depressed, EMDR proved to be a more effective antidepressant than Prozac. Keep in mind, however, that selfishness and preoccupation with deficiencies keep some from growing beyond their existing internal achievements to become greater people.  

Medicines that target the autonomic nervous system, like propranolol or clonidine, can help to decrease hyperarousal and reactivity to stress. This family of drugs works by blocking the physical effects of adrenaline, the fuel or arousal, and thus reduces nightmares, insomnia, and reactivity to trauma triggers. Blocking adrenaline can help to keep the rational brain online and makes choices possible: Is this really what I want to do? Since I have started to integrate mindfulness and yoga into my practice, I used these medications less often, except occasionally to help patient sleep more restfully. Self-actualizers have an unbiased view of reality, acceptance of themselves and others, simplicity, social interest, self-reliance for their own requirements, focus on problems outside of themselves, profound personal relations, creativity, and great tolerance. When they try to inspire others, they do so for the sake of those others, not for their own aggrandizement.  

Traumatized patients tend to like tranquilizing drugs, benzodiazepines like Klonopin, Valium, Xanax, and Ativan. In many ways, they work like alcohol, in that they make people feel calm and keep them from worrying. (Casino owners love customers on benzodiazepines; they do not get upset when they lose and keep gambling. Many journalists are also on these drugs because the traumatic nature of the job.) However, also like alcohol, benzos weaken inhibitions against saying hurtful things to people we love. Most civilian doctors are reluctant to prescribe these drugs, because they have a high addiction potential and they may also interfere with trauma processing. Patients who stop taking them after prolonged use usually have withdrawal reactions that make them agitated and increase posttraumatic symptoms. Some of my patients have told me they know a guy who is kind of like a benzo, he makes them feel comfortable, but they have withdrawal from not seeing him. 

I sometimes give my patients low doses of benzodiazepines to use as required, but not enough to take on the daily basis. They have to choose when to use up their precious supply, and I ask them to keep a diary of what was going on when they decided to take a pill. That gives us a chance to discuss the specific incidents that trigger them. Openness involves an appreciation of things others might consider impractical and a readiness for new and unusual experiences. The traits that make up this factor tend to be more esoteric than those in the other factors, less based on overt behavior (observable actions) and more on covert behavior (the things we do that others cannot directly observe—thoughts, feelings, attitudes, beliefs). The highly open individual has a greater appreciation for subjective or abstract reality. 

Influence through mass communication need not be blatant—it can be very subtle indeed. Even when communicators are not making a direct attempt to sell us something, they can succeed in influencing the way we look at the World. If my assumptions about you are incorrect, I will continue to perceive you in incorrect or incomplete ways. Through education, books, encounter sensitivity groups, and programs on television and other media, we are trying to bring about awareness of such problems. Racism, gender discrimination, elitism—all these are increasingly being brought to our collective attention. Love is that blessed wand which wins the waters from the hardness of the hearts. Emotions become volatile over time and officially prove to be the greatest weakness for many. We can also recognize messages from the collective unconscious when we experience synchronicity, making meaning out of sheer coincidence. Nothing happens by accident. There is a profound significance in what others may perceive as random, inconsequential coincidence. On the path to individuation, a person examines synchronistic events as meaningful expressions of the collective unconscious.  We all have the innate capacity to walk a path that leads us to our true selves. We gather strength from a connection to God. This force has wisdom to share—wisdom that brings with it peace, balance, and wholeness, but to benefit from this wisdom, we must first learn to feel. The body responds to extreme experiences by secreting stress hormones. These are often blamed for subsequent illness and disease.

However, stress hormones are meant to give us the strength and endurance to respond to extraordinary conditions. People who actively do something to deal with a disaster—rescuing loved ones or strangers, transporting people to a hospital being part of a medical team, pitching tents or cooking meals—utilize their stress hormones for their proper purpose and therefore are at much lower risk of becoming traumatized. Nonetheless, everyone has his or her breaking point, and even the best-prepared person may become overwhelmed by the magnitude of the challenge. Helplessness and immobilization keep people from utilizing their stress hormones to defend themselves. When that happens, their hormones still are being pumped out, but the actions they are supposed to fuel are thwarted. Eventually, the activation patterns that were meant to promote coping are turned back against the organism and now keep fueling inappropriate stand your ground and freeze responses. In order to return to proper functioning, this persistent emergency response must come to an end. The body needs to be restored to a baseline state of safety and relaxation from which it can mobilize to take action in response to real danger. In the powerful body-based therapies called sensorimotor psychotherapy and somatic experiencing, individuals learn to deal with issues by taking the story of what happened and letting it rest. Instead, they explore physical sensations and discover the location and shape of the imprints of past trauma itself, which helps an individual to build up internal resources that foster safe access sensations and emotions that overwhelmed them at the time of the trauma. This process, which we have already discussed is called pendulation—gently moving in and out of accessing internal sensations and traumatic memories.

In the way, an individual is helped to gradually expand their window of tolerance. Once a person can tolerate being aware of their trauma-based physical experiences, they are likely to discover powerful physical impulses—like hitting, pushing, or running—that arose during the trauma but were suppressed in order to survive. These impulses manifest themselves in subtle body movements such as twisting, turning, or backing away. Amplifying these movements and experimenting with ways to modify them begins the process of bringing the incomplete, trauma-related action tendencies to completion and can eventually lead to resolution of the trauma. Somatic therapies can help individuals to relocate themselves in the present by experiencing that it is safe to move. Feeling the pleasure of taking effective action restores a sense of agency (agency is the technical term for the feeling of being in charge of your life: knowing where you stand, know that you have a say in what happens to you, knowing that you have some ability to shape your circumstances) being able to actively defend and protect themselves. When people can physically experience what it would have felt like to fight back or run away, they relax, smile, and express a sense of completion. Love is better than a pair of spectacles to make everything seem greater which is seen through it.

We face certain problems by trying to develop exclusively along the path of transcendence. What a man has ever felt that all his thinking powers were absorbed, even by the most poignant mental misery that could occupy them? In moments of imminent danger, the mind can still travel of its own accord over the past in spite of the present—in moments of bitter affliction, it can still recur to everyday trifles in spite of ourselves. We might believe that if we awaken to God or the Self, our personal difficulties will magically disappear. Work and relationship problems, conflicts concerning self-esteem, anxiety, and depression will automatically take care of themselves if we mediate, pray, and transcend our ego-personalities. Although it is possible to have many meaningful spiritual experiences as we journey along the path of transcendence, the downside is that we might simply dissociate from our psychological conflicts and emotional problems. Moreover, if we exclusively cultivate our innermost spiritual awareness, the shadow side of our personality will usually find some way to become known. Sooner or later, whatever is split off is likely to come to the foreground, perhaps through a traumatic breakdown of mind or body or through painful difficulties in love and work. There is a drowsy state, between sleeping and waking, when you dream more in five minutes with your eyes half open, and yourself half conscious of everything that is passing around you, then you would in five nights with your eyes fast closed, and your senses wrap in perfect unconsciousness. At such times, a mortal knows just enough of what his mind is doing, to form some glimmering conception of its mighty powers, it is bounding from Earth and spurning time and space, when freed from the restraint of its corporeal associate. Sometimes it is not until we fall from grace that we finally come down to Earth and become aware of the split-off parts of our personality. 

What a felicity it is to mankind, that they cannot see into the hearts of one another! At the core of recovery is self-awareness. The most important phrases in trauma therapy are “Notice that” and “What happens next?” Traumatized people live with seemingly unbearable sensations: They feel heartbroken and suffer from intolerable sensations in the pit of their stomach or tightness in their chest. Yet avoiding feeling these sensations in our bodies increases our vulnerability to being overwhelmed by them. Body awareness puts us in touch with our inner World, the landscape of our organism. Simply noticing our annoyance, nervousness, or anxiety immediately helps us shift our perspective and opens up new options other than our automatic, habitual reactions. Mindfulness puts us in touch with the transitory nature of our feelings and perceptions. When we pay focused attention to our bodily sensation, we can recognize the ebb and flow of our emotions and, with that, increases our control over them. Traumatized people are often afraid of feeling. It is not so much the perpetrators (who, hopefully, are no longer around to hurt them) but their own physical sensations that now are the enemy. Apprehension about being hijacked by uncomfortable sensations keeps the body frozen and the mind shut. Even though the trauma is a thing of the past, the emotional brain keeps generating sensation that make the sufferer feel scared and helpless. It is not surprising that so many trauma survivors are compulsive eaters and drinkers, fear love, and avoid social activities: Their sensory World is largely off limits. There are a few difficulties associated with psychospiritual splitting. First is the tendency to use images of God to compensate for unmet childhood needs; second is the potential for ego-inflation if we identify with these images. When our use of God-images is compensatory and we identify with them, we inevitably inflate and drive our traumatized and lost parts further into the unconsciousness.  

Often it is only by suffering a profound dark night of ego that we let go of our inflated self-images, reclaim our wounded parts, and begin to realize our true identity as the formless Self beyond all images of God. The formless Self might then use our illumined and individual personality as a vessel through which to radiate the love, wisdom, and power of our true nature out into the World, into all the activities of our daily life. In order to change, one is required to open oneself to one’s inner experience. The first step is to allow your mind to focus on your sensations and notice how, in contrast to the timeless, ever-present experience of trauma, physical sensations are transient and respond to slight shifts in body positions, changes in breathing, and shifts in thinking. Once one pays attention to one’s physical sensations, the next step is to label them, as in “When I feel anxious, I feel a crushing sensation in my chest.” Focus on that sensation and see how it changes when you take a deep breath out, or when you tap your chest just below your collarbone, or when you allow yourself to cry. Practicing mindfulness calms down the sympathetic nervous system, so that you are less likely to be thrown into feeling the need to stand your ground or escape. Learning to observe and tolerate your physical reactions is a prerequisite for safely revisiting the past. If you cannot tolerate what you are feeling right now, opening up the past will only compound the misery and retraumatize you further. Because we identify exclusively with transient body, emotions, and mind, we lose sight of our true nature as pure being/awareness, the Knower in all states of consciousness. Learned men make one headful of brains go a long way by poaching on each other’s knowledge. The more knowledge a person has, the better they will do their work. 

There are a thousand familiar disputes which reason never can decide. A good mind ought to be incited, a bad mind restrained. The mind that is often employed about little things will be rendered unfit for any serious exertion.  Over the past few decades, mainstream psychiatry has focused on using drugs to change the way we feel, and this has become the accepted way to deal with hyper- and hyporousal. We have a host of inbuilt skills to keep us on even keel. Emotions are registered in the body, and some 80 percent of the fibers of the vagus nerve (which connects the brain with many internal organs) are afferent; that is, they run from the body into the brain. This means that we can directly train our arousal system by the way we breathe, chant, and move. It is a certain elevation of mind alone, a sensibility of what is great and good, a comprehensive view of what is desirable or contemptible, which sets a man above the common level, and show him everything in true light. It is the first proof of a superior mind to liberate itself from prejudices of country or education. Learning how to breathe calmly and remaining in a state of relative physical relaxation, even while accessing painful and horrifying memories, is an essential tool for recovery. When one deliberately take a few slow, deep breaths, one will notice the effects of the parasympathetic brake on your arousal. The parasympathetic is part of the automatic nervous system that counterbalances the action of the sympathetic nerves. It consists of nerves arising from the brain and the lower end of the spinal cord and supplying the internal organs, blood vessels, and glands. It serves to slow the heart rate, increase intestinal and glandular activity, and relax the sphincter muscles.

The more one stays focused on one’s breathing, the more one will benefit, particularly if one pays attention until the very end of the out breath and then wait a moment before one inhales again. As one continues to breathe, and notice the air moving in and out of the lungs, one may think about the role that oxygen plays in nourishing one’s body, and bathing one’s tissues with the energy required to feel alive and engaged. This will restore that calm dignity of mind that accompanies conscious rectitude. Since emotional regulation is the critical issue in managing the effects of trauma and neglect, it would make an enormous difference if teachers, police officers, army sergeants, foster parents, and mental health professionals were thoroughly schooled in emotional-regulation techniques. Right now this still is mainly the domain of preschool and kindergarten teacher, who deal with immature brains and impulsive behavior on a daily basis and who are often very adept at managing them. To think the man, whose ample mind must grasp whatever yonder stars survey—what is your opinion of that image of the mind’s grasping the whole Universe? I am shocked to find a man have sublime ideas in his head, and nothing but illiberal sentiments in his heart. Mainstream Western psychiatric and psychological healing traditions have paid scant attention to self-management. In contrast to the Western reliance on drugs and verbal therapies, others traditions from around the World rely on mindfulness, movement, rhythms, and action. Yoga, tai chi, qigong, and rhythmical drumming are just a few examples, which allows the mind, age after age, to march on—like the ocean, receding here, but advancing there.

The heart loves repose and the soul contemplation, but the mind needs action so other cultures have spawned martial arts, which focus on the cultivation of purposeful movement and being centered in the present, abilities that are damaged in traumatized individuals. Being out of touch with the Self (mind and body) leaves us feeling unstable, empty, and ontologically insecure. By contract, if we neglect our sacred manifestation, we might rest in deep and timeless being/awareness, but there is no development of the unique gifts and talents by which we might potentially contribute to our loved ones and our community. A person’s mind is a kingdom to itself. Cheerfulness depends as much on the state of things within, as without. To ignore the path of individuation, then, means the Self or Spirit might end up expressing through an inadequate vehicle, a vehicle moved about by powerful, immature, unconscious forces which not only short-circuit our potential for love and creativity but also distort and derail our quest for stable spiritual realization. Anything less than realization of the seamless totality of essential being and sacred individuality is virtually impossible unless we learn that the mind and body are one and both need to be fed. Pain of mind is relieved by an abstraction of solid thought. When the body becomes diseased, it is not uncommon for the mind to be affected also. The real superiority, even of manners, must be placed in the mind. The great secret for managing the mind of a man is to find employment for it. All things fulfill their destiny. 

Growing up brought responsibilities, he found. Events did not rhyme quite as he had thought. Nature’s logic was too horrid for him to care for. That mercy towards one set of creatures was cruelty towards another sickened his sense of harmony. The fundamental issue in resolving traumatic stress is to restore the proper balance between the rational and emotional brains, so that you can feel in charge of how you respond and how you conduct life. When we are triggered into states of hyper- or hypoarousal, we are pushed outside our window of tolerance—the range of optimal functioning. We become reactive and disorganized; our filters stop working—sounds and lights bother us, unwanted images from the past intrude on our minds, and we panic or fly into rages. If we are shut down, we feel numb in body and mind; our thinking becomes sluggish and we have trouble getting out of our chairs. People who are long before they see a thing, when once it strikes them, see it in the strongest light. As long as people are either hyperaroused or shut down, they cannot learn from experience. Even if they manage to stay in control, they become so uptight that they are inflexible, stubborn, and depressed. Recovery from trauma involves the restoration of executive functioning and, with it, self-confidence and the capacity for playfulness and creativity. The fields of air are open to knowledge. Only ignorance and idleness need crawl upon the ground. Reconciliation is the tenderest part of love and friendship: the soul here discovers a kind of elasticity, and, being forced back, returns with an additional violence. There are some dangers which, when they are braved, disappear, and which yet, when there is an obvious and apparent dread of them displayed, become certain and inevitable. 

If we want to change posttraumatic reactions, we have to access the emotional brain and do limbic system therapy: repairing faulty alarm systems and restoring the emotional brain to its ordinary job of being a quiet background presence that takes care of the housekeeping of the body, ensuring that you eat, sleep, connect with intimate partners, protect your children, and defend against danger. The danger, when not seen, has the imperfect vagueness of human thought. The fear grows shadowy; and Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated, sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion. A moment of peril is often also a moment of open-hearted kindness and affection. We are thrown off our guard by the general agitation of our feelings, and betray the intensity of those, which, at more tranquil periods, our prudence at least conceals, if it cannot altogether suppress them. The rational, analyzing part of the brain, centered on the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, has no direct connections with the emotional brain, where most imprints of trauma reside, but the medial prefrontal cortex, the center of self-awareness, does. The neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux and his colleagues have shown that the only way we can consciously access the emotional brain is through self-awareness, i.e. by activating the medial prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that notices what is going on inside us and thus allows us to feel what we are feeling. (The technical term for this is interoception—Latin for looking inside.) Most of our conscious brain is dedicated to focusing on the outside World: getting along with others and making plans for the future. However, that does not help us manage ourselves. Neuroscience research shows that the only way we can change the way we feel is by becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going on inside ourselves.  

Also, traumatic reenactment is the source of most of the violence in the World, which affects us all. Yet, as common as trauma has been throughout history, we have been slow to learn how to resolve it. Since the healing of trauma involves somatic and spiritual processes, the field of psychology has had little to offer over the past century. Because of its effect are so intense and pervasive, trauma can be a catalyst for profound surrender and awakening. I see it as a wake-up call for the human race, especially in light of the hundreds of Americans that have been killed, on American soil, by gun violence in the Summer 16. Trauma is a primary cause of human suffering, and yet it can only be truly resolved by coming home to the eternal now. In the healing of trauma, we must let go of the mind’s illusion of control and discover the beingness that is always present.  Therefore, the healing of trauma has the potential to help bring about transformation and awakening in the human species. Otherwise, trauma will continue to be a painful and destructive force among us. Our survival as a species may depend on the resolution of trauma and traumatic reenactment. Fortunately, now is the time when both the healing of trauma and awakening to our true nature are better understood and increasingly possible. As I see it, our individual psyche and physical body are sacred manifestations of our essential Self, Spirit, or Being. They are centers of expression for our greater transpersonal awareness. Officially, nonduality is abidance in and as the Self, from which wisdom, compassion, and power spontaneously arise and flow forth through the unique qualities and capacities of our individual self. Could you know from afar the feelings of someone jilted? On my birthday, which has already passed, what I wanted was not an invaluable gift, but I simply wondered what song you would sing me.  

No matter what happened to you in your life, no matter what horrendous event you experienced, it cannot be undone. However, what can be dealt with are the imprints of trauma on body, mind, and soul: the crushing sensations in your chest that you may label as anxiety or depression; the fear of losing control; always being on alert for danger or rejection; the self-loathing; the nightmares and flashbacks; the fog that keeps one from staying on task and from engaging fully in what you are doing; being unable to fully open your heart to another human being. Trauma robs you of feeling that you are in charge of yourself, of what I will call self-leadership. The challenge of recovery is to reestablish ownership of your body and your mind—of yourself. This means feeling free to know what you know and to feel what you feel without becoming overwhelmed, enrages, ashamed, or collapsed.  For most people, recovery involves finding a way to become calm and focused, learning to maintain that calm in response to images, thoughts, sounds, or physical sensations that remind you of the past, finding a way to be fully alive in the present and engaged with people around you, not having to keep secrets from yourself, including secrets about the ways that you have managed to survive. These goals are not steps to be achieved, one by one, in some fixed sequence. They overlap, and some may be more difficult than others, depending on individual circumstances. The emotions and physical sensation that were imprinted during the trauma are experiences not as memories but as disruptive physical reactions in the present.  

In order to regain control over yourself again, you are required to revisit the trauma: Sooner or later you are required to confront what has happened to you, but only after you feel safe and will not be retraumatized by it. The first order of business is to find ways to cope with feeling overwhelmed by the sensations and emotions associated with the past.  The engines of posttraumatic reactions are located in the emotional brain, which expresses itself in thoughts, the emotional brain manifests itself in physical reactions: gut-wrenching sensations, heart pounding, breathing becoming fast and shallow, feelings of heartbreak, speaking with an uptight and reedy voice, and the characteristic body movements that signify collapse, rigidity, rage, or defensiveness.  Why can we not just be reasonable? And can understanding help? The rational, executive brain is good at helping us understand where feelings come from (as in: I get uncomfortable around certain people because I had an uneasy feeling. I have trouble expressing love towards my son because of something that happened to my best guy friend). However, the rational brain cannot abolish emotions, sensations, or thoughts (such as living with a low-level sense feeling that you could be a better person, even though you rationally know that you are not to blame for your friend copying your homework assignment and getting a deficient grade on the assignment). Understanding why you feel a certain way does not change how you feel.

However, it can keep you from surrendering to intense reactions (for example, ignoring your boss because he reminds you of a teacher who was mean to you, breaking up with your mate at your first disagreement, or jumping into the arms of a stranger). However, the more frazzled we are, the more our rational brain takes a back stead to our emotions. This inquiry led to a realization that the habitual pattern of vigilance to protect the body from hears was not true safety. Realizing this allowed long-standing patterns of concentration to begin relaxing. Without an embodied understanding, the body and mind keep these patterns in place, believing them to be needed for protection. In order to truly release these contractions, it is important for the true safety to be realized in the body on the level of sensation. Trauma is a fact of life. Everyone experiences it in some way, whether directly or indirectly though the trauma experienced by loves ones. No one can judge another, that cannot be that very other in imagination, when he takes the judgment seat. When the heart flies out before the understanding, it saves the judgment a World of pains.