The Logic of Primal Therapy

Let me give you an excellent example. When a woman describes being raped at the age of eleven, a brutal and sadly common trauma, then if she recalls the event at all she will describe herself as being "like outside of her body" when it happened.

That is the subjective experience of going into heavy shock, and repressing an event. If the girl did not split from the trauma she would literally die from the terror and emotional pain, as the trauma of rape is that extreme especially for a child.

In regression psychotherapy (primal therapy) the woman would have to relive that event - to be done with its effect. But 'relive' is a poor word, because the truth is when you feel a prior repressed trauma, you will in fact be experiencing it for the very first time. Relating to the rape example, you would experience the trauma from inside your body - not outside of it. You associate with the originally disassociated pain.

-No child or adult can feel their pain until they are ready, and until they are properly supported. The body will open to trauma for integration, for as much as it can handle, and in only small doses at a time when the pain is too great. But that's a long story and an aside.

The thing is, it makes perfect sense. How can you process an old trauma when you do not even know it? How can you know an old trauma when you have not yet even experienced it, as a psychological event? The body must know what it's dealing with to deal with it. It's that simple.

To better clarify, the pain of true trauma is repressed into the hard-drive, yet not run though the CPU. No pain is integrated until it runs through the CPU. To feel and experience the pain is to run it through the CPU - where it is then processed.

When prior repressed pain is finally experienced and known to the body and mind, the event is then properly categorised within the system. The past stays in the past. For example, the woman raped as a child will no longer fear men once she has integrated her pain, unless of course the fear is rational in present-day terms. And she will not need to act-out her trauma once it is left in the past.

So how do you deal with trauma when you do not experience it, and therefore do not know it? Well you can't and won't deal with it. Not really, anyway. You will only manage its effects, at best. The brain cannot process what it simply does not know. Old trauma is going nowhere until it's first taken out of cold-storage and let into the light. To know the trauma is to experience the trauma.

Though feeling old pain can give the most tremendous relief, there is no other easy way out. You cannot cheat the demands of your body. To deal with the past is to deal with the past. You have to go to the past.

For further understanding read here: The Walking Man Story.

-Andrew Atkin