Trauma, dissociation, and relinking psyche and soma

Healing from trauma and any form of relational wounding involves a relinking of that which has become unlinked. In this way, trauma is the experience of unlinking.

To re-associate that which has become dis-associated.

To re-embody to what which has become dis-embodied.

Or, to speak more alchemically, the word dis-aster involves an unlinking from the stars, from our own stars, from the sparks of light that form the human soul.

To reconnect with the stars which have been scattered will ask everything of us, and more.

Dissociation is natural to the psyche and serves a vital adaptive function, keeping us out of states of profound, unworkable, unendurable fragmentation, terror, and an annihilatory sense of panic.

To re-associate and to re-link soma and psyche occurs by way of relationship. In this way all healing is relational in its essence.

But the nature of what this relationship is, is of the Mystery. Relationship unfolds inside the psyche as previously dissociated pieces of soul are brought back together; and interpersonally though a safe, attuned, empathic relational field.

And also transpersonally, a re-association with the Divine, with our essential Being, with that part of ourselves that was never wounded and was always Whole.

Somehow, reunion with the missing companion, with the lost Friend, whether inside, outside, or in between, for the great union and re-linking to occur.

To bear witness to this dissociation and re-linking and to offer a safe, holding, and dynamic vessel and inner Temple, where the other can feel felt and understood, can take us to the ground.

As we weep and lament together, somehow in that, in the purity of those tears, the stars are returned, the splitting is healed, the rupture is repaired, and the dissociated pieces of soma and psyche are reunited.

It’s only love that can foster that sort of reunion, a love that belongs not to a “healer” or a “patient,” but to the field itself; all we can do is allow our perception to be cleansed and our heart to be polished so that we can perceive it and be a vehicle for its embodiment and incarnation.

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When meeting with a friend who is down...

When we meet with someone who is feeling melancholic, empty, shaky, or confused, we can quickly become convinced that something is wrong, and that our role is to act urgently to fix them - to spin off into techniques, theories, and ideas to help them replace the actuality of their experience with what we believe they should be having instead.

It’s totally natural to want relief for those we care about and to do whatever we can to help; we don’t need to pretend this isn’t the case. We can hold that larger intention that they feel better, while simultaneously staying open to a call emerging in the field between us into deeper territory.

Perhaps it is something more subtle, nuanced, and merciful than relief that they’re most longing for. For the Friend, for a companion who will go with them into the dimly lit, endarkened landscape of the soul.

There is wisdom and guidance in the images, emotions, and somatic data arising into the relational field between ourselves and another, vital communication from psyche serving an initiatory function beyond what we can perceive. We don’t want to short-circuit that, especially as a result of our own anxiety and discomfort.

If we slow down and reflect, we might discover how much of our “fixing” activity, the movement toward relief, arises out of an unresolved relationship with our own shadow, untended historic core vulnerabilities and complexes, and from the spinning of the ghosts of our unlived lives.

It is possible that the most skillful and kind thing we can offer our friend is to sit in the charged energy with them, bearing witness to pure feeling together, in that claustrophobic or restless space, and stay near; to remove the burden that they come out of their experience, “feel better,” or heal in order for us to stay close.

Perhaps they don’t need to be healed, but to be held, to be heard, and to feel felt and understood, for someone to companion them as the hidden wisdom unfolds.

Where, together, we can make sense of their experience and discover the meaning in it, crafting a safe and empathically-attuned home where the shards of a broken world can reassemble.

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Return into the inner temple

There is spirit buried inside matter, but we must open our imagination and allow our perception to be cleansed.

Behind the veil, multiplicity is just as holy as oneness, sound as sacred as silence, form as pure as the formless, when embraced within the heart.

Each an equal arrow in the quiver of the beloved, sent to pull us closer.

Reality is neither dual nor nondual, but way beyond all that. Those distinctions fall away in union.

In a moment when the emotions surge, a doorway appears. Sink into the earth, enter her colors, open your inner senses, enter the mandala of the imagination. The ally is near.

We are conditioned to find a problem where there is an invitation.

Place your hands on your heart. Attune to the aliveness of the somatic flow. Follow the breath back into essence. Return into the inner temple. Stay there. And listen.

Learn about Matt's new 2024 inner work group and community