for her to even imagine being seen in public like this.
As we continued to work with her, we grew to understand the profound extent of what that mask was covering up. In the end, it took years of deep clinical hypnotherapy before Jodi was able to open up to her own truth. Jodi grew up in a devoutly religious family from an authoritarian, Eastern European background. Her father was the head of the household and his mother—Jodi’s grandmother—lived with them to help raise the children and to protect their strict family tradition. So it’s no wonder that Jodi and her sisters grew up as high achievers, always looking perfect to the outside world in a compulsive attempt to bring accolades to this immigrant family, which was trying desperately to assimilate into the American way of life.
During her therapy, it was revealed that Jodi’s past was filled with addictive behaviors, which we saw as a way to continue numbing the pain she carried underneath her fancy façade. Jodi had used food and alcohol as far back as she could remember to numb the hurt which, along with fear and anger, consisted of deep layers of shame. In group, Jodi would always speak highly of her father, discussing at great length his many outstanding attributes and how much she loved him. When her father died, Jodi was devastated and spent months grieving his loss. Soon after, however, it started becoming clear that her beloved father had been sexually molesting her all during her childhood. In fact, her father had a very destructive, angry, erratic side to his personality that the whole family feared. When this facet of explosiveness came out, the mother or grandmother would send little Jodi upstairs to “quiet him down.”
As we worked together, Jodi slowly began to let herself know what her role was in this devastating family process. It became apparent that her role was as her father’s little mistress. Through the Jungian hypnotherapeutic approach, we saw how Jodi “ran away to the circus” and adopted several different personalities in order to survive. She had to find circus characters more powerful than her in order to deal with her abusive father. She became the tightrope walker in a childhood attempt to continue this delicate balancing act that had been assigned to her. Jodi also used the personas of the clown, to keep everyone laughing, the lion tamer, to keep her rageful father from hurting other family members, and the fat lady, in an unconscious attempt to perhaps repulse her father into stopping the sexual abuse. As she grew older, Jodi became the powerful ringmaster, always making sure that in one ring the family secret was being kept while in the next ring she was managing her father’s sexual appetite and keeping him from attacking others. In the third ring, Jodi was going to school and getting good grades while also managing the family image in the community and at church. In order to be less internally conflicted about all these different roles, Jodi artfully dissociated or split off from these parts of herself.
Dissociation is a natural process that occurs when children (or adults such as war veterans) are placed in untenable, painful situations for which there is no other solution. Like the millions of children who are abused, Jodi could not literally run away from home, so she ran away to the circus she had created in her mind.
A young man hiked into the desert and was working his way through a narrow crevice when a boulder fell on his arm and trapped him. Not only did he have to face the physical pain of having his arm smashed, but as time passed, he had to face the almost unbearable reality that there was no way of getting the rock off his arm and there was almost certainly no way someone was going to find him. So his only choice for survival was to apply a tourniquet and then sever his arm in order to make his way to freedom.
Thankfully, few of us ever have to face such a physically frightening and brutal circumstance for survival, but we’re often faced with having to sacrifice something we want in our lives for the sake of something more important. In the midst of a home fire, people will do anything to save their children and then their pets in preference to their possessions. More along the lines of the hiking example, every day people around the world choose to drink dirty water that has a good chance of making them sick, because, ironically, they need the water to survive. So they choose the lesser of two evils.
In fact, the entire body operates in this way. Any time it endures a lack of nutrients, for instance, it asks the same question we would ask with a limited budget: if I only have so much, what do I have to spend money on, and what can wait? Just like a human with a credit card, the body will borrow from its own resources—like the minerals in the bones—to make sure that day-to-day function goes on as well as possible, even though that may make its long-term foundation a little more shaky. Maybe the body needs calcium to keep muscles contracting, including the heart. Probably worth stealing a little calcium from the bones if it’s not getting the calcium from its diet, right? But what happens if that occurs on a regular basis?
As we’ve discussed, the physical body isn’t the only part of us that uses this principle of “the lesser of two evils.” While we always prefer ideal options from which to make our choices—happy and pristine surroundings, perfect nutrition, wise teachers, kind friends—circumstances are often far from ideal, and we have to do the best we can in the situation. Adults sent into war, children sold into slavery and indeed the child at home being physically, sexually or emotionally abused—all these instances may call for choices of sacrifice: “If I want to function from day to day, I cannot live in a state of shock. So ‘someone else’ will handle getting abused while ‘I’ handle daily living.”
In effect, the abused child basically sacrifices part of her connection to her true self, her soul, in order to preserve it. By separating her true self from the abuse, this aspect of her life is able to keep its attachment and its control over other parts of the child’s life. It’s wonderful that our true essence can be preserved in this way, and that this allows it to continue taking part in our lives. But there are consequences to this splitting.
After all, our souls are really the life force that makes us individuals rather than just a biological entity or part of a collective mind. This life force is what allows us to have what many people call “God-given talents,” whether these are for learning, for creating or for having a good sense of humor. This essence also knows how to deeply love and respect itself and others—something that seems to be missing in so many people who have suffered from shock.
The potential for shock is around every corner, from the moment of conception to birth to the patterns we’re exposed to by our parents, teachers and the media. No child completely escapes the impressions of stress and trauma, even if he or she is only affected to a small extent. But picture the child who has experienced minimal trauma, from a loving conception to an easy delivery, from harmony in his home and classroom life to encouragement in learning and doing. Perhaps most important of all is regular assurance from both word and deed that he is loved and respected. Picture that child and know how eager he is to learn; how happy he is to show affection; how readily he laughs. This is the structure of the generally uninhibited soul.
The soul is inhibited to some degree simply by being in a physical body. The body gives it limitations and frailties. And while most parents would love nothing better than to give their children this idyllic kind of environment, the challenges of everything from global and household economics to jobs, politics, relationships, health, housekeeping and other errands seem determined to keep them from doing so. But the younger the children without substantial abuses in their lives, the more we see those brilliant soul qualities shining through their eyes.
As we get older, though, trauma and shock play their role in teaching us, either directly or indirectly. Subtle traumas happen even in simple instances like heading
