I was inspired recently by a recorded conversation with one of my therapeutic heroes, Bill O’Hanlan. Thinking about trauma, he described the structure of the problem when a part of us is holding trauma and our everyday life is being affected as being like two people trying to walk at the same time through a single door. They can’t get through and they get stuck.
Bill’s invitation is to ‘ Be stuck and keep moving.’ Healing is not about pushing away or denying symptoms. It's about acknowledging them and letting the pain or discomfort of them to be there. It's also about allowing movement to be there too. It’s an and/both, that gives permission for both the symptom, and a way past it to co-exist. When we do this, then the magic happens. Be it through EMDR, hypnotic suggestions in the style Bill uses so skillfully or any other approach, what heals trauma is integration. Embodied experiences of and/both with the there and then and the here and now bring new information into the previously cut off part of the system and they integrate what was previously isolated.
When you feel stuck, really allow yourself to experience your stuckness. As you do so, keep moving. I don’t know yet what that will mean specifically, but I do know that you will know when the time comes.
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