In What Am I Protecting? I spoke of areas of experience that were walled off for decades. This exchange from Anything Is Possible speaks to a dimension of that same territory—when something is not just defended, but unbearable.
When difficult experiences are walled off, a web of reactive patterns grows up around them. One of my patterns was the conviction that no one could be trusted. Because this ruled my life, seeking psychological help felt very risky. I tried once, as a young adult, and it backfired. The experience of placing trust in another person intensified the wound.
Over time, I noticed that my behaviour consistently produced results that differed greatly from my intentions. Nearly a decade later, I confided this to a friend who became my first contemplative teacher. More than a decade after dipping my toes in the waters of meditation practice, something in me was ready to approach experience in another way, and trust was no longer such a no-go proposition. By then, I had stumbled, quite unexpectedly, across Unfettered Mind, and Ken suggested I work with the five-step practice and with mind training. These gave me a way to begin forming a relationship with what had felt untouchable—not as a substitute for professional help, but as a way of making contact. Very gradually and slowly, I could allow attention to inch toward what had been too hot, too painful.
There is something deeply astute in Ken's observation that what we could not experience at the time remains as undischarged emotional reactivity. He is explicit that people generally need sensitive support to work with trauma, and that over-exposure can re-traumatise. That caution feels essential. A key is not to force anything open, but to form a relationship very gently, appropriately, as capacity allows.
To my surprise, in my sixth decade working with a therapist proved unexpectedly fruitful. Practice had not replaced therapy; it had made therapy possible. For others it may well be the other way around.
Forming a relationship with the experiences we have banished requires patience. And sometimes it begins with opening to only one thousandth of what could not be experienced.
Student: Connected to both what Bill said about healing, myself being connected to all of society, and also the talk about politics, I'm going back to what you said about memory, and when you gave the example of thinking of a mild irritation, and then switching over to saying, "I'm glad about it," and it disappearing, that worked very well for me, but when I start to think of more serious irritations like PTSD, which you raised, how is that? I'm not sure I have the question formulated except how can Buddhist practice relate to some wound that is so deep as PTSD?
Bill: What's PTSD?
Ken: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Student: And I just want to add to it that as a psychotherapist that works with them, a more appropriate label for that acronym or words for that, is post-traumatic soul disorder.
Ken: Well, even with PTSD, one way of looking at it, certainly not the only way, but one way of looking at it is something happened which we simply did not have the capacity to experience. So there's an undischarged emotional reaction. And that may be because of the physical trauma, that may because of the emotional trauma and whatsoever.
And in a certain sense, when that happens it's like a part of us is now unavailable to us and it goes back to Bill's idea of drawing a line around it. It's something that happened and we can't touch it. It's just too hot, too painful, or what have you. The approach in Buddhist practice would be gently and appropriately to start forming a relationship with that part. Now with a mild irritation that was very easily done, as you pointed out. With something that is deeply, deeply painful, it has to be done much more carefully. And there are two or three techniques with which I'm familiar.
One can apply the Anapanasati Sutra, the Full Awareness of Breathing Sutra to this. The Full Awareness of Breathing Sutra in using the breath and opening to, as you breathe, allowing yourself to move into however much of that experience you're able to and doing that very gently. So if you can only open to one thousandth of it, that's what you do.
Thich Nhat Hanh has a technique for this. It's a five-step process, which consists of holding that part, tenderly in attention, and even starting with just a very, very small amount of it so that you gradually form a relationship. And he knows of what he speaks because he comes through having been driven out of Vietnam from both sides, 'cause he was equally unpopular with the Americans and with the Vietcong.
There's another technique in the Mahayana tradition called mind training which is a way of forming a relationship with any aspect of our experience from which we are alienated. Because in that aspect of experience from which we are alienated, there is some suffering. And in mind training, you're taking that suffering and you give your own understanding and joy and support, and you just do this again with the breath, taking in the suffering, giving your own joy. And in this way you start a process of mediation with that which forms a relationship.
In the case of something as deep as post-traumatic stress disorder, I think it's highly advisable to, if one is undertaking those kinds of techniques, to do it in conjunction with seeing someone you can talk about it with. Because it's very easy to over-expose oneself to these experiences and thus re-traumatize. So I think one has to be quite careful here, but I've worked with a number of people with both of those techniques and it's been very helpful.