READ IT TO ME: Click play to listen to this post.
In my last blog, I wrote about the impact of trauma repetition and re-enactment in my own life. Perhaps you recalled your own re-enactment experiences. I hope you spent some time reflecting on the questions designed to promote conscious awareness of your own childhood trauma and how it impacts you in your present life.
Many times people try to compartmentalize their traumas. They want to forget that they are there. However, your vitality is not sufficient to maintain centered living in the presence of trauma. Like springs being pushed down, the more you compartmentalize, the more constrictive you become, forcing an eventual explosion or meltdown.
This happened to me 35-plus years ago. Under the duress of trauma repetition and re-enactment in a ministry setting where I was identified as the culprit to one of my parishioners committing suicide, I experienced an emotional meltdown. I could no longer keep all the springs pushed down and I collapsed into a major clinical depression that rendered me nonfunctional for a while.
A healthy response to trauma is about accessing resiliency. What happened to you must be worked through.
So many of the problems that occur in a relationship are re-enactments. He’s feeling no one took care of him as a child and he brings this into the relationship. She feels that no matter how much she does she is not appreciated. So often, the problem the couple brings to you is never the problem. The problem is always the unfinished business of a family of origin. Each tends to project onto the partner by re-creating the problem that existed in the unfinished work of a family of origin.
In this blog, I want to suggest different ways to address childhood traumas that interrupt emotional intimacy in adulthood. Here is a list of modalities that many of my clients have found most helpful.
- Inner child work—Guided imageries reconnect us with, nurture, and protect the wounded child self.
- Family of origin work/genogram analysis—Encourages understanding and breaking dysfunctional family patterns that lead to repetition.
- Shame reduction exercises—affirmations, journaling, group therapy, and self-compassion practices to dismantle toxic shame.
- 12-Step or recovery group work (e.g., Adult Children of Alcoholics, CoDA)—Supportive environments for practicing boundaries, building healthy attachments, and seeing through re-enactment patterns.
- Role-playing/psychodrama—Externalize and resolve old family roles. (role reversal, empty chair, re-parenting skills, family sculpting, etc.)
- Somatic therapies (trauma-sensitive yoga, Somatic Experiencing, breathwork)—Reconnect safely with the body, release stored tension, and interrupt automatic physical responses that fuel re-enactment.
- EMDR, Brainspotting, ETT (Emotional Transformation Therapy)—Reprocessing of traumatic memories so they no longer trigger re-enactment patterns.
- Neurofeedback—Regulate brain patterns, calming hypervigilance and emotional reactivity that drive repetition.
- Internal Family Systems (IFS)—Supports integration of fragmented “parts”.
- Psychedelic-assisted therapy (ayahuasca, psilocybin, etc)—Can be helpful in accessing and integrating buried memories and emotions. Facilitating self-compassion and forgiveness. Disrupting fixed patterns of identity and behavior. Creating a sense of connectedness.
There are other modalities that can be helpful. Personally, I have engaged most of the above and found each of them healing. The key to healing trauma is integration. In addition to what has already been identified, it was very healing for me to go back to the scene of the crime(s). Though somewhat controversial, I found my journey very healing.
When my mother died at the age of 99, I decided to do some profound healing work. I traveled back to Illinois where I grew up and she had lived from birth. In addition to mourning her death, I wanted to give back the residual shame carried with me from childhood. I had done much healing work previously prior to this time. I decided that I would go to 5 pivotal locations where somebody else’s shame was heaped on me and utilize my wise-minded adult self to give back the shame that was forced on me when I was young and impressionable. I asked that my three sons go with me and my wife. A dear friend and colleague and his wife offered to attend as well. I reached out to 70 different program support people asking them to send to me positive energy on the morning as I went to the 5 places.
I am talented at writing poetry. So, my strategy was to go to these 5 places and read a poem that I had written for each location. It was my way of giving back the shame I had been carrying all my life. I went to:
- My mother’s childhood home where she accidentally burned her sister to death, playing with fire—triggering lifelong shame for her that was eventually given to me.
- The Church (where I was sexually molested by the pastor and lost my sense of smell)
- Lawson Baseball Park—where my mother and brothers all had played baseball and I had been told by an older brother that I was not good enough (after pitching a Perfect Game)
- The home I grew up in (where I was abused and learned to medicate with sexual images as a kid)
- The Illinois Central Train Station (where my African American teammates’ parents were forced off the City of New Orleans train because they were black during the Great Migration.
At each of these locations, I read an inspiring and revolutionary poem that helped to further transform who I was. As a result of all the previous therapy that I had done and the giving back of shame during these moments of healing, I have a clearer and deeper awareness of my own self-belief that resonates with truth and continues to deepen to this day.
When it comes to healing re-enactment, there is no need to rinse and repeat. There is a plethora of therapy modalities to draw from. The question is are you willing to stop avoiding painful trauma and begin scrubbing the wound in order to fulfill your destiny?
