The Balance Between Feeling and Questioning Our Trauma

So I have a great question about trauma. Maybe you're like a lot of us watching this video, you know, we're all doing pretty responsible thing by looking at our own stuff and we're working through our trauma. This question is kind of about dissolving or starving trauma. Now the question is the short question, but it says in terms of healing trauma, I've heard two main approaches. The first is to feel the pain more fully. And the second is to stop feeding energy into the trauma. But aren't they contradictory, the question says. And this is a really great question because, okay, maybe I'll put it a little differently if you're not with me on this. But there's kind of like this, this whole thing about feel it more, feel it more, feel it more. And there's also a thing you may have heard me talk about and other people too, about just inquiring into kind of questioning the trauma, which is less feeling focused, if you like. So the first one is this deep feeling into the emotions. Now I've heard that described as a more feminine approach, not necessarily a female approach, but a feminine approach. So this is kind of the idea that we feel the emotion to its fullest or as fully as we can, and we kind of surrender to the emotion when it presents itself. And we feel it completely. We feel it fully with this approach. Now the idea with this is that in feeling it and meaning it fully and sort of surrendering to it and allowing it to be as it is, that it kind of dissolves the actual trauma underneath this feeling. One of the ways you could describe it is it's a very loving approach. Okay, we use the word a feminine approach is a very loving approach. It's to meet it exactly as it is without even needing to change the emotion. The benefit of this approach, if it's successful, is that it's incredibly fast way of healing for traumas. So to meet an emotion fully like that and say, okay, I accept that you're here and I'm going to bring you in and feel you 100%. And if you do that, you know, there's a huge chunk of healing that's just taking place there, right? To the extent of the emotion, the energy that's in it to be felt and really brought in and surrender to and dissolve, that kind of dissolves into that allowing space that we create for it. Very, very healing and very rapid healing that can lead to immense changes for a person if that's possible to really meet a big emotion. So am I for that? Of course, absolutely. I mean, that's incredible when a person can do that. It's so, so beautiful. The only issue with that is I have seen, you know, maybe sometimes that approach is a little bit glamorized, if you like, maybe for lack of a better word, because it's not always the appropriate approach. It is a great approach, but it's not always the appropriate approach because potentially when you're doing that and you're coming face to face with a big trauma or a big block of guilt or fear or shame or something like that, you could potentially experience re-traumatization with this. So it's not as simple as just saying to everything, every emotion or every trauma, bring it up completely and fully, try and even trigger it. Some people talk about which is certainly at times not appropriate to do that. Some degree of triggering at times, but it's more of a sort of a, you get an intuitive sense of what's appropriate and what isn't appropriate over time. But I'll talk about that more. So this is the feminine surrender. This is the loving approach to meeting it fully as it is. So it's fast. That's the good thing. The other thing about it, we need to be a little bit careful and respectful of the trauma itself because it can be potentially re-traumatizing. And the other approach would be what we would call more of a masculine type approach, not male, but masculine. And in that we mean it's sort of the, whatever the trauma is, it kind of inquires into it. It questions it more. Okay. Now this is the feminine approach. The surrender approach is to dissolve it. The masculine approach, this inquiring into, is almost a way of starving the trauma. It's an attrition. It's sort of like, it keeps a kind of a safe distance from it. But there is a lot of benefit to this too, as I'll talk about, because sometimes this approach is kind of looked down on a little bit, I've found. And it shouldn't be, it really shouldn't be, because there's a lot of benefit to this. Because why is there benefit to this inquiring into? Maybe from a safer distance. Well, what it's doing really is, it's kind of maybe working on different mindsets, or it's much more of a kind of a, rather than a loving approach, it's a wisdom based approach. And it's sort of questioning into the underlying beliefs or the emotions to find alternative things to focus on, or alternative perspectives or mindsets. And because then the attention or awareness is on a different mindset, or different thoughts or aspects that we're trying to integrate more and more, this energy in the body sort of dissipates after a while, because it isn't being re-energized all the time. Now, this is maybe you could say, if you wanted to play it safe for a little bit, this would be a good approach, which is not a bad thing, given that we don't want her to experience a re-traumatization. The only thing about it is, it probably will take longer to heal trauma if we're using this approach. So the other problem with it, okay, it's slower. It can also lead to, if it's kind of taken to an extreme, it can lead to a kind of a denial, or maybe an over-intellectual approach. Intellectualization goes on. And it's kind of, we're keeping too far of a distance away from the emotion itself. It's not been felt into. So really what I'm saying here is, should we dissolve or starve it, right? Really, for most people, I think it's probably going to be a mixture, or we use both of these approaches. We start to feel more into the body. We do body work. And also, we start to inquire into some of these underlying beliefs that we come into contact with. And once we're doing that, I think, you know, it's a pretty rapid and safe way to start to look at some of these feelings. Maybe through getting some support with somebody else can be a very, very helpful thing too. But the main point of this video here is that, you know, I've heard more people who are in that masculine approach, kind of feeling bad about not doing, like feeling it fully all the time. Feeling it fully is really good at times. But what I want you to take away from this video is that there is no wrong approach to this, okay? There's a balancing act that goes on in this. Sometimes people, for a short period of time, go into the more loving approach to fully feel it and dissolve it. Then they step into the inquiry approach a little bit more. So it's not always the same balance. Sometimes it's 50-50, it's 80-20. It doesn't really matter what the approach is. You can't go wrong with this. So both of them are very, very helpful approaches. So what you got to do is trust your intuition, right? You're probably the best judge of this. Sometimes, you know, you can tell a therapist that you're working with the approach that you'd like to use. You lead the way on that a little bit more because you really know best what... Yeah, you can ask your therapist what they think if they've worked with you for a while or something like that, or a friend or a partner or something. But really, you can make an informed decision on that because both of these are very, very helpful. If you're doing either of these, you're healing, okay? So don't analyze it too much and don't be too critical of yourself for the approach that you typically take or the modality that you find yourself in most of the time. Both of these are really helpful. So I hope that's a useful video, guys. Neither is bad. Both are helpful, probably for most of us. A balanced approach is the best approach. But I'll leave it there for now, guys. And I'll see you again in the next video. Bye for now.