There’s something about sexual trauma that doesn’t get enough emphasis: it binds you to other people, in complex and sometimes unexpected ways.
It’s not hard to understand that feelings could get bound up with the perpetrator of that trauma. Here is one classic way: if the one taking advantage of a little child has no remorse—be it through rationalization or sociopathy—the child takes on that guilt. There are other ways this happens.
Such trauma plays an important role in future sexual relationships—although, depending on how deeply buried the experience has become, that effect may not be so obvious. In an attempt to deal with, to master that experience, the person can be attracted unconsciously to someone who resembles the abuser. It might be a physical similarity, or the same degree of ‘power differential’—a boss, or a teacher or professor, for example. But more insidious and more likely, there is something ‘abusive’ in their relating together, that operates like a magnet.
These complexities contribute to the soul’s patterns of knots and entanglements—sanskara—that can twist this life’s trajectory, or play out over many lifetimes.
Sexual trauma creates yet another type of binding between people that exerts a powerful pull. The person abused is drawn inexorably to the person to whom the story is revealed.
Those trained in psychodynamic psychotherapy are familiar with the concept of transference: how feelings stirred up by confiding deeply held thoughts and beliefs play out in the psyche of the person coming for help and also in the therapeutic space between them. In revealing trauma, some or many emotional aspects are experienced with that other person. That is why it is so important that a therapist has deep and supervised training and experience so that there is healing and not further abuse.
But this very human phenomenon doesn’t only happen within the confines of a treatment setting. The invasion of one’s bodily integrity is a powerful violation, and the condition of openness and trusting required when it is revealed creates a powerful energetic bond.
In an ideal situation for a child so traumatized, this other is a loving parent who comforts, cares, understands, and protects. A person of any age might confide in a friend who is already close and engaged with them in a loving relationship, and with whom they can expect a supportive and similar reaction.
But sometimes that is not the case, the requisite safety is not as it seems, or perhaps the desire for or experience of relief is so great that blind spots interfere with warning signs. Yet another entanglement of the heart is created—unconscious and just as binding in its own way.
One of the deepest effects of NRT, the New Regression Therapy, is the unwinding of sanskara, with the effective bringing in of Divine Resources that touches all of the connections. This changes a painful ‘soul murder’ into a healing journey and balm to the heart. Poured into such wounded thoughts and beliefs about oneself is Light that sets the person on a new path freed from knots of trauma.
clarity of mind and a peaceful heart