Trauma can be transformed

Trauma is a two sided coin. One face is negative, dark, destructive. The other is positive, hopeful and transformative.

In most cases, trauma warps our personality, blights our health, stunts our development, and condemns us to living well below our potential. It brings aggression and violence into families, communities, nations, and the whole planet. And trauma begets trauma as victims become perpetrators, passing on their own trauma to their partners, children and communities. In this way, humanity has been trapped for several thousand years in a vicious cycle of violence and domination. In the words of Daryl Paulson and Stanley Krippner, the aftermath of trauma is often “anxiety that will not subside, depression that will not heal, or psychosomatic injuries that will not mend.”

But this is not the whole picture. Trauma can be the dark gateway through which we enter into a journey of personal and spiritual growth. As trauma therapist Peter Levine expressed it:

Trauma has the potential to be one of the most significant forces for psychological, social and spiritual awakening and evolution.

For most of us, transformation is a slow and arduous process requiring determined commitment, and the help of skilled therapists and spiritual teachers. But, for a surprising number, it comes unbidden as a sudden awakening following intense and prolonged turmoil in their lives. The trigger may be loss and grief when a loved-one dies. It may be a life-threatening illness, or an accident that leaves them severely disabled. It may be the crash of a business or the end of a promising career. But whatever the trigger, there comes a point at which the person lets go and accepts the loss at a deep level. At that moment, they experience a transformation of their ‘dark night of the soul’ into joy and bliss. And they awaken to a new meaning and purpose in life.

This transformative power of trauma is nowhere better documented than in Steve Taylor’s latest book “Out of the Darkness.”  This forms a perfect complement to our book, “Hope for Humanity.” We focused primarily on the impact of trauma on the world and actions we might take to reduce it. We included only a relatively brief discussion of its potential for spontaneous transformation.  Steve fills that gap by telling the stories of many people for whom life-shattering events became a blessing, and analyzing the factors that made them so.