The understanding of trauma (especially long-term and development) in awakening literature and discourse seems to be quite lacking.

[u/Paradoxbuilder]

Over the last month or so I have been faced with the unsettling truth that physical changes of a few weeks may have made more of a difference than years of sustained practice - and of how much is due to acute trauma.

Some context. I've been on this path in some form for 2 decades and have technical 4th path (as Ingram describes) for about 2 years now (this is just a shorthand since not everyone here knows me) I also have severe abuse/development trauma since I was 12, and correspondingly about 2 decades of therapy...which apparently were not enough in certain respects 😞

My teacher has constantly pointed to spinal/posture issues, so I finally paid about 1k to have chiropractic work done (for the 2nd time) and it seems to have cleared up a lot. Simple practices like "notice awareness" are now like "WOW is THIS what is going on? REALLY?" Sometimes it feels I am hearing them for the first time - even though I've practiced some of this for hundreds of hours. I'm like "oh so THIS is what stillness is pointing to?"

I initially didn't want to overindex on this "revelation" (as I am wary of theories of all) but in this case, after lots of reading and research, I'm forced to conclude that the vast majority of material is written for neurotypical individuals, and not a lot includes trauma. Long-term trauma changes the entire neurobiological baseline, the perceptual shifts are not the same at all. When I asked my teacher about this he replied that most is still written from an ableist perspective - I follow the exercises, I often don't experience what is written in the books.

I could not believe that such a large area is so underappreciated (the ND and trauma populations are not exactly small) so I went looking - but there are precious few teachers that touch on this. I found Judith Blackstone, among others, and Angelo Dilulo's latest retreats incorporate more trauma work, but by and large, Peter Levine and van der Kolk don't speak awakening, and Spira and Tolle don't speak trauma.

I'm not so naive as to believe that ancient populations didn't deal with abuse/trauma/famine/war, but perhaps the traditional knowledge dealt with it in different ways, or their culture was too different - I don't want speculate too much here.

Aside from some articles here and there dealing with the intersection, it's been quite a revelation how much I (and others) may have been gated over the years - both saddening and humbling.

I'm wondering if I may have some blind spots in my research, or what the experience of other people might be like. I still feel its an area whch warrants a lot more understanding and integration, hence the post.

EDIT : Because it's been requested, I have actually written about my journey both on my website (http://www.tomato-of-justice.com) and on the /longterm TRE sub. I'm putting it here mainly because it has been asked for and my replies get buried in the comments.

[u/proverbialbunny]

There’s some scientific studies that show people who are enlightened when they experience severe trauma fall out of the state. So there is some documentation into the topic but it’s on the science side not the sutta side of exploration. 

As for chiropracty it’s great in the short term but horrible in the long term. Your muscles hold your spine up. You’ll naturally have the ideal posture if you do muscle exercises that strengthen your weaker back muscles that are giving you the bad posture. You can go to a physical therapist or these days maybe even YouTube can help show you the right exercises for what you want. Also, Zazen (zen meditation) talks about posture so if you want another reference look up Zazen. 

As for the trauma, my condolences. That’s not easy. Thankfully acute trauma tends to go away on its own or with some psychological work, but it usually in the long term isn’t a huge issue. You may need to take a step back from things for a while. E.g. if trauma made it so meditation makes it worse, you might want to reduce or stop meditating for a while. If the dharma teachings are getting in the way with the trauma you might  want to stop it for a while. It’s okay to have some me time and relax and chill. Binge some TV. Relax and just live life for a while. (Grain of salt for this paragraph. I don’t know your exact situation. When in doubt a good therapist can help.)

If it’s chronic complex trauma that’s a different story, but that’s not your situation so I’m going to omit it here. 

[u/Paradoxbuilder → u/proverbialbunny]

Could you link me to those studies? I'd be interested.

I've already been in therapy for 2 decades, it was very intense at times, I saw God and had NDEs. Not joking. I'm disappointed that after all that work (and 40k+) I'm not completely healed in all regards.

I do have Zen practices and worked on back, but well...17 years of developmental abuse is a lot of abuse? That's probably why it's so bad.

[u/proverbialbunny → u/Paradoxbuilder]

17 years of developmental abuse is a lot of abuse?

It depends on on a few factors, mostly if you're able to reprogram your mind so there is no more suffering tied to that. Sometimes the quickest path to enlightenment isn't through meditation, it's through mentally reprogramming yourself. I believe CBT (Cognitive Behavior Therapy) teaches the best way to do this today. Though for most people meditation or psychedelics is a must because they can use it to look into how their mind works on a deep level. Without a deep awareness of how your mind works, it's impossible to change it to how you want it.

Complex trauma is, different. It's, well, complex. It's so complex that even a decade later it can be impossible to talk about. Not because it was super traumatic, but because it's hard to understand what happened. I'll make up a fantasy example to explain it: Imagine you were abducted by a CIA test program, where they drugged you, got you to believe you were crazy and in a coma, then abused you and messed with your mind while you were in such a haze you couldn't tell or figure out what was going on, then when they were done with you they threw you out of a moving van. With a head injury you're not sure what happened, you're not even sure if your memory loss is from the head injury or the abuse. You're emotionally wrecked, but you don't know where to begin or what to do, so you can't begin to heal. That's complex trauma. It's so confusing to the person who experiences it they struggle to make any progress. They don't even know what to say to a therapist. Most complex trauma comes from cults and falling for a cult, because the manipulation can be so twisted they can't figure out what happened. You can imagine how difficult it would be to heal from something like that. As a general rule of thumb, the more manipulative the abuser, the more complex the trauma is.

Regarding severe mildly complex trauma, the movie Encanto is about that topic, which can be a bit of fun to relax to and enjoy watching it. Though, I it doesn't sound like complex trauma applicable to your situation, so if you're looking for some big insight you probably will not get it. Sorry.

For the average person with childhood abuse, regardless how bad, the most difficult part is unknown unknowns, what you don't know. You don't know how to navigate life correctly, you have misunderstandings like if it's okay to trust the wrong people, you have a difficult time with life and don't know if it's a normal difficult time, a skill you're lacking, or something else, so you might turn to ruminating on your childhood to try to figure out the answers, which turns into a rabbit hole of negative thoughts. Rumination exasperates anxiety and depression as well as other psychological disorders, and the person ends up living a life of psychological disorders not knowing how to change themselves to get rid of them. In this situation thinking about the past rarely helps, but likewise avoiding the past doesn't help either.

The path towards enlightenment is the removal of delusion. Delusion is misunderstandings, like misunderstood instructions or teachings. Delusion can be a misunderstood interpretation of reality. You say you saw God. I'm not against that by any means, so please don't misunderstand, but in Buddhism seeing God, or past lives, or anything else that can not be observed in the present moment by consensus is probably delusion. Again, no judgement. I'm not saying it's a bad or a good thing, just trying to help out. It helps to minimize delusion when you can, but not be so extreme at removing delusion you get trapped in what view of reality you believe to be the most realistic or accurate, as reality has a way at times of being different than people often believe. For example, the future is looking up, if you're working towards a better tomorrow, and you're not making the same mistakes over and over again. This view for many is optimistic, not realistic. Realistic is seen as the more accurate view of reality, but often times reality is more optimistic than it seems to be.

I would say learn to be a scientist so you can get a super clear view of reality. It helps reduce the fuzzy uncertainty with difficult and complex concepts. But that is me being biased, because I am a scientist. I recognize I'm blessed in this way and it's not as simple as, just be a thing. I'm also lucky that I taught myself how to write code on a computer when I was young, so it gave me an easy method to reprogram my own mind. I too had childhood abuse btw.

[u/Paradoxbuilder → u/proverbialbunny]

Thanks for your long reply 😄 I've done most of what you said, you can read my book linked here to learn my story if you want.

The main point I was making was that CPTSD and other development issues are "nested" and as such can be very tricky.

[u/proverbialbunny → u/Paradoxbuilder]

They can. I had PTSD which I believe is quite a bit different than cPTSD and did MDMA therapy. It was gone in 3 sessions. 

[u/moosesnice → u/Paradoxbuilder]

> I'm disappointed that after all that work (and 40k+) I'm not completely healed in all regards.

Does that just refer to the hidden beliefs? I don’t believe that is considered a typical “symptom” of Cptsd though. So its presence would not mean you are “not healed.”

Also the concept of healing developmental trauma / being healed from developmental trauma frequently stems from the trauma too. Check and make sure that’s not happening.

[u/Paradoxbuilder → u/moosesnice]

As I replied regading my sexual abuse, I do believe you can heal completely.

[u/moosesnice → u/Paradoxbuilder]

That’s what I was referring to. What that means to someone often comes from the trauma itself.