Heroes in Business - Andy Hahn, Fearless Living, Loss, Violence, Deep Parts, Blocked Traumas

Episode Date: June 7, 2022

We describe 4 patterns, loss, violence, dead parts, blocked memories. We share stories, indications,different ways they may show up, how to work with them. The One-Hour Miracle Appendix in this episode of Dr Andy Hahn Guided Self Healing Fearless Living.  

Hi, this is Dr. Andrew Hahn, and this is episode 50 of the podcast, Guided Self-Healing, Fearless Living. And we're going to continue with the book, and at this point, we are at the appendix. And in the appendix, there are eight patterns, and in this podcast, I'm going to talk briefly about four of them so you get a little sense of them. And the patterns we're going to talk about today are loss, violence, already dead parts, and what we call blocked patterns, which are like blocked memories. So let's start in. so let's start in loss trauma always has the same structure and really in a loss trauma what happens is that you experience such some kind of loss that is so much that you can't bear the loss and invariably what happens is there's a deep sense of emptiness inside. So the induction for a lost trauma is I feel empty.

And when you experience a lost trauma, invariably what happens is that you begin to feel not only this inner sense of emptiness, but a fear of losing others or a kind of like antithetical way of being, which is to not let yourself get close in the first place because you're afraid of the loss. So you protect yourself by not getting close. And then people say, why aren't you getting close to people? But really that's a protection. But the key again,

always is that there's a sense of emptiness. And loss trauma can come, obviously, from anything, it can come directly from a loss, but it can also come from, you know, things that we may not consider a loss. If we're adults, like, you know, we may be with a toddler and have to be called away for a week. And when we come back, we see that that toddler responds to us differently. They're no longer just as joyful to see us necessarily, or they may become more clingy, or they may become more distant, or a whole variety of other things. And all of that, of course, is just a response to that loss. There are so many cases of loss trauma that we've experienced in life-centered therapy.

And invariably, people may not even be aware of the loss, particularly if it's something that happened in another lifetime or when they were very young, they may not have even considered it. But the thing, of course, is that it's still held in the body. And when you find the loss, and you can be in a different relationship with the loss, which often involves a kind of reparenting, with the loss, which often involves a kind of reparenting and a statement that I will always be here with you. And a sense of being able to reparent yourself by saying, even if I've lost someone in the outer worlds, I don't have to lose them in the inner worlds. Worlds open up and invariably what happens is we're able to be with our own sense of emptiness and the aloneness or loneliness that follows loss and be with them in a whole different way. So that's loss trauma. Now we're

going to go to violence trauma. And again, no matter what, there is the same underlying structure. And what I would say also is that I have a colleague, Judith Swack, who wrote a wonderful paper in 1994, I believe, that's in the journal Anchor Point on the structure of loss and violence traumas. And essentially, she says it doesn't matter what the loss or the violence is, but in either case, it always has the same underlying structure and I found that to be very true. So let's go to violence. And the underlying structure in the violence trauma, the underlying experience is a sense of vulnerability, so that there is always a sense of potential danger and that you can't protect yourself. And sometimes also

a sense that there's something toxic inside you, that you feel poisoned inside. And this can come literally from a violence trauma where there is some kind of physical violence, like rape, for example, and you may feel that something is inside you and it feels disgusting. It can also happen when you feel like, you know, there's been violence with a parent, and even if they don't do anything like penetrating you, just their words can penetrate you, and it can be something that gets inside you and makes you feel sick and really poisons you to life. Again, we've had so many examples of violence traumas. One of the interesting ones that we wrote about in the book was a violence trauma that mapped as a violence trauma,

even though the violence was by running into a pole and this literally like a telephone pole in a playground when a girl wasn't watching very carefully but it mapped as a violence trauma because from then on she felt a deep sense of vulnerability and that you know there was danger lurking and she didn't know where to anticipate it so it's really quite extraordinary course, what can map as a violence trauma. But typically, the more typical violence traumas are, of course, about some kind of either physical or verbal attack that you can't weather. And in response to violence traumas, people can do a lot of things, but they tend to be in the area of fight or flight or freeze or fawn, because the world then becomes dangerous. And danger is always lurking.

And the question is, how can you keep yourself safe and secure in a world where you never feel safe and secure? So, violence, traumas. The next pattern I wanna talk briefly about is called already dead parts. And already dead parts is like when a part of you inside, it doesn't wanna die. Something happens and it feels like it dies or it's numb. So something happens and it just shuts your heart down to such a degree or some other part of your being

to such a degree that it already feels like it's dead or numb. And of course, it depends on what the part is. So, you know, but usually what someone says is they say it felt like I died inside or I go around all the time and I feel numb inside and depending on where that numbness is, of course, will, you know, you can have very different parts that die. and depending on which part dies you can identify it. So if your heart dies, you can go around, you could be in a major depression or you could be sadistic and, you know, you could, someone does something that makes you feel dead inside, you can treat other people the same way because, you know, your heart's died's died inside of course that can come from violence also and you can have violence and dead parts at which point you might go after vulnerable people

because that's what happened to you but you shut down so much that you just don't even feel your heart and you lack compassion or empathy but of course other parts of you can die um your hands can die at which point you can't in any sense manipulate the world. And I don't just mean that in a sense of, you know, psychological sense of manipulating, but I mean, taking action, and being able to use your hands and create something, or your throat can die, at which point you can't speak, or you can't sing, or you can't really listen. Or of course, your genitals, you know, something can happen, and you can't really listen, or of course your genitals, you know, something can happen, and you can have such a deadening of your genitals that it feels like there's no

interest in anything, and it's because something happened that was so horrific that it's like they went numb, and when we get to the next pattern, actually, which was a blocked pattern, the person experienced actually five levels of numbness and never felt anything in her genitals or in the rest of her body, but of course didn't even know why because it had been a repressed memory. So that's dead parts. And the last pattern I want to talk with you about in this brief overview And the last pattern I want to talk with you about in this brief overview is a pattern we call the blocked pattern, or we originally called it a blocked memory. But we then generalized it to anything that fits what we call the blocked memory.

And in a blocked pattern, what happens is something happens that is so overwhelming that you put up a guardian or a sentinel but it's sort of like you know the little boy in the fairy tale who has his finger in the dike but the water pressure is getting more and more and more intense and it feels like a tsunami is brewing and it's going to break down you know it starts to leak through the hole and there's nothing you can keep the water, you know, to keep the water back. And so what happens for people, of course, is if it's a blocked memory, particularly if it's a blocked memory of some kind of violence and sexual abuse, they begin to get strange experiences in their body and they don't know what they are. And so really what it is, is there's a sense that something may have happened, but you don't know what they are. And so really what it is, is there's a sense that something may have happened, but you don't know what it is. You have no memory of it.

And the key is, it's sort of like, you know, the movie, A Few Good Men, where there's one character who says, I want the truth. I have to have the truth. And another character that says, or another part that says, you can't handle the truth. And really that's what's going on here. Except for in this case, of course, the part that is saying you can't handle the truth is not a general with great power, but a little child who's been parentified or someone in the story who can't

hold back the flood. And so they're they go into terror, the sentinel or guardian goes into a place of terror. And what you need to do in a blocked pattern, whether it's a blocked memory or a fear of anything that you know, might flood you. So some people might have blocked access to a feeling state even because they're afraid that if they experienced it, they would get devastated. What you have to do is you have to work with the profound terror of the one who is this protecting sentinel or guardian. And when you work with its terror, is this protecting sentinel or guardian.

And when you work with its terror, it no longer has to be so afraid of the fact that it's too small to do its job. And at that point, one of many things can happen. The first possibility is that because it no longer is afraid, if it's appropriate, then it can let the memory in. Or at which point you'll have to deal with what the underlying blocked memory or the thing was that you believed that the sentinel believed actually was something that couldn't be handled. But you'll often find that other parts are very resourced and can

handle pretty much anything, particularly if they have good healing work that they're doing. So if a blocked memory comes up or a blocked pattern comes up, what that means is we're ready to deal with it. So once you detraumatize the guardian or the sentinel, either the memory will then arise, or the person might say, you know, that was then this was now and I don't need to know and they really don't need to know because we don't need to remember everything. You know, if it's if it's not a big deal anymore. It's like, there are all kinds of things we don't remember, but it's not that we're afraid to remember. It's just like it doesn't matter anymore. The time it does matter, of course, is

some people just in order to be free need to know the truth. But sometimes, of course, the reason it may matter is that the person who was the perpetrator may still be around, at which point it becomes very important to potentially know that you've had that experience, because then you can make what choices you want to about the perpetrator. Or you might need it for symptom relief. So at that point, you'd have to know the truth. The time also you really need to know the truth is if not only is there a blocked memory, but there is some kind of gaslighting going on. And of course, we know, we told you about in a different circumstance, but in a case of where there was violent sexual abuse

that was denied by everybody, you know, once you handle the part of you that's afraid that you won't remember, then you can find the truth, and, you know, when you find the truth, then you can confront people. Also, by the way, blocked memories can come up, not just because of the violence, but because of the consequences. So for a whole other possibility, there could be some kind of horrific thing that happened. And then the person can remember,

but they may be like too scared to even open to the possibility of sharing the information, and they repress the decision, you know, and they say, it never occurred to me to bring it up. And really, what it is, is that they were afraid that if they brought it up, it would cause such devastation to a family system, or that they would be so vilified for bringing it up that they actually will then repress the possibility that they ever could bring it up and they'll say it was no big deal or they will just not remember the possibility of ever bringing it up even though they remember the actual thing that happened to them and that also can come out as a blocked pattern because

really the fear is what would happen if the truth gets into your consciousness and then the possibility that it'd be repealed. So we've gone through these four patterns very quickly, but I wanted to give you a little sense of all of the different kinds of patterns that are in life. And if you can discover the underlying pattern of course as we say many limiting beliefs many fears of experiencing feelings and being a choice about expression many boundary issues of letting in too much or not letting in enough can all transform because they're they all get enfolded into the narrative of that guardian or the narrative of the person who was traumatized, that the guardian is afraid of the truth being revealed. So thank you for joining me.

And again, my name is Dr. Andrew Hahn, and I go by Andy. And if you want to reach me, you can certainly do that at ahahn at lifecenteredtherapy.com. And I do answer my emails. If you want to know more about our community and our Institute, you can just go to lifecenteredtherapy.com and you will find out everything about who we are and all of our certified practitioners and our online trainings. And again, hopefully because we're still in the pandemic, but we're hopefully coming towards the we are and all of our certified practitioners and our online trainings and again hopefully because we're still in the pandemic but we're hopefully coming towards the end although who knows again live trainings and of course you can also find our book there and everything about it a book called the one hour miracle which is what i've been talking about for all these many

podcasts so until next time thank you so much. Be well. Good night.