Archive for category: trauma

Toxic Ties Feed the Horror

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As a psychotherapist and writer, I treat and write about unhealthy emotional ties as horror-making. Sick ties exert toxic effects that can be felt as anxiety and depression. They can eventually make their way into the body. The body cries out when the mind is in pain, writes one psychologist. And it’s true. In Goddess of Everything, Consuela, Gabriél’s wife, tries to help him see the source of his suffering. But getting through to one enmeshed in a toxic relationship is challenging, to say the least.

The good thing for Gabriél is that he has a wife who loves him. She’s willing to give him time and space to figure things out. The bottom line for him is that he has to see what he needs to see, or the horror will continue to be fed. He keeps it alive by keeping the tie alive and feeding it—literally, as you’ll see in the story.

Writing horror for me as a trauma specialist is natural since trauma is horror, and horror always springs from trauma. It’s a Jack-In-Box that pops up in your life and can be terrifying and terrorizing. Horror is the dark gift that keeps on terrorizing us unless we see what we need to see. And reading horror allows us the chance to hone our horror-spotting skills. It helps us to read on and spot the horror at work behind the scenes of the story. Then, we may be able to hone our horror-spotting skills in daily life.

Spotting horror is vital for us to be healthy psychically, denying horror, keeping it alive, and making our mind uneasy and even ill. This passage in Goddess of Everything speaks to this dynamic: “Uneasiness stole over Consuela. It was in the way she shifted in the green webbed lawn chair, got a faraway look, grit her teeth, jaw muscles taut. Then she turned to him, brow furrowed. ‘Things go from top down, Gabriél. . .. Maybe you’re too close. Facts get blurry when you’re emotionally tied’ “(p.169).

Gabriél denied what stared him in the face and so kept the horror alive. Blurred then denied emotional reality leads to emotional and physical suffering and trauma. Only moving from emotional doubting and denial offers hope from the affliction of horror in Goddess of Everything and in the realm of everyday life.

As you’ll see as you read Goddess of Everything, toxic ties are real, and so is the horror that comes with them. So, it comes down to a decision to keep the denial going and, therefore, to keep the horror alive, or risk what needs to be risked and see what happens!

Live Deeply . . . Read Daily!

Find Your Rage, You Find Yourself . . .

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Find Your Rage

Rage cuts through the BS. It gets to the heart of things and sweeps all else away. There’s nothing like it to get things going in life. As a psychotherapist and writer, I want to make sure you understand that rage has nothing to do with losing your temper – a destructive act. A person in the midst of a temper fit has lost hold of self; they’re possessed by a dark emotion that hurts, maims, and ruins what has the potential to be good. So, the kind of rage I’m talking about is not temper. We find our rage by bypassing our temper and tapping into an assertiveness that sets things right.

Rage Gets to the Heart of Things

When everything goes crazy, emotions are mixed up, and the situation becomes confusing, tap into rage as assertiveness. Let yourself zero in on the bottom line of what’s causing pain. In Goddess of Everything, a young man and his wife are troubled. Their marriage is suffering. Things are confusing. Dealing with the dark magic at work takes cutting through the BS of the husband’s denial. Getting to the heart of things is the only hope of releasing yourself from the swirl of psychic confusion and destructive living. Rage, assertiveness that sets things right, can help take you from crazy to hope.

Rage and Let the Fates Tell the Tale

“You find your rage, you find yourself,” said the old healer in Goddess of Everything. Rage is a gift if it sets things right. It helps us and others heal and grow. Not all respond favorably. And that’s their problem, not ours. The dark witch, hidden behind the black cloak of religion gone awry, howls and jettisons terrible black magic against those who oppose her. Goddess of Everything puts things on the line – use it or lose it – rage! A husband and wife’s fate depends on rage and its power to confront wickedness and let the fates tell the tale.

Check it out on Amazon. Read the sample. It’s all there – rage is a gift!

Live Deeply . . . Read Daily!

The God of Fire

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God is Charged

The word God stirs people, sometimes sets off explosive or loving feelings. It gets a reaction, either good, bad, or indifferent. In depth psychotherapy and writing, I help folks explore shock, trauma, and healing both emotionally and spiritually. Simply saying “God” is meaningful to different people in different ways, and that is to be respected.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great American transcendentalist philosopher wrote in The Over-Soul, “How dear, how soothing to man, arises the idea of God, peopling the lonely place, effacing the scars of our mistakes and disappointments! When we have broken our god of tradition and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with his presence.”

A Fire in the Heart

My novel, The Unholy, generated quite a reaction among traditional religious people. Some posted angry reviews that I dared explore the dark side of religion. They were upset, some enraged. I meant no ill will. Metaphysical thrillers make us ponder and question religious matters, human feelings, and the meaning of life. Dramatic storytelling pops out the good and the bad. It sets a fire in the heart for matters authentic and sacred.

Goddess of the Wild Thing didn’t provoke the same outcry among hard-core religionists. The story is about complicated love, the dark side of religion not as upfront and center. However, this story is laced with religious trauma injuring the capacity to love. Traditional religion, the dark side of spirituality, has profoundly impacted relationships and life. The challenge for one woman is to find a way through her spiritual dilemma so that the potential for love can emerge.

My soon-to-be-released thriller, The Goddess of Everything, taps into compromised love – a heart divided. The power of the dark side of religion serves as a backdrop for conflict and hoped-for resolution. Husband and wife are nearly torn apart by the toxicity of a religious mother’s love gone bad.

The antidote, in all my stories, for religious wounding is fire in the heart. It is truth to self and to those who are themselves true. It is the experience of life, not perfect or without problems, but real and true and passionate. This is fire in the heart, this is God.

Visionary Fiction and the God of Fire 

In visionary fiction, novels of crisis and consciousness, fire sets each page ablaze. We’re challenged to let go of what no longer works for us, including dead ideas about religion and God. God, as Emerson addresses, is accessed only by shedding lifeless traditions and rhetoric. God isn’t in the dogma, tradition, or rhetoric. God is, in Emerson’s words, ” . . . the infinite enlargement of the heart with a power of growth  to a new infinity on every side.” Step into infinity on every side, discover the God of Fire, as the imaginary realm of visionary fiction draws you in and nourishes your soul.

“Live Deeply…Read Daily”

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You Can’t Change Anyone But Yourself

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Thinking we can change someone is never a good idea. Even as a psychotherapist, it’s not my approach. I help people to further their understanding of self and other, then we wait and yield to the effects of therapeutic human understanding. We never know how it’s going to turn out; we only know that truth facing is medicine for the soul.

So, it’s the same when I write books. Stories can be medicine for the soul. Esoteric fiction moves us into powerful psychic realities, dynamics that shift the way we see ourselves and others. Stories are their own form of truth facing – medicine for the soul.

I remember that while writing The Unholy, my depth psychotherapy practice was overrun by patients seeking healing from religious trauma. They had suffered physical, emotional and often sexual trauma within a religious context. It was within church-going homes, respected religious institutions, and mediations ashrams that trauma abounded. As they healed, they desperately wanted to make the perpetrators change; but so often the families and organizations refused to see the problem. Thus, there was no hope for changing those in denial; but my patients, through their own journey into self-understanding, healed and changed.

My writing shifted during this time away from inspirational psychology and into visionary fiction. Here I told stories of emotional and spiritual upheaval. Trauma laced its way through action-packed dramas of religion gone bad and one person’s determined struggle to battle dark forces within and without. Within the narrative, as in our daily life, things vacillated between hope and despair. The imagination takes us into realms of visions, dreams, and everyday magic in a way that inspirational psychology approaches but, for me, did not bring home.

Stories take us headlong into what we’re grappling with in our own lives. Unconsciously, we’re always drawn to read the story that will speak most to us at a given time. The writing of Goddess of the Wild Thing bolted out of me as patients moved into issues of what it means to find love. It doesn’t go the same way for everybody. You can’t pin it down. Love is a wild goddess. The image of the wild goddess came to me in a dream one night. It was to be the title for this particular book that depicts an age-old struggle about love—whether bad love is better than no love— and the discovery that love is a wild thing.

So when it comes to changing someone, don’t do it. It’s the message of lives nearly lost and then regained. We can lose ourselves by giving more and more to someone who does not see or want to see that there is a problem. Whether in religion, love, or day-to-day work and relationships it’s the getting on with things as they are that matters. Of course, that doesn’t imply sticking with what’s bad or dysfunctional. There are mean and malignant people. They are the ones who, in small ways or big strikes, undermine our sense of worth and integrity. Actually, they seem to get a kick out of it. Oh, they might say they’re sorry, but they’ll come around and do it again. There’s a payoff for them in the form of power and control. We need to shake loose of them and move on.

In story writing, it’s utterly fascinating to experience the characters speaking to me, the writer, of their plight. Maybe (they wonder) they made up the bad thing that happened. Maybe they blew it out of proportion. Maybe, maybe, maybe. So many maybes signal upside down thinking and one unhappy soul setting themselves up for another you-know-what.

So, when we read we can go through things on the page that helps us with everyday things. That way we’re less likely to set ourselves up for another you-know-what situation. We can avoid unnecessary life pain and trauma through an understanding of self and others. Reading opens up soul paths for change because, after all, you can’t change anyone but yourself.

#visionaryfiction #depthpsychology #soulmedicine #change

Rape, Rage, and the Monster

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There are timeless myths and stories that speak to the horror of rape. Rape makes us insane, and it can empower us to heal. Then, there can be hope. Hope potentially ushers in a more profound understanding of the incredible force that is rage and the patriarchy that ignites it.

A recent Broadly article notes, “If we go back to Greek antiquity, Medusa was a mighty force endowed with the power to both kill and redeem. Sculptors and painters would use the Medusa head as an apotropaic symbol to ward off evil spirits. But her tragic beauty was even more inspiring. Take the Roman mosaic floor on display at the Getty, where Medusa’s wild, snaky locks are depicted as wind-blown curls, her petrifying gaze an elegantly turned head. Her head peers out from the center of the mosaic, a protective talisman offset by a shield of concentric circles. There are countless other examples, too, where she’s definitely more muse than monster . . . Beautiful victim, monstrous villain, powerful deity—she’s all of those things, and more besides. Perhaps it’s that mercurial nature that makes her an endless source of fascination. She is, in a sense, a site for our collective projections of both fear and desire: simultaneously a symbol of women’s rage and a figure sexualized by the very patriarchal forces she is seeking vengeance against.”

In symbolic dream material treated in depth psychotherapy, the Medussa emerges as an image of rape. When the symbol enters treatment, I wonder about the unresolved sexual pain of the patient. Over time we move into the pain, find our way in and through it, and therapeutically understand the victim’s story. We all have stories, some about sexual pain.

Unresolved sexual trauma is a monster. Visionary fiction may visit the hallowed realm of rape, rage, and the monster. The dark side of the patriarchy is the monster of all manner of violation. Sexual rape is intimate violation. A monster enters and plunders.

In visionary thrillers such as Goddess of the Wild Thing and The Unholy, we experience trauma. Unconsciously we’re drawn to the stories we need to read, must read. They nourish the soul as well as the mind. In them, something within us is touched. It needs to be touched because it’s lying there dormant and in need of awakening.

“Consciousness”, reported one patient, “is so hard.” “There are so many other things I’d rather do with my time than turn within and discover what’s there. I’ve rushed around, done this and that in a frenzy. It’s all been about escaping myself—getting away from the monster and my rage. It’s there for a reason. I’m glad I faced the monster and my rage. I’ve told my story and have come out the other end of that dark tunnel. But, it was no easy task to face the monster and the rage.”

Good stories, thrillers, take us into dark tunnels of mind. We’re hesitant to go there. We should be. They are scary places. But, unless we take things a step at a time, enter into our story we never discover the hope that can heal.

Hope comes at the price of our time, energy, and effort. Nothing happens without time, energy, and effort. There’s an emotional zero, a big psychic zip, without investment into self. Remember, passivity is an investment, a lethargic and fruitless one, but an investment nonetheless. The unique fact about an investment in story, following instinct into the dark tunnel of discovery regarding self and others, is that there can be hope.

When we read, we do it for a reason. The mind nudges us to read. Stories come our way, tug at us. We listen, respond, and discover that when we read, we receive what we need. We find out that behind the rape, rage, and monster is the hope that we can heal.

Paul DeBlassie III, Ph.D.

Paul DeBlassie III, Ph.D., is a psychologist and award-winning writer living in his native New Mexico, crafting visionary thrillers energized with trickster mischief and natural magic.

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