Trauma and Repetition

Trauma stops us in our tracks, sometimes for years to come. While there are many reactions to trauma, one for us to more deeply consider is the experience of being stuck.

Stuckness lives in both your psyche and your body. It feels like some inescapable force is marching you to your doom. You may find yourself fighting with your partner all the time, or lashing out at your children, or turning to substances, or you lose the ability to imagine or create. Somehow, these dynamics feel inevitable even though you want out. You’re caught in an endless loop.

We repeat patterns of trauma in daily life: the careers we choose, the relationships we host, the body we inhabit, the dreams we conjure up. This is something I see often in my clinical work. People choose what is familiar to them, even if it hurts. Being stuck in this perpetual cycle is unbearable for most, as it leaves one alone in the world, suffering. It’s what drives people, at its worst mad, at its best to therapy. And sometimes both.

This unseen force of repetition is unprocessed and unacknowledged trauma stored in the unconscious, finding a way to call out to you, “look.” This wound gets projected out into the world, into relationships, into situations. The repetition is necessary because it is your wounded psyche’s best way of calling you in to look at its pain. And of course, we never want to look. But each time you look away, your psyche will call to you, often escalating in wickedness. 

The spiral in nature

Let’s take a step back to consider how the endless loop of stuckness in trauma mirrors other loops found in nature. There is a phenomenon called the “ant death spiral.” This occurs when army ants become separated from the main foraging line and begin following each other in an endlessly rotating circle.

Theories speculate that this may occur due to hunger or stress, or that it is a way to protect the ants from predators. However, the ants will eventually die of exhaustion, repeating the same pattern again and again. The only way to escape this spiral is by some external force, like wind or rain, where the cycle can break. Otherwise, escaping the spiral on their own is impossible. 

The spiral is an interesting and ancient entity. It exists in many forms throughout the world and universe: shells, snakes, DNA, horns, hurricanes, galaxies, flowers, bird flight patterns. The list goes on and on. Fundamentally, it is a symbol of opposites existing together (e.g. tightness/expansion; death/rebirth).

If it rotates inward, it is a shape that tightens and chokes. If it rotates outward, it allows expansion and evolution. And as with any spiral, there is the calm eye at the center. We can also see this center as a symbol of the transmuted self that has integrated the turbulent journey of trauma. Taken together, the spiral can trap us in repetition, or the spiral can open up and move us closer to the self.

How to break the repetition

Now that we have both images of the spiral, the destructive neverending spiral and the progressive evolving spiral, we can return to the experience of the human who has been traumatized. You’re thinking, “I am stuck, what do I do?” Firstly, it is important to acknowledge that perhaps this stuckness formed as a defense to keep you safe, as with the ants. It is the only way they know how to survive the suffering of stress and hunger. Another lesson from the ants is that disrupting the cycle is crucial. Their lives depend on it.

We can disrupt our destructive cycles in a variety of ways. You may have already tried something external like a new workout routine or journaling, but it hasn’t made the change you hoped for. You may still find that the pull to repeat past habits is strong.

This is because your self has not been allowed to exist in its current state. This is because there has not been an internal reckoning with what you have been through and dedicated space given to process that. Your wound has not yet been acknowledged. Have you really stopped to consider how your heart beats? Where your soul lives presently? How much pain you are in on a daily basis?

Sometimes we think we are acknowledging our pain, but there are many things we do to numb ourselves (work, relationships, consumerism, moving quickly from thing to thing, etc.). When you let yourself see this, really see what you have lived through and where you are presently, without trying to numb, externalize, or escape, the spiral will begin rotating outward instead of inward. This is where you find your center, your eye of the storm, your self. This is where stuckness can begin to shift.

Sometimes therapy is necessary to facilitate this processing. Sometimes it takes another person to sit with you in your pain and notice its depths. Then, the therapeutic relationship becomes the external disruptor to the repetition. I think of the ants circling ceaselessly and how much relief would come if someone could step in.  

There is a poem I think about here:

How to survive a tidal wave, by Jonah Welch

1. put your raw body far out in the ocean as close to the wave and as far from land as you can get. It’s best to be naked so your clothes won’t weigh you down. bring nothing with you.

2a. When the wave gets close, swim down to the root of it and let it pass over head while you hold your breath, staying close to the floor of the ocean.

2.b. repeat step 1 but this time go out into the water with all of your loved ones. lock arms in a big circle and hold on as tight as you can. go over the top of the wave. If you stay connected, even if you are cast down underneath, and churned up, your circle will float up to the surface and you will all still be together.

3. Return to land to tend the wounded on the shore.

The relational process of therapy

Trauma leaves us feeling alone. Like there isn’t anyone to survive the tidal wave alongside. Or even worse: we think we can do it alone. In both clinical work and research, we see that trauma responses tend to cluster around feeling unsafe and not trusting that another person has your best interest at heart; that no one will care what you think and feel, and will stay with you through hardship. Trauma tells you that you are unloveable. This leads to isolation.

Allowing the spiral to spontaneously open outward is a big challenge from this vantage point, because the trauma tells you that you are not safe–that the spiral must rotate inward because discovery and openness are dangerous. We know this leads to isolation, but also stagnation. When you cut off access to your self, both in relationships and internally, you will invariably find yourself stuck.

One part of the therapeutic process is allowing the therapeutic relationship to show you that these things can be possible, that you are not alone and can experience safety in relation to another. That the therapist will lock arms with you and jump into that tidal wave, because there is no other way.

And of course, seeing that the therapeutic relationship can be that external disruptor to the death spiral, showing you things you haven’t seen and helping you feel things you haven’t allowed yourself to feel. Over time, you can begin to feel your center, your self; and it will rotate outward, opening up and expanding into the world.