Is therapy all a victim of childhood trauma needs?
by Sieglinde W. Alexander

Recent facts have brought me back full circle to an insight I had before I began writing in 1992 about my childhood. At the time I expressed my thoughts by saying, (I'm paraphrasing) "…we must face the shadows of the past by feeling the pain one more time before we can begin unlearning the imprinted pattern of violence…. Then, when we have emptied the soul garbage can, only then, are we able to learn and restore our damaged life, adopt new and healthier ways to live, by learning from caring people who have either themselves learned or never forgotten what humanity is all about."

As I began addressing my own experience, regression seemed the only and natural way to access frozen feelings and the hidden memories. Regressive therapy gave me a chance to access my natural world of feelings and allowed me to express/release the pain. No doubt, feeling and the expression is one of the vital parts imbedded in the foundation of a healing process. But is this all that a victim of trauma needs?

What came after primal therapy I try to recall: When did I discover the real world of feelings again, I asked, what will be my next step in integrating myself into the natural cycle of life? From where or whom should I have learned how to establish a healthy life pattern to my own liking, when all I have known is harmful, or, said another way: I have never known the true value of life because all I did since childhood was live as a soldier, packing the weapons of defense to prevent being hurt over and over again.

To what extent was primal therapy better than all other therapies, I asked myself?

For whom were the results satisfying enough to say, life now is better for me?

Who claims that the access to repressed emotion makes life more livable?

At this point, I compared cognitive therapy with primal therapy. I found that both are limited theories. One is to feel the pain the other to manage it. Neither however provide long-term solutions, because the fact is, trauma itself remains or was through coaching redirected.

We know that many primalers (people who use primal therapy) are stuck for years in the same repetition and consequently in the same reoccurring pain. The no-progress is explained in many ways and many therapists offer their own version of a theory, but the fact is that the trauma remains and leaves many of the traumatized in repetitive, cyclical stages of pain.

Many therapies (including primal therapy) become lifelong crutches and the effect is that one will never learn to walk on their own. If we would remember the reason why we sought therapy in the first place, we often find two reasons. One reason is to find a place where we can spill out or unload our pain. The other reason is, and should be, to heal the trauma, to become an independent human being, free from restraints that divide us from our true identity.
Unfortunately, in many cases therapies have become another drug to repress the pain and a welcome excuse not to accept one's own identity. The outcome is that too many became a lifelong therapy junkie. They have in fact found, in the many available therapies, a new religion, another reason to hide their trauma, to continue acting out, because they're still afraid of facing the reality in finding themselves.

No one can claim that primal therapy or any other therapy has in fact helped heal a trauma. So far, in my reading on the subject, "healing trauma" has ended in a dead-end street, because no one can report a complete healing of PTSD. Is there any healing with primaling or any other psych-theory? If there is, why are the primal and other therapy experts who have experienced trauma themselves not healed? Fact is, that it is the individual who need its self and needs no more or less an empathetic psychotherapist who is willing to exclude its own limitation.
I, along with many other primalers, proclaimed once that cognitive therapy does not work. Now I ask, how much better is primal therapy?

I would now say, cognitive, holotropic and primal therapy all work, but all have their limits.
I found myself hung up in promoting primal therapy and forgot my original thought, that the traumatized person needs more! For a long time I comforted myself with the idea that primal therapy is the non-plus-ultra approach, not seeing that stirred up feelings by themselves, leave us in a emotional, childlike stage and hinder us from becoming fully functional adults able to approach life in both the cognitive and emotional... We cannot live on emotions alone, nor on logic alone – we need both functions to live.

I am convinced that all the therapies known are not enough to restore the damage done by abuse. True, I have come out from the darkest corner of depression because of regression therapy, but I also know I was looking in every direction for examples and guidance in how to continue my life.

After I emptied my soul garbage can I was a blind, 46 year old child who needed a guiding in the new world without depression, an empathetic hand to show me how life could be lived differently. Years followed with unlearning the old childhood imprinted pattern and afterwards came the time to learn, to fill the now empty space where anxiety dominated, with what was meaningful to me. Orienting my self to good examples, I was able to sharpen my cognitive awareness, found finally my boundaries, and began to integrate myself into a society that has not changed as I have. Violence is still the dominant factor in everyday life and an ever present reminder of my childhood. How easy is it for the traumatized in healing process, when no better examples available, to fall back into the old and pattern learned in childhood.

In my opinion, therapists should have knowledge of all psychological approaches available and remain open for an eventual new approach, to provide help effectively according to a client's needs, according to his/her past trauma experience. As we see and hear on a daily basis, people continue with violence and abuse and contribute to more trauma everyday. For this reason psychology must continue to approach trauma on many levels. However the entity of every human is foremost und must be respected and preserved. Only then do we have we a chance to help the childhood traumatized who became a dysfunctional adult. Society will only change if we contribute with sensitivity, keep manipulating theories out of psychotherapy to address every human being with equal human rights. We have a chance to reduce dysfunction and prevent the repetition of abuse. After all, the strength of any society lays in the mental health of its individuals.