What To Do About Voices

By Dean Schlecht

Hearing voices that others cannot hear is one of the most puzzling and disturbing aspects of mental illness. The standard psychiatric response to this phenomenon has been less than helpful. The current general psychiatric consensus is that voices are a hallucinatory aspect of psychosis. The common assumption is that the voices should be drugged into oblivion, or failing that, ignored and/or resisted by both client and therapist. Any consideration that the voices might have something important to say is considered naive and destructive since it is assumed that this would potentially exacerbate an already troubling pathology. A new perspective grounded in clients’ own experience of voices contradicts this professional stance, and has led to improved therapeutic outcomes with less dependence upon antipsychotic medications than traditional psychiatric practice. A group for voice hearers reported in the New Therapist that was based upon a willingness to acknowledge the voices and learn from them “reduced anxiety, depression and voice hearing, and in the long term three members of the group stopped hearing voices and returned to work.” (Coupland, 2005)

The traditional reaction of the psychiatric community to voices reflects a cultural assumption that “hearing voices” is a bizarre experience that sets the hearer apart from the community of “normal” people. This assumption is usually shared by the hearers themselves who often feel a need to hide this experience from others, if possible, and consider themselves to be abnormal and crazy because of it. Because of their shame for having voices and the impact of the voices themselves, many who hear voices become socially isolated. At least some of the social isolation noted in mentally ill people is because they share society’s judgment of their experience and they have not been given the means to cope with or respond to the voices. Due to this judgment and a dearth of skills to address the voices, mentally ill persons often stigmatize themselves as readily as anyone else.

“Hearing voices” is not as uncommon as contemporary people might think. It is not necessarily limited to persons with mental illness or those in the throes of a psychotic episode. Ancient and traditional cultures valued voices. The Old Testament and other ancient literature are full of references to voices and visions, which were taken quite seriously, by those who experienced them. Jesus heard voices, Joan of Arc heard voices, Ghandi heard voices. Carl Jung heard voices. So did Florence Nightengale and Winston Churchill. Anthony Hopkins still hears voices. This list is long and would be longer still if all who heard voices would be willing to admit it. A large study of 15,000 people living in Baltimore discovered that 2.3% regularly heard voices on a frequent basis. (Tien, 1991) Other studies suggest that 10 to 15 % of respondents acknowledge hearing voices on an occasional basis. (G.H.V.N. FAQs2, 2006) Another study indicated that approximately 4% of the population regularly experience voices. (Nelson, 1997)

Despite the typical professional assumption among mental health workers that hearing voices is conclusive evidence of psychosis and a probable indicator of severe mental illness, it seems extreme to me to label a phenomenon pathological that 10 to 15% of the population admit experiencing. My own rule of thumb is that if the other major elements of psychosis such as delusions, thought disorders, or lack of insight are absent or understandable, given the content of the voices, the person is not suffering from psychosis or a major mental illness. The voices are more likely a Dissociative phenomenon in which the integrative function of the psyche has been disrupted. Usually this happens because the psyche was subjected to an event or series of events whose impact overwhelmed an individual’s repertoire of coping strategies.

Most persons struggling with voices that I have known and with whom I have worked fall into this latter group. Their voices are an important resource, which have the potential, if handled appropriately, of enriching and deepening the person’s life. Therapies, which identify them as pathological and attempt to shut them down through drugs or other mechanisms of control offer short term comfort to the Ego in exchange for a long term potential of significant growth. Most voices, whether they be benign or antagonistic, reflect unintegrated aspects of the self and thus a potential gift. Some voices are not of the self, but are the introjected presence of significant others who have had a deep, disruptive and as yet unresolved impact on the person’s psyche. Their presence is an ongoing reminder of a hurtful relationship and consequent wounds still in need of healing. As such, these voices are also a gift.

Jamie, a client I once worked with, had been hearing voices most of her life. She was depressed, anxious and embarrassed because she believed the voices were clear evidence that she was insane. Even though she was successful in school and able to hold down a responsible job, she felt like an imposter with an enormous shameful secret. Her goal in therapy was to get rid of the voices and be normal. Ultimately, she achieved that goal, but the path was unexpected and paradoxical. The “normality” she achieved was far different and richer than what she had imagined.

She had to begin by surrendering her conviction of insanity. Instead of seeing herself as the victim of a major mental illness, she came to see herself as presiding over and responsible for a community of unacknowledged hurts, disowned potentials and polarized emotions that over the years had evolved into autonomous and highly verbal ego states. As she learned to acknowledge, listen to and eventually even love them, they became part of her and she became a very different woman. After gathering the voices into herself Jamie became more self aware and emotionally stronger than the great majority of people who have never had the experience of voices or never learned to embrace those voices that they did have.

Whether the person hearing the voices fits the criteria for a major mental illness or not does not make a significant difference in the experience of voices or how best to respond to them. Unless the mentally ill person is decompensated to the point where communication or clear thinking is not possible, working with the voices is one of the most constructive options available. Some observers say that among those with a diagnosable major mental illness, such as Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, Severe Depression or Dissociative Identity Disorder, negative voices tend to predominate over benign and that in the rest of the population benign voices tend to predominate. Others claim the proportion of negative to benign voices is approximately the same in all populations. Unlike the patient population, the non-patient population was not afraid of the voices and less distressed by them. (Romme, 1993) All populations benefit from taking the voices seriously and responding to them constructively, instead of attempting to resist or deny them.

Persons with severe mental illness and PTSD have a higher incidence of voices than the rest of the population. About 50% of those with schizophrenia hear voices, 25% of those with affective psychosis and about 80% of those with dissociative disorder. (Coupland, 2003) Also 65% of combat veterans with PTSD report hearing voices. (Holmes, 1995)

Probably, this is because their mental illness and/or trauma impair the psyche’s ability to integrate and modulate disparate aspects of mental function. Among those with whom I have worked, their negative voices are much more aggressive than the general population. These negative voices often express fixed and bizarre delusions that are at the extreme end of the rational/irrational continuum. In their delusions, disordered thinking and lack of insight they seem to embody the most dramatic elements of the individual’s psychosis. These can have a very severe disabling impact and often the best short-term solution is an antipsychotic medication that will diminish or silence the voices. Some individuals, however, cannot tolerate these medications and are left with the painful and frustrating choice of a life diminished by voices or a life diminished by medications. Moreover 30% of those who take antipsychotic medications experience relatively little diminishment of the voices. In my estimation nearly all of the above individuals would benefit from an opportunity to learn how to work with the voices to reduce their impact though enhanced internal communication and awareness.

At Royal Avenue voices are a very real experience for many if not the majority of our residents. To understand and effectively support the participants in our program, it is important that we appreciate the impact of this phenomenon. These voices are often a dominant factor in determining the quality and direction of the lives of those who experience them.

One resident, Sadie, lives with a voice that claims to be her mother. It sounds like her mother. It acts like her mother, sometimes helpful, but usually critical. This voice is so real to Sadie that when her mother died recently, Sadie didn’t believe it because she was certain that she was talking to her mother every day telepathically. It’s easy to see how this voice could have a major impact on Sadie’s life. Imagine that your mother followed you everywhere you went, observed everything you did, and even knew what you were thinking. Then she would proceed to tell you exactly what she thought about it all. This is Sadie’s dilemma. It’s enough to make a person crazy. An internal mother like this is extremely difficult to ignore and impossible to hang-up on.

Besides being surprisingly common, voices can be surprisingly real, as real to the hearer as any external conversation. Brain scans of persons hearing voices demonstrate activation of the speech area of the brain. (Goleman, 1993) This means that the voices are not an imaginary experience. It’s quite understandable that persons with voices might be confused or uncertain whether the source of the voice is external or internal. I have noticed that DID populations are much more likely to identify voices as internal phenomena than are schizophrenics who are more inclined to externalize the source of their voices. This is probably because schizophrenics are more prone to delusions and disturbances of thought than are those who suffer from DID.

John and others in our program readily admit that they have a hard time discerning whether they are hearing internal or external others saying things to them. This can lead to socially awkward situations which increases their inclination toward withdrawal. Others like Vince, whose voices are mean spirited and demeaning, will sometimes think that the comments were made by external others in their environment and will become aggressive toward them in reaction to the perceived provocation. Vince will calm down after he has been assured that the latest insult was internally generated and there is no need to retaliate by striking out.

Audible voices that sound real to the hearer beg for some kind of explanation. In order to reduce the cognitive dissonance caused by the experience, the psyche will often quickly generate a delusion explaining the source of the voice. This is true especially for non DID voice hearers with a major mental illness. “The tv is talking to me.” “The CIA has implanted a chip in my brain through which they broadcasting instructions to me.” Or, “My hand (or some other part of the anatomy) is talking to me.” Moreover, voices also beg for an explanation of their source which can lead to various systems of explanation, some of which can interfere with the hearers willingness or ability to work with the voices. The mainstream psychiatric response, that it is just a hallucination, which must be quashed or ignored, is very destructive in this regard. The common religious response that the voices are demonic can do even more harm. This will inevitably increase the hearer’s fear of the voice and if the voice buys into this religiously inspired delusion, which some of the more antagonistic voices may do, it becomes much darker and far more difficult to work with.

Although many voices sound just like someone in the room saying something to you, not all voices are experienced in this fashion. Sometimes the voices are experienced as anyone would experience their own thoughts, except that the thought comes from some other source than the ego itself. Whether it is an audible voice or an autonomous thought, the hearer does not make it happen and has no idea what will be said next. Sometimes the voice is actually many voices. They may sound like the conversational buzz heard at a cocktail party with no reference to the hearer at all. Or they may be having a group discussion about the hearer, usually commenting on the individual’s various shortcomings.

At one end of the spectrum some voices are focused on a single theme and have very little personality structure. At the other end, voices may seem to emanate from a complex personality which has a name and sense of personal history as well distinct personal reality such as Zoltan the emissary from Jupiter, or Princess, the talking unicorn.

Sometimes voices begin in childhood and are life long companions. Others begin in adulthood. Trauma is almost always a factor in their origination. The voices that begin later in life are usually easier to resolve.

I know from my own experience as a therapist that the resolution or integration of voices is possible. I also know that it was a very challenging and time consuming process that required considerable individual therapy. A different approach has recently been developed in England and the Netherlands that uses a group process whose goal is not the integration of voices, but helping people learn how to cope with their voices more effectively. Here in Eugene, Jonathan Schwartz has been running a “Coping With Voices” group at LCMH and Ron Unger is about to start a similar group at the Laurel Hill Center. An effective approach to voices, whether through group or individual work, is dependent upon several fundamental premises.

First, if the voices are so intense that the person cannot function or they are irresistibly commanding self-destructive behaviors, antipsychotic medication may be required before any effective work can be done. Also effective work is usually not possible if the person is going through a severe psychotic decompensation, especially if a delusional system or thought disorder blocks the possibility of forming any kind of therapeutic alliance. Also if insight is so lacking that the individual doesn’t see that there is a problem or if the person is convinced that there is nothing that can be done about the problem any attempt at intervention will probably be fruitless. A further exclusionary criterion is the continued use of heroin, amphetamines, etc., or large amounts of alcohol.

Marcia had two principal voices, God and the devil. God was largely comforting and made many predictions and promises to her including one that He was going to punish this writer for making a decision Marcia didn’t like. The promises were seldom kept and the predictions never came true, but Marcia continued to listen carefully to whatever God told her. As might be expected the devil was often mean and aggressive and would say terrible things to her about herself. She was quite frightened by the devil. But, like God, the devil also supported ego level desires which when she acted upon them she would explain by saying, “the devil made me do it” and sincerely mean it. Although no effort was made to engage Marcia in therapy regarding these voices, I doubt that much would have been achieved given their delusional supportive structure and their ego syntonic messages. Accepting that they were just internal aspects of herself would have been extremely threatening and costly to the ego.

The acceptance of voices as internal aspects of the self is not an awareness that comes easily for many voice hearers. Nor is it necessary in order to begin working effectively with the voices. What is necessary is a willingness to consider the possibility that there is a better way to deal with the voices than trying to shut them out or control them. Strange as it may seem, voice hearers are more willing to consider this option than most mental health professionals. In fact, the “Hearing Voices” movement in Europe was grounded in voice hearers’ own life experiences and what they discovered worked best in helping them learn to live productively with the voices. The first lesson they learned was that trying to shut the voices up was not productive. It seems to be a rule of thumb in the psyche that resistance energizes that which is resisted.

They also learned that agreeing with the voices or doing whatever the voices commanded was not productive. The voices were frequently wrong in their assertions about the individual, or others in the person’s life. Their predictions, even when stated with great authority, as in Marcia’s case, seldom came true. Worst of all, many of the things they commanded were patently harmful to the hearer or others. These commands, technically known as “command hallucinations” can feel almost irresistible. Sometimes the commanding voice won’t be irresistible, but it will threaten to punish the hearer if its command isn’t followed. One typical punishment is internally caused severe pain such as headaches.

Another insight that came from seriously listening to voice hearers is that some voices are genuinely benign. Others are both benign and profoundly wise. In my work as a therapist, finding an internal wisdom figure such as this was like finding pure gold and served as a powerful asset in the therapeutic process. Making the most of a resource such as this and the pitfalls involved in depending upon it is a whole article in itself. Suffice it to say that the ancient belief in angels or indwelling divine presence is probably well grounded in a healthy inner connection to just such a voice.

A central assumption of the “Hearing Voices” movement, and validated in my own experience as a therapist is that all of the voices, the good, the bad and the ugly, must be heard. The key issue is the stance the ego takes in listening to them.

Unthinking surrender to the voices will almost always be destructive and often disastrous. The negative voices are driven by hurt, fear and anger. The perspective toward life they engender is controlling, rigid and paranoid. Even if they were not pushing the ego toward acting in accord with their point of view, their way of seeing the self and the world is deeply distorted and limiting. In most instances they tend to be profoundly judgmental of the ego and external others as well. They tend to continually erode what little confidence the ego has with an unremitting shame and guilt inducing commentary the hearer can’t ignore. The hearer who already feels insecure and odd, simply because of the existence of the voices, is further diminished by what they have to say. The behaviors they encourage or command invariably involve either attack or withdrawal. More often than not, the attack is toward oneself. When the ego acquiesces the pressure from the voices will often ease temporarily. However, a new marker will have been established. An action the ego would not have considered before giving in to the voice, is now within the realm of plausible action. Voices that push for profoundly self destructive or even suicidal behavior do not usually consider themselves at risk for the consequences of such behaviors.

Mark has put up an epic battle against his various negative voices. He refused their commands and argued vociferously and loudly against their demeaning commentaries. Since one of the voices was his mother this made the struggle all the more poignant and painful. These arguments would be so loud at times that they would disturb the other residents in the shelter where he lived. Mark was clearly a good man fighting for his honor against an intractable foe. The battle was never won. The more energy Mark put into the battle, the more energized the voices became. Medication and a calm, protective environment helped reduce the intensity of the struggle, but the struggle goes on. Mark lives a socially withdrawn, limited life far removed from his true potential. There is hope, however. Mark will soon be joining a “Coping With Voices” group. Perhaps there, he will learn an entirely different way to approach this dilemma.

Benign voices are obviously easier to live with, but they are not necessarily constructive companions. They will often fuel grandiose assumptions, which may help compensate for the demeaning commentaries of negative voices, but lead to foolish choices and self-destructive behaviors. They may speak with an air of great authority as if they had special knowledge, which will be very impressive to the ego, but often turn out to be wrong. The accuracy of their knowledge about the person’s inner thoughts and needs, can persuade the person that they have equal perspicacity in their perspective on external persons and events. Like an indulgent caregiver, they often try to “help” by helping the person avoid hard truths and giving it permission to engage in self-soothing or self-aggrandizing behaviors that ultimately make matters worse.

There is a kind of helper voice that I mentioned previously which could best be known as a “Wisdom Figure.” Unlike some of these others it is deeply loving, but it never sugar coats reality. It makes clear that it is in the service of the entire psyche. It will not help in diminishing or removing any voice. Rather, it will help the ego listen to and understand what is driving the voices and show the way to ultimate integration. This extraordinary source of wisdom and healing is far more common than most contemporary people would imagine.

Whether this resource is used or not in trying to help a person respond constructively to voices, its perspective is invaluable. The healing process begins with acceptance and a commitment to truth. This is one of the initial and most powerful gifts that a “Coping with Voices” group can offer. Here the voice hearer can speak frankly with others who really understand without fear of stigma or judgment. Just this, is a momentous life change. After so many years of struggle, isolation and shame, it has finally become possible to be known, heard and respected. Obviously, this can happen in individual therapy, but the group context, if well run, can enhance the experience.

The next step in the healing process involves the dawning realization that no matter how the voices may identify themselves they are all part of the same psyche including the ego itself. However primitive, distorted or alienated they may be, they are part of oneself and at their core a gift, although discerning and integrating the gift may take a great deal of time and energy.

Once this truth is accepted and the hearer is ready to explore the inner life through the agency of these voices, resisting the voices is slowly replaced by learning to listen to them in a way that breaks down the divisions and polarization between ego and voice(s). This listening seeks to understand the perspective and needs of the voice. It neither agrees, nor disagrees with the voices’ commentaries, but is very interested in why they say what they say and what gave rise to them. It is respectful and nonjudgmental. It truly wants to know. A hearer taking this path may choose not to follow the voices’ advice or commands, but will explore as deeply as possible the fundamental intent behind the advice or command. The intent will almost always involve some kind of self protective strategy.

In a nutshell a voice hearer committed to this path will neither acquiesce to nor push away the voice. When the gift within the voice is discerned and welcomed by the hearer, integration will flow naturally in its own time.

The general outlines of this process are easy enough to describe. The accomplishment of them may be one of the hardest challenges the voice hearer will ever face. The alternative, however, is well known to the voice hearer and few would choose it if they knew that there was a genuine, life affirming way out.

VICARIOUS TRAUMATIZATION

The nature of this calling, as a therapist, is such that if you want to give your best you must willingly enter some very dark places with deeply wounded people. It is not enough to be merely an observer or teacher or even kindly guide. You must walk beside them and feel the harsh texture of their pain with them if you would ever hope to truly appreciate their situation or earn their fragile trust. This is hard and it is costly.

Some conflicts and problems can be resolved through a solution oriented therapy that relies upon analysis, insight and a bit of personal support and encouragement. We have all given this kind of counsel and done some real good in the process. We have also received it from time to time and been grateful for the gift. There is another level of need, however, for which this is starkly inadequate. A spirit, twisted and broken by devastating and intimate cruelties such as are known in far too many families and elsewhere as well needs a heartfelt connection with someone who is able and willing to tolerate and empathically connect with the grief and distress of a deeply wounded soul.

As we all know from our own lives, some painful stories can only be safely told within the confines of a loving, authentic relationship. Such a relationship becomes possible when the listener allows him or herself to be emotionally impacted by the pain the other is disclosing. Without emotional resonance there is no relationship in any significant sense of the term. The depth of a person’s healing has always seemed to me to be more or less proportionate to the depth of relationship that person has with the therapist. Emotional attunement and nonjudgmental respect create the bond and safe environment necessary for a traumatized person to dare to hope for a life unburdened of its weight of darkness and pain. When the therapist is willing and able to allow in the emotions and existential questions occasioned by significant trauma and abuse, the client will be given the best chance possible to face the horrors of her life and the maelstrom of emotions and questions that are their immediate and unavoidable consequence. Offering this as best I can to my clients and keeping my balance at the same time has proven to be a significant challenge.

The anguish and terrible knowledge of the dark side of the human condition that these stories inevitably convey are burdensome to hear and struggle with. My emotional equilibrium and my desire to maintain a trusting, optimistic view of life are severely challenged by helping bear the weight of my clients darkness. It can’t be otherwise. Some degree of vicarious traumatization is necessary and inevitable.

The Adam and Eve myth tells us that we were cast out of paradise because we dared to taste of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I believe that the felt knowledge of our client’s wounding is precisely what this story is about. This is powerful and dangerous knowledge. If I let myself really know how depraved and mean spirited life can be in the lives of my clients then my world no longer feels as safe or as good as it had seemed before I tasted this bitter fruit. Those who do not or will not face the terrible darkness of the human condition can have the comfort of easily believing that a benign force is in charge of everything and that everything that happens, happens for a reason and all is well in the end. I don’t have that comfort anymore. I have been cast out of paradise by the force of my own personal life experience, but more especially by its reiteration over and over, day after day in my office by men and women about whom I care deeply. I don’t even have the comfort of being able honestly to tell myself or my clients that all will be well after the therapy is concluded. No one ever heals altogether from severe, prolonged trauma. Therapy always hits a point where it becomes clear that certain affective, relational and cognitive limitations must simply be accepted and worked around.

Although dealing with trauma effectively can lead to depth of character and a compassionate heart, there are other better ways to get there. Such as growing up in a home where the early attachment bond with your mother is deep and trustworthy; where your parents celebrate your individuality and do all they can to promote the emergence of your authentic self and leave you have no doubt you are loved deeply; where depth of character is modeled by your parents and compassion is celebrated by your culture. It’s hard for me to believe in a compassionate father/mother God who has everything under control when I spend so much time with people who have known no such thing in their lives and instead present such immediate, constant and varied examples of lives deeply compromised by the out of control behavior of those who were entrusted with my clients’ welfare. For me, this philosophical\spiritual consequence is one of my most significant vicarious responses to my clients’ pain. It has forced me to dig very deep in order to build a viable spiritual foundation for my life.

The next most impactful aspect of my clients’ suffering is the ongoing struggle with attachment disorders and enmeshment problems that are endemic in dysfunctional and abusive families. Most of the wounded people I know began their lives immersed in abandonment pain flowing out of insecure attachment to their mothers and proceeded to grow up faced with innumerable boundary violations and every kind of enmeshment. This is personally difficult for me at two levels. First it keeps before my mind facets of my own life that I would just as soon not have to think about for a while. However, over the years as my own healing has unfolded and genuine forgiveness of my parents has begun to flourish. This is less painful than it used to be. The second level of difficulty flowing out of the clients’ abandonment/enmeshment diad is the manner in which it constantly intrudes into the therapy arena. Clients have been conditioned to anticipate and invite interactions that energize either end of the polarity, especially with people with whom they have an intimate bond such as their therapist. All too often I catch myself accepting the invitation either because my own unresolved wounds are being activated by the clients’ material or I simply miss what is going on between us until my inclination to abandon or become enmeshed with the client becomes so obvious that I can no longer not see it. When I become thrown off balance by becoming caught up in the process of abandoning or becoming enmeshed with a client some of the worst patterns out of my own history are activated with significant ramifications for the therapeutic process as well as my every day life. Both client and I suffer.

When the wounding is deep only love can bring genuine healing. I think it would help a lot if the graduate seminar on techniques in counseling included a section on how to love your clients in a deep, heartfelt fashion. The best text I can think of for such a course would Eric Fromm’s classic, The Art of Loving. As he points out, love consists of four distinct but interrelated attributes; care, knowledge, respect and responsibility. As applied to the therapeutic relationship I must genuinely care about the welfare of the client. How well he or she is doing must matter significantly to me. I must also seek to truly know who this person is who is inviting me to help her find the Self that she doesn’t yet know. It takes an enormous amount of awareness and sensitivity to begin to know the wounded self and the full complexity of its story. It takes even more to begin to sense the underlying authentic self and help it emerge out of the ruins. It goes without saying that I must be able to hold this distorted, usually regressed, often manipulative and nearly always angry Ego with infinite respect, the kind of respect in which the divine within me bows before the divine within the other. If I don’t I can be assured that I will almost certainly do more harm than good. Finally I must be responsible to the relationship with all of its myriad, implicit and explicit needs, demands and wants which can be akin to walking through a mine field. If I do not execute my responsibilities to the relationship well, both client and I will be hurt, perhaps deeply. I am not talking here about getting in trouble with an ethics board or getting sued. What I am alluding to here is that if I deeply interact with people in a way that is not loving at its core, I will slowly lose my soul. I will become dehumanized and lose connection with the very energies that give life meaning. Choosing to offer oneself as a healer is a glorious and dangerous thing. You will either grow significantly or it can harden your heart which to my mind is the greatest tragedy that can befall anyone. Of all of the facets of vicarious traumatization this is the worst.

The violation of love in the therapeutic relationship will inevitably be expressed as some form of abandonment or enmeshment. Moreover, abandonment and enmeshment lies at the heart of the pain in the lives of most traumatized clients. It also constitutes the most fundamental dynamic that must be kept in balance throughout the therapeutic process. All therapists will err in both directions occasionally. Those with a personal history of pain around these two issues will have the added pressure of repetition compulsion pushing them to lose their balance. Most therapists will be more inclined to lose balance toward one end of the polarity or the other due to factors of temperament and personal history.

When I stop and think about it too deeply, such as right now, doing in depth therapy with those who most need it can feel almost overwhelmingly difficult. On the one hand you must be emotionally attuned and responsive if there is going to be even a chance of the client taking the risk of baring her soul. Letting myself sense the hurt, grief, terror, hopelessness and shame of this devastated lost soul sitting before me is painful and tiring. I am not the kind of person who enjoys horror movies. On the other hand when I do open myself to that other’s story I then find myself walking a tightrope. I must be careful not to inappropriately connect and thus exacerbate the clients enmcshment wounds or at the very least discmpower the therapy. But I must also be equally careful not to abandon the client and activate what is usually the most fundamental and destructive wound of all.

Years ago as I became aware of the power and centrality of the abandonment/enmeshment diad I saw it principally as something caregivers did to children. Then it dawned on me that this is what constitutes the essence of bad therapy. All those incompetent therapists out there are basically people losing their balance either toward the abandonment or the enmeshment side of the polarity. Finally, as I appreciated more fully the specifics of abandonment and enmeshment I saw that I was one of the incompetent therapists, at least some of the time, as are we all.

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Children who suffer from enmeshmcnt are not allowed or helped to find their own voice or live out their own best potential. They have a connection with their parents, but the cost of that connection is that they sacrifice themselves to serve the needs of the parents. Something comparable happens when therapists become enmeshed with their clients. The therapist inclined toward enmeshment is typically kind and compassionate and is willing to go the extra mile to help, just the kind of therapist any one of us would like if we needed therapy. In itself it is an ideal stance for anyone engaged in depth psychotherapy. Since the therapist’s intentions are so pure and openhearted it’s difficult to see how this could be harmful which only makes it all the more dangerous for both parties. A traumatized client’s truth is nearly always complex and subtle. The unfolding of that truth is usually going to be hampered by ingrained secretiveness, distrust of others, especially authority figures, shame and the client’s fear of her own dark aspects some of which can be quite awful. The enmeshed or overinvolved therapist blocks the full evolution of that truth by unwittingly imposing his own usually well intentioned agenda.

The enmeshed therapist usually violates the therapeutic relationship in one or more of several fairly predictable patterns. Like the enmeshed parent he may allow to develop reciprocal dependency in which he needs the clients attention and support as much as the client needs his. Although very affirming to the client over the short term it is the same kind of false empowerment through role reversal that robs children of their childhood and a chance to mature appropriately and will do the same to the client.. Another form of inappropriate therapeutic dependency is pathological bonding. ~You and I against the world,” is one expression of it. Getting caught up in the reenactment of the client’s trauma bond with an abuser is another.

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Just as a healthy parent recognizes that she has a special role in the life of her child that demands certain kinds of interactions and disallows others so must a healthy therapist. Wounded, suffering people need someone who is confident in her skills and competent to understand their real needs. They prefer a therapist who has known significant wounding herself and is willing to admit it, but they do not want or need a “me too” in which their stories become the occasion for more of the therapist’s own story. Our personal stories can come close to the client’s but can never be the same. Too much attention to them will invite role reversal, but even when that does not happen they will block perception of the uniqueness of the client’s own truth which, of course, is part of what happened to them as part of their original wounding.

Like a healthy parent, the effective therapist must be able to tolerate the sometimes overwhelming needs and feelings of the client without becoming defensively disconnected or detached. This can be very difficult. Some stories are heartbreaking, and some are terrifying evoking horror and shock. Yet the therapist must stay in balance and a solid point of reference as the client struggles with the intense feelings triggered by these remembrances. Not only must the therapist be able to tolerate the stories, she must also be able to tolerate the clients intense painful emotions and not withdraw or be overcome herself.

When the therapist engages the client is a spirit of loving respect care must be taken that this does not degenerate into idealization of the client which is merely another facet of enmeshment. Once again the client’s reality is discounted and healing is thwarted. It is easy to fall into a good/bad dichotomized world view when people speak of the atrocities done to them. The perpetrators are bad and the victims are good. Comforting as this model may be, it is seldom true. Perpetrators are usually complex people driven by their own pain and may have had a much more convoluted

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relationship with the client than a good/bad model can entail. Additionally, the client will almost inevitably have been so distorted and compromised by his suffering that he may well have made choices about which he feels great shame or guilt, some of which may be appropriate. By idealizing the client the therapist implicitly makes some of the most important things the client must explore, his own shame and guilt, off limits. Again, enmeshment deprives the client of his own truth.

Related to the inclination to idealize the client is the inclination to take a position of excessive advocacy or responsibility for the client’s life. A kind therapist may be so touched by the very real unmet needs of the client that she may be tempted to make the client’s life a personal project. Drawing the line here can be very difficult. After all a person without minimal food, shelter and safety in her life is not going to be ready to do in depth therapy. Nonetheless when a therapist becomes a primary source of support for clients outside of the therapy context it often ends badly for both parties.

A final destructive expression of therapeutic enmeshment has to do with how the recollection of the traumatic event or events is handled. For healing to happen the story must be told and felt. Sometimes, many times over. The therapist must be willing and able to truly hear it without judgment and with empathy. She much not, however, become overly fascinated by it or let herself too fully identify with the client as the story unfolds. This will make the story part of her agenda and again rob the client of her own unique reality and diminish the possibility of achieving resolution. The power and drama of the trauma must be diminished through the telling of the story, not intensified. Then the trauma can be placed in the broader context of the person’s whole life history which is the essence of healing.

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The other alternative for doing bad therapy by robbing the client of the possibility of a healing relationship is to give into the abandonment side of the dichotomy by taking an avoidant or detached stance to the therapeutic relationship. There arc innumerable ways to do this. Many of which are considered highly appropriate and ~professionaI.” They are in fact the cruelest thing a therapist can do to a client, and echo the awful potential for damage of early life maternal abandonment. At its most fundamental level the therapeutic abandonment of the traumatized client begins with the denial of the validity of the client’s story or the denial of the phenomena of PTSD as either real or significant. A variation on this theme of abandonment is the unwillingness to discuss traumatic history unless corroborating evidence can be offered “proving” that it really happened. Another way of detaching from the client is to fail to explore the trauma story which will guarantee that it will remain unresolved. Pushing the client to recover quickly and or minimizing the impact of the trauma may please a managed care company, but it is just another form of abandonment. Victims are usually already predisposed to minimize their traumas and “slower is faster in the long run” is an important axiom to hold onto in the working through process.

Even with therapists who are open to the subjective truth of their clients’ stories and willingly engage in the working through process will sometimes find themselves slipping into an avoidant, abandoning posture. The awful content of the stories and the myriad ways in which the clients can be difficult can evoke dread, disgust, loathing, numbing, shame, horror and any number of psychophysiologic reactions such as nightmares, anxiety states, depression, insomnia and other somatoform problems. Not surprisingly, therapists dealing with this tend to be relieved when their clients cancel and will themselves cancel sessions for any plausible excuse. Often they will detach by taking a hostile,

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blaming, judgmental or disdainful stance toward the client. Eventually they may abandon the client altogether by referring the client elsewhere, overmedicating the client or by declaring the client “well enough” and prematurely terminating therapy.

As bad as the damage done by enmeshment may be, the harm done by abandonment is even worse.

We who seek to truly love our clients must never assume that our good intention is enough. We will always be prone to losing our grip on genuine love and falling into enmeshment or abandonment. It is foolish and dangerous for ourselves and our clients to try to walk this difficult path without our own support community. As the preeminent expert is the treatment of traumatic stress, Bessel van der Kolk, has said, “We all agree that the regular and open communication about our feelings and actions in the therapeutic setting is essential in harnessing the intense responses elicited by this work.

THE JOY OF COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

Buddha said: “Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders, but after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of all, then accept it and live up to it.”

St. Paul said: “If anyone, whether man or angel, teaches you other than I have taught, do not listen.”

I prefer the Buddha.

We humans seem to have enormous appetites for things that are only good for us in moderation: salt, sweets, fat, dependence on rationality, becoming couch potatoes, grasping for certainties, tobacco, letting authorities dictate the course of our personal and spiritual lives, cocaine, and becoming true believers.

Clearly there is some small benefit in many of these propensities, but the cost of every one of them can be enormous. What they all share in common is the capacity to diminish self awareness when overindulged.

Whether a person is high on drugs, zoned out on sweets or simply unaware of the way his or her life style is diminishing body or spirit, the outcome is the same. The capacity to be fully awake, open to experience and living an authentic, effective life is undercut.

Generally, we have at least enough awareness to be ashamed of our involvement in most of these self destructive inclinations. A sad irony is that the two that could well be the worst of the bunch are proposed time and again to be the answer to life.

GOD SAID IT. I BELIEVE IT. END OF DISCUSSION!

You’ve seen the bumper sticker. You know the mentality. Perhaps you’ve been there yourself. I have -- Sort of. I once was a Catholic priest. The Catholic Church is infamous for its intricate web of doctrines and presumptions of divinely sanctioned authority. Like so many spiritual seekers I believed that the institution and the sacred texts were the way. I may have interpreted them a bit broadly, but I accepted that the book and the traditions and the divinely appointed authorities contained the essence of the truth I was seeking. I tried hard to conform, but couldn’t do it. Trying to make myself believe six impossible things before breakfast gave me indigestion. The church was always kind to me and some of my fellow priests were truly heroic men, but I couldn’t fit in. My mind refused to yield, and my heart longed for a companion. I had to go.

The implicit longing behind the bumper sticker and my own unconscious need that kept me wedded to the church is that I would not accept ambiguity. I preferred the comfort of certainty over the disruptive potential of applying my critical faculties to fundamental questions. I lost a whole way of life when I finally did.

I had relinquished my birthright, the unfolding of my own unique identity, for the sake of future reward, professional status and acceptance. As with so many others I refused to see things as they are so that I might live undisturbed in my serene fantasy.

Implicit in this stance and my critique are two very different visions of ultimate reality. When God is envisioned as an “other” who is “all” everything (good, knowing, powerful, etc.) and who stands apart from the created universe, then the foundation is laid for the mind numbing, spirit breaking distortion of most religion.

When creation is seen as the place where God is not; and when the human psyche is experienced as an alienated emptiness unless infused with a divine spark mediated through ecclesiastical channels then the siren song of true belief becomes persuasive.

BUT IF NOT THIS? THEN WHAT?

Most people seem to possess a hunger for purpose, meaning and transcendence. Those who ignore it often feel their lives are pointless. Many who listen to the hunger end up crippling their minds in order to feed their souls.

Is there another way? What would a spiritual path be like that honors critical thinking; personal autonomy; the rejection of absolutes and certitudes; the celebration of earth, senses and the body; and seeks the sacred within the experience of creation and oneself?

It would be a quest for truth unhindered by doctrines and unburdened by sacred texts. It would be an act of surrender to an unfathomable depth. It would be a commitment to the unfolding of Self and a life that is essentially unpredictable. It would be a journey taken for its own sake, not for some presumed outcome. It would be grounded in experience rather than authority. It would be sensual, natural, embodied, ecstatic. It would be a path in which body, mind, heart and soul are celebrated as integral aspects of the unfolding self.

This is not where I ended up when I stepped away from the Church. I did feel a powerful sense of exhilaration as I reveled in the internal permission to think whatever I pleased. But in stepping away from the ecclesiastical trap, I didn’t realize that my horizon was encircled with a much more subtle and powerful trap. Reason, the trusted friend who liberated me from Catholic Christianity, was also my warden imprisoning me in my mind. It’s objectivity, genuine regard for truth and enlightened approach to the human condition were deeply comforting to me and persuasive. I genuilely liked being a rational- humanist for a while.

Have you ever noticed that the general unspoken consensus of sophisticated, literate folks seems to be that any experience or awareness that can not be presented in either a mathematical or verbal/rational fashion isn’t real or at least isn’t worthy of much attention.

I stepped squarely into this mindset and was lost there for quite a few years. Finally, with a little help from my family, friends, clients and folks like Alan Watts I saw that this too was illusion.

Family made clear in short order that real life was much bigger than any set of rational presumptions. Friends obviously wanted more from me than a head trip. Clients’ inner demons were singularly unimpressed by rational observations and reasonable options. Eastern wisdom, especially Taoism, Buddhism, and the mystical teachings of all the great traditions pointed me toward a transpersonal domain that, although not irrational, went far beyond the reach of reason.

Our verbal models, hypotheses, and theoretical assumptions are like grids that we lay on top of reality. They fragment the fundamental oneness of things and if taken too seriously distort our perceptions. Our inordinate celebration of reason extracts a very personal cost. The most important things human beings do have more to do with spirit and heart than with reason. If reason is given supremacy, these are proportionately diminished. Falling in love, raising children, nurturing friendships, feeling that life is worthwhile, touching ecstasy, the experience of empathy, compassion and mystical union are all beyond the reach of reason.

The prerequisite of a path that leads to the full expression of your human potential is that you be a nonbeliever who foregoes the easy comfort of dogmas and right/wrong, good/bad dichotomies and who gives precedence to experience over rational constructs. Progress on the journey demands a commitment to doing whatever is necessary to broaden and deepen awareness.

All the things that matter most are mystery. The significant choices in anyone’s life are motivated by such a complex interweaving of motives, history and unacknowledged assumptions that any understanding can only be partial. The emergence of who I am at my most profound and authentic level is invariably a surprise, albeit a delightful one. Mystics of all ages repeat the same message. Their encounters with the founding principal of the universe leaves them speechless. There are no words for it. It has been called the pregnant nothingness and the pleroma, the fullness of Being.

The point is, taking ego constructed, mental maps too seriously obscures your vision of the territory. “The map is not the territory.” The models are not reality. The doctrines are not the truth. All of these things, maps, models, and teachings, can be helpful until we set them in stone at which point our own hearts become hardened and our dance with the Great Mystery becomes leaden.

The hallmark of one who knows is a spirit of “not know” mind. One who knows is at ease with the clash of ideas and the realization that his varied models don’t fit together all that well and will never encompass deep reality. One who knows is grateful for cognitive dissonance. The noise of mental models grinding up against one another keeps her awake and aware that what is, is only truly known through direct experience. True knowing arises out of the discipline and practices necessary for minimally distorted experience of oneself, the other, creation and ultimate reality.

Like the perpetrators of all other scams, the proponents of “right belief” or “right thinking” promise an enormous return for a very limited investment. “Think” or “believe as we tell you and you will know the true nature of things.” The truth is, if you take the hard path of discipline and commit yourself to an ever expanding awareness, you will never again be certain of anything except that life is wonderful beyond words and that the universe seems to be in love with you.

If your journey is a profound one for every mile you travel on the path the destination is two miles further away. And would you really want it any other way? Think about it. The more you know, the more there is to know. By your very knowing, you help create more knowing. The knowing gets richer, more fascinating, for as long as you live. The more you create, the more you can create. The more you love, the more you can love.” So long as you can relinquish the claim to have “gotten it” your journey will lead to an unlimited horizon.

THE DIVINE CHILD

No matter what life may have done to a person, no matter what she may have done to herself, no matter how profound her psychological wounds might be, ultimately she remains inviolate. Aside from organically based brain dysfunction, underneath all the scars, open wounds, and distortions that mar the psyche, when one breaks through to the kernel, the core of one’s being, it remains whole. In the depth of her Center, the individual remains alive and real, profoundly vital, life-embracing and life-giving.

This deep, central, unmarred reality can express itself in several different ways. One expression of it, and perhaps the truest expression, occurs time and again in the internal lives of people I meet. I have come to call it the Divine Child. As the name implies, it is young, unsophisticated, and connected to God, but in a very unselfconscious fashion. The Divine Child does not say, “I believe in God.” It says, “I am with God. I am of God. My life and my energy are obviously divine, and I accept that as a matter of course.” The Divine Child is basic and primitive. It would fit very nicely into a hunter/gatherer tribal context.

Unfortunately, it does not fit so well into contemporary Western culture. In fact, in many families in such a culture, it does not fit at all. By the time a person is between five and seven years old, and frequently long before then, the Divine Child knows it is no longer welcome in the External World. In order to protect itself from the destructive demands of the External World, it retreats into an internal space in which it continues to live--vibrant, joyful, powerful, but hidden--a gift once glimpsed, but now enclosed in a secret part of the psyche which the Ego can no longer readily access. This withdrawal of the Divine Child has been described as the moment when the light goes out in the child’s eyes.

The Divine Child is not a fantasy or wishful thinking. It is certainly not a form of irresponsible, regressive self-delusion. The Divine Child is an individual’s highest potential, manifested in childlike form. It is a reality, as present to the Ego as the Ego is willing and able to accept. Bennett Braun (1986), a leading theorist in the study of multiple personality disorder (MPD) says, in reference to the “original personality” which I have named the Divine Child, “The original personality is often difficult to locate and work with, but this needs to be done to achieve a stable and lasting integration.”

The Divine Child can be thought of as potential insofar as the External World is concerned, because it is so rarely expressed in the External World. In the Internal World, it is an intact and powerful reality. In reality, it is the Ego that is merely a potential and a largely constructed reality. In right order, the Ego should be a constantly receptive potential that is enlivened and formed by the ground or truth that lives in the Divine Child.

Given a genuine opportunity, the Divine Child will easily come forward; gladly, graciously accepting the invitation to return to the External World. The Divine Child is eager to live, not just in the Internal World, but in the midst of nature and relationships, drinking deeply of the beauty and goodness of life. Those who choose to venture into the hidden depths of the psyche and reclaim the Divine Child are in for an extraordinary treat.

Every human being is very unique. The Divine Child within is even more distinctive than the differences between individuals that can be seen at the level of Ego and body. It is somewhat difficult to describe the Divine Child in general with any precision. It is, by definition, a subjective reality that is never expressed in the same way twice. However, there are some common patterns.

The commonalties to be found in the Divine Child of anyone I have ever seen are crystalline innocence, playfulness, spontaneity, joy, willing trust, curiosity, and a greater interest in experiential learning than in abstract intellectual processes. The Divine Child finds its greatest pleasure in those things that are most life-giving for it. It is also very capable of empathy. Even if it is only a few months old, it can touch the pain of others with great sensitivity. But the major theme that the Divine Child strikes in anyone who touches it is an embrace of the joy of life. The Divine Child is universally sensual. It lives in its senses, and it finds life to be a playful adventure to be fully embraced. The Divine Child knows no shame, feels no guilt, and is constantly ready to embrace whatever new experiences might present as gifts.

The Divine Child is spontaneous. It expresses how it feels with a straightforward honesty that has no room for pretense. If it is displeased or angry, this is immediately evident, and it passes quickly. What the Divine Child wants, it reaches for. But it is not unkind, for it is also quite spontaneous in its affection. The Divine Child does not establish clear boundaries. Because of this, the Divine Child is able to embrace both the joy and the pain of the other.

The Divine Child lives a life that clearly emanates a deep goodness. It is also drawn to the good and the beautiful, which it tends to see everywhere. When children are very young, they can be fascinated by a grasshopper, a blade of grass, or a leaf. They can also be quiet, experiencing the day flowing by. Frequently these qualities are lost by the time children are four or five, but many people can vaguely remember those early childhood moments when they were still this deeply involved in life.

The Divine Child is never jaded or bored by life. It has the capacity to sense things as always fresh. Its openness to the changes in life that are constantly occurring is clean and precise. Therefore, the Divine Child sees the flow of life as a constant unfolding of new gifts. The bored children, who are jaded even though they live in the midst of a plethora of stimulations, are hurt children. These children have had to close down their sensitivity because their own lives have been shut down and enclosed by pain. The Divine Child knows nothing of this boredom. It is alert, open, and always deeply involved, seeing in the most minute of things a very special beauty that beckons for exploration.

The whole child, the uninjured Divine Child, trusts naturally in life. Of course, the uninjured child has known primarily love and reliable support. This Divine Child has had only minimal exposure to the viciousness of life. Thus it feels a deep connection to life. The Divine Child has a sense that life cares about it and invites it into an ecstatic mutual participation. Both life and the Divine Child give the best they have to each other.

The Divine Child is open to letting life flow through it. There is no need to control because life is good. The Divine Child does not have to defend against life or channel it into particular goals. Life is that which embraces the Divine Child gently and therefore the Divine Child feels only a minor need to protect itself.

The undifferentiated oneness that the infant knows with all of its environment, and most especially the mother, is never really broken in the Divine Child. The Divine Child does grow into a fuller sense of its uniqueness, and is capable of perceiving itself as different from the other. However, undergirding that, it knows that it has never finally been separated from that which it loves and which loves it.

The Divine Child is loath to build psychological walls. Even though it may be growing into a sense of separateness, oneness is the central truth. The Divine Child knows this and rests comfortably with this awareness.

Unfortunately, in most instances the Divine Child has had to separate itself from the Ego and the External World for the sake of its survival. It then rests very deep within, because it could not withstand the intrusion of the External World. What the world usually meets instead of the divine child is a broken, hurt child. The hurt child lives according to the dictates of the External World, either fearfully seeking to please or reacting in anger.

Because there are few barriers with the Divine Child, there is no pretense either. The Divine Child is simply who it is, transparent to whomever looks upon it. To live in pretense is to live a barricaded life in which a mask stands between the individual and the world. The Divine Child has little use for masks. It feels that it is perfectly fine as it is, and expects others to see that, too. This may seem arrogant, but actually it is an expression of profound self-acceptance.

The Hurt Child can be considered an expression of what Christianity has called original sin -- the brokenness children suffer at the hands of those who should protect them and against which they have no defense, but for which they must pay with their lives. The Divine Child can be considered an expression of original innocence -- the living internal expression of the fact that we are born whole, beautiful, and good. Everyone is best served when each has an opportunity to live out that original innocence. If it is lost due to the impact of a destructive External World, salvation is found not by appeasing an angry god, nor by detaching from the earthly realm, but by reclaiming the very earthy innocence embodied in the Divine Child. No matter what a person may have done with her life, or what may have been done to her throughout her life, she can reclaim her innocence. She can, once more, become genuine and childlike. The reason she can reclaim it is that she has never fully lost it. It remains alive within her.

Reclaiming the Divine Child is another way of talking about the process of attaining wholeness. Wholeness is a matter of claiming one’s natural inheritance. It is a divine right of human beings to be who they were born to be. Wholeness simply describes a person in the full and balanced possession of her potential. That potential is not just an abstraction that might or might not be attained. It is an active, present, dynamic reality that is best understood and most clearly embodied in the Divine Child.

The Divine Child can be seen as a diagnostic criterion against which a person may appraise the quality of her life. In general, the Divine Child is very similar from individual to individual. Its innocence; its interest in living life in an experiential, sensual fashion; its capacity to live in trust; and its joyfulness and spontaneity are all part of our inborn, natural human endowment. Aside from those who suffer from profound biogenetic disorders such as schizophrenia, everyone participates in this. Nevertheless, each person has a very unique way of expressing that potential. This unique style of self-expression, of living out the divine potential from within, can be seen with great clarity in the internal experience of the Divine Child. The Divine Child is an individual’s private, personal foundation and only worthy life goal.

The first step in reclaiming the Divine Child is a matter of honestly appraising one’s life as one lives it now so that one might make an effective comparison between one’s present life and the nature of the Divine Child. Wherever there is discrepancy, it will point to the need for serious work.

The second step in embracing the Divine Child is a willingness to become more like the Divine Child in everyday behavior. Becoming childlike, even if one is able to do so readily, means relinquishing socially approved goals and external support that the individual, and perhaps everyone she knows, holds in very high regard. The Divine Child may delight in the simple Joys of nature much more than in the adult kind of pleasure that comes from owning a fancy car or maintaining a particular social status. The Divine Child may find it very burdensome to fulfill the requirements necessary to make a large income. It may prefer living simply and having sufficient time to play. Moreover, it will be inclined to be very nonjudgmental. If the individual is willing to align herself with the Divine Child, she may find herself also in alliance with people whom everyone else finds easy to reject. She may also be rejected herself.

Owning the Divine Child, owning one’s basic inheritance, may cost a great deal. If the Ego is unwilling, there is no point in even meeting the Divine Child. Such an encounter would only set up a painful kind of discrepancy that does not get anywhere. Ego willingness is essential. However, even if the Ego is willing, that may not be enough. A person may have honestly looked at her life and the ways it is discrepant from her Divine Child. She may be very willing to live out of the Divine Child, even if it costs her externally. But when she attempts to do so, she repeatedly fails. She may prize the openness and innocence, yet not be able to drop her defenses. She may want to trust, but cannot--absolutely cannot--and when encountered with anything the least bit different or strange, may hide in panic. She may be very angry or profoundly sad, and be unable to do anything about it. In these instances, willingness and honesty are simply insufficient. They are prerequisites for finding the Divine Child, but by themselves they cannot overcome the wounds that life has inflicted.

Many people have been hurt in a profound fashion by life. All the honesty and willingness they can muster will not be sufficient to overcome these people’s scars. In such cases, much effort and energy must be put into healing the Burt Child so that the Ego has the capacity to become open to the presence of the Divine Child. The Hurt Child is, in many ways, the only final path to the capacity for living the Divine Child. Paradoxically, to embrace joy, spontaneity, innocence, and true freedom, the Ego must first embrace pain, fear, deep hurt, and the many dissociated experiences which have had the power of hiding the Divine Child and crushing the spirit. These must be owned, felt, and responded to, before the Ego will ever begin to be able to accept the natural gift embodied in the Divine Child. For some the accumulated impact of continual childhood stress and even terror will so disorder the brain’s natural mechanisms for modulating fear that even after intensive, effective therapy the person will need the help of anti-anxiety medications and a non-stressful life style in order to maintain balance. Within those constraints, however, the person can still live out of the Divine Child’s energy.