And I realize that in important respects the traumatized reenact things with the same automatism, and with no more consciousness than, insects. There is behavior, but it has no purpose. It does not meet any current need.
You can imagine little race tracks, little loops, next to people who have trauma. Their behavior and consciousness exists on that loop. It goes around and around. They never meet open ended lines. The only forward is in a circle. This is the only movement they can handle. Some loops are bigger than others, but they all repeat.
I remember times when my mother just wasn’t there. I realize now that she herself suffered and suffers from severe trauma. I can’t tell her this, because she can’t hear me. I am not there. I have never been there. For that matter, she has never been there. This is not her fault, mostly, although I don’t doubt some alarm bell has been ringing in her all her life that something has been missing from our relationship, and she has chosen to ignore it. She did not want to go there.
We have all seen vacant eyes, and met detached people. They are everywhere. Large segments of their consciousness are taken up with what I might call “Insect memory”. This is unconscious memory, continually reenactments of things they can’t remember. Even when nothing seems to be going on, even when they themselves think they are calm and feel fine, large subroutines are running continually, crowding out the pleasures of life, and open curiosity.
This is all very, very interesting. Large segments of human life are hidden. They are subterranean. We all see caves all day every day without realizing it.
And darkness is also where the rainbows are.