An Integral approach to trauma involves enriching autobiographical narratives.

I believe much of the healing that comes from trauma work is people shifting their self-identities, their autobiographical narratives, from negative and limiting to positive and liberating. Autobiographical narratives are the ongoing stories we have of ourselves as man, woman, child, teen, friend, lover, son, daughter, worker, etc. They are centered in our right hemisphere and continue to evolve as we evolve.

Trauma learning in general reflects sensitization—environmental triggers cue amplified reactions that leave people feeling weak and diminished.

Trauma and resilience are memory systems.

· Resilience memory systems relate to unpleasant events as trials successfully navigated to produce more strength, confidence, flexibility of response, and self-regard.

• Trauma memory systems relate to unpleasant events as stains and crippling injuries that reflect a diminished self and limited capacities.

· Trauma work identifies the unpleasant events and reintegrates them into an emerging narrative of increased resilience, greater adaptability, and more flexibility of response. This transforms trauma learning into resilience learning.

Successful treatment of trauma learning results in people feeling progressively less intense reactions to triggers while experiencing themselves as stronger and wiser. This shift to stronger and wiser reflects changes in a person’s sense of self in their autobiographical narratives.

Traditional narrative therapy focuses on disidentifying from weaknesses, problems, and values to craft a new self-story. There is an understanding that values are relativistic, reality is cocreated, and personal identity changes somewhat when healing takes place.

Integrally informed trauma work also supports maturing autobiographical narratives and understands that trauma work progresses through stages. Later stages involve more compassionate understanding, deeper consciousness, and wider embrace. They also progressively privilege soul and Wise Self.

I like A.H. Almass’ concept of soul—a core identity that evolves as we evolve.

Integrally informed psychotherapy assumes a soul who cares, shares, and is fair, as well as a Wise Self that is supported or inhibited by life experiences. Soul and Wise Self are supported or blocked by type (normal crazy/extra crazy, enneatype, etc.), family experience (especially goodness of fit between children and caregivers), and cultural contexts.

Successful treatment means a more positive sense of self in a variety of autobiographical narratives and increasing flexibility and diversity of options in navigating life—all of which support self-esteem and resilience.

Soul and Wise Self through the Spiral

Development through the Spiral increasingly privileges soul and Wise Self. Healthy development chooses values and behaviors consistent with soul and Wise Self over the biases, fixations, allergies, and addictions we all struggle with as human beings.

Personality is mostly genetic.

Yes! This blew my mind when I saw the data from the Karolinkska Institute in Stockholm—65 thousand pairs of twins demonstrating that personality is 70% to 80% heritable. 100 years of Freudian theory saying life events structure personality turns out to be wrong! One of the core assumptions of the Attachment field that attachment is independent of genetic make-up turns out to be partially false! Traumas and poor parenting make things worse for people, but the seeds of our problems and strengths are with us from birth and are our responsibility to deal with as we become more self-aware and in charge of our development.

Since 70% to 80% of our personality comes from our genes and no two children have identical childhoods, we are all different types. Much of our anxiety/anger/depression, cooperation/joy/empathy are heavily influenced by our type. The magic of human consciousness is that we can direct our ontological evolution to discover ourselves, develop our strengths, and transform our weaknesses into growth and health.

All of us have areas we resist accepting, loving and integrating. These often become the negative meanings we attribute to painful traumas. If I have inherent self-doubt and self-criticism, I might attribute it to a frightening parent shaming me in a traumatic scene from childhood. The scene was horrible, but the self-doubt and self-criticism were already there, ready to be amplified by humiliating experiences. Exploring traumatic events can lead therapists to such client distortions as “I am worthless,” or “I can never be good enough.” Addressing specific traumas are often the first steps to developing a new sense of self by transforming these distortions into more realistic and prosocial narratives like “I am worthwhile,” or, “Effort and progress are always admirable, independent of outcomes.”

Self-discoveries

Healthy development always involves self-discoveries and reevaluations of our autobiographical narratives as we learn to turn trauma memories into resilience memories.

My book, Trauma into Transcendence (available for free on drkeithwitt.com), details the four stages of working through trauma. All the stages involve more life affirming and compassionate autobiographical narratives.

I believe traumas—both big T and small t traumas—become symbolic focal points for negative self-identifications that mostly predate the traumas. I partly conclude this because personality type predicts PTSD while severity of trauma does not.

Trauma work encourages clients to move into and through the traumatic feelings, memories, and meanings to access the deeper issues of self-identity that separate people from soul and Wise Self.

Trauma work is not just resolving the emotional discomfort of trauma memories but also involves strengthening resilience and Wise Self using trauma experiences and meanings as vehicles for growth.

Recognizing trauma as an entrance into the deeper work of an evolving self adds depth to all the beautiful trauma treatments that are present in today’s rich psychotherapeutic world. It is completely consistent with the three core goals of psychotherapy I detail in my book on Integral psychotherapy Waking up—remediating symptoms, enhancing health, and supporting development. This is an Integral approach to healing trauma