Psychological Healing
in the Roman Catholic Mystic Tradition

Disasters and Trauma

 
Introduction | The Imaginary | The Real | The Symbolic | Blame | Breaking the Cycle of Hatred

 
HEN natural disasters and other traumatic events happen, survivors, journalists, and relief workers can be overwhelmed with horrendous sights and smells and profound scenes of human suffering. But more often than not, in the midst of devastation and helplessness, these persons can do nothing more than cast weak sympathetic glances at each other, overlooking the greatest strength of all: complete trust in God.

And, in a tragedy even greater than the original tragedy, many persons feel angry at God, saying, “How could God have let this evil happen? The reality is that God has abandoned me.”

In psychological terms, though, the reality is that in our anger at God we confuse the psychological realm of the imaginary with the realm of the real. For those not familiar with psychology, this needs some explanation, so follow along with me here.

 
The Imaginary

The Realm of the Imaginary derives from the pre-verbal state of childhood. As children, we need—and desire—others to take care of our needs, but, without language, we conceive of this caretaking imaginally; that is, as images in our minds. Hence the realm of the imaginary is all in our heads, so to speak.

Now, when a parent takes care of a helpless infant, the caretaking can be an act of pure—rather than imaginary—love in which the parent is concerned only for the infant’s ultimate good.   But once the child becomes capable of language and independent thought, then caretaking can fall back into the imaginary realm and degenerate into mere bribery, in which a parent “gives” only to manipulate the child with game-playing and guilt into behaviors more suited to the parent’s comfort than the child’s well-being.   Even in adulthood the desire for romantic fulfillment in another person resides in the realm of the imaginary because romantic fulfillment depends on fantasies of someone giving you what makes you feel good. As hard as it is to admit it, and as much as it contradicts popular culture, romantic sentiment is based in self-indulgence, not in a selfless love for God.

OK. So there is the realm of the imaginary.

 
The Real

The Realm of the Real  is the place of our essential fragmentation, vulnerability, and death. It’s the “place” where every disaster leaves us, wounded and helpless. It’s our wretched reality. To most persons, it’s a terrifying place, and so most persons will do most anything to hide this reality from their own awareness. In fact, that’s the psychological function of a symptom: to hide a horrifying reality behind mental and physical manifestations such as anxiety, insomnia, lethargy, nightmares, depressed mood, and so on.

And protesting to God in anger and disobedience about any suffering that afflicts us, and about how unfair it all seems, only serves to sustain the illusion that we—not God—should be in control of our lives.

Psychologically, then, when you encounter the real you experience a trauma. Or, more precisely stated, you experience a trauma if you encounter the real with nothing but symptoms and defenses from the Imaginary Realm.

On the other hand, if, when you encounter the real, you have the trust and patience to place yourself totally in God’s protection—Into Your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit—then a new possibility opens.

The world is generally quite stable. We go to bed at night and fully expect our slippers to be there, right where we left them the night before, when we wake up. Without this sense of stability we would be living in an Alice in Wonderland type of craziness. We couldn’t function. Yet consider just how fragile this sense of daily security really is. Any number of things —from a car crash to an earthquake—could happen suddenly, with-out warning, and leave us in chaos. How is it possible to live secure and peaceful in the moment while knowing that in the next moment everything and anything worldly that we rely upon—our possessions and our bodies—can be wiped away? Well, many persons prefer to ignore that “next moment” and instead make gods of their possessions and bodies. They rarely think of their dependence on our true God—until something disastrous happens; and then, if they survive, it won’t be long before they return to their old ways.  To live an honest and humble life, however, each soul needs its own inner sense of confidence to guide it through the confusion of the unexpected. Complete trust in Christ and faith in the ultimate stability of God is a blessed gift of peace—a tiny whispering sound (1 Kings 19:12)—that endures behind the noise of chaos.

Read an excerpt from a homily by Saint John Chrysostom about trust in Christ

 
Saint Francis of Assisi, (the saint everyone loves to love and whom few are willing to imitate in his austerity) knew this very well. He rejoiced in all things, beautiful and ugly, life and death, and he taught his followers to repent their sinful lives, live in chaste purity of heart and body, and place total confidence in God alone, come what may, good or bad, as the only path to holy life in genuine service to God. Moreover, this same sentiment speaks to us through the Old Testament as well: 

	We should be grateful to the Lord our God, for putting us to the test, as He did our forefathers. Recall how He dealt with Abraham, and how He tried Isaac, and all that happened to Jacob in Syrian Mesopotamia while he was tending the flocks of Laban, his mother’s brother. Not for vengeance did the Lord put them in the crucible to try their hearts, nor has He done so with us. It is by way of admonition that He chastises those who are close to Him.
	—Judith 8:25-27

Read an excerpt from a letter by Saint Peter Damian about tribulations

 
The Symbolic

And so, the truth is, when “bad” things happen to you, that is reality. But when you set aside complaining and place yourself in God’s protection and voice your pain openly to God in prayer—that is, when you really trust in God—you raise the Realm of the Real to the level of the Realm of the Symbolic. In the symbolic realm, the realm of language, horror is given containment through the Word, thus allowing us to draw wisdom from pain and tragedy.

If, however, you’re angry at God that your prayers haven’t been answered as you desire, maybe you have been mistakenly seeking yourself, and your own satisfaction, as a continuation of the smoldering sarcasm you learned from your parents. Maybe you cling to your indignance as a self-consoling comfort, fearing your own wretched loneliness—fearing to die to the Realm of the Imaginary—and ignoring your Baptismal vows. But take heart, even Christ—in His humanity and for our sake—had to confront and overcome this fear:

When Christ cried out these words from the cross, He was quoting the opening line of Psalm 22 to refer us to the entire psalm. There we find that what at first appears to be loss and failure actually results in the redemption of the entire world: For God has not spurned or disdained the misery of this poor wretch . . . the poor will eat their fill; those who seek the Lord will offer praise . . . all the ends of the earth will worship and turn to the Lord.

Through His obedient acceptance of the cross, Christ overcame death. The real cross, upon which Christ hung, is reality itself: the ingratitude and contempt that humanity inflicts on God’s love. The symbolic cross, upon which the Word—and our very destiny—hangs, and which every Christian must embrace, is the spoken acknowledgment of our brokenness, trauma, and death that love alone can overcome. Christ offers us a share in the glory of His achievement if only we accept His call to follow the same path—if only we stop hiding the real behind empty defenses, if only we openly admit our pain to God, if only we let our prayer speak in honest humility for us.

		O Lord, my God, You are no stranger to those who do not estrange themselves from You. How can anyone say that it is You who absent Yourself?
		—St. John of the Cross The Sayings of Light and Love, 50

 
Blame

Adam’s part in Original Sin is seen most clearly not so much in his eating the forbidden fruit but in pointing to Eve and saying, “It’s her fault! This woman you put here made me do it!” In other words, instead of admitting his mistake and begging forgiveness, Adam hid himself and blamed God. And we have been making excuses, hiding in sin, and blaming God—and blaming others—ever since.

“Why didn’t you stop them from abusing me? Why don’t you stop the wars? Why do I have to suffer pain? It’s not fair!” We blame God. We blame the government. We blame anyone who doesn’t give us what we want.

In all blame, we absent ourselves—that is, hide—from God.

Therefore, in all of our blame, anger, and protest—in all of our hiding from God—we never allow ourselves to hear—or proclaim to others—the final words of Psalm 22 that express the triumph of the Word over the Realm of the Real:

 
Breaking the Cycle of Hatred

Whenever you pray for divine guidance, answers will come through encounters with mundane, daily events. As these events occur—however difficult or disappointing they may be—ask, “What is God trying to teach me in this?” Then open your mind and heart to what you need to learn about yourself through your encounter with the event. And grow in wisdom.

If your response is, “Yeah, right. God is telling me that He hates me and that I’m just a piece of garbage!” then your sarcasm reveals the depth of your anger at your parents, the magnitude of your resentment of others, and the pervasiveness of your unconscious tendency to turn that anger against yourself in repeated self-sabotage. Truly, it’s far easier to say that God hates you, as an excuse for your hating others, than it is to set aside the pride of defending your wounded ego.

It would be far better to step outside this repeated cycle of hatred and ask yourself some meaningful questions:

•	“Do I hide my emotional hurt behind a show of anger and a thirst for revenge?” If so, maybe God is calling you to face up to and admit your hidden emotions.
•	“Do I use pride as a way to hide my feelings of vulnerability?” If so, maybe God is calling you to set aside your pride and stop thinking so much about yourself.
•	“Am I harboring an attitude of resistance to authority?” If so, maybe God is showing you that this defiant attitude, which results from hidden anger at your parents, has been crippling you all your life.
•	“Do I lack patience?” If so, maybe God is telling you that, even though you think you live a devout life, your “faith” is all in your head and you don’t really have much genuine love for others.