Why Painful Memories Continue to Do Harm

In Primal Therapy our patients go back and experience damage from decades before.  That implies that the hurt is a long-term, almost never-ending hurt.  I have written about this earlier; it is part of a survival mechanism.  We retain the memory of menace and pain which stays "alive" until we can experience  it fully.  Enter the imprint:  a neuro-chemical event that "marks the spot and the time" of the damage, and when Primal Therapy is done correctly will lead us to the center of the imprint in order to bring it back into conscious/aware where we can start to feel it; often in small bits at a time in order avoid overload and abreaction.  That means feeling just enough so it can be absorbed and integrated.  It then becomes part of us, and is no longer ego dystonic (a bow to Dr. Freud).

When we begin a past feeling we reawaken both the genes and epigenes.  They begin to change in order to accomodate the noxious input the baby suffers.  The trauma rides piggyback on the gene and causes even a slight detour; that means we detour in our development, not just the cells.  And the experience either weakens or strengthens the genes and their connection to other brain cells. What happens is that the imprint changes the on/off switches in the brain, and again we are affected.  What all this means that the trauma, a mother seriously depressed during pregnancy affects the epigenetic methylation process where the cells are marked with a trace.  That trace is a reminder, a very serious reminder of psychologic work to be done to address the memory.  It is just a small tag with an enormous punch.  It changes so much about us:  how we breathe, move, our energy level, interests, how we learn and how much we can feel.  Above all, when the imprint is overwhelming it will help determine how deeply we can feel and how introspective we can be.  In short, we are changed as human beings; and to change all that there is a way: to go back and feel what the key imprinted memory is, fully.  It means undoing damaging experience and reversing history.  Think of that:  reversing history to stop our personal trajectory toward serious afflictions later in life.  If early trauma is ever-present, even though well sequestered, and we can stop its damaging effects and help normalize an individual.

Methylation is basically a marker and an aide to long term memory, and so long as there are changes on the genes the memory and its damage will persist.  Basically, it means we are no longer what our genes meant us to be.  That is why we see bone growth in our patients as the genetic destiny is finally unleashed.  Not being ourselves has multiple meaning which includes the neurons and the biochemistry.  It means recapturing our growth potential,  not in every case but often enough to make believers out of skeptics.  In the reliving it has to be all-encompassing just as it was when the trauma was set down.  The whole memory and all of its aspects are waiting for their chance to be liberated.  We cannot leave any part of the experience unfelt because that will mean only a partial improvement.  All of us suffered initially, and all of us must suffer again: that very same pain that we never fully experience at the beginning. 

 Originally, the pain was far too much to integrate so now we can go back as adults and experience it over time.  It can be done. We have done it over decades now and have verified the results.  We see it in the disappearance of life-long discomfort and of enduring symptoms.  In the Primal world getting yourself back is a literal notion, not a New Age mantra.  The problem is that biology will not tolerate any cheating nor any short-cuts.  The reliving takes time and it takes feeling.  There is nothing I can do about that;  embrace it and realize it is the path to wellness.