History repeats itself, or does it (have to)?

We have all heard the old adage that history repeats itself. I often look at current day events and wonder in awe while witnessing a faux pas by some political party, business or celebrity. When studying history at school and then later on as it became a passion of mine I often asked the question “Why the hell did Hitler invade Russia? Was he mad? Did he not study the misadventures of NapoleonNapoleon only a little over one hundred years previously?" Most of us know the answer to the second question. Wherever we look in our past we see people repeating errors that their ancestors made. The question I pose in this article is, “Are we any different?”

For those of you reading this article who are not familiar with my work, let me give you a little background. I studied mathematics and had a career working in marketing and technology for more than fifteen years. I decided in 2002 to change paths completely and began studying healing modalities such as NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), Hypnosis (various schools of thought), EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) and Neurofeedback (a technology for retraining brain function that goes back to the 1960’s but has become more affordable and effective in the last few years since the speed of computer processors has increased exponentially).

As a mathematician I am trained to see patterns in both senses. Seeing something that fits and also just as importantly seeing something that does not. Combining this with healing, I began to ask why cycles of destructive thinking and behaviors were still repeating themselves. I must admit that initially I became absorbed in my work as I saw my clients breaking free from conditions such as alcoholism, drug addiction, depression, fears, commitment issues to name but a few.

Many people take the view that adults are responsible for their own actions (I agree to a point). I have seen people who have had moments of clarity when they realised that the reason they were captive to obsessive thoughts or depression for example came down to one incident or a combination of incidents back in their childhoods. Once this realization was front and centre they were in a place where they could forgive those people or situations that they believed were responsible and move on with their lives in a healthy and vibrant manner.

You see we all have things that we learnt incorrectly as children that we carry with us to this day. Survival strategies, as my friend Mike likes to call them, developed back in time to help us get through what was perceived as a threat to our physical or emotional being. Lessons we learnt so well as a child that they were carried all the way through life only to surface at a later date as an incorrect option for handling something like stress at home or work, intimacy, etc.

Dr. David Bercelli and Dr. Bob Scaer are both experts in the field of trauma and trauma recovery. In my work I often refer to David’s work in releasing trauma that is physically stored in our body and to Bob Scaer for his work in ‘kindling’.

What is ‘kindling?’ Imagine if you will that you are exposed to low but continuous levels of stress in your life. Situations at home, work or school. Situations that puts your ego or physical well being in a situation that your subconscious mind considers to be a threat. Remember that the subconscious mind’s first duty is to protect you at all and any costs. If you do not discharge this energy through relaxation or exercise or some other process the levels of stress related tension and hormones begin to build up. They continue like a cancer in your system to reach levels such that even unrelated moments in life to the original stress points can be considered as a threat in themselves; all at a subconscious level. It is often at this point that one experiences kindling.

A reaction to stimuli that can cause illogical and damaging behaviour and thought patterns. (To read a scientific explanation of kindling please view http://traumasoma.com/excerpt5.html).

David Bercelli has developed a technique called TRE (Trauma Release Exercises) that stimulate the psoas muscle to tremor and release traumatic and nervous energy stored throughout the body. I recommend this simple, effective and easily learned method to anyone. You can read more about David’s techniques at http://traumaprevention.com/.

These types of stress induced reactions are common and becoming increasingly more common in our modern high paced society.

But there is another source of negativity that runs through out all humankind. It comes from our ancestors. It is behaviour we have learned as normal from our parents, siblings , and society at large. The ‘original sins’ of our ancestors carried through generation after generation from exposure to chattel slavery which involved the deprivation of just about every human right that exists today. Subjected to forced labor, sexual aggression, battery, humiliation and untimely death as well as having to witness those close to the family unit suffer and not having the power to lift a finger to assist without risking one’s own life in the process.

The survival strategies of repressed anger, fear, and desires still run through our civilizations to this day. Our modern religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam were all born in a time where people knew no better. In fact we are only recovering from the hang over of these ancient ‘wisdoms’ since the end of world war II. Not that I am suggesting that we throw out the baby with the bath water in terms of the wisdom of some of the teachings of these faiths, but that we must understand that much of the wisdom’ passed on over the last two thousand years was based on experiences of societies that knew brutality, serfdom, slavery and death as normal life.

So now that we have established what most of us already know, how can we learn from our history?

The problem with much of the teaching of history through the ages has been that it has been purely objective in terms of dates and places and events and subjective in terms of the slants given depending upon who wrote the accounts. What we do know from the varying studies based upon archaeological findings and historical accounts from is one very important point. It is the lack of detail that tells us everything.

For example children played little or no part in the accounts of history until we start to see accounts from modern day historians analyzing how children fared in the recent world wars and other spats around the world in the past one hundred years. However the historians of the day paid little or no attention to the lives of these children and how they must have been affected by their experiences of these major historical events.

Indeed the disciplines of psychology and psychiatry have moved from being experimental tools in medicine from the late 19th century to being an integral part of the medical toolkit in today’s world. Before the 19th century these disciplines were often mocked; sometimes for good reason but often by those afraid of change.

My point is this. Moving back to our historical accounts of war and life in the days of our more recent and ancient ancestors, children suffered terribly by omission and by design. They were present in wandering bands of Gauls massacred by professional Roman soldiers, they were present in all the major offensives during the Blitzkrieg advance of Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler’s army and so on. Let me ask you this. Do you think that perhaps it is possible that not only the adults of these periods in our history, but the children also suffered from some form of post traumatic stress? Do you think that it’s just possible that post traumatic stress rather than being a recently diagnosed condition is a part of the human psych from millennia of violence and abuse? And if so, do you think it’s possible that perhaps our ancestors just didn’t know any better?

Did you know that children between the time they enter this world and about nine years of age spend a lot of their time in the hypnotic state. A state of mind where they are open to suggestion and where whatever they learn, they accept as normal. This includes domestic violence, alcohol and drug use and abuse, as well as laughing on cue to certain types of stimuli and feeling sad at others. Almost everything we ‘know’ we inherit. And so our children of the past learnt by living through violent and testing times that not only the victims were behaving normally, but the aggressors were too.

By taking a person on a journey through time and teaching an understanding of this part of our human nature, we can begin to make inroads into the acquired knowledge that we are basically evil creatures or victims of circumstance. We can begin to see that it is not only possible that the person who beat you, raped you, assaulted you, or verbally abused you is carrying within them a residue from the past. A past that they do not understand as being a part of them. This equally applies to those that have carried out acts of depravity on other human beings because in a real sense they too are captives of a learning set that brings psychological and physical harm their way.

Sure many will say, ah its because he came from a broken home or a bad neighborhood that he is this way or that. But what I am saying is that we all have roots in people who were slaves, part of war, part of unspeakable acts of violence against the human body and mind. But you know what? They survived long enough to pass on their DNA for us to be here today. We owe them a debt of gratitude for all they have done to get us this far. Can you imagine what it must have been like to be in the middle of the Battle of the Somme or having one of Hannibal’s elephants almost take your life? Can you imagine what it must have been like to be in the middle of a mob screaming for blood during many of the revolutions that the world has known? As an adult, a parent, a child, an instigator? Can you?

Using novel techniques combining several modalities of healing and involving traveling back through the ages we are able to help people make those connections in time and place to see that they now have the choice to leave these negative patterns and cycles behind them; and also that now in this era of health services, democracy, human rights, running water, electricity and the right to express our opinions there is a very good chance that progress made in freeing ourselves from these acts of violence breaking these age old cycles that have for so long been the death of us in so many ways, can be permanent.

Go well

Paul J .Soden

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email: paul@paulsoden.com

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