compassion emerges

Unresolved psychological trauma is very hard to treat when people are living emotionally isolated lives (Herman, 1992; Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007; Ozbay et al., 2007). It’s no accident that people like Cain isolate themselves. Violent and aggressive men that break the rules face harsh judgment and stigma in our culture. The harm he caused others during his drug addiction and crime spree haunts him, not to mention the trauma he inflicted on others. He avoids connection to protect himself and the rest of us. 

Cain presents data to the therapist, like most motivated patients, week after week, documenting encounters with other people that stir up unconscious trauma. The body-based beliefs he encounters are initially unconscious. As these somatic manifestations are more thoroughly studied, Cain begins to consciously integrate this material into a coherent self in pursuit of human connection. 

The events he documents and bring into session have a general theme—defensive aggression. He notes few instances of acting out, or externalizing behaviors. More often, he experiences variations of the thought, ‘I hate people’. Cain turns away from others and avoids eye contact. When he presents these thoughts in therapy they become the data that rounds out a general understanding of his belief system.

His therapist asks, “What do you hate about people?”

“I don’t trust them to have good intentions”, Cain responds, indicating a lack of trust in people generally. His ability to believe in the goodness of humanity was severely impacted during his formative years due to repeated betrayal and trauma.

The therapist helps Cain connect with this part of himself, compassionately. It’s this side of him, the therapist teaches, that protects Cain from danger, and did so during the time he spent on the streets and incarcerated. The defensive aggression is a protector instead of something “bad”. A shift in the way Cain thinks and feels about this characteristic of his personality will support it’s future development into a more adaptive, precise, and gentle boundary-setting mechanism.

At the onset of therapy, defensive aggression was unacceptable to Cain and was projected onto everyone around him. He often felt unsafe and unable to trust anyone to treat him well, expecting them to be as harsh as the unconscious, unacceptable part of his personality was. Moreover, he’d condemn himself quite frequently in the formative stages of the therapeutic process. He’d often say, “I’ve done terrible things to people” or “I’m a monster”. At this stage of the process, however, Cain comes to realize that the part of him he despised the most was only trying to protect him, as it does for those around him.

Compassion is born. 

In some cases, this leads to bereavement. The grief a person feels when they come to realize they’ve condemned themselves, that it’s not the other way around, opens the door to conscious awareness of their projections (Freud, 1914/1958; Jung, 1966).  For instance, Cain’s notes indicate that he projected this self-condemnation onto others often—“I hate people”. It’s only at this stage of the therapeutic process that he realizes grief. This transformative experience can be quite overwhelming. 

The process of sensing, re-collecting and integrating the fragmented, dissociated parts of Cain continues for many months with the support of the therapist. As he becomes more conscious of the various parts of himself and connects with them compassionately, he finds more freedom of choice in managing his behavior (Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 2012; Neff, 2003). Eventually, Cain becomes his own therapist and must learn how to let go and say goodbye.