We talk a lot in recovery about onions. Peeling back layer after layer, getting to know each level of ourselves and our trauma. This has been an incredibly useful metaphor/model for me personally, and I assume from its frequent use in the recovery community that it's really helpful for lots of people. I think it also aligns nicely with the idea of spiral healing, which shows us how we circle back to parts of ourselves and our trauma that need additional and/or deeper healing as we go. (For more, check out The Spiral Dance by Stawhawk. Or a number of sources, I just googled spiral healing and omg so many books I'd love to read).
Onions and spirals have both been great for me. Metaphors are seriously awesome. To say our brains love them is just the tip of the iceberg. Humans evolved to both receive and give information in metaphors and stories, it's just how we're designed. Maybe in another 200,000 years we'll have evolved to do something different, but for now it's still deeply our reality. (There used to be documentary on Netflix that really got me into this while I was studying teaching but that was almost a decade ago and I can't remember what it was called but I'll try to find it...) But it's not just our brains, because of course it's not! Everything's connected.
It's not just learning and communication that work so effectively in metaphor form. Our emotions and bodies have their own information, knowledge, wisdom, metaphors and stories. Beyond what our brains can understand and translate into language that computes intellectually.
Which brings me to ghosts, which I've been thinking a lot about lately. The onion I feel is the intellectual model, brain-oriented, top-down, outward-inward. This is where I started and spend my first couple years in recovery. The spiral feels like the complementary emotional/spiritual model, which goes upward and outward from deep to surface. I spent a couple years here next.
Between the two—and where I’ve been lately—is the BODY. Or, how our healing manifests in the body. Ghosts!
You know that common plot line about someone who's died but their soul can't move on yet because they haven't done XYZ yet? The only example I can think of right now is that one Friends episode where an old lady's soul gets stuck in Phoebe and "wants to see everything" before she goes.
This metaphor just got fleshed out for me this week. I was reflecting on a conversation with my partner I'd had, and thinking about things to say later, as you do. We had been talking about the first stage of our relationship (about a year and half) that was, to tell you plainly from my perspective, shit. And I said that, and he was a bit hurt/offended/defensive about that. Understandable. Easy to perceive as a personal insult. I then said, "honey, of course it wasn't ALL shit, we both know there was enough good and amazing to carry us through it obviously, but still, overall, for me, on average, it was terrible." And it really was. We both had some deep, intense, unhealed trauma come OUT.
This was partly because we absolutely RUSHED into the relationship. We met, we went on one date, then spent one night together, and we were both absolutely in, and within two weeks I'd decided to move from the United States to NEW ZEALAND right in with him. I was then almost immediately faced with an application for a partnership-based visa which basically was like "ok are you one hundred percent committed to this person and this country for the rest of your life? Please sign this affidavit legally swearing that you're not lying." So I had to really consider and decide if I was fully committed, because I couldn't stomach not being fully honest and authentic with immigration.
It was also because we are both addicts, both children of addicts, both victims/survivors of a lot trauma, both emotionally and spiritually deep and sensitive humans. Both FAIRLY new to recovery; when we met he had 5 years and I had 3 and a half. All in all, our first stage of our relationship was very difficult. We both had everything triggered, and we hadn't been together long enough to have that established trust to hold you through shit, or the knowledge and familiarity you get with someone to navigate shit...or literally just know what the hell is going on.
We were both living in both the present reality and in past traumas. It was rough. We got through it. We are seriously awesome now. Not awesome like we're sunshine and rainbows, awesome like we are connected and integrated and strong and very knowledgable about each other. It's also important to know and remember that the other reason our trauma comes out with each other is because we feel safe. Even without the experience, trust, knowledge, or familiarity with each other, our souls felt safe with each other.
Anyway. That was for context. Back to the conversation where I said that first stage was shit and he was offended. Later I was thinking about how I would have loved to also say this:
Honey, I love all of you. Every part of you. I do not mean in SPITE of your defects, the parts of you that show up that are dark and painful and difficult. I LOVE those parts of you too. I don't mean I love them as in I ENJOY them, I mean I have love and caring for them, I love-the-verb love them, I love them the way you still love a child even when they're flailing their bodies or their words at you when they are intensely overwhelmed.
Because that is literally exactly what's happening. I believe time isn't linear in that everything that has happened and everything that will happen in some way exist in the present moment. (Elizabeth Gilbert recounts a really great example of this in Eat Pray Love: “My thoughts turn to something I read once, something the Zen Buddhists believe. They say that an oak tree is brought into creation by two forces at the same time. Obviously, there is the acorn from which it all begins, the seed which holds all the promise and potential, which grows into a tree. Everybody can see that. But only a few can recognize that there is anther force operating here as well—the future tree itself, which wants so badly to exist that it pulls the acorn into being, drawing the seedling forth with longing out of the void, guiding the evolution from nothingness to maturity. In this respect, say the Zens, it is the oak tree that creates the very acorn from which it was born.” In other words, the oak tree version of the acorn exists in the present moment while it is currently an acorn, and vice versa.)
I believe that every version of my partner that has existed still exists within him now. His 5-year-old self, his 15-year-old self, his 25-year-old self, all still currently living in him. And when a wound that he received when he was 5 gets poked, his 5-year-old self comes out. When he goes through a similar experience to something that happened when he was 15, his 15-year-old self comes to the forefront. When we have an argument that uses some of the same words that he heard in an argument with an ex when he was 25, his 25-year-old self takes over his words and behavior for a bit. (I've got a bus driving analogy I really want to throw in right here but I think it's too much so never mind.)
Because just like the souls that don't feel like they've done everything they need to do before moving on, all of his old selves still have more to say and feel before they can feel at peace. (Let the actual bus driver get on with driving. Ooo it's a good analogy y'all.)
Because they got stuffed, paused, numbed, boxed, suppressed, buried, set aside, ignored, dismissed, beat down, pent up.
His ghosts HAVE to live out their lives. Their feelings have to be felt. They have to be released, free and safe and seen and loved, because that is simply what life needs. (Life as in a life as in a person, and life as in the animating force as in energy. Energy has to move, it CANNOT be eliminated.)
I wish I would have told him I love his ghosts. His child self, his hurt self, his so-full-of-rage-he-wants-to-smash-shit self, his so-hurt-and-scared-he-wants-to-push-me-as-far-away-as-possible self. I will spend as long as I have with him telling him that.
And, I will spend as long as I have with ME telling MYSELF that. And you. And anyone I can. Because we've got to let the ghosts out. That's how we heal.
(PS I'm absolutely sure I did not come up with this stuff, because that's just not how it works lol. Is this perhaps similar to what Gabor Maté talks about in In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts? I have no idea, that book's been on my reading list for six years. Is it similar to what the Māori Romiromi teachers I took a course from were talking about when they said Māori healers are the ghostbusters of the world? I don't know, I don't have enough information about or practice with Māori healing nor do I know if I have the right to receive it as someone who's not Māori or Indigenous. I'd love to learn more about both those things, if I'm meant to, and ANYTHING related to any of this because I think it is just so fascinating and awesome and amazing, and healing and this type of healing are just my absolute favorite things in the world and what my whole life is devoted to. If you have info or sources or perspectives or experiences or questions comments concerns as always feel free to reach out and chat.)
(PPS This also needs to be said. When people have trauma triggered and they, like I said, are flailing their bodies or words at you, this does NOT mean that that resulting behavior TOWARD you or anyone else is ok. It is one thing if your 5-year-old kicks your shin or your 15-year-old yells that they hate you and slams their bedroom door, it is QUITE ANOTHER THING ALTOGETHER for adults to do that. An adult may not be capable (yet) of doing something else, but the behavior cannot be tolerated and they need to be held accountable in one way or another for it. In the example of my partner and myself, he tends to do short verbal lash outs and I tend to do long emotional shaming, and we both had and have to say to each other, NO this is unacceptable, please walk away, go work your recovery, we need to put a pin in this until we are safe and supported in therapy, etc.)
(PPPS aw man I just thought of a tree ring analogy too.)
(PPPPS are this many postscripts even allowed? As you can see, I REALLY vibe with this idea, I REALLY think and communicate in metaphors. I REALLY hope this makes sense to y'all reading it.)