Imagine that, in our normal state, we have an emotional protective layer that insulates us from harm. Let us imagine this to be a skin of sorts, protecting us from emotional needles and pins (Shakespeare‘s slings and arrows) like our physical skin protects our flesh.
In the reasonably well-adjusted adult, this imaginary protective layer can be considered to be relatively absorbent (spongy) and/or flexible. That is, in our run-of-the-mill life, events that we deem to be moderately negative, or little hurts that inevitably arise from being in relationship, are either absorbed into the layer, where their energy dissipates harmlessly, or else bounce off the layer, impacting but not penetrating.
Did you ever hear expressions like thin-skinned, or touchy? These describe people who become offended easily, and around whom others feel that they have to be careful what they say. Or, consider our expression highly-strung, tense like a wire pulled so tight that if we put any more pressure on it, it’ll snap.
I am sure that the expression thin-skinned comes from the notion of our imaginary protective layer being very thin, and does not refer to our real skin! And touchy implies very little insulation, like the game where a buzz goes off if you touch a ring off a wire. If the wire was insulated there would be no sound so the person would not have to avoid touching the wire.
Nowadays little disappointments or hurts that come our way are sometimes referred to as first world problems, implying that if we were in poorer countries these concerns would be so trivial they wouldn’t bother us. And I read an entertaining book once entitled Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff by Richard Carlson which encourages us to separate out big worries from small worries!
For example, if our favourite team loses, we feel angry or disappointed for a day or two but eventually the bigger picture emerges, we absorb the disappointment into our day-to-day life, and our life resumes as normal, i.e. the imaginary layer is restored to normality. If we have a bigger negative event, such as failing an exam, (which might have longer term consequences), it may take longer for the disappointment to be absorbed, and longer for the layer to return to normal thickness and sponginess, but it does nonetheless.
Of course, with a positive event it’s the same. If our team wins, or we pass an important exam, we are delighted for some time afterwards – but, like the negative event, eventually we put it in perspective and see that normal life with all its trials and tribulations will soon resume – indeed, the example I used, passing an exam, might bring on more challenges that we then get ourselves ready for.
Part of the reason for this is that (if we are realistic people) we probably have prepared ourselves for the possibility of either our team losing the match or us failing the exam, (or, in the positive case, our team winning, or passing the exam). This is linked to resilience which I already described as our capacity to bounce back after a negative event.
Realism also ensures that we are not carried away, as the saying goes, with a positive event – and we don’t think that just because something good has happened to us everything in the garden will be rosy for ever.
Trauma has a different flavour to our team losing or even failing an exam. A traumatic event is an event of such emotional intensity (and usually happens so unexpectedly) that it pierces the imaginary protective layer that I just described. Following the piercing it penetrates to the extent that it affects our body, mind, and spirit/soul.
It often evokes the fear of either dying oneself or, perhaps a loved one dying, or losing something very precious that we depend on for life.
In the well-adjusted child or adult with a loving family and supportive environment healing from trauma can take a long time – but healing eventually does occur. The old saying asserts that time is a great healer – but an empathic, supportive environment is vital too.
However – if trauma happens within an environment that misunderstands or ignores the trauma, or even pours more trauma upon it, healing may never occur, no matter how much time elapses.
Let us once again imagine our emotional skin – our psychological protective layer. (Remember now, this is not our real skin)!
If, when we are infants and/or children, the protective layer is pierced again and again, without having an opportunity to heal, our natural tendency to protect ourselves kicks in, and the layer begins to increase in both thickness and solidity, and the sponginess becomes crusty, and eventually loses its flexibility. In this, we can imagine it becoming more like rigid armour. Over time, we find it difficult to allow in any emotions at all; whether they are good for us or bad for us.
Our armour will often manifest in developing skills at spotting emotions from a distance and choosing places, people and things that do not bring emotions with them.
In short, we come to regard emotions as things to be wary of.
Using the analogy of armour, rather than the sponginess or flexibility that is healthy, the layer becomes brittle, so if it is breached, rather than absorbing the pain, it shatters like glass.
When it shatters, our psyche – that is, our conscious and unconscious mind, our body and our spirit, is overwhelmed.
Armour is displayed in our language by the terms we use for those who we perceive to be unemotional, i.e. the hard man, or describing someone as hard-hearted. And it is well known that continual stress that arises from a series of negative events that we appear to be helpless to stop can harden our arteries and affects vital organs such as our heart, liver, spleen etc. – the term hard implying the armour which I described above. As W.B. Yeats put it ‘too long a sacrifice makes a stone of the heart’.
Rather than feeling each hurt, and either acknowledging it or expressing it, the hurts are suppressed. But the trouble with unacknowledged and/or unexpressed hurts is that they build up over time until what might seem to be others to be a minor hurt triggers all the other hurts and the person might react in an explosion of anger, which could well lead to violence.
Or the explosion could be turned inwards, which perhaps, is what is commonly referred to a nervous breakdown, and could result in violence against self.
Psychoanalysts such as Wilhelm Reich and Alexander Lowen were among the pioneers of this way of thinking of our protective layer, and coined the term body armour. While they were controversial in their day, if you have an openness to different ways of looking at illness, both physical and mental, both are worth dipping into for more information on the subject.
A complete Chapter is devoted to Energy in Section Four. I believe that ongoing experience of trauma is a substantial drain on our energy – as most of our energy goes into ensuring that our psychological armour stays impenetrable.
But notwithstanding our hard, brittle, armour, the human within continually yearns for love, warmth, intimacy, closeness to others, genuine relationship, and (I believe anyway) the ability to feel.
To finish this post, I remember a hit song when I was a teenager entitled Little Arrows, by a singer called Leapy Lee – who I don’t remember having that many more hits! (It was covered in Ireland by the wonderful Dixies Showband from Cork, who had quite a few hits – in Ireland anyway). A memorable line from the very clever song – which is about how Cupid’s love arrows overcome all sorts of obstacles to reach our hearts – goes:
“Some folks put on armour but the arrows go straight through”.
This implies, of course, that the force of love (one of our root foundations) is so strong it will penetrate any armour we put on!