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by Peter A. Levine, Ph.D.
''despite our differences, we're all alike. Beyond identities and desires, there is a common core of self -- an essential humanity whose nature is peace and whose expression is thought and whose action is unconditional love. When we identify with that inner core, respecting and honoring it in others as well as ourselves, we experience healing in every area of life.''
-- Joan Borysenk
''Minding the Body, Mending the Mind''
Technology and the growth of our populations are bringing us into a world where time and distance do little to separate us. At the same time, we face serious threats to ourselves and our planet including war, terrorism, nuclear weaponry, a growing split between haves and have-nots, and environmental destruction. Citizens in our inner cities randomly destroy property and life as the effects of years of accumulated stress, hostility, and economic oppression combine and ignite. The outlook becomes even more grim when we consider the frightening potential for violence in a soon-to-be mature generation of children born with crack and cocaine addictions.
As our communities become more interconnected, it becomes ever more imperative that we learn to live and work together in harmony. We have problems which will destroy us if we cannot work together effectively to solve them. Yet rather than to negotiate economic, ethnic, and Geographic issues, communities, even entire nations, seem bent on destroying one another. Indeed it is to these issues that the causes of war are often ascribed. But are they the root causes? The hope for our survival as a species and planet may lie in our ability to answer this question.
Why Do Humans Kill, Maim and Torture One Another?
Even when competing for their most basic resources - food and territory - animals typically do not kill members of their own species. Why do we? What has happened to propagate large-scale killing and violence as human populations have increased in number and complexity? While there are many theories of war, there is one root cause that seems not to have been widely acknowledged. And yet it is perhaps the single most important root cause of the form modern warfare has taken. Its perpetuation, escalation, and violence, at least, can be attributed to post traumatic stress. Our past encounters with one another have generated a legacy of separation, prejudice and hostility. This legacy is a legacy of trauma fundamentally no different from that experienced by individuals-except in its scale.
The re-enactment of trauma in the form of potentially harmful behaviors is one of the strongest and enduring reactions that occurs in the wake of trauma. Once an individual has been traumatized, it is almost certain that he or she will continue to repeat or re-enact parts of that experience in some way, to be drawn over and over again into situations which are reminiscent of the original trauma. When that person has been traumatized by war, the implications are obvious.
Let's review what happens when a person is traumatized. First, their internal system will remain aroused-they are always on edge, unable to relax or tune down. They are constantly aware of a pervading sense of danger and suspicious of everything and everyone. Not knowing why they feel that they are in danger causes fear and reactivity to escalate which, in turn, amplifies a need to identify the source of the threat. Propelled by the tremendous terror and rage that lurks just beneath the surface of their experience, they are unconsciously driven into re-enactments to help regulate the on-going escalation of arousal.
Imagine now an entire population of people with a similar post-traumatic history. In fact, imagine two such populations located in the same Geographic region, perhaps with different languages, colors, religions or ethnic traditions. The consequences are inevitable. The disturbing arousal with its on-going perception of danger is now explained. The threat has been located: It is them. The enemy.
What will happen? Croatian civilians are sawed in half by Serbian soldiers. Atrocities are committed in turn by Croatian troops. Dozens of cease fires are called and each time the result is the same: the urge to kill and destroy takes over and the insanity once again prevails. The urge to kill, to maim and mutilate seems unstoppable-these two ''neighbors'' seem compelled to slaughter each other, to destroy one another's homes and any hope for economic security in their future.
This example of brutality is hardly unique to Yugoslavia. Tear a page from any news magazine: Kurds, Iraqis, Irish, English, Blacks, Whites, the list is endless. While war is complex and can hardly be attributed to a single cause such as trauma, nationalities which must live in close proximity do have a disturbing tendency to make war on one another. This is a pattern which has played and replayed innumerable times in recorded history and probably before. Histories of trauma have a frightening potential to be reenacted in the form of violence.
The Serbs and Croats have been repeating their violence as virtual instant replays of World Wars I and II. Middle East nations can readily trace their replays to Biblical times. And even when actual wars do not repeat with the kind of ferocity and brutality that are seen regularly around the globe, suffering in the form of societal dislocation, child abuse and other forms of hatred will. There is no avoiding the traumatic aftermath of war; it reaches into every segment of society.
Transforming Cultural Trauma
Just as the effects of individual trauma can be transformed, the aftereffects of war on a societal level can also be resolved. Different peoples can and must come together with a willingness to share rather than to fight, to transform trauma rather than to propagate it. And there is a place to begin. The innocence of our children can provide the bridge that enables all of us to experience closeness and bonding with those we may formerly have regarded with animosity.
Several years ago, Dr. James Prescott, then at the National Institute of Mental Health, engaged in some important anthropological research on the effect of infant and child rearing practices on the prevalence (or absence) of violence in aboriginal societies. He found that the societies in which child rearing was characterized by close physical bonding and stimulation through rhythmical movement had a low incidence of violence. Conversely, the societies with diminished or punitive physical contact with their children showed clear tendencies towards violence in the forms of war, rape and torture.
As we know from the studies of Dr. Prescott and others, the time around birth and infancy is a critical period. It is here that the infant assimilates the states of its parents with regard to basic security and ability to regulate arousal. When parents are traumatized, they have difficulty imprinting their young with this sense of basic trust and resource. And without this sense of trust, children are more vulnerable to later trauma. One solution to breaking the cycle of cultural trauma is to involve infants and their mothers in an experience that generates trust and bonding before the child has completely assimilated the parents' anxious state.
In Scandinavia, I am involved in some exciting work inspired by my Norwegian colleagues. This project uses what we know about this critical period around infancy to allow not just one individual, but an entire group of people to begin transforming the trauma their past encounters have brought about. All this method of bringing people together requires is a room, a few simple musical instruments, and some blankets strong enough to hold a baby's weight, all of which are readily available nearly anywhere at little or no cost. Once a group of people have participated in the experience they can easily be trained to replicate it for others. The impact of this experience is so powerful that participants want to spread it throughout their communities, and many of them do.
The process works as follows: A group composed of mothers and infants from opposing factions are brought together at a home or a community center. The encounter begins with this heterogeneous group of mothers and their infants taking turns teaching one another simple folk songs of their respective cultures. Holding their babies, the mothers dance while they sing the songs to their children. A facilitator uses simple instruments to enhance the rhythm in the songs. The movement, rhythm, and use of the voice in song strengthen the neurological patterns which produce peaceful alertness and receptivity. As a result, the stuckness and fixation that generations of strife have produced begin to soften.
At first the children are perplexed by these goings on, but soon they become more interested and involved. They are enthusiastic about the rattles, drums and tambourines which the facilitator passes to them. Characteristically without rhythmical stimulation, children of this age will do little more than try to fit objects such as these into their mouths. Here, however, the children will join in generating the rhythm with great delight, squealing and cooing as well.
Because these infants are not blank slates, but highly developed organisms, even at birth, they send signals which activate their mothers' deepest sense of serenity, responsiveness and biological competence. In this healthy exchange, the mothers and their young feed off each other in an exchange of mutually gratifying physiological responses which in turn generate feelings of security and pleasure. It is here that the cycle of traumatic damage begins its transformation.
The transformation continues as the mothers place their babies on the floor and allow them to explore. Like luminous magnets the babies gleefully move toward each other, overcoming barriers of shyness as the mothers quietly support their exploration from a circle around them. The joy and mutual connection that is generated by their small adventure is difficult to describe or imagine-it must be witnessed.
The group then continues with smaller groups of a mother and infant from each culture working together. The two mothers swing their infants gently in a blanket. These babies aren't just happy, they are completely blissed out. They generate a roomful of love which is so contagious that soon the mothers are smiling at each other and enjoying an experience of deep bonding with members of a community that earlier they feared and distrusted. The mothers leave with renewed hearts and spirits that they are eager to share with others. The process is almost self-replicating.
The beauty of this approach to community healing lies in its simplicity and its effectiveness. An outside facilitator begins the process by leading the first group. After that, certain of the mothers who have participated can be trained as facilitators for other groups. The primary attributes required by a facilitator are an acute sensitivity to timing and to interpersonal boundaries. It is our experience that for certain individuals, these are skills that can be easily learned through a combination of participatory experience and didactic explanation. Once trained, the mothers become ambassadors of peace within their own communities.
Experiences such as the one just described can bring people together so that they can again live in harmony, even if the experience itself does not completely heal all the aftereffects of trauma. Trauma's impact is different for each individual. And each individual must at some point accept the responsibility their own healing, healing which will never happen if we must continually wage war on our neighbors.
Nationalities which live in close proximity can break the generational cycle of destruction, violence and trauma which holds them hostage. By utilizing human organism's capacity to register peaceful aliveness, even in the web of traumatic defensiveness, we can all begin to make our communities safe for ourselves and our children. Once in safe community we can begin the process of healing that the traumatized psyche so desperately needs.
Healing Cocaine Babies
The tragic plight of cocaine babies and their mothers is another societal problem that cries out for solution. These infants (and others) are gestated in a minefield of stress and trauma. If the pattern is not quickly reversed, these children will have profound difficulties in regulating stress, arousal and bonding. They are also likely to exhibit extreme deficits in emotional and impulse control, making them likely candidates for violent acting out. As ever increasing numbers of drug babies are born, the potential for pervasive mass violence in our society is greatly amplified. Unfortunately, politicians seem unwilling to deal proactively with such a long term problem. If anything is to be done, we must begin it ourselves.
Because of the deep neurological responses that are generated when mothers and their babies move rhythmically together with music, there is every reason to believe that this will help facilitate the normal neurological development and bonding that these children so desperately need to begin their journeys back to normal functioning. The process is simple and inexpensive, making it ideally suited for the socioeconomic groups from which most of these babies come.
Circle of Trauma, Circle of Grace
''Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that we have to erect the ramparts of peace''
UNESCO Charter
Resiliency to stress and trauma, the development of basic trust and the capacity for enduring personal and peaceful relationships are forged during a critical period of life. In the womb, at birth and in the first few months of life, mothers exposed to the trauma and chronic worry that is always associated with war and threat, pass this stress onto their fetuses and newborns through a delicate set of physiological, chemical and emotional messages.
The experience just described offers a gentle alternative to the destructive cycle of trauma, suffering, and violence by allowing the biological imperative for natural bonding and love to assert themselves. By helping to promote neurological responses which enhance relaxed alertness, security and trust, this experience interrupts the cycle of trauma at three key points:
First, it reduces stress in the newborn. While we would like to promote healing measures even during pregnancy, our first opportunity to intervene in the cycle of trauma is in infancy. The experience just described helps to neutralize the effects of the mother's stress that has already been passed to the fetus. The timing of this intervention is critical. The mother under stress is less able to meet increased demands of a stress gestated new born, she will in turn experience greater frustration and worry. And in a horribly vicious cycle, her agitation will be ''absorbed'' by the already distressed infant, making it ever more difficult to comfort . . . making the mother feel less adequate and more helpless, etc.
The effect of the experience then is to help reduce this part of the distress frustration-distress cycle by restoring the relaxed alertness that is lost in the wake of trauma and stress.
Secondly, the experience promotes the mutually beneficial effects and maternal-infant bonding which can occur only when relaxed alertness is established in both infant and mother. And, as Prescott's studies suggest, without close physical bonding, as these children grow up, the societies they populate will have increasing tendencies for violence.
Thirdly, in this experience, mothers and infants of both tribes, nations, ethnicisities, color, religions, etc., are developing close bonding and promoting cooperative behaviors towards each other. It is, of course, through cooperative bonds that the conflicts and tensions which can trigger war and violence are diffused.
''Give me a place to put my lever'', exclaimed Archemedes, ''and I will move the world.'' In a world of conflict, destruction, and trauma, we find this fulcrum in the close physical, rhythmic, pulsation between mother and infant. It lies within the human organism's capacity to register peaceful, aliveness, even in the web of traumatic defensiveness. It is through the body's capacity for aliveness and bonding that the generational circle of destruction, violence and trauma begins to unwind towards the circle of cooperation and grace for which we all so deeply yearn.
Epilogue or Epitaph?
An Armenian villager laments, ''It will be a hundred years before I can talk to my neighbor again.'' In America's inner cities, pressures rise to the brink of destructive chaos and then crash into it. In Northern Ireland, people separated only by clothes-lines and different religions watch their children waging war rather than playing it.
Untraumatized humans prefer to live in harmony if they can. Yet traumatic residue creates a concomitant belief strengthened by unconscious underpinnings that we are unable to surmount our hostility and that misunderstandings will always keep us apart. The experience of bonding described here is only one example of the many concepts and practices that are being generated at the Foundantion for Human Enrichment to address this most serious dilemma. We are designing others to bring pregnant women, older children and fathers into the circle as time, money and opportunity become available.
These approaches are not panaceas, but they are a place to begin. They offer bright hope where political solutions alone have not worked. The holocaust, conflicts in Iraq and in Yugoslavia, the recent riots in Los Angeles and other cities-all of these encounters have been traumatic for the world community. They also portray too graphically the price we will pay as a society if we leave the cycle of trauma intact. We must be passionate in our search for effective avenues of resolution. Not just peace, but survival itself, depends on it.
We live in a world that has become increasingly complex and increasingly ridden with danger in spite of progress toward peace between nations. As we have discussed, trauma, once fully developed, has a compelling tendency to be re-enacted. When such re-enactments reach a scale which affects entire populations, we are at risk for extreme violence however good our intention toward peace may be. Nature is no fool. Evolution happens as result of forces which threaten to destroy the species. For us, trauma is one such force.
Trauma cannot be transcended. It is an inherent part of the primitive biology which brought us here, biology which cannot be changed without completely redesigning us down to our very cells. The only way we will be able to release ourselves, individually and societally, from re-enacting our traumatic legacies is by transforming them. And we can only do so by addressing the problem at its roots in our physiology. Working with physiological and neurological patterns gives us at once the instinct of the animal and the intelligence of the human being. Lacking either we are doomed to repeat our hostilities until none of us remain. With the two together we can move forward on our evolutionary path and become more truly human-able to use all the capacities that are ours, able to perceive and enjoy our world, able to bring our children into a world that is safe.
To continue our work we need:
- Funding
- Travel
- Lodging and living expenses
- Video equipment and supplies
- Volunteers
- Consultants who can help us design experiences for different cultures
- Facilitators to lead groups
- Fundraisers
- Coordinators
- Contacts and opportunities in different cultures and urban areas
- Publicity
Please, can you help?
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