Understanding Trauma and Healing: Lessons from Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen | Free One Million Minds: Are We There Yet?: The Pursuit of Ease and Truth

12/31/2024

Duration | 5 minutes 30 seconds
Guest: Dr. Symeon Rodger

Synopsis

Dr. Symeon Rodger discusses how conditioning and trauma shape our lives, often triggering involuntary reactions. He shares a personal story of overcoming childhood trauma through Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). Although the trauma initially seemed resolved, it returned, teaching him that true healing requires patience and a deeper approach. Dr. Rodger concludes that working through challenges, rather than seeking a quick fix, often leads to lasting resolution and growth.

dialogue summary

Dr. Symeon Rodger:
We all run on a certain combination of conditioning, where we’ve been heavily conditioned. We were heavily conditioned by our parents, by the school system, by the media. We’ve been conditioned literally since the day we were born. And so we have conditioning on the one hand. We also have trauma, which is a different, more specific kind of conditioning, and pretty much everybody’s been traumatised in some way or another.

So we have all of these things, and when we’re traumatised, we have this pent-up energy that can be triggered at any time, and we can go down that rabbit hole involuntarily. We don’t control it. Can you get past this? You can, but the worst thing you can do is fixate on whether you’re getting past it. That’s absolutely the worst thing you can do.

Sometimes you can have some pretty bizarre experiences. For example, I had a really bad trauma when I was growing up because my father’s attitude toward life was that life is really dangerous. My aunt, his sister-in-law, later said, when she was in her 90s, “Yeah, your father just didn’t trust life.” And I said, “No, he didn’t.” He communicated that to me at an age when I had no defense because, until you’re eight or nine, you don’t have cognitive defenses. You absorb everything as truth, and your subconscious assumes it’s true. There’s nothing you can do about it at that stage.

So, long story short, I disproved this particular trauma. I have a friend in the world of EFT, the Emotional Freedom Technique, tapping. About ten years ago, she emailed me and said, “I have this new trauma protocol for EFT. Can I try it on you? I’m looking for people to experiment with. It’s free; just hop on the phone with me.”

So, I did. We were tapping away, and she was doing the linguistic parts of it, for which she was very gifted. At the time, I wasn’t emotionally connecting with the trauma, but I thought, “Okay, that’s fine. This probably won’t do anything, but I volunteered the time, so I’ll stay for the session.” We were on the phone for about an hour and a half, and the next day, the trauma was gone. I didn’t think about it for seven years. I assumed I had finally found what everyone wants: not just temporary relief but real resolution. It was gone.

I was so wrong. It came back with a vengeance. The same old approach didn’t work the second time. Over time, I realised that what had happened was that I had been given a space out of the trauma, but I didn’t understand the purpose. When it returned, I needed to do more than just try to get rid of it; I had to work through it. I needed a deeper, more patient approach.

But even then, it wasn’t easy for quite a while. We have to be aware that sometimes we’re given challenges we just need to work through. It’s not necessarily bad. There may be reasons we don’t fully understand. But eventually, we have to trust that there’s a greater wisdom behind it all, even though it’s uncomfortable. It won’t always be smooth sailing.

Credits Roll