Dear Mate:

I wasn’t aware that you posted August 2. If I was aware, I would have responded to you that same day or the day after. What happens sometimes, is that following clicking on “Submit”, there is no record of the submission on the page of Topics (that  is my name doesn’t show as the last one who posted on the thread). When I submit and that happens, I add a post: “didn’t reflect under Topics” and that so far corrected the situation and my name shows. You may do the same, if you want, so to prevent your post from not being noticed and read.

yes, the Primal Scream idea of releasing trauma through a scream, or a series of screams, doesn’t work because trauma registers in many, many neuropathways in the brain, and those cannot be undone in a scream or a series of screams. It takes years. Significant progress can be done in months of persistent work and patience, with the help of a capable psychotherapist.

Regarding an “early trauma” in your life: often people think only the most extreme traumas count as trauma, but it is not so. It is not difficult for a small, dependent child to be traumatized, that is, to get so scared that he suffers for years from anxiety. The knowledge of what it was that scared you so much as a child is available to you if you paid attention to what scares you now.

Regarding why you have the urge to throw things, to act aggressively- anger and aggression follow fear. When an animal fears for its life, it either runs away (feeling only fear), or it feels fear, then anger, and it fights so to save its life.

Regarding your most recent post, the reason you thought: “I’m gonna die” can be that “early trauma” you mentioned earlier. Like I wrote, it doesn’t take a lot for a child to get scared, and a fear children share with all other animals is the fear of physical death. (I don’t think that as a child you were aware of the concept of ego, and therefore you were not afraid then of your ego dying).

anita

Dear Mate:

I would like to understand better, therefore I ask: if your ego died, how would be life for you every day, what will it be like?

anita

Dear Mate:

Ego death as the experience of “merging with the love and beauty of the universe” is something you already experienced and you described it well, page 1. Maybe ego death is not a forever-after kind of experience for anyone. Maybe it is an experience that you remember and then you can re-experience, when alone in nature, let’s say.

anita

Dear Mate:

The word “death” in the term “ego death” suggests an event that is final. I don’t think it is possible, to change our brain’s neuropathways, and so many of them, in a one time experience, even in a series of experiences. A changing of thinking and believing, that takes years and the old doesn’t disappear without a trace, as we change we still deal with old thinking and old believing.

When you wrote “let (fear) do whatever it wants”, you mean throw things and such, acting aggressively?

anita

Dear Mate:

If I understand you correctly, you believe that fear could be gone in one experience. If you let fear do whatever it wants, throwing chairs, acting aggressively, for as long as it takes, the fear will be gone for the rest of your life and you will experience permanent, lifetime inner peace.

Did I understand correctly?

anita

Dear Mate:

I agree: that’s not the way it goes, fear doesn’t disappear and we don’t get to enjoy perfect, undisturbed peace. Regarding the “unnecessary suffering, he suffering we cause ourselves to ourselves”- tell me more about that, what you mean by it?

anita

Dear Mate:

These are a few of my thoughts regarding fear, anger, aggression and mental illness: fear is a natural emotion in nature. It is not an illness. The purpose of fear is to motivate an animal to escape- or fight danger (The Flight/ Fight reaction to Fear).

In humans, escaping danger is often impossible, specifically it is impossible for a young child to escape his home. Later on in life, we may be bullied in schools and without help, we are not able to not go to school. Bullying may happen in the work place later on. With no other way to make money, we may feel forced to stay in the aggressive work situation.

Having to remain in an aggressive environment, be it in one’s childhood home, and/ or in school, and the workplace later on… or in a crime ridden neighborhood and so forth, the fear does not flow out of us because we remain in danger(aggression is danger).

Remaining in danger, fear festers, remains, grows. It expresses itself in a myriad of mental illnesses. Many people suffer from a few diagnosable mental illnesses, combinations of symptoms, expression of that festering fear.

To heal, you have to figure what aggression you are currently living with, be it hostile parents, a bullying workplace, and so on, and then escape, finally.. escape that danger, literally, no longer be present for it.

That would be the first step of healing.

anita