Trauma & the Soul

Honoring Our Relations with Diverse Realms

Collage by Doug Van Houten

We were born into a world shaped by a trauma too horrific to let into awareness. Our ancestors’ trauma, remembered and forgotten, have shaped us and our society in ways we may not realize, creating a world filled with danger, sadness, corruption, and crime. Traces of it are everywhere. Deep sea mining, the rapid destruction of forests worldwide, and the pollution of air and waterways. There’s been an increase in the sex trafficking of children in 2024, including online exploitation. Nearly a quarter of adolescent girls who have been in a relationship experience physical intimate partner violence by the time they turn 20, according to the World Health Organization.

I look toward the juniper-pinion desert and the La Plata mountains beyond my home each morning. I walk to a large juniper tree I sit with daily and feel connected to all the wild places I have known: the red rock canyons of Utah, the rainforest and ocean of Costa Rica, the Spruce-Aspen forests of Colorado, and the trees of my childhood. As a nature and soul guide, I have witnessed people discover their sacred stories on the land and through encounters with powerful images from their dreams. My relationship with the land and my soul direct me. I close my eyes and feel myself in the cave womb, under a mother tree in a forest on fire. I ask this place to support me and influence my responses to life’s challenges.

A tragic misunderstanding often occurs about individuals with trauma histories in mainstream culture; even in personal growth communities, a prejudice can bleed through. They may be deemed less capable of living their soul’s gifts or being healthy. The reality, however, is that trauma can give people greater access to an inner life and unique talents. In addition, trauma does not happen only to some people. Everyone experiences trauma, whether consciously or not. Facing it is the key to healing.

Judging those with trauma histories can be a defense against feeling one’s trauma. By “othering” trauma survivors, one may be trying to avoid the trauma within oneself. When trauma-related experiences and feelings are explored and integrated, in addition to life’s mythopoetic dimensions, it creates an increased capacity for understanding, empathy, and grief, a connection to what Jung called “the divine and human realms,” and greater intimacy with one’s wild heart, others, and the world.

Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung suffered intense early relational trauma. His mother went to a mental hospital for several months when he was three, and he felt abandoned and became mistrustful of love. He felt alone with no one to talk to about his night terrors, frightening dreams, and obsessive thoughts. Later, his unusual nature and inward preoccupations alienated him from his school peers. These traumas broke him open to an inner wholeness and mythopoetic potentialities and gifts. Jung’s autobiography shows how, through the gap of dissociation, a defense from trauma, he was both rescued from unbearable pain and opened to an alternative world.

Tragedy, injustice, and suffering in a violent and polarized world are part of life, as are the sacred mysteries (Rudolf Otto 1917), often called the numinous dimension of human experience. Jungian analyst and writer Donald Kalsched has explored the relationship between trauma and the soul in his book Trauma and the Soul: A Psycho-Spiritual Approach to Human Development and Its Interruption. Kalsched invites us to live within and between both realms without using either “as an escape from the other—without bypassing the realities of human suffering or discounting (as mere illusions)” the ineffable mysteries. Kalsched writes:

C.G. Jung realized early on that the magical and mysterious world into which the trauma survivor falls when dissociation cracks open his/her psyche is not only an artifact of the splitting process but is also an archetypal or mythopoetic world already there to catch them.

The Mythopoetic Matrix

Early trauma begins in childhood when we are given more to experience than we can tolerate consciously. Our brains and nervous systems aren’t equipped to metabolize particular experiences. We become overwhelmed by unbearable emotions that are impossible to digest. This shock threatens our vital core, which could shatter. Instead, a life-saving split, called dissociation, happens. The unbearable emotions are given to another part of our psyche, removed from our conscious awareness. These divisions protect our innocence and save our souls by splitting them from our bodies.

People suffering from trauma are often supported by their relationship with the sacred world. Trauma can force people into non-ordinary reality to survive intolerable pain, and once there, they can have mystical experiences or encounters. Kalsched suggests that the soul exists in the intermediate space “between the worlds,” which he calls the “mythopoetic matrix.” He suggests that people must be aware of ordinary and non-ordinary reality and the space in between, where survivors can find a deeper mythological story that holds their pain. Hillman said people enter psychotherapy to see this larger story of their soul’s destiny “as citizens of two realms.”

Kalsched defines the soul as the “vital animating core that links us (through love) to the divine, to each other and the exquisite beauties of the natural and cultural world.” At Animas Valley Institute, where I guide, people descend into the mysteries of nature and psyche to discover their souls through image, metaphor, dream, or myth. At Animas, we define the soul as an ecological niche and the unique way we enrich the relational web. As a guide, I have heard many stories of soul encounters: someone receiving a story or image that deeply and mysteriously mirrors their essential core.

The worlds of spirit and soul open us to a deeper conversation with the world and valuable and unique ways of seeing. After his break with Freud, Jung’s early trauma was re-activated. Many colleagues criticized him and his experiences and ideas. Still, he found refuge in the inner world and trusted the powers of his dreams, visions, and mythopoetic images. He spoke with them, and they responded with wisdom he did not consciously know.

Trauma never wholly disappears but calls us to have relationships with the inner and outer realms and the space in between. This means relating with the intersubjective world and the mythopoetic space. We can invite the dream into our awareness and hold ourselves with love. Stormy emotions may be generated as the soul re-awakens within the body, reconnecting feeling and imagination. Archetypal defenses can release us into intersubjective relationships and ensouled living, restoring our connection with our bodies and souls and awakening our compassion for all life.

Join Me in New York, Costa Rica, or online ~

Reverence in the Cave Womb of the Dreaming Earth

Awakening to the Visionary Power of Nature & the Deep Imagination

Helderberg Mountains, New York State

September 27 -29, 2024, with Rebecca Wildbear and Susanna Raeven

Join us for a weekend of yoga and dreaming in the enchanting Maple-Basswood forest. We’ll gestate in the Earth's mystery, cherish the night world’s power, and engage in ceremonies and conversations with the animate world. We’ll begin each day with a Wild Yoga asana practice and connect our inner landscape with the spirits of the land. Nurture yourself, dance with your muse, and receive a glimpse of your mythic soul. Steep in the enigmatic images of your dreams and connect with nature.

Dreaming with Nature & Community Online

November 21, 2024 - January 9, 2025, Six Thursdays, 11 AM - 1 PM MT

In this online immersion, we’ll approach dreams like wild landscapes. We’ll listen for what the dream images, places, and characters want us to experience. We’ll submit ourselves to the atmospheres of our dreams and wander in the mysterious terrain of our souls. We’ll explore the lessons learned in our dreams during our time in nature. Our dreams know more than we do. They offer possibilities our minds could never imagine. Join us to explore your dreams through movement, art, and play. Connect to authentic power to help you reimagine yourself and our world.

Wild Yoga: Where Rainforest & Ocean Meet

Ojo del Mar Ecolodge, Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica

January 14 - 20, 2025, with Rebecca Wildbear

Do you long to reconnect to your animal body, stretch your wild imagination, and listen to the dreaming Earth? In this week-long journey, leave behind the speed of culturally imposed timelines and realign with the rhythms of nature. Rest in tide pools, rejuvenate in the ocean, and awaken to the songs of birds and the vibrant colors of tropical flowers. Listen to the rolling waves. Notice how each place influences how you move, sense, feel, dream, and imagine. Cultivate a loving relationship with your body and shift your awareness toward reverence, wonder, and intimacy with nature.

Receive an Early Registration Discount if you register by October 15th.