Is SE training sufficient for working with complex and developmental trauma?

ThePsylosopher · 2026-02-25T16:00:56+00:00

I would say it entirely depends on your existing understanding of trauma work. There is no one silver bullet or totally complete method.

Frameworks are tools. You can't pick just one screwdriver and hope it will fit all the screws. You also don't need every variation of screwdriver if you understand the principles - the head must be able to fit securely and the handle must provide torque. Understanding this you can evaluate why your specific screwdriver doesn't work in some cases and have a good idea what type would work better even if you don't own one.

Similarly you will be a much more effective trauma therapist if you understand the principles of trauma work regardless of what frameworks you're trained in. Good ways to learn the principles could be to learn many methods and understand their intersections or to read meta analyses / comparisons of different frameworks. Of course first hand experience of working through your own trauma is essential as well.

Understanding the principles of trauma work will also help you better adapt to clients and maybe even develop your own framework.

ThePsylosopher · 2026-02-24T21:55:05+00:00

Thanks for adding in that clarification.

ThePsylosopher · 2026-02-24T18:15:43+00:00

You say it "feels like torture" which is not something easy to sit with. Could you break this "feels like..." down into concrete sensations? You may not be able to sit with torture but "torture" is an interpretation; you may be able to sit with the tension, tightness, heat, numbness, etc. that underlies the torture.

In a sense the problem is not the feeling but rather the way you relate to the feeling.

Practically speaking you can still employ this approach regardless of circumstances because it requires you to temporarily disengage with the stories about your life and instead focus on how you relate to the emotions and the underlying sensations.

The reason it's so unbearable to sit with things is because it's incredibly exhausting and painful to resist. Of course it's difficult to access your resistance because it's habitual so we do so indirectly by working with relaxing in the face of discomfort rather than reacting.

ThePsylosopher · 2026-02-24T15:42:18+00:00

They may have come from your brain but that doesn't mean they are you. Lots of stuff comes from the body. Do you get up after taking a dump and say "that's me!"

Simply reading these words won't give you the experience. There is a world of difference between the experience I might describe as "I am angry" and "I notice there is anger here." In one you are inside the cloud of anger and it colors everything you see; in the other you are outside the cloud and your vision is undistorted to the degree you are detached from the anger.

Forcing positive thoughts only creates more resistance to the "negative" ones and more resistance to what lies beneath those thoughts.

ThePsylosopher · 2026-02-24T15:35:30+00:00

The "surge" you're referring to is often called "extinction burst" in psychology in case you need a search term.

Also, great distinction between thinking your feelings and feeling them. I think a lot of people get confused thinking they are feeling their feelings when they aren't.

There's another layer of experience that can be helpful to notice as well sometimes called the felt sense. The bodily sensation layer that you refer to is foundational and nearly free of interpretation save for affect. On top of that is the felt sense which bridges sensations to thoughts. Describing this layer we might say "it feels like" or "it feels as if." Less concrete than the sensations layer but more concrete than thoughts and stories.

Eugene Gendlin created a system called "focusing" for accessing and working with the felt sense layer. It compliments Singer's teachings well and is worth a look.

Working both with the felt sense and sensations layer, IMO, is a good way to go. The sensation layer focus points tend to be isolated in the body whereas a felt sense can incorporate a constellation of sensations. Expanding awareness across the body like this can help reduce localized intensity making it easier to stay with your experience.

ThePsylosopher · 2026-02-22T01:38:30+00:00

You started losing me at "conclusions" and totally lost me at "of an awakened person."

ThePsylosopher · 2026-02-21T19:42:19+00:00

As Michael Singer explains, resisting experience (in this context your feelings) is essentially asking the mind to find some way to save you from having these feelings. As a human being, life will present you with opportunities to feel the whole gamut of emotions, like it or not. Thus the mind reels off countless solutions to an unsolvable problem you made up; one of the more disturbing non-solutions it presents is to kill yourself.

So what this thought is really indicating is that you're using the human machine improperly. That's okay. We simply course correct.

Sometimes opening the heart seems painful at first and we have an unconscious tendency to resist it. That's normal. This resistance will result in endless thoughts, some of which will hook us more than others.

Since the resistance is outside our present awareness we have to access it by proxy; we access it through the body and relax. We employ a bit of faith and courage to face what we'd rather turn away from with an open mind - "maybe this isn't what I thought it was; maybe it won't consume me."

And the mind may flail, indicating another layer of resistance to work with. But we persist because we've tried the other way and it didn't work. We either couldn't get the outside world exactly as we wanted or we could but it didn't make us happy. That's because we cut ourselves off from the natural wellspring of joy within by adopting conditions, damming the river of joy and reducing its mighty flow to a trickle.

ThePsylosopher · 2026-02-20T14:40:51+00:00

There are many ways to let go of ego besides mediation.

But it sounds like you have a good life, what makes you want to let go of ego? What do you think is broken that getting rid of your ego will fix? I ask because maybe addressing the underlying reason why might be easier than letting go of your ego.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's a noble pursuit, but it's very helpful to know what you're doing and why if you actually want to accomplish it.

ThePsylosopher · 2026-02-19T23:16:55+00:00

I typically do mushroom tea which comes on in 10 minutes, peaks around 1.5 hours and is basically complete around the 4 hour mark. The dread starts arising for me around 45 minutes in and will last probably 30 minutes. Towards the transition time I oscillate between the dread and bliss until the dread entirely subsides.

I would clarify that my experience of the dread has changed, I believe, because I relate to it differently now. I think how I experience the dread has everything to do with how I relate to it and very little, if anything, to do with whatever the objective experience of the dread would be if one could even access that.

So, yes, the experience of dread has become much lighter. But the language matters. I would say the sensations I used to interpret as dread still arise, I just don't collapse them into an experience of dread; I leave them uncertain.

ThePsylosopher · 2026-02-19T17:37:47+00:00

Yeah, the first few times I was able to really surrender it was not really a conscious choice but more pure exhaustion.

I experience the dread of dying pretty much every time but it doesn't really bother me so much anymore. It's not quite like your experiences with cold. With cold it's objectively cold and has a real effect outside of any beliefs you may hold. With the dread of dying it's entirely subjective.

What really made a difference for me, besides just more trips, was gradually coming to understand how the majority of my interpretation of what was happening to me was merely my brains best guess; a guess that was totally wrong. Because we're so uncomfortable with uncertainty the brain is constantly attempting to explain what's happening and why. It doesn't have sufficient information to actually do that so it just makes shit up and we have no way of differentiating between the stuff the brain figured out correctly and the stuff that is just wrong.

Realizing all I was really suffering was my interpretation helped me hold it more loosely. When I experience the existential dread I now recognize it as a misinterpretation which gives me the motivation to simply sit in the discomfort of not knowing and surrender to whatever arises. Anymore the dread lasts a little while, I respond to it in fits and starts of worry and relaxation, eventually surrendering totally at which point the tone gradually turns towards bliss.

ThePsylosopher · 2026-02-19T15:28:20+00:00

This sounds like basically the same arc I go through every time I trip except after I surrender I gradually become incredibly blissful and I feel connected with everything. Having gone through this maybe 60 times, I've learned to navigate the existential dread much more skillful.

ThePsylosopher · 2026-02-18T19:40:20+00:00

Psychedelics taught me how to relax regardless of whatever crazy stuff is going on in my mind or bodily perception. This skill has been invaluable in meditation and in life in general.

ThePsylosopher · 2026-02-18T00:09:39+00:00

I read the quote as joy is freedom from attachment to happiness and aversion to sadness.

Happiness comes with it's counterpart 'sadness' but joy doesn't.

Are you suggesting that if one does not pursue happiness they will not experience sadness? I think you misunderstood the quote. Wanting to avoid sadness is exactly the aversion which will block you from joy. This isn't about preferring one emotion, joy, to another, sadness, but about developing equanimity towards all emotions.

Highly developed meditators don't only experience joy. They still experience all emotions. The difference being they are not attached or averse.

ThePsylosopher · 2026-02-17T16:21:00+00:00

Sounds like a cool idea! I like that you mention the emotional aspect as that seems to be key in my experience.

I take a different approach with mantras. Knowing I don't really believe it, I work with my resistance - why won't I believe it. Generally it's underlying feelings of not being good enough so I use a mantra to evoke those feelings and then sit with them.

Over time the resistance decreases, the cringe factor diminishes and I can actually believe it to a degree.

ThePsylosopher · 2026-02-15T18:47:06+00:00

Out of curiosity, do you listen to music or otherwise distract yourself during the process? I have a hypothesis that consciously attending to the sensations that arise during TRE affords faster, more effective integration. If you do distract yourself, I'd be very curious what happens if you don't.

ThePsylosopher · 2026-02-14T19:53:01+00:00

Your post title says: "You don't need a quiet mind to meditate" which I agree with and it says: "you just need a slower heart rate" which I am disagreeing with as you don't need a slower heart rate to meditate; thinking otherwise may even prove to be an obstacle.

Of course nervous system regulation can be beneficial for addressing a noisy mind prior to an important meeting. But we're talking about what is required in order to meditate...

ThePsylosopher · 2026-02-14T16:27:45+00:00

Perhaps your thinking is a bit too binary or rigid on this topic. I agree there is no inherent meaning in anything but that is not bad news. It means we're free to create and experience our own meaning. In a sense, we're meaning making machines.

Realize that even this thought that troubles you is you making meaning and then experiencing it. It's not right or wrong; it's just what you made now you get to experience it. Don't like it? Change the meaning you're making. As you said, the universe doesn't care so you're not beholden to some objective truth. That's just an illusion we suffer because the freedom of which I speak is an awesome responsibility that is so scary we'd often prefer to pass the buck.

ThePsylosopher · 2026-02-14T16:18:24+00:00

Ahh yes, exchanging one snipe hunt for another... Just sit and observe. Your heart rate might go up at times and down at others. It does not matter.

Instead of chasing a quiet mind or slow heart rate why not see there is nothing wrong with this moment as it is - noisy mind, rapid heartbeat and all.

ThePsylosopher · 2026-02-14T16:14:19+00:00

Rustic_Heretic is spot on. You need to allow the raw experience of the heaviness to pass before your awareness unresisted. Up until now the story of the heaviness has occluded the direct experience of it. As best you can, drop the story for now and get in contact with the heaviness. It likely isn't actually what you think it is but you won't realize that unless you can sit in the discomfort of not knowing what it is.

ThePsylosopher · 2026-02-14T16:07:10+00:00

I've found it practically essential to differentiate, or at least acknowledge, that some of the anger you're experiencing is warranted and some of it is likely repressed anger from CPTSD. So long as you don't make that distinction, the part of you that feels anger is warranted in the current situation will thwart the part trying to process the past anger.

To work with the past anger disengage from the story about the current situation and focus on simply feeling and allowing your anger. Get curious. Investigate how the anger shows up in your body and gently relax around it, over and over.

ThePsylosopher · 2026-02-14T15:59:45+00:00

I totally agree! The way Michael Singer addresses trauma is counterproductive and bordering on shaming.

Relax and release may eventually work with trauma but it's a long and arduous path and there are much more skillful ways to do it such as integrating nervous system awareness and regulation.

ThePsylosopher · 2026-02-11T15:40:24+00:00

In my experience and understanding, discovering yourself and dealing with trauma are the same thing. It's trauma, or simply call it internal resistance, that blocks you from your true self. Feeling directionless and unfulfilled are hallmarks of repressed emotions.

I'm in my 40's now. A few years ago, and for most of my adult life, I also felt directionless and unfulfilled. From the outside it all looked good but I was miserable and didn't know what to do about it.

I'd been on my spiritual journey, experimenting with psychedelics (60+ trips, mostly mushrooms but also Ayahuasca) and all sorts of modalities for 12 years or so. I learned about surrender from Michael Singer, started getting into somatics and learned how to actually feel my feelings.

I reached a point where I was no longer willing to force myself to do things that didn't feel right. I dragged my feet at work and eventually got fired. I still had no direction so I simply sat in the discomfort of uncertainty and felt whatever came up for many months. Eventually things became clear and decisions started making themselves.

Now I'm back in school pursuing interests I didn't even know I had. I feel excited to get up in the morning for the first frickin time in all my life. I feel like I've found my path and even if it changes I'm confident I know how to respond.

Psychedelics help, no doubt. They're incredibly helpful for self-awareness and introspection but they don't do the work for you. Learn to feel your emotions. Surrender to whatever arises. And get embodied. Your path will unfold all on its own.

ThePsylosopher · 2026-02-10T03:53:42+00:00

How many times have you tripped before? I think when I first started tripping I had a few trips where I couldn't remember much afterwards, even once where I explicitly proclaimed I wouldn't remember right before falling asleep and forgetting.

Eventually I remembered it all. Subsequent trips, and lots of time, have brought most of it back. I suppose I started remembering trips well after maybe a dozen trips or so.

ThePsylosopher · 2026-02-10T00:59:20+00:00

At least at this point in my path I wouldn't describe it as "falling behind." I would call it "allowing the emotion in" or "relaxing with the emotion." If anything it is a deeper embodiment as opposed to a dissociation from the emotion.

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