Beyond the Wound – Healing Our Traumatic Past: Finding Balance and Harmony in an Unbalanced World

By Charles Ellis

This book is about healing the traumatic wounds of our past in a way that allows for recovery in moments and not years. This healing approach offers the techniques necessary to heal those wounds where science and spirituality converge. This book demonstrates how our wounds are physical, emotional, and spiritual experiences, and so is the healing process.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669848233

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Copyright © 2022 by Charles Ellis.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 11/04/2022

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CONTENTS

DEDICATION

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK first to the love of my life, my wife and soulmate, Syndy S. Ellis, who has shown me the kind of love that I believe endures through all times and that has filled my soul to be who I am today and the author of this work.

To my West Coast family, who accepted me for who I am and has shown me the way of acceptance and unconditional love.

To my sister, Dr. Joan M.E. Gaither, who has mentored and been that shining light and role model that set the bar for me so high and that I have been obliged to take steps to reach. To my East Coast family, who has taught me the meaning of patience and acceptance.

To my many patients who have honored me with the opportunity to serve them and to join them in their journey toward health and wellness. You have taught me so much, and I am eternally grateful.

To healthcare professionals everywhere who devote their lives to helping others and to students who may not realize the potential and importance of the profession they have chosen.

Finally, I dedicate this book to my children and grandchildren with my love, appreciation, and thanks for being who you are, loving me, and lifting me every day. I pray your journey in this life will be forever filled with love and happiness.

PROLOGUE

I TOLD MY WIFE that I met a patient who reminded me of my friend, Snowball, who died years ago. From time to time, I think of my friend and what life would have been like had he stayed alive. We both dreamed of singing on the big stage since we could harmonize from day one. We blended whenever we opened our mouths to sing or hum a tune. It was natural between us as our lives just seemed to be in sync. I want to share a short story about my friend, Snowball, because I think it’s a great one to lay out my thoughts about this book, Beyond the Wound. Forgive me if it feels like I have driven down a different pathway. I promise you that in the end, the meaning and purpose behind this story will be crystal clear as it relates to Beyond the Wound and why I am writing this book.

Nevertheless, after being gone for thirty-five years, I was back in Baltimore, Maryland, working while my wife attended the University of Maryland School of Nursing. I had returned after thirty-five years on the West Coast. Returning to Baltimore has its meaning and significance, but meeting this patient, for now, is the focus. I worked with this patient around his anger and resolved issues of impulsivity, issues that my friend Snowball had and was partly responsible for his death. After several sessions, my patient expressed how important he believed I became to his life and saving him from a life in prison or death. He shared that he had a dream in which we were best friends growing up and having fun exploring our world together. He said the dream felt and seemed so natural to him that he could not ignore the dream and could not wait for his session to share his experience. As he shared his vision, an eerie feeling emerged, and suddenly, it felt as if Snowball was in the room, sharing that he was making the change to live out his purpose in life. Through my work with this patient, he recognized that he had a goal and was moving toward it in his lifetime. My patient knew nothing of Snowball or my comment to my wife that he (a patient) reminded me of my friend earlier in our work together. However, he was confident and sure that we had met before, that we were friends or would have been friends if we had encountered each other growing up. He was sure of it and even mentioned that it was hard for him not to believe we were friends.

Sharing this with my wife, being mindful of maintaining confidentiality, I asked her, What do you think it means? Do you think this is a coincidence or something more? As my wife shared her thoughts that she did not know but was curious about what I thought it meant, I shared with her that I believed it was something more.

I am not saying that I believe the man in my consulting room was Snowball. But I am saying the parallels are disquieting. For example, Snowball would have been the same age as my patient had he lived: They both adored dogs; in fact, my patient kept a dog kennel. They both loved to fight, and they both were aggressive, quick to anger, while simultaneously supporting those being bullied. They both loved Marvin Gaye and the Softones singing group. Yet again, I am not going to say if I believed my patient possessed the spirit of Snowball. I will leave that for the end to reveal my thoughts around this subject, but for now, let me be clear about this experience. The forces at play in our lives that we are unaware of or remotely aware of have significant meaning for practitioners in the helping professions. Beyond the Wound hopes to bring clarity to this unique nature and energy, if you will, so that we, as practitioners, can harness this energy in service to our patients across the globe.

Let me share another experience that helped to shape Beyond the Wound.

A couple came to see me, to address problems in their marriage, which had to do with them as a couple and their extended family. He was a minister, and he felt his ministry had reached a plateau and he was not progressing, and that the ministry had become ho-hum—his words, not mine. But we agreed that ho-hum meant stagnant and uninteresting, and he was losing his sheep. He told me that he felt he was losing his faith, that somehow the God he learned to love and preach about was fading, and he had no idea why. His wife described herself as the black sheep of both families, and neither wanted her to be married and believed she was an unfit parent, although their children were already grown.

When we began our work together, I noticed how he would interrupt his wife whenever she tried to speak but would do it jokingly. When she spoke, he would put up his hand, halting her voice, and she would often stop in midsentence to obey his command as he would pick up the conversation and often talk about what he wanted to impart and not what she was speaking about. When I first saw it, I did not think much of it. I let it go as this is who they are, and they are playing this way, especially since she smiled while he laughed. But as time went on, this behavior continued, and the problems with her family, her children, his family, his sisters, and his brothers became more hostile and intense. They described a situation that characterized the pattern of limiting her voice, something that perpetrated her entire life and was noticed by his siblings and her siblings. This was described casually in a session focused on their interactions with extended family members. They explained that their interactions with them are not different from how they interact in the session.

When I inquired more pointedly about the behavior in the session, I noticed that the minister appeared almost suddenly to go into a trance state. Noticing this trance state, I decided to go with it and began to transition into using a hypnotic voice. In doing so, I pointed out my observations regarding the behavior and inquired if they were aware of this limiting behavior pattern. His wife, without hesitation, looked at her husband as if to say, I have been trying to tell you. In a matter-of-fact voice, she said, I have always noticed it, and her husband sat quiet, closed his eyes, and began shaking his head, indicating no. I watched for a second, waiting for a reply from her husband, and because he seemed to leave the room mentally, I then inquired of the minister what he was experiencing. He suddenly began to rock back and forth in the chair, moving his head and mumbling the word no. This continued for a moment, with his wife peering at her husband in what looked like utter surprise.

I asked again, Minister, what are you experiencing now? Then a voice that was not his voice said plainly, I cannot let her talk because she will say something I don’t want to hear.

I responded, What is that? What is it you do not want to hear?

His rocking and head nodding became more intense, and his voice, again louder, screamed out, That I am stupid, I am dumb. At this point, the wife was praying aloud and laying her hands on her husband. The minister’s rocking and nodding became violent for a minute, then abruptly stopped. Tears flowed down his face. He opened his eyes, looked over to his wife, and said quietly, I am so sorry. The minister then turned to me, looked me in the eyes, and said, Thank you.

When I asked him what that was like for him and if he wanted to share any part of what he had just experienced, he said, All I know is, what I just let go of was not of any God I know, and keeping my wife silent all this time I wasn’t even aware of, it was not me—it was something else.

Our work together revealed that his parents and siblings all called him stupid and dumb growing up, to the point that he only did things supporting his idea of being stupid and dumb. His life was filled with challenges—drug addiction, homelessness, and a life of crime that included time in prison. He says he found Christ in prison and changed his life, but the words of his family lingered inside him. His biggest fear was to hear his wife refer to him as stupid or dumb, so he silenced her with his Bible and the idea that the man is the head of the household and the woman is the man’s helpmate. She was like a servant, doing everything for him, and tied to him through her faith and belief in his loyalty and acceptance of her where her family did not. He was tied to her because she did not judge him for not learning how to read or write. Hence, they have joined together out of deficiency, not what they possess in abundance.

The long and short of this is, whatever energies released that day, the minister learned to listen to his wife, appreciate her voice and her ideas, and discontinue shutting her down. Still, he encouraged her to speak and share her experiences and ideas. This shift changed how he treated her and how his and her family treated her. The ministers’ ministry has improved to heights he only imagined, and they are as happy as they can be living in their abundant love and appreciation for one another and their faith.

Psychotherapy and healing from our past wounds and symptoms are more a soulful experience, an appeal to the wounded souls to reframe the experience into an awareness that heals from our state of forgiveness and letting go. Our minds and bodies are unembellished vehicles by which the soul transports itself. Although these vehicles seem to suffer, and the vehicle expresses the suffering, our souls or our vehicles’ passengers cry out for change, healing, and balance. Beyond the Wound is a road map to healing the soul or, as some may say, our spirit. As we work with patients, we cure wounds of the present moments and injuries that date back in time and even before this lifetime or the last. We are healing wounds of the soul, recognizing that we are not our bodies, that we are eternal beings, having a human experience that has, for some, gone awry. Opening ourselves to the idea of our souls and spiritual life opens a whole new awareness of who we are and why we are here. We open to an understanding of our wounded selves, and the healing journey is a soulful one. The wounds we need to heal to be our best selves are not only wounds of the present lifetime but wounds that date back years and centuries, into other lifetimes when we didn’t exist.

Furthermore, the wound we most often do not discuss or acknowledge is the wound of not knowing our true purpose or our reason for being. Not journeying to find, consciously or unconsciously, our reason for our birth and life unfolds into a wound that you will find unfolds as we heal the wounds that cause us pain and discomfort and propels us into the consulting rooms across the globe.

So I say all that to say this, and I dare say, to move beyond the wounds of life, to move beyond our past traumas, we need to not only be open to how the traumas of this life affect us, but also to how those from previous ones have manifested the traumas in our present life.

We are here, were here, and will forever be here to master our purposes,