The Healing Power of Pain: Trauma and Recovery: A Self-Help Guide

By Ybe Casteleyn and Lara Schmelzeisen

The Healing Power of Pain is an accessible guide for those grappling with emotional distress. This empathetic resource helps readers understand the root causes plaguing heavy hearts, from negative thought patterns to fears and lack of self-worth.

Rather than immediately turning to a therapist, many first seek to comprehend their inner turmoil through self-study. This book meets them where they are, using relatable stories and unique practical exercises to anchor emotional breakthroughs.

Through psychotherapeutic insights and trauma case studies, The Healing Power of Pain illuminates how grief, loss and suffering can shape us. It provides a roadmap for alleviating pain and pioneering our own recovery, moving from simply coping to transformed thriving.

Accessible yet anchored in psychology, The Healing Power of Pain puts healing tools into the hands of the reader. Through candour, compassion and actionable steps, this guide lights the way from hurt toward lasting hope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 28, 2024
• ISBN: 9781035840380

Ybe Casteleyn

Ybe Casteleyn is one of Europe’s most sought-after psychotraumatologists, with clients from all over Europe, but also Syria, USA and Afghanistan. She has worked with all kinds of trauma: people haunted by their past, survivors of child abuse, refugees, victims of accidents and crime, victims of terrorist attacks. Nowadays, she organises online trauma courses for fellow-therapists, psychologists, midwifes, GPs, gynaecologists and other professionals in the field of mental health. Ybe is an avid advocate for the ‘trauma-informed society’.

Book preview

About the Author

Ybe Casteleyn is one of Europe’s most sought-after psychotraumatologists, with clients from all over Europe, but also Syria, USA and Afghanistan. She has worked with all kinds of trauma: people haunted by their past, survivors of child abuse, refugees, victims of accidents and crime, victims of terrorist attacks.

Nowadays, she organises online trauma courses for fellow-therapists, psychologists, midwifes, GPs, gynaecologists and other professionals in the field of mental health. Ybe is an avid advocate for the ‘trauma-informed society’.

Dedication

For you

Copyright Information ©

Ybe Casteleyn 2024

Illustrated by Lara Schmelzeisen

The right of Ybe Casteleyn and Lara Schmelzeisen to be identified as author and illustrator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781035840366 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035840380 (ePub e-book)

ISBN 9781035840373 (Audiobook)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Foreword

By author and psychotraumatologist Ybe Casteleyn

The stories in this book are based on real accounts by real people who have shared their tales with me. However, each story is but a limited expression of what has been said and felt during the sessions. Body language, eye contact, the back-and-forth (occasionally careful, sometimes courageous) of the conversations and the sitting, feeling and thinking together cannot be summed up in words or between lines. Moreover, for privacy reasons, the names of these people have been changed and their accounts adapted to better bring across the story that we want to tell. For these and many other reasons, I would like to use this space to thank the contributors to this book, the people who shared their stories with me before this book was written.

About Trauma, Hope and Pain, And About Being Human—Together

Hope is the central theme of this book, a book featuring stories and exercises from my psychotherapy practice. Hope for more rest, inner peace, more empowerment, less pain, less sorrow. The hope that we can use our pain for our own healing process. The hope that pain will not lead to more pain, but that there can be relief, that it can vanish, if only a little—enough to enjoy life again. And also the hope that we don’t have to go it alone, that we can ask for help from a fellow human being, someone just like us, someone equal to us, a therapist.

There seems to be a taboo about therapy, when in fact it is quite a human process involving equals.

In this book, trauma is used as an overall term for all the terrible wounds that we may have suffered: being hurt by those close to us—our parents, partners, friends—or by people or situations at school, in the streets, in oppressive societies and in war zones…Trauma causes pain, outrageous, sometimes unspeakable pain.

Instead of being ‘disempowered’ by your trauma, I’d like to see you being ‘empowered’ by it. It is all about fundamental respect for oneself.

It is this kind of pain that I, as a trauma therapist, am trying to understand, to sense, to empathise with—because I am convinced that although shared pain does not necessarily mean less pain, it makes it more bearable. Because to share pain means that you connect with each other, you look at the pain together, you approach it together, and you express your humanity together. For victims, such sharing of trauma, expressing their humanity with others, is essential, because trauma is inflicted by the exact opposite: the lack of understanding, emotional distance, estrangement and acts of inhumanity.

Resilience, i.e., our ability to overcome pain and to grow in the process, is essential for recovering from trauma. We are all born with resilience, it is in our nature: we utilise the most fantastic, sometimes bizarre mechanisms to survive trauma. Our survival instinct is proof of a quiet, contained power that rests in each one of us. However, just as pain can become too overwhelming to stand, our resilience too can weaken. And this is a second aspect of my work as a therapist: to help people rediscover their innate resilience.

How You Can Read This Book

As a collection of stories

The stories in this book are about people like you and me. People who have been hurt; people who have been traumatised; people who have trouble picking up their lives again. Reading their stories, taking a peek into their lives and into the struggles of their souls, will feed the humanity in us. It shows us what trauma really is and how it can affect us, and it brings us closer to each other, our fellow humans.

As a manual

Each story is also a ‘case’, a report about a specific psychotherapy process. Thus, the book can serve as a guidebook for anyone who is interested in trauma and trauma processing: for parents; for those who work with children; for people who work in the social sector; for physicians and colleagues in the field of therapy; for people working with the law; for politicians and for policy makers…

The stories are supported by theoretical interludes: essential information, conceptual frameworks and specific theoretical terms related to trauma are explained, clarified and fed back to the reader. The theoretical sections can also be read independently of the stories, as a book within a book, as a series of lessons in trauma theory.

As a ‘feeling’ book

Each story ends with an exercise for you, the reader. An exercise in which you can get in touch with what makes you resilient, with what helps you withstand your own traumatic pain. Part Three, which is dedicated to healing from trauma, also contains exercises. The exercises are designed to be as safe as possible, but it is very important that you check at all times whether they have a healing effect on you rather than a traumatising one. If your own pain increases as you are reading the stories or doing the exercises, or if you feel anxiety, anger or despair, put the book aside and take the time to calm yourself down. It is then best to focus on something else. For instance, tossing a tennis ball from one hand to the other. Writing down your feelings can also help. In short, if you find yourself struggling with your own pain more often, get help from another person. Nothing helps more than to feel understood.

Trauma can manifest as something very physical. This is why I insisted on making this a ‘Feel-Book’. My invitation to readers is to help them get in touch with their feelings.

For more information, please visit:

www.thehealingpowerofpain.com

www.ybecasteleyn.be

Part 1

The Impact of Trauma

Traumas can cause us pain for years; they can get under our skin and become a chronic burden; they can damage us and estrange us from others, from society and humanity as a whole.

And trauma, in particular when experienced in our family of origin or in our youth, has a devastating impact on the rest of our lives.

In fact, these early traumas touch us at the core of our stress response, our automatic reaction to new trauma, new pain. They have an effect on our basic level of resilience and our love for life, and they have a decisive impact on our self-image. These core traumas are the underlying reason for not being able to know ourselves, for getting lost in ourselves, for not finding any direction in our lives and for not becoming who we want to become.

Trauma can turn you into someone you don’t even know. Without being aware of it. Some situations simply demand too much of us. The tensions can remain in the body and shape us.

Trauma: Emotional Pain

I am using trauma as a synonym for all emotional pain—every type of hurt, however small or significant, everything that make us shrivel up inside, all the little pains and any pain that turn us into damaged people, damaged souls. There is no objective way to rate trauma.

Any attempts to classify trauma into life-threatening or threatening to mental health or non-threatening are artificial.

A severe punishment can be traumatic. A humiliating comment as well. So is a horror film watched at a young age. Being without the support of your parents at a certain moment. To feel lonely and misunderstood as a child. Having uncertain and undefined feelings.

Confusion. Fear. Not receiving help. Growing up in a household where you were deprived. Taboos in a family. Parents who divorce and thus can no longer be parents. Not being able to see one parent for a long time. Feeling unimportant to others. Being an unwanted child. Being bullied. Being threatened. Being beaten, even if only now and then. Being laughed at in school by other children or the teacher. Being betrayed in love. Being manipulated by people whom you trust. Being seriously ill. Having an accident. Having more [physical] pain than you can stand. Moving. Someone leaving you, from one day to the next. The death of someone you know. Watching someone suffer. Not being able to help. Feeling extremely helpless.

It is not the event itself, but the way we experience it which traumatises us. It is about how you experienced it, ‘how it was for you’, that counts.

These are all examples of possible traumas. Traumas that can be as deeply hurtful and damaging as the better known trio of mistreatment, sexual abuse and neglect.

And precisely because trauma is so personal and intimate, it is important that you take your own pain seriously. No one other than you yourself can feel and empathise with what a certain event has done with you. That you experienced pain. A lot of pain—be it physical or emotional. That you have felt extremely fearful, sad, powerless or angry. Only you can feel that.

Even if you don’t really know what exactly has traumatised you or if you don’t consider your experience a trauma, it can still be one. Because trauma is often invisible, and traumatic pain is often made light of or has been deeply suppressed until the time is ripe to move on to processing it.

--------◊--------

1.1. The Tiger in Carlo

About trauma, survival instinct, loneliness, trauma processing, reliving the trauma and retraumatisation

The Tiger

Therapy Session 1

I remember well the first time Carlo and his father came to my practice. Carlo, tall and robust for his age, looked more like a 15-year-old than a child of 12. His father was even taller, more solid—a bear of a man. Both had their backs slightly bent forward and their heads were somewhat bowed—as if they were a bit ashamed of their huge bodies and the threat they could pose to others.

Carlo’s father had said on the phone that his son’s first few weeks in secondary school had not gone so well. After a relaxing summer holiday, Carlo had become rather anxious in recent weeks. So anxious, in fact, that it seemed to border on paranoia. His father had noticed that Carlo