The Rebel Archetype and Trauma

June 30, 2014 — Psyche, rebel, rebel without a cause, subconscious

Authority issues plague many of us.  I am highly suspicious of all authority.  There are a few instances that make the exception to the rule, but generally I think that power is a reason to investigate the motives of someone.  My own upbringing has a lot to do with the issues I have today, since I grew up with quite a bit of sexism and some rigid nonsensical rules.  There was violent insistence on the rules and on the concept that we were a happy family.  I don’t think my parents were very happy, and I know I wasn’t pleased with my living conditions during childhood. This social mask imposed to hide the true situation included a strong dress code and many other elements designed to display  perfection.   I always felt repressed and restrained in various ways.  When I was out of my parents’ world I never sought out any status symbols or social signs of belonging.  I preferred to be a pleasure-seeking liberated person without the need for social approval.  I respected no authority figures of any kind.  As I look at it today I see an extreme reaction to rules and regulations, as well as to many institutions.

Trauma lives on in the feelings, thoughts, senses, and memories of everyone.  It would be impossible to go through life without any shocking disruptive events.  The way we process them depends on our circumstances at the time.  If trauma is induced by  parent or someone we must depend on for survival we may disassociate from reality in order to survive.  Later the trauma continues in the body and the emotions if the appropriate anger is not found and processed for the serious betrayals of the past.  Forgiveness is a part of the healing process, but it is not healthy to forgive without recognizing the wrongs and the disrespect we endured in childhood and early adulthood.  Our personalities are mostly formed by the time we are 30, although we can have transformative events after that time also.  If you draw a timeline of your life and include all the major emotional and physical traumas you have experienced you notice how your current reactive self was formed.  We continue to react to the unresolved past, often by rebelling.  To heal the trauma and stop the need to react we need to return to the times of greatest stress and damage, acknowledge the ways we were hurt, and come to the rescue of the helpless victim in the story, ourselves.  Notice this situation may have been reconstructed a hundred different ways in life.  To clean the slate and transform that trauma into understanding we need to look at the truth and take it into our consciousness.  To stop repeating patterns that we continue out of reaction to the past we must examine the source and resolve to treat ourselves with confidence and love.  We must rebel against unfair and unjust treatment both now and in the past in order to free ourselves from the damage it does.