Up: [[Trauma]] Course: Psychology of Early Trauma, Donald Kalsched for Jung on Hudson Created: 2022-07-23 Trauma suppresses feelings. This is a big problem because if you can’t share vulnerable feelings, you can’t get close to anyone. Many people who have experienced trauma don’t get effectively angry with people because they’re so focused on being who everyone wants them to be, on making sure everyone is happy. A typical question is, “What do you want from me?” It’s much easier to focus on others than to look inside where the worry is that what is found will be shameful. Coping comes through the development of a false self that is based on compliance, first on accommodating parental needs, then other people’s needs, and last, if ever, the individual's needs. Kalsched refers to many trauma patients as ‘limbo patients,’ people who describe themselves as feeling “cutoff, in a fog, disconnected.” He says they go brilliantly through the motions of therapy with some part of them not quite in it. Some don’t remember any dreams at the beginning of therapy. And when they do dream, a lot of their dreams are immature, meaning that feelings and images aren’t connected. There are dreams with no feeling or nightmarish feeling with no context. > [!Orbit] Karla McLaren in *The Language of Emotions* > The way to tell if you’re dealing with unsealed trauma is to check in and see if you can listen to and approach all of your emotions without dissociating, distracting yourself, or avoiding them. (p. 79)