‘It was in this stuck-ness that something changed’

All I knew was that I had forever changed. I had 'symptoms' that I couldn't explain. Time appeared as an abstraction I could find only in thought. My 'self' appeared the same, unfound outside of thought. So much pain, so much loss, including the loss of me. 'I' had somehow died along the way, yet I couldn't tell you when, for time and self had died together, leaving only here and now in their wake.

Life and I had met, unblinking, nose to nose. We'd met so intimately, so brutally, there was no separation between us. Defenceless and deferent, I had dissolved and merged with the ground. In the light and the shadow of recognition, I came to know who I was. I was not the self that once was. I had become death and also life. The ground did not divide or judge. It was edgeless, unbound. And all that was left was surrender. And the stillness. The stillness in my head was resonant and deafening. I breathed it in here, and I breathed it out now.

I became one with joy and despair, grief and bliss. Plagued by mental noise for so long, I knew none now. And I could no longer find the 'I' who knew. For in the depths of here and now, there was no 'self' separate to life. No boundaries, no inside nor outside. I felt translucent to life. And in its gaze, I was humbled, grateful, whole, and indescribably free. And that's all I knew.

I cannot tell you that I chose to grow. That would be untrue. Trauma catalysed profound change in my life, though not through accumulating knowledge or reframing what had happened. It came about through the bottom falling out of what was before. It's hard to describe but, in a nutshell, suffering forced me into deep and awaring presence, and this changed the way I perceived everything in my moment-to-moment reality.

Nothing could have prepared me for the horror of watching one of my children die. He was diagnosed with leukaemia at the age of five and passed away when he was seven. This, alongside a fearful marriage, wreaked havoc in my inner world. 

I grabbed therapy as a lifeboat, spending hours trying to work things out. But no amount of understanding seemed to stop me being confronted with the continued disintegration of my world and my beliefs about what that world 'should' be. 

I felt an inability to carry on, alongside the inescapable requirement to carry on. Every time I went into my head to argue with reality, I felt battered. I was stuck, and I think it was in this stuck-ness that something changed.

I remember recognising that my defences were breaking down. I felt naked and exposed.  Everywhere I looked, my failings were being mirrored back to me. The disorientation became so immense that I gradually retreated into simply 'being' right here, right now. Exhausted by the endless rumination, a bit like a trapped animal which stops struggling, I slowly gave up. Well, my mind gave up. But I realise I must have always believed I was my mind because, as it gave up, it felt like a death. It felt like the death of 'me'.

I felt I'd been shunted into intense presence through pain. But this presence was also vast… I couldn't find the edges of it. Experiencing reality in this way changed everything.

My mind became much more translucent to me. I watched its processes, interpretations and stories. It was as if I'd been subject to my mind my whole life and now I was witnessing it from a different perspective. And this new perspective was where a more fundamental experience of unity seemed to emerge.

It's not really possible to speak about experiencing unity (or non-duality) when the very act of speaking creates duality, between 'me' the subject and 'the experience' the object. So please forgive the dualistic language throughout – words are the wrong tools.

However, I've found it helpful to divide what appears paradoxical into the 'relative' and the more 'fundamental'. Imagine experiencing two realities at the same time. The first is our everyday 'relative' in which we function in an interpretive, relational and, therefore, dualistic way. Everything is known relative to everything else. The second is a deeper, more fundamental reality in which there is no division and, therefore, no duality: a reality which brings everything into unity and judges and excludes nothing. The latter feels to give rise to the former, but trying to speak about it using relative language is like trying to visualise a whole cake by cutting it into pieces. 

In real time, I'd watch my conditioned patterns create 'stories' about whatever was happening. These stories would have once felt so true to me. I'd have caused myself incredible suffering in the believing of them. But now, witnessing them as my own creation, I recognised they were fundamentally empty. Seeing through them caused them to fall at the same time as they arose.  It was as if their creation and destruction happened simultaneously. I realised that, whilst pain could naturally arise any moment, 'suffering' was generated by me. Whenever I created stories of resistance, I suffered. This was an incredibly humbling realisation.

On a fundamental level, reality felt 'prior' to interpretation. It felt pristinely empty yet pregnant with possibility.

And so, from this new perspective, it became obvious to me when I was looking to my mind to interpret my reality. I couldn't find a sense of self that was 'separate' anymore, unless I created that in thought. The same was true of time. In direct experience, here and now, I struggled to orient myself in time unless, again, I looked to thought. Without thought, neither self nor time were here. In fact, they felt co-dependent to me. Without one, the other couldn't exist.

I felt I had dissipated into the here and now. Without existing as a separate entity, you become this here and now. Everything contained in it is you. There are no boundaries, no separation of a 'self' to divide you from it. 

Therefore, on a fundamental level, rather than experiencing life as a 'self' looking out at everything, it had switched around. I now experienced myself as fundamentally 'everything' which included the relative experience of being a 'self'. 

There was full undivided contact with the thoughts, feelings and emotions which arose. When there's no felt sense of 'self' dividing you from an experience, it is immense. You are it. I realised that I'd lived in a more disassociated way before. I'd been disembodied but never known it. This was both merciless and liberating.

Nothing is 'personal' anymore either. Experiencing is no longer contained 'in you'. Pain becomes the pain of humanity. Labelling emotions as 'positive/negative' is relative.

From a relative perspective, I live an ordinary life with the usual ups and downs. I have thoughts, feelings, conditioned behaviour, and a personality. I am also a single mum to four children, work full-time as Deputy of a University Music Conservatoire, and have a wonderful partner. 

However, because of the intense presence trauma initiated, I experience my humanness more fully. When the self becomesthe here and now, the experience is one of full-frontal contact with the human condition. Yet, expressing all the activity of life is a stillness which is ever-present and undisturbed. Because of this, I feel as though I balance an ordinary human existence overlaid onto a deep peace and unity with everything. It feels that my reality was transformed by how I came to know it.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy/Psychological Flexibility model – Dr Ian Tyndall

Our minds are quite resistant to the concept of oneness. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which is largely derived from behavioural psychology and buddhist ideas, observes that people who come for therapy are often characterised as being stuck in a conceptualised past or worrying about imagined futures. The ACT model of psychological wellbeing views clients as stuck in rigid and non-helpful patterns of behaviour and thought, termed psychological inflexibility. The aim of ACT is to foster and build psychological flexibility, characterised by six distinct processes: experiential acceptance, cognitive defusion, self-as-context, present moment awareness, values clarification, and committed action.

The psychological flexibility model has various iterations such as the three factors of open, aware, and engaged, or as pivots of psychological flexibility. Open (experiential acceptance; cognitive defusion) and aware (self-as-context; present moment awareness) relate most clearly to Alison's experience. Similarly, when conceptualising the processes as pivots of psychological flexibility, then the four mindfulness and awareness pivots of  experiential acceptance, cognitive defusion, self-as-context, and present-moment awareness are key. Experiential acceptance involves opening up to our unwanted thoughts, emotions, feelings, sensations, and memories fully and without defense. Cognitive defusion refers to an outcome where a person relates to their negative thoughts in a more expansive way, no longer behaving as if they they are literally true of themselves. Thus, these negative thoughts no longer tend to trigger unhelpful or maladaptive behaviours that perpetuate and maintain cycles of psychological suffering – the thought patterns are defused.

ACT's view of the self typically refers to concepts of 'Self-as-Content' and 'Self-as-Context'. Self-as-Content (i.e. the conceptualised self) is the idea that we become fixated on, and identified with, our own multi-layered self-story or narrative (often negative) of our lives that we continually tell ourselves, and others about ourselves, and literally believe to be true. As it touches on virtually all aspects of our lives – our history, situation, abilities, preferences, emotions – it is very well-elaborated, and clients will typically defend it vigorously in therapy.

In comparison, Self-as-Context, also known as the 'observing self' or the 'transcendent self' is the ability to observe these narratives and self-conceptualisations as fluid and as the natural workings of the ego/mind, and, therefore, distinct from the essential self.

There is a third self – Self-as-Verbal Process' or 'The Knowing Self' – that is not mentioned as much in the ACT model but is important in the theoretical model of language and cognition that is associated with ACT, Relational Frame Theory. This third self seems key for potentially understanding Alison's experience. Self-as-Verbal Process/Knowing Self is important to the development of openness and sensitivity, and also empathy, self-knowledge, and personality integration. It tends to be fluid and ever-changing (although it can feed the conceptualised self too). Present-moment awareness may be defined as the ability to remain centred in the present moment without conceptualising the past or the future.

These ideas seem particularly relevant for understanding the psychological growth that Alison reported following decades-long suffering as a result of her trauma experience. Alison appears to have migrated from self-as-content and her story of loss and shame and excessive rumination to a transcended self-as-context, via self-as-verbal process, as post-traumatic growth emerged. Alison distinguishes the shared collective consciousness, feeling of oneness, in which 'self-transcendence' occurs. It is here that the mind-body dualism, or duality, of Rene Descartes and others fades away and the non-duality or oneness of consciousness and universe is readily transparent. ACT views pain as inevitable but psychological suffering as not, and thus would fully endorse Alison's realisation that her suffering occurred in the resistance to fully experiencing her inner world.

Moreover, what Alison articulated as the death of her old 'self' is what ACT practitioners would say when they encourage clients to kill off their 'ossified' conceptualised selves. Perhaps, however, what Alison experiences and describes is beyond the capacity of current iterations of the ACT model of psychological flexibility to fully explain.

Transpersonal Psychology – Terence Sexton

Models of adult developmental psychology (e.g., Loevinger; Graves; Kohlberg; Kegan) suggest that throughout our lives our psychology can grow through clearly defined stages that can be categorised as 'conventional' and 'post-conventional'.

The conventional stages can be described as the 'I' being identified as a conceptualised self. Alison experienced these stages as believing she was her mind. It is a period in our life where we establish and develop our ego as our self-identity. The post-conventional stages of growth are reached when we start to let go of our ego. Alison describes this experience as witnessing herself from a different perspective.

However, it is evident that Alison continued to grow further. In doing so, she entered into what can be described as the transpersonal stages of growth as identified by Ken Wilber. Alison describes this as the emergence of a more fundamental experience of unity. According to Wilber, the highest of these transpersonal stages is characterised by the transcendence of subject–object duality. Alison describes this as experiencing no boundaries, no inside, no outside. For Wilber, this is the realisation that what appears as hard or solid objects 'out there' are really transparent and translucent manifestations of our own being.

The transpersonal stages describe our psychology beyond the ego. As we continue to let go of our ego, we increasingly experience 'pure consciousness'. This consciousness is awareness in the here and now. As we continue to grow, we start to transcend our identity. A variety of spiritual traditions suggest that when this happens, we start to enter a state of consciousness where subject–object duality disappears, described as non-dual or unity consciousness. In this altered state of consciousness, while experiences differ, people often report experiencing ego-dissolution and being connected to something greater, be that other people or the cosmos itself.

When we are in the womb, we have no concept or experience of subject-object duality.  Instead, we are totally at one with our environment. Once we are born and experience being hungry and not being immediately fed, we realise we are separate from our environment and begin to form a concept of subject-object duality. To manage and navigate our separation from our environment, we begin to develop our ego. Its function, therefore, is to keep us safe and protect us from suffering. In Alison's case, it appears that her ego was unable to prevent her from suffering and, consequently, it dissolved. Her ego-dissolution then enabled her to experience subject-object duality disappearing, allowing a greater connection with unity consciousness.

Alison's comparison…

It's been fascinating to view my post-trauma experiences through the lenses of Transpersonal Psychology and Psychological Flexibility. Again, please forgive the duality implied by the words 'I', 'me' and 'my' here. I'm using them for accessibility only.

The model of Psychological Flexibility conceptualises the movement from mind-identification (psychological inflexibility) to disidentification (psychological flexibility) in an experiential way which makes differentiation between the two states highly accessible. 

In my experience, the degradation of my mental structures post-trauma catalysed psychological flexibility. Also in my experience, the four 'mindfulness and acceptance' pivots of the model interpenetrate. In other words, the initiation of one pivot causes the others to manifest in one unified movement. It might be helpful to briefly visualise this with reference to the pivots themselves: 'contact with the present moment', 'cognitive defusion', 'self-as-context' and 'acceptance'.

As my mind gradually gave up trying to interpret and 'make sense' of things, awareness came away from cognitive activity ('cognitive defusion') and into my body ('contact with the present moment'). As my 'self' as I knew it depended on my mind, this shift brought my conceptualised self to a halt. Without this 'self', all that remained of 'me' was an awaring presence ('self-as-context'). And as this, I saw the reality of what was without the previous 'self' resisting it through interpretations and 'stories', meaning that 'acceptance' was also inherent.

Whilst the model of Psychological Flexibility embraces significant disidentification, it also seems to imply a dualistic view to some extent by differentiating between the 'experiencer' and the 'experienced'; a self who makes choices about when to cognitively defuse and how to behave in value-driven ways. Relatively-speaking, this is unproblematic. More fundamentally though, this duality is not in my experience. It may, however, be a concession made for general accessibility which would be completely understandable.

Unity consciousness, as conceptualised within Transpersonal Psychology, resonates with the deep, abiding nature of my experience in a more global and holistic way and it might be helpful to briefly unpack why I feel this.

The mind feels to be an interpretive functioning. It feels to be the mechanism through which fundamental unity (or consciousness) expresses and experiences itself. The mind interprets all that arises and, by doing so, creates an apparent duality between the 'experiencer' and what is 'experienced'. When filtered through the lens of interpretation, reality is, therefore, a distorted one. The appearance of duality is inherent to this distortion.

Ultimately then, when interpretations of reality break down, its distortions go too. Post-trauma, many of my interpretations, including that of duality, broke down as my mind broke down.  Without distorting reality, I was it. 

So, what happened to duality once I transcended it? We know that 'transcending' means 'going beyond' by subsuming the previous perspective. In my experience, transcending the relative does not negate it. Transcending duality means 'seeing through it'; experiencing it as an expression of a more fundamental non-duality.

Post-trauma, it felt that deeper states of presence were revealed as pure consciousness as the experience of reality became less obscured by mind-identification. The dissolution of 'myself' collapsed the illusion of separation, making the subject/object duality an appearance rather than a truly existing reality.

Essentially therefore, both Psychological Flexibility and Transpersonal Psychology offer complementary conceptualisations of what has been experienced here, post-trauma, albeit in their own ways and, perhaps, in relatively different degrees. Both though, seem to drive at the same question – 'who or what am I?' I wonder whether experiences post-trauma have the capacity to provoke a yearning to ask and answer that question.

• Dr Ian Tyndall is a Reader in Cognitive Psychology, Department of Psychology and Criminology, University of Chichester, UK.
• Alison Woodward is Deputy Director, University of Chichester Conservatoire, UK, and undertaking a PhD thesis on post-traumatic growth.
• Terence Sexton is a Business Psychologist undertaking a PhD thesis in Applied Transpersonal Psychology with the Alef Trust and Liverpool John Moores University.