3. Resultados
3.6. Expresión de HLAs y presentación antígenica de los TT
W
e were walking downtown together, toward the big gray cloud.The cloud’s edges covered the entire financial district, and the toxins reached out over all of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. It was the cloud from the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, the day after the planes hit. We wanted to volunteer, to help in any way. We were both massage therapists, and we thought we could be helpful. For the purpose of this story, let’s call my friend “Alice.”
I’ll admit that we were scared. Though we wanted to help, we joked about being turned away, not making it to the center of the nightmare. It took some guts to walk straight into that cloud. If we hadn’t happened to meet as we both exited the subway at 14th Street, either one of us might have turned back. We gave each other courage.
As it turned out, a group of rescuers in a van picked us up and gave us a ride right to Ground Zero.
We worked side by side for about a week, working through the nights. We had massage tables set up in a dusty school building in the midst of the wreckage, and as the rescue workers collapsed from
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fatigue and trauma, we fed them, massaged them, listened to their stories, dried their tears, and sent them to the showers and then back out again to dig.
That was 2001. This is 2007. I hadn’t seen her since, until last weekend. We both attended the Demartini Breakthrough Experi-ence® in New York City. During and after the class, she told me her story. Like so many New Yorkers, and probably people all over the country, after 9/11, Alice was traumatized. What she didn’t realize until later was that the 9/11 group trauma we went through stirred up personal traumas. After 9/11, those personal traumas exploded forth for those trying to keep them buried. Others sought the most expert of therapists, to carefully dismantle these traumas. When Alice began to “remember” things, she sought out one of those expert therapists, one who was also an energy healer. Alice saw things in her head, as people do when remembering. But these things were shocking to her. She asked herself, “How can I remember things that never happened?”
Alice saw pictures in her head that were clear as any memory she’d ever had. She saw herself as an infant in a crib. She saw her grand-father come over to the crib and pick her up. Grandgrand-father held her upside-down against his chest. He unbuttoned his shirt. His chest was hairy. He unbuttoned his fly. He stroked her. He held her head against his penis . . . and let her suck on him. She remembered Grandmother coming in, and Grandfather hurriedly putting her back in the crib. To make a bad situation worse, in his haste he didn’t bother to right her.
He just held her upside-down by her feet, took the one or two steps from the side of the bed, where he was sitting with her. Nervous and fearing discovery, he lifted her into the crib, misjudged the height of the crib railing, and banged her head against it.
This didn’t come to her all at once. She got fragments of it. She fought against it. How could she have a memory of something that never happened? Her grandfather never abused her. The therapist dis-agreed. Alice had all the classic signs of child sexual abuse; unexplained depression, low self-esteem, an inability to love, feelings of not deserv-ing of love, a kind of numbness when it came to love, and inability to enjoy sex. She had married twice, and both marriages failed.
She was baffled. How could she know if it had really happened?
Grandfather died more than twenty years earlier, as had Grandmother.
She didn’t want to bring it up to her family. She decided not to con-cern herself about whether it was real or not but to treat it as if it had been a real event. The funny thing about our bodies, whatever we can vividly imagine, our bodies will treat as real. When scientists studied Olympic athletes, they asked them to imagine their events. With the athletes hooked up to electrodes, the scientists could see that the ath-letes’ muscles were firing in imagination identically to the way they would fire during the actual event. Whether the event actually hap-pened or not, Alice suffered from infant sexual abuse, it was real to her.
She went through years of therapy dealing with it, and she thought she had come to a place of acceptance. Then it came up at the Demartini Breakthrough Experience®.
In the Demartini Method®, you complete pages of questions. Then you pick a person that angered, hurt, or disappointed you. You exam-ine the incident and the person’s actions in detail. You list the traits you liked about the person, and the traits you disliked. How did you benefit from those seemingly bad things that happened? How did you suffer from the good things?
It’s a methodical process, and the class went about it with some complaining. Alice did her process on the relationship with her boy-friend, which had broken up earlier that same week. She saw all the good things that had come from the relationship, all the good things in the man. She came to the point of gratitude; tears of gratitude filled her eyes. She felt so peaceful about the man and the break-up . . . when, suddenly, there was Grandfather again.
John said that when you come to a place of peace and gratitude, you make a quantum leap from where you were in anger and disappointment to this new level of finding balance and gratitude. Alice asked a question:
“Then why did it trigger in me this memory of my grandfather abusing me when I was a baby? I’m not even sure it is a memory or that it really happened.”
“That’s because you have reached a new level, and with the new level there is a new challenge,” John explained. “Think about it. What benefits did you get from this abuse?”
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“Well,” Alice said, “I’m now a therapist, and I treat many women who were abused. I’m able to understand and help them.”
“See,” said John, “there was a benefit. You might not have been such a good therapist for them if that hadn’t happened to you. You might not have become a therapist at all! You need to do the process on your grandfather.”
After the class, Alice and I teamed up to continue studying John’s method. About a week later, she had completed the Demartini Method® and “collapsed” her grandfather. (John calls it a collapse when you see through all the events you have built up into this story, this fantasy, and come to a new insight, a more whole truth.) Alice told me she went through the process, and found the many benefits of the trauma.
She credited it for turning her towards becoming an excellent therapist.
She pursued a path of learning, largely because of her yearning to find answers to a question she couldn’t even formulate. She even felt that the birth of her child was in some way a result of this event. In fact, she felt that her whole being, the type of person she’d become, her work, her strength and determination, were all a direct result of this event.
She could imagine sitting with Grandfather and thanking him.
She’d imagined sitting with him several times before, but never had she thanked him. Before this, he appeared remote, confused, taciturn, and unremorseful. Now he was warm. She now understood why he had never apologized. She understood why she repeatedly attracted disem-powered financially insecure men. She realized that it was her way of keeping control. Grandfather at that time was the financial benefac-tor for the family. Her parents lived in his house while they saved for their own. She came into adulthood with this childhood fear of men controlling her. So, she drew disempowered men to her. She had one impoverished boyfriend and husband after another. Now it’s no longer necessary. Alice can attract a man who can match her with his strength.
She can be safe even if the man is powerful and financially strong. Life looks different to her after this Breakthrough Experience®.
Challenging experiences shape us in a multitude of ways. Sup-pression of the event stunts our growth. Accept it with gratitude and we grow. I’ve heard of infant memory before. People ask, “Is it real?”
That’s a trick question. It takes us out of the process. A better question
is, “What if it is real? What then? What is it telling me?” Ask that and proceed from there.
Enjoy your life lessons!
❤ ❤ ❤
Elizabeth Pasquale, LMT, CST is the director of Well On The Way®, a holistic treatment center in Westchester County, New York. She special-izes in trauma therapy, treating adults as well as children. Elizabeth is also widely known for her personal coaching and group trainings, her Gratitude Magnifier System, and entrepreneur development. For more information visit www.wellontheway.org, or call 914-762-4693 to share your own struggles, ask key questions, and talk about solutions free of charge.
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