Transformational Teachings from Counselor Jane Ilene Cohen

What questions do you have?
Send it to “ASK JANE”
(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

Just go to the “Contact Jane” page and ask your question in the contact form.

Below are questions from Susan from Carlsbad, CA:

Q: “I have a question about healing past traumas. I recently recovered a traumatic memory of being kidnapped and assaulted when I was a teenager. The memory was repressed by PTSD and drug induced amnesia. Over a period of 6 months, I recovered my complete memory and now wish to seek justice. Though I feel strongly about prosecuting my kidnapper for a very serious crime, several spiritual counselors have advised me to just focus inward on healing myself. While I don’t think that healing should be solely dependent on a legal outcome, I do believe that taking responsible action is an empowering step in the right direction for healing to take place. What do you think?”

A: “I gather from your question that the reasons you are thinking about prosecuting this person are to help yourself become empowered and to facilitate your healing. So I’m assuming that a significant aspect of what you are wanting to heal is feeling powerless. Whenever you (or anyone) feel you can gain power by taking an action toward another person, you are, in fact, holding in place an underlying feeling of powerlessness and the illusion that they have the power and you don’t, so you have to get it from them. It is not possible for this other person to have disempowered you in the first place. The only thing that can happen is for you (on an emotional level) to give your power away. Regaining it has only to do with your internal process, and nothing to do with that other person.

From the perspective of my work, trauma originates in limiting decisions formed in childhood, when something occurs that you don’t have the conscious tools to make sense of. These decisions — made on an unconscious level — are always some form of deciding there is something inherently wrong with you and/or that life is not meant to work. Limiting decisions are never true. The source of your limiting decisions are inside you, and have nothing to do with anything outside of yourself. (For a complete definition of limiting decisions, click here.)

One of the major ways people cushion themselves from their limiting decisions is through the emotional defense systems they set up (unconsciously) to avoid them. Part of this defense system can be projecting the pain of the limiting decisions onto another person or situation, and then taking action against that external source, which can then give you the illusion of having power and being in control. But this won’t help you regain your real power. It will just reinforce the mistaken idea that the problem is the enemy outside yourself that you need to conquer to win back your power, which in fact you never really lost in the first place.”

(After a further communication from Susan)

“My advice does not have to do with me telling you what I think you should do. If your motive is, as you said in your recent communication, “about revealing information which could be used to prevent this particular group from continuing to harm others,” I see no objections to that. If it has more to do with your own healing and empowerment, then my advice has to do with where I believe your focus should be.”