As a caregiver, I help clients see and understand their burdens and help provide a safe container to release them. By their very existence, I know any client parts that show up to engage with me are burdened.
Burdens are unresolved, suppressed, and hidden aspects of human experience. They are energies, memories, urges, and experiences whose imprints live on in disintegrated form in people’s bodies. Burdens are pieces of experience that have not been seen or regulated by others; consequently, they are not seen or regulated within the self. Burdens are better off remaining split off and isolated rather than exposed to ignorance, judgment, abandonment, or rejection. Exposing disintegrated states to further disintegration would harm both the self and relationships.
“Trauma” is another term used to describe burdens. In its broadest meaning, trauma is any imprint of experience in the nervous system left in an unprocessed, unintegrated state. By this definition, all humans are “traumatized.” Trauma includes “Big T” events that are discrete and extreme. Most often, these are acts of violence or abuse observed or received outside or inside the home. Harmful events become traumatic to all parties involved, including witnesses, to the extent caregivers are unable, incapable, or unwilling to give the needed care and protection or are the perpetrators.
Trauma also includes widespread “little t” patterns of disconnection. Un-repaired relationship disconnection, when repeated, also creates fragmented pieces of dysregulated experience. These leave the most significant imprints when they occur in the first few years of life, that critical period of right-brain development. Often, these imprints become the basis of negative relationship cycles in adulthood.
I prefer “burden” rather than “trauma” or “shadow” to convey normalcy and universality rather than something abnormal or wrong. By being human, all of us carry the imprints of vast amounts of human suffering. “Burden” more broadly includes:
- Hurtful experiences that remain unresolved (trauma)
- Times when nothing happens because no one sees or responds to longings for care and attention (invisible neglect)
- The genetic transmission of generational trauma
- Mighty cultural burdens that are hidden in plain sight
I also prefer “burden” to convey that unprocessed imprints of experience are adaptive and have a positive purpose. Remarkably, human pain continues to matter indefinitely through vulnerable imprints that live on until they are resolved. Burdens remain hidden and protected until they are safe to be seen, appreciated, and cared for. In the meantime, it makes sense to be unaware, hide, or mask the body’s experience rather than be met with an unseeing, uncaring reaction or one that creates more distress.
As caregivers, we have an opportunity to provide a different experience. Experiential, highly attuned therapy models like EFT and IFS provide excellent training for doing just that. By combining these models and continuing to do our own work, we can develop our ability to see, understand, and release our own burdens as we come alongside our clients to help them with theirs.
