Treatment.
This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
~ Morpheus, The Matrix
stages of healing, 3.
This series continues to explore how humans become healthy and whole after experiencing trauma… particularly spiritual trauma. Stage one is the state of denial, and from this place we live as the “walking wounded,” bleeding on ourselves and others without understanding and without healing. The essence of the second stage is simply, but crucially, to become capable and willing to acknowledge injury; it’s the move out of denial into awareness.
So where we do go from here? A lot of people don’t know and get stuck in disillusion and bitterness for years, or even a lifetime.
What our souls need most at this stage is “treatment.” Or to mix our metaphors a bit, it’s like taking the “red pill” in the movie The Matrix (one of the most entertaining, albeit violent, cinematic depictions of spiritual transformation). Like all humans, the character Neo is living in an unreal world as a wounded soul; Morpheus becomes his mentor and healer, eventually helping him uncover his True Self. And like him, we must establish a new baseline of what is true and what is not. What is dysfunctional and what is psychospiritually healthy. We must unlearn one worldview and relearn another. Essentially, we have to reclaim our connection with and interpretation of reality.
“What is real? How do you define 'real'?,” Morpheus asks Neo. “If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.” Our versions of reality have been manipulated by culture, authority figures, and even our own misdirected appetites; they have created our own version of the “matrix.” But once you spot the illusion, you can’t unsee it. You have to keep going down the “rabbit hole” until you find the rabbit.
In short, the Treatment stage of healing is a period of re-educating ourselves and reorienting ourselves to what is true—or at least more true than how we saw things before. If your trauma has been relational, then your re-education will likely revolve around leaning what healthy, loving relationships look like… the roles of nurture, affirmation, responsibility, boundaries, autonomy, community, etc. If your trauma was spiritual, then your re-education will probably focus on broader theological inquiry, listening to new voices, personal spiritual practice, and discernment.
Let’s talk a bit about timelines: Stage one can keep us in denial for a large chunk of our lives. Stage two can either land in the flash of a lightning strike, or more often, in a couple years of increasing dissonance and displacement. Stage three takes longer than stage two and sometimes overlaps it. This space often continues to be a season of anger, reaction, and a deeply-motivated drive to tear down the unreal structures that have caused us pain so that new, life-giving structures can replace them. You can’t rush it… but you can delay it.
The Treatment phase is about “unplugging” from one trauma-perpetuating system and awakening to a new world. A world both darker than we imagined and more hopeful than we dreamed of. It’s fiercely uncomfortable, yet it rises with a supremely reorienting gnosis: “I knew something wasn’t right with that worldview! And I wasn’t crazy after all… I’m finally coming home to what was true all along but hidden!” The relief is palpable.
Finally, this stage inaugurates us into a new community of other rescued souls who are in various stages of embracing their own healing. We’re not alone! We are part of a larger awakening, a larger redemption.
growing your soul
Can you describe how your participation in reality has changed since you named your trauma and chose another path?
serving our world
Your healing is not for you alone. Every soul that breaks free of the Matrix helps to establish a better world.
takeaway
Take the Red Pill.
*I am neither a medical doctor nor a psychotherapist. Instead, I write and minister as a pastor, a spiritual director, a professional coach, and a theologian. Nothing in this blog series should be construed as psychiatric advice nor substitute for professional medical care around the experience of trauma.