Birth trauma is caused by the sudden and unexpected shock of going from the comforting confines of the womb into an environment that is totally unfamiliar.

In the womb all of our needs were met. We lived in safety and comfort and there was no struggle. Then our bodies became too big for their containers and suddenly we were forced down a passageway that seemed too small.

This experience was painful, frightening, and distressing for both the mother and the infant. Then we found ourselves in a hostile world that was cold, bright, and noisy.

What we needed was to be shown that the outside world is safe, and it is a far more interesting place with infinitely more possibilities than the womb. Unfortunately, we were shown the opposite—not because the people in the delivery room were evil, but because each of them had their own unresolved birth traumas, which were transmitted to the infant in the form of fear, tension, and urgency. So rather than safety and trust, the setting was one of fear. Out of fear comes ignorance. This has led to a set of false assumptions regarding the newborn.

It has been assumed that babies feel nothing during birth. We have concluded that since they don’t have fully developed senses, they aren’t capable of intense emotions. They have no conscious awareness, they can’t see or hear, so how could an infant feel pain? We assume that because they can’t speak, they can’t communicate or express themselves. Yet, the newborn is crying out for help. It is we who do not listen. We seem blind to the possibility that the baby is suffering.

So while it is assumed the baby feels nothing, in fact, he feels everything. Birth is a tidal wave of sensation, surpassing anything we can imagine. A sensory experience so vast we can barely conceive of it.

The delivery room is set up for the convenience of the attending physicians, beginning with the bright lights aimed at the mother’s pelvic area. The baby is very sensitive to light and able to perceive it while still in the womb. The first thing the newborn sees are bright floodlights. The infant is blinded by the light; then several drops of a burning liquid (silver nitrate) are put into his or her eyes. Then he or she is injected (hepatitis-B vaccination) with a needle.

The baby is also able to hear in the womb, and of course the impulses are muted, but in the delivery room they are not. ‘So the first sounds the newborn hears amount to a thunderous explosion of noise—too much for tender eardrums.

The temperature in the womb is about ninety-eight degrees Fahrenheit, and the temperature in the delivery room is about seventy degrees. This means the nude, wet newborn experiences a sudden thirty-degree drop in temperature. That is the equivalent of taking a hot bath and then running outside. This “temperature trauma” remains in the body in a suppressed state, and it is most likely the cause of colds.

Furthermore, the infant is not given an opportunity to make an easy transition with its breath. We breathed one way in the womb and, because the umbilical cord is cut immediately, we are forced to learn to breathe outside the womb instantly, in a do-or-die situation.

Air striking the lungs for the first time results in unbelievable searing pain. Yet the infant must breathe—there is no alternative. The cord has been cut.

Breathing then becomes subconsciously associated with the pain, fear, and panic of the first breath. This results in perpetual anxiety and feelings of urgency. In order to keep this suppressed, we learn to breathe in a very shallow manner.

Tremendous damage was done to our breathing mechanism at birth. Fortunately, it can be healed.

Often, the infant is held upside down and spanked to expedite the process of draining the amniotic fluid from the lungs in order to facilitate breathing. This is extremely traumatic to the newborn, especially the sacroiliac joints, often resulting in chronic back problems.

After all this, what the infant most needs is to be reunited with his or her mother. Instead, the newborn is whisked away and placed in a little box in the newborn nursery. The baby is left alone, trembling with terror, hiccupping, and choking.

Such is the trauma of birth. Having considered all this, the fact remains that it’s over and you survived it! So what’s the significance of birth? In many ways, it’s the conclusions we all made about life as a result of this early experience. These conclusions have become our lens through which we see life, and they continue to produce results in present time until they are unraveled.

Some of these conclusions are: 1) fear of change, or fear of the unknown—integrating the fear of change associated with birth makes it easier to go through changes in life; 2) our aliveness hurts people—going through the birth canal activates our mother’s birth trauma; this in turn causes her to tense up and shut down, which causes her fear and pain; and the infant might conclude that it was his or her fault; 3) pain follows pleasure—the pleasure of the womb is followed by pain of birth; 4) you can’t trust people, they hurt you; 5) the world is hostile; 6) you have to struggle to survive; and 7) breathing causes pain.

The Parental Disapproval Syndrome

This discussion is not about blame. Blame always evades responsibility. It locks energy in place and ensures the continuance and abundance of what you said you did not want.

Parenthood is probably the most difficult job on the planet for which there is no proper training. All parents have done the best they could, given what they had to work with.

All parents are at the effect of a pattern—that is, unconscious, repetitive behavior handed down from generation to generation. Our parents disapproved of us because they were disapproved of by their parents, because they were disapproved of by their parents, etc. …As you can see, this quickly becomes a vicious circle.

Parents manipulate their children because they were manipulated by their parents, and so on. They use discipline (control) to keep their children inline. The message to the children is that they are not okay the way they are—love and approval are conditional, and must be earned.

Our parents experienced disapproval as children. They resented it, but they suppressed their feelings because they didn’t have a big enough body or vocabulary to get even, and they had probably already learned that it wasn’t okay to express anger. The only thing they could do was more of what was disapproved of, which only caused more disapproval. This often led to punishment—physical abuse, verbal abuse, being ignored, being isolated, or being thrown a fierce glance.

At a certain point, the children gave up and decided they couldn’t win. They decided to surrender their divine authority in the name of following instructions. Most people have been following instructions ever since. They were invalidated by their parents the same way their parents were invalidated by their parents, etc.

They also may have concluded that there was something wrong with them, that they were bad, and these children may have begun to disapprove of themselves. We all have inside us a parent and a child, so one’s inner parent can be used to disapprove of the inner child. We carry out the whole cycle in our own minds and bodies without any further input.

At the point at which approval becomes a need, children begin to experience anxiety as a result of fear of disapproval. This is based on the assumption that our self-worth depends on what others think of us (or what the “others” inside us think of us).

When approval becomes a need or an addiction, rather than a preference, a person becomes a conformist, spending his or her life conforming to parents and other authority figures in order to earn their approval. A common pattern that emerges then is the need-obligate syndrome. The person has decided…he can’t do what he wants to get what he needs, and since others have what he needs, he is obligated to do whatever others want. He is then dependent upon others and must perform some unpleasant task to earn the love and approval he so desperately needs. Approval is a need that must be earned.

The other side of the coin is a rebel. He has given up on approval and spurns it.

There is ultimately no difference between a rebel and a conformist. They are both at the effect of the same thing. Rebels are simply conformists who have given up hope of getting what they need, so they cover up that need with a rebel act.

A common pattern that emerges from rebel consciousness is called “failing to get even,” especially if your parents put pressure on you to succeed. The decision made here is: “Since you were such terrible parents, I’ll get even with you. I’ll fail.” So you fail in jobs and relationships, or if something starts going right you find a way to sabotage it, because if you succeeded, you would have to admit they did a good job in raising you.

You may also play this out by attempting to be far more successful than your parents were, but because it his based on getting even, it is success without satisfaction.

The problem here is that you never really get even enough. In fact, it becomes a game of one-upmanship, at which point failure becomes what your life is about. You are the one who fails to get even because getting even is itself an act of failure. Only giving up the game releases you.

You will find yourself creating “substitute parents,” where you tend to recreate their personalities as closely as possible in your other relationships. That means you will probably discover at some point that you married your mother or father, or your boss is your father. So in order to make it with your mate or at work, you first must complete your relationship with your parents.

Also, “you tend to recreate the kind of relationships you had with your parents in your other relationships. You will tend to find a partner who treats you the way your parents treated you, and you will tend to act out your parents’ roles in your current relationships.

Then when you have children, you will have finally gone one full turn on the vicious cycle. You have finally found someone on whom you can take out your suppressed hostility. And around and around it goes, unless you end the cycle.

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