Beliefs,Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,and Mysticism

Abstract

This article examines three related approaches to understanding Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The idea that trauma disrupts belief systems is a current widely accepted theoretical perspective on PTSD. However, it may be that beliefs founded on the inner realizations are less disrupted by trauma than are beliefs formed from interaction with the environment. Some of the psychological attempts to interweave spiritual understanding with psychological thought are examined in relationship to traumatic experience. Finally, the mystical perspective is recommended not only as a way of understanding internally based beliefs but as an important process for all therapists working with the traumatized.

"Since you are properly a clod, you will not rise into the air; you will rise into the air if you break and become dust."

"I was snow and I melted, so that the earth drank me, till I became a mist of soul that I might climb to the sky."

-Unknown Turkish dervish Hazrat Mevlana Jellal Ud Din Rumi's Urs Marin, California, 1989

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