An Online Workshop with Dr. Willem Lammers

The subconscious mind tends to hide disturbing memories as a protection against being overwhelmed. That’s a good solution because it allows the person to study, start a profession, engage in couple relationships, and become a member of society. That makes it possible to belong to others and the world without being disturbed by the memory of the traumatic events. However, this comes with a price: the loss of emotional and physical intimacy. Instead, closeness is created through mechanisms of second-order dissociation.

The person does their best to be perfect, to work hard, to achieve, to help others, or to shine brightly. That strategy brings a lot of respect, even admiration, but something is missing as soon as the lights are out or the shift is over, and you’re never strong enough, good enough, perfect enough. Shame, guilt, anger, emptiness, fears, and depression are signs that something else is going on.

When long hidden events finally reach the surface of the person’s awareness, it may look as if this is a coincidence. A divorce, a job loss, an illness, an accident, or moving to a new place can all lead to the realization that something is terribly wrong with the person. Another reason can be that the body isn’t strong enough anymore to continue to fight down the painful memories.

Often disturbing memories show up after a person enters therapy. The safe space of the consultancy room and the empathetic presence of an experienced professional create an environment in which it’s possible to come out of hiding. For the client the memories can appear unexpectedly because they came into therapy for a different reason. Sometimes the client becomes angry at the therapist because they get “worse” instead of feeling better.

In the healing environment of the working alliance, the Logosynthesis sentences support the processing of the traumatic memories, one after the other, slice by slice, resolving painful images, voices, smells, tastes, and the whole array of body sensations associated with them. The experience that distinct traumatic events can be neutralized and don’t need to be addressed again and again, restores the confidence that healing is possible, and that there is a future after a painful past.

Once clients, as well as therapists, have learned that traumatic memories are nothing but frozen energy patterns, and that the energy bound in them can be freed, processing can become a kind of routine. The client is taught to use the sentences of the Logosynthesis Basic Procedure on their own, and bring an issue into the session if it needs to be handled within the safe environment of the therapeutic relationship.

In the session it’s necessary to activate memories, just for a few minutes, to initiate the processing through the sentences, but it’s not necessary, even counterproductive, if therapist and client descend into hell together and stay there for an hour. For many clients it’s an enormous relief that Logosynthesis work doesn’t need hours of exposure to the pain. Once the pain becomes active, the sentences are offered, and that’s it—often three or four layers within one session.

For therapists this is often something to get used to. Before I discovered energy psychology and Logosynthesis, I spent thousands of hours with clients, and in these sessions I couldn’t do much more than inviting my clients to share the horror of their lives and then stay with them through thick and thin. From my own experience as a client, I also know that that works, that the presence of a person who is seeing me, listening to me, who is touched by my story, is healing in itself, but I have wished many times it wouldn’t hurt so much.

I finally discovered that everything is energy, that energy can be frozen in patterns, and that the energy of words, spoken quietly from a loving intention, can resolve those patterns, that it can free your energy to live a life of love and meaning. That discovery changed my life, and I’m happy to share it every single day.