Repression and Reintegration

When you reintegrate repressed energy flows, the reason for their original repression will also reemerge. The repression mechanism is not a mere accident; it is effective!

Those emotions, that overwhelming stress, that tightness, the insecurity, the fear, the self-doubt, the inability and the disempowerment… all those emotions are repressed when their associated energy flows are cut off from consciousness.

“Cut off from consciousness” means they are nowhere to be found: there is no insecurity, no self-doubt, no stress... neither in direct experience nor in direct memory (which means you no longer feel that emotion: you can only remember “that” you were afraid, but not directly feel how that fear actually felt). All those unbearable emotions disappear. They are literally nowhere to be found!

The sacrifice is the positive aspects of those energy flows: a narrowing of personality… a narrowing of experience. The wonder of that little child towards the world… that unforced creativity… that connection with every little bit of its body… that sensitivity towards the non-linguistic expressions of others (their movements, the tone of their voice, their facial expressions, their degree of overall tightness… all the things that actually created meaning in the first place)…

But if the trade was made, that means the trade-off was worth it! When repression is effected, at that moment it is always necessary and, thus, positive.

But then, by its very nature, psychological repression is self-reinforcing. It couldn’t be any other way. If it were not it wouldn’t work. The unbearable emotions need to disappear for the personality to survive. That is why, sooner or later, repression can become negative: from an affordance to a limitation… from life-affirming to life-negating. And when that time comes it needs to be lifted: to reconnect with the foreign, which is also intimately own.

And, as it is lifted, all those emotions will reemerge: the pain, the doubt, the stress, the tightness, the weakness… all these emotions—the very same emotions you were not able to suffer (to “suffer” literally means to “bear”: sub+ferō / ὑπο+φέρω) when you were young—will reemerge… and the entire intervening time was the preparation for this reunion: for the reconnection of your consciousness with its parts that it had to cut off in order to survive and flourish.

The personality needs to become strong enough: it needs to amass enough egoic power… enough self-confidence, skills, connections, happiness… Until it does, the repression cannot—should not—be lifted. The butterfly is not yet ready to exit its cocoon and survive.

As the repression is gradually lifted, and all these previously-unbearable emotions gradually reemerge… you are now asked to reintegrate them (to “integrate” stems from the Latin “integer”, which means “complete, whole, healthy, uninjured, untouched”). 

This time you will be called upon to stay with them… because suppressing them is no longer the life-affirming answer... 

Now it is time to both die and grow…

…to be reborn!