The Troubling Link Between Childhood Trauma and Psychic Ability

I was recently editing the memoir of a psychic friend of mine. She had warned me that it would be graphic, and filled with potential "triggers". And, she was right. Her memoir touched on the sexual and physical abuse she had sustained as a young child at the hands of a teenaged family member. It also touched on the passing of her parents, and her near-death experiences. It got me thinking about the pervasive link between trauma and psychic ability.

Anecdotally, a large percentage of psychics report some kind of trauma during childhood (further reading here), but other kinds of trauma are sufficient to set up the conditions psychiatrist C.G. Jung referred to as the "wounded healer" archetype. The passing of a loved one, the changes in the body as a result of pregnancy or extended illness, near-death experiences and physically-traumatic accidents, drug use, and other conditions and events can encourage the awakening of psychic ability in those who might be predisposed to it.

While not all psychics have experienced trauma, most have some combination of genes and experience to thank (or blame?) for their abilities. In my opinion, certain experiences are more powerful than others in setting up the conditions that naturally push psychic ability forward, such as:

1. During childhood, being immersed in a situation that requires preternatural predictive or empathic abilities to stay physically and/or emotionally safe.

Children's brains are remarkable things. They grow new neural pathways in response to the environment, adapting to survive. If something in the environment causes pain to the child, the child soon learns ways of coping to avoid that pain. Sometimes, the best way to avoid pain is to use all of the brain's available resources to avoid the painful event in the first place.

For example, maybe a child needs to learn how to identify that a parent is in a bad mood, which leads to extra development in the brain's centers of observation, empathy, and cause-and-effect reasoning. When this happens often, those brain changes become deeper and more interconnected, as well as more permanent. The need to observe the emotional state of caregivers and predict their behavior in order to avoid pain is a powerful motivator for the development of psychic or near-psychic powers of prediction.

2. An event at any time of life that results in a person dissociating often.

Dissociation, for those not familiar with the term, is what I would call mentally "checking out" of normal reality. We all do this to some extent, such as when we're daydreaming. Extended or severe episodes of dissociation, however, are more the key to awakening psychic abilities.

Some of the situations that can cause these types of dissociative episodes are near-death experiences, intense grief over the passing of a loved one, severe childhood physical or sexual abuse, other events that typically lead to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the regular use of powerful psychoactive drugs with dissociative properties, or a physical condition that causes intermittent but regular episodes of intense pain or discomfort.

It's not necessary to have either of these two types of experiences to be a great psychic, but they do seem to contribute. They also tend to result in possibly-unhealthy ways of coping with life that have to be successfully dealt with before one can focus on developing and honing one's psychic gifts.

If these descriptions are feeling familiar to you, consider that you might have unknowingly awakened your own natural psychic abilities through the things you've experienced. Psychics are born, and they are made.

If you'd like to know more about how your life experiences may be contributing to your psychic abilities, please consider a reading with me.