In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness

by Peter A. Levine

In Buddhism an important distinction is made between suffering and unnecessary suffering. According to the Buddha, “When touched with a feeling of pain, the ordinary person laments … becomes distraught … contracts … so he feels two pains … just as if they were to shoot a man with an arrow and, right afterward, were to shoot him with another … so that he would feel the pains of two arrows …” Trauma sufferers are so frightened of their bodily sensations that they recoil from feeling them. It is as though they believe that by feeling them they will be destroyed or, at the very least, make things worse. Hence they remain stuck. In this way, they shoot themselves with the second arrow—FDR’s “fear of fear itself.”