Some years back I read a book called 'The Primal Scream' by Arthur Janov. I found it confronting, stimulating and controversial. Janov believes we lock away early childhood traumatic experiences which appear later in our lives as neurotic behavior.

Those early traumatic experiences produce 'primal pain' which if left unresolved can disturb us for the rest of our lives.

One of the most confronting aspects of 'primal pain' is that we may not even be aware that it exists. Primal pain can be embedded into our system right from childbirth. In fact it is suggested that difficult birth experiences can so traumatize the young infant that these experiences swirl around in our system ready to reap havoc when added stress comes into our adult life.

If we undergo further early childhood traumas these are added to the 'primal pool' and eventually become a reservoir of unresolved anxiety and pain.

An 18-month year old boy was put into an orphanage after his mother was hospitalized with a serious illness. He had been a 'breach baby' at birth. Cut off from his mother's support and security and deeply traumatized by the feelings of catastrophic loss and grief, he repressed this 'primal Pain' so much that he became numb and felt nothing.

The pain remained but his survival depended on him not feeling its immensity. However he was left with a deep sense of anxiety and underlying fear which was kept repressed by the 'numbness'.

Primal pain is a physiological event. We may not remember what caused it but the traumatized feelings it produces are stored away ready to be tapped into at any time.

One day as an adult, this 18 month year old boy saw a photo of himself in the orphanage and the primal pain of the small child avalanched over his adult life.

That photograph triggered the primal pain which for thirty years had been surrounded by numbness. The repressed pain came to the surface and the life threatening catastrophic feelings of the child were now being released and re-experienced.

Primal pain may be archaic but its pressure can effect us for the rest of our lives.

Arthur Janov described as a 'primal scream' the cry of agony and terror that is frequently experienced by adults as the traumatic feelings of their childhood pain is released for the first time. No child asks to be traumatized by early life experiences, nor do the adults who later experience the legacy of those traumas.

Primal pain is given to you without asking. You don't have a choice. It is embedded into your system when you are most susceptible and vulnerable and you then may spend the rest of your life defending against it.

When childhood is safe, secure and happy the likelihood of primal pain is reduced and the maturing adult can be open to all their feelings and respond to the world with openness and confidence. As adults this is the path we would choose for ourselves as children if were could. But for those of us who live with primal pain, these early choices were not ours and the legacy remains.

We now have to live with the primal pain, defend against it, repress it, act it out, sometimes behave neurotically, and where possible resolve it.

The greatest fear the traumatized child has are of the feelings they experience when being 'victimized' by life's events. The reason why we as adults find it so difficult to get in touch with these primal feelings is because of this fear. We fear the feelings. No one wants to re-experience traumatized feelings especially when they feel life-threatening, catastrophic and totally overwhelming.

We might spend our whole lives avoiding them by "being busy", "being intellectual", "being aggressive", "being depressed", "being numb", "being addictive", "being childish", "being mothered", "being fathered", being anything...but being free to be ourselves!

It is not until we begin to "feel" our own primal pain that we understand the extent to which our lives have been spent avoiding it, suppressing it, denying it but never facing it. To face our own primal pain is not easy.

We will need competent, professional supportive and caring help. But you will deliver yourself back into your own hands and you can then more truly get on with your own life.

I know because I am doing it!