INTRODUCTION

I am honored to be a part of a community of professionals who have found their calling in the art of compassionately helping people heal from their personal histories of woundedness.

As much as I have learned from and appreciate these incredible people’s contributions to my life and career, I am not writing this book for them. Their giftedness and clinical expertise are the stuff of legends, and their books and scholarly contributions are immensely helpful. This book is for the masses of dear people who are suffering from the unprocessed pain of their past, desperately trying to manage often debilitating feelings of emotional paralysis, worthlessness, anxiety, and fear, and feeling utterly helpless and hopeless to find the peace, freedom, and healthy sense of self for which they long.

If you are a professional people helper, please forgive the absence of extensive footnotes and citations — I don’t want any of that to get in the way of what I hope will be a simple, straightforward explanation of why, for many people, life just isn’t working and how they can experience deep, meaningful, and healing change. Admittedly, I desire to speak through this book just as I would to my clients in a typical psychotherapy session. To my fellow people helpers, I am so grateful for your willingness to respond to the sacred calling of facilitating people’s transformation. I pray many of my readers will seek you out.

Please note that specific terms I have set in bold typeface are defined in the glossary section at the back of the book in what I hope are more simple terms. This is my attempt to demystify certain psychological concepts.

Please also note that throughout this book, I will use several different terms interchangeably to describe the same system in the brain that is primarily responsible for triggering our reactive responses. Sometimes I will refer to this system as the emotional brain, sometimes as the traumatized brain, and the more clinical term as the limbic system. You will also notice the interchangeable use of the terms reactive self, survivor self, and false self. I intend not to confuse you; each of these synonymous terms fits the context of what I am conveying more understandably than the others.

To all those seeking hope, may I encourage you to realize that healing is a journey of sacred suffering worth the time and effort because you are worth it, no matter what life has taught you otherwise.

It is common knowledge among most people helpers that the woundedness of the past creates problems for folks in the present. Despite that knowledge, until I experienced an epiphany many years into my practice, I did not realize that, in response to a person’s learning history of mostly relationship-based traumas, the survival brain, from even our preverbal developmental years, unconsciously constructs a reactive survival philosophy. This philosophy includes an entire set of survival beliefs and strategies used in a well-intentioned (and previously adaptive) but misguided attempt to prevent us from experiencing more of the pain we’ve already suffered. Tragically, these reactive impulses, beliefs, and behaviors keep us stuck, reliving the effects of the past, preventing us from growing, healing, maturing, and coming into an accurate understanding and acceptance of who we are and how to experience a healthy life. This book will explain how this unconscious self-sabotage occurs and what we can do to better protect ourselves from its damaging consequences. And the results can be tragically destructive in the most critical aspects of our lives — our relationships, our pursuit of work, and our mental, emotional, and physical health. The phenomenon I just referenced is what, for many years in my private psychotherapy practice, I have dubbed “The Reactor Factor™.”

If what you just read sounds somewhat odd, I promise we will walk it through in the coming pages and provide understanding and hope for experiencing transforming change in your life.

There are many theoretical conceptualizations of why people’s lives aren’t working, and each has a contribution to make in helping folks change, but until we understand how our survival brain — and the reactive self and survival strategies it creates — undermines the very growth, peace, and freedom we truly desire, we will most likely never experience what we are looking for. In my work with clients, until an understanding of their Reactor Factor is achieved, they unknowingly continue to undermine the gains I am otherwise attempting to help them achieve. Understanding how and why the survival brain is working against us and how to better protect ourselves from its well-intentioned but maladaptive intent is the very focus of this book. Consequently, I will return to this basic central organizing theme again and again.

I am indebted to my clients for allowing me to learn from their stories of suffering. Many of the insights contained in this book would not have been realized apart from their courageous work in therapy. I extensively use their stories but have been careful to obscure their identities to preserve confidentiality.

When we see the basic definition of The Reactor Factor (RF) as a maladaptive survival reaction to the painful experiences acted upon us in the past, we can see and understand that the RF will essentially be an over-corrective attempt by the survival brain to avoid the painful effects of those experiences and the negative messages, spoken and unspoken, those experiences conveyed to us. The RF is what we do, knowingly or not, to avoid the painful experiences of our past and to prove we are not how we were made to feel about ourselves (unimportant, worthless, damaged, unwanted, and insignificant, to name a few). It is the survival brain’s well-intended but misguided attempt to help us avoid the fear and shame-based suffering we experienced and are still trying to avoid.

The following illustration might help us understand the consequences of the over-reactive nature of the RF.

I grew up in Maryland, where the winters are cold, and the roads can be dangerous due to a phenomenon known as “black ice.” This is a road condition where snow and ice partially melt in the daytime sun and then refreeze at night, making it very difficult to see against the black asphalt. If a driver does not know how to handle black ice, they can quickly begin to lose control and, in a reactive panic, overcompensate their steering to avoid landing in the ditch they are headed toward. The result is often ending up in the opposite ditch! This is an apt metaphor for the RF because this is precisely what happens when we do not realize how our responses to past experiences of fear and shame cause us to reactively overcorrect and end up getting us stuck in maladaptive ditches of believing and behaving.

To further illustrate the recursive nature of the RF, I have chosen the picture on the front cover of an old novelty from my childhood known as “Newton’s Cradle.” This object perfectly illustrates the tragically enslaving effects of the RF due to the temporary motion it creates. The name of the novelty is a reference to Newton’s Third Law of Motion, “to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Once set in motion, they will transfer the energy from the initial action of setting the first ball in motion until heat and air eventually slow the reciprocal motion to a stop. The Reactor Factor functions in the same way. The “ball” of the painful energy of unresolved trauma sets in motion the RF’s equal and opposite attempts to protect us from more of the original pain with no conscious understanding that those very attempts transfer the same energy back in the opposite direction. Action and reaction fuel and sustain each other without changing the system. Like all analogies, this one has its limits. Unlike Newton’s Cradle’s temporary motion, the Reactor Factor’s reactivity does not wane over time. The unbeneficial reciprocal dynamics of action and reaction are energized by the survival brain’s attempts to protect us and can tragically last a lifetime. The only real hope of arresting the Reactor Factor is usually a level of suffering, a critical mass of pain if you will, that causes a person to realize it is easier to accept the therapeutic suffering necessary for change than to stay the same. Thank God, we don’t have to live in this chronic state of stuckness. This book is my sincere attempt to assure you that freedom from the unnecessary suffering of the RF is achievable!

In part 1, Understanding The Reactor Factor, we will introduce the basic concept and begin to look at how the RF negatively impacts how we see ourselves and reveals what we believe we must do to avoid experiencing the pain of our past. We will look at how the RF is the survival brain’s well-intended yet misguided attempt to meet our most profound need for acceptance from others, especially intimate others, and to avoid the pain of our past, whatever the circumstances of that suffering.

In part 2, How The Reactor Factor Develops, we will look at how suffering, both from our family of origin and other painful experiences, unconsciously shapes how we relate to life, ourselves, and others.

In part 3, The Survival Systems’ Role in the RF, we will delve into how the misfiring of the survival system works against us by generating misperceptions of threats and, in response, misguided reactions...