There is a widely told story about a visitor who goes to the circus and asks the elephant trainer why the animal can be controlled by just a stake in the ground and a light chain. The trainer answers that the elephant doesn’t recognize its own strength because it’s been chained all its life. The animal doesn’t know it has the power to pull itself free and do what it wants.
The story is one most of us have heard, but many are unfamiliar with the practice that makes so many domesticated elephants ignorant of their power—a practice called phajaan. The Thai word means “the crush”—and it’s a cruel practice used to ensure young elephants taken from the wild never rebel against their trainers.
In phajaan, a young elephant is captured. In the months that follow, the young elephant is confined to a cage, its legs are restrained, and it’s beaten, stabbed, starved, and tormented with a bull hook. At the end of this barbaric process, the elephant is considered “broken,” and its handler believes it will never rebel.
The truth of the matter is that most of the elephants that undergo this experience are not broken. What they lack is trust—in themselves and in others. What these emotional animals carry is fear, anger, or grief (Samui Elephant Haven, 2025).
People who have experienced great trauma can adopt a similarly deep, painful sense of powerlessness. But, like the great elephant, we have strength within us that is waiting to be rediscovered and set free. It is within our power to pull up the stake, turn away from our tormentors, and know we can take care of ourselves.
The process by which this happens is growth—and it is the steady work of the subconscious that can help us transform our traumas to grace, as demonstrated by the following case example.
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in an Adolescent
James, a 15-year-old athlete, was referred to work with me to deal better with anxiety stemming from his deeply troubled relationship with his father. Following his parents’ divorce when he was 2, James divided his time between households until a heated argument led his father to suggest that James should leave. James did just that and moved permanently to his mother’s home.
A subsequent reconciliation attempt with a therapist ended disastrously when the father told James he wished he had never been born, then argued with the therapist before storming out.
The aftermath left James with persistent nightmares, fear of his father appearing unexpectedly at his mother’s house, and deep concern that he might inherit his father’s propensity for anger and social alienation. These fears were grounded in real experience: His father had previously arrived at his mother’s house, banged on the door, and called the police alleging kidnapping over a scheduling misunderstanding.
When I introduced James to his subconscious, he received calm guidance about becoming a better student and athlete, which was a gentle entry point into deeper work.
Later, we addressed his father’s behavior, exploring the possibility that the father’s destructive parenting represented the best he was capable of rather than deliberate cruelty. Notably, James’s subconscious consistently pushed the therapy forward while James himself remained more cautious.
Over the following months, James built sufficient emotional resilience to attempt reconnecting with his father. Just before their first reconciliation meeting, his subconscious brought up a positive memory—a hike shared with his father four years earlier—reminding James that positive experiences between them had been possible.
I then asked a key question: If all the hardship with his father could be erased at the cost of losing the wisdom James had gained from dealing with his troubles, would James accept the trade? He said he would not. Thus, he recognized the important formative impact of his difficult experiences.
James and I started meeting with his father at a planned five-minute encounter and gradually lengthened the monthly meetings to 45-minute outings involving walks, sharing meals, and increasingly substantive conversations about the father’s anger and how their relationship might improve.
When James eventually said that he was ready to meet his father independently, his father ceased all contact. James investigated enough to confirm his father was physically well, then accepted the situation with equanimity, understanding he bore no responsibility for his father’s choices.
After two years of therapy, James had transformed remarkably. He became a high school newspaper writer and wrote some of his articles about trauma and resilience, and a sports team captain known for encouraging his teammates. In college, James founded a men’s emotional support group, thus channeling his own hard-won healing into service for others.
From Self-Rejection to Grace
Traumatized individuals may not recognize their own self-worth and may reject themselves or be rejected by others (van der Kolk, 2014). Fortunately, as demonstrated by James’s recovery, the work of healing can lead to increased resilience and transformed self-understanding, which can become the cornerstone for great achievement (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996).
This is reminiscent of a passage from the Bible:
The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. (Ps. 118:22).
Jesus himself applied this passage to his own ministry, teaching that he was the cornerstone rejected by the builders (Matthew 21:42, Acts 4:11). History has repeatedly echoed this pattern:
Galileo Galilei was forced by the Inquisition in 1633 to recant his support for the idea that the sun was at the center of the solar system instead of a stationary Earth. Legend has it that he muttered in reference to the Earth, “and yet it moves.” Of course, he was right (Finocchiaro, 1989).
Johann Sebastian Bach’s music was largely neglected after his death in 1750. Felix Mendelssohn revived Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in 1829. Thereafter, Bach’s music was rediscovered. He is now considered a pivotal figure in the history of Western music (Wolff, 2000).
Ignaz Semmelweis proposed in 1847 that doctors should wash their hands before delivering babies. He was ridiculed by the medical establishment, institutionalized, and died in an asylum. Within decades, the discovery that germs caused illness vindicated him completely (Keske, 2025).
Gregor Mendel presented the results of his genetics research in scientific forums regarding the fundamental laws of heredity in 1865. Yet, his studies were largely ignored for 35 years when they were rediscovered by three independent botanists who credited Mendel for his work (Vyskot & Siroky, 2022).
These cases are not merely historical curiosities but rather reflect a pattern that philosopher Thomas Kuhn identified as fundamental to how knowledge advances. He argued that truly revolutionary ideas are almost always rejected first, because they threaten how people understand the world, and their adoption would require much upheaval and rethinking. He termed this phenomenon paradigm shift (Kuhn, 1962).
Analogously, a patient may at first be unable or unwilling to conceive of any potential benefit from working through their trauma, but therapy can help shift their thinking, as an essential part of the healing process.
Takeaway
Viewing the work of recovery from trauma as possibly leading to worthy life achievement can act as a guiding light during dark times.