It's A Mind Thing (By Jana Hicks)

Having a healed soul begins with having a healed mind. The soul house your mind, will, and emotions. I am in the life long process of healing my soul. When I got saved/born again my awareness of the damage and trauma in my soul became heightened as my relationship with God and His word continued to grow in my life. My thinking was so messed up. I cried out to God to help me because I didn't know how I was going to make it pass all of the trauma in my soul. With each experience and with each loss of family members back to back parts of me became deeply wounded by the losses. Three of the losses was my 3 siblings. After my youngest brother passed I didn't know how I was going to come out of all the trauma.

As I prayed about it God started showing me through different ministers that it is my thinking and changing the negative thoughts rooted deeply in my neural pathways with the word of God. Even though I know the word it was going to take a deeper work to heal my mind. Thoughts are everywhere and if you do not cast them down you will keep fighting them to a place where it can wear you out.

As 2 Corinthians 10:5 (The Voice) tell us what to do with a negative mindsets:

We are demolishing arguments and ideas, every high-and-mighty philosophy that pits itself against the knowledge of the one true God. We are taking prisoners of every thought, every emotion, and subduing them into obedience to the Anointed One.

I learned through a well-known minister Dr. Juanita Bynum how to change my brain. Even my Pastor A.R. Bernard taught on it. God was speaking loud to me! As I began to apply what I was learning the darkness in my soul was giving way to the light of the word of God. This is a lifetime process and you will have moments when it feels as you took steps backwards but don't give up on the process of taking control of how you think. Here are a few steps to follow I have learned and will work as long as you stay consistent in applying them:

1. You have 10 seconds before a negative thought becomes yours. Replace that thought with positive new information/thought - the word of God.

2. It takes 12 pieces of positive information to remove one negative thought

3. Negative thoughts are going to come make sure you don't let them make a nest in your head.

4. Screen your thoughts and think about what your thinking.

5. Don't just let your mind wander all over the place

6. Meditate on the word of God to help push out the negative.

Romans 12:2 (New International Version) States:

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is-his good, pleasing and perfect will.

You are the sum total of your thoughts this motto rings so true "A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste" so don't waste it.

Quote: Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will - Zig Ziglar

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Why Healing Your Inner Child, Helps You Discover Your True Self

Unconscious To Our Wounds

I'd like you to take a journey into yourself, as you read this article. Hopefully, in that time, you will gain a glimpse of why healing your inner child is not only essential but important to overcoming our problems as adults. Many people grow up in less than optimal family environments. Even if our childhood was ideal, we are likely to inherit trauma from generations before us. That is why alcoholics face an unfair disadvantage, since they inherit the genes of their alcoholic parents. We all have wounds to confront and the journey of becoming an adult involves retracing our childhood and making peace with our early life. Can you identify with this narrative? Did you grow up in a stable family environment or did you experience any childhood trauma?

The journey of becoming our true selves requires revisiting our childhood wounds and seeing them through the lens of compassion and forgiveness. It involves attending to our vulnerable parts that we have neglected. So why is this important for self-transformation and self-improvement? Many of our problems stem from our early development, according to developmental psychologists. Depending on our attachment style, this will figure dominantly in adulthood, if we haven't healed our inner child. This shows up when we are triggered in relationships and recall past hurts. Because we are unconscious to our wounds, we believe the pain is occurring now.

For example, if you are emotionally triggered and cannot control it, it may be a triggered event instead of a reaction to something taking place now. This sentiment is echoed by author Liz Mullinar in her book Heal For Life: How to Heal Yourself from the Pain of Childhood Trauma where she explains: "Remembering that a majority of all emotion comes from childhood, it is a really good idea to check whenever you are angry if it is about what is happening right now or is it reminding you of someone or something from your childhood." For instance, I had a strained relationship with my father growing up, owing to his stern disciplining. As an adult, I experienced anger I couldn't control and traced it back to my childhood. However, I ignored it until it affected my relationships.

Release The Negativity And Hurt From The Past

Have you experienced something similar whether it was anger, anxiety, shame or guilt? Often, we will carry the programming of our parents or caregivers into adulthood, if we haven't healed these aspects of ourselves. The trauma we experience in childhood is being triggered in the present moment. Psychologists believe trauma is located in the right hemisphere of the brain, in the unconscious centre. Therefore, to heal and transform our wounds, requires going to the source instead of using logic and reason. In my case, my childhood wounds were associated with fear, which shaped my anger as an adult. It required attending to my fears and transforming my beliefs as a child such as: "I am unsafe" and "It is not safe to be me." These days, my adult self knows I am safe; however, my inner child was still playing the tapes of fear, guilt and shame.

Most of our difficult emotions stem from our childhood. When we experience these emotions, we must notice whether we are being triggered by a childhood experience or something in the present moment. It is beyond this article to explain how to heal and transform our childhood wounds. Moreover, I invite you to work with a trained therapist or counsellor, if you identify with this message. It may be difficult working through our childhood wounds on our own because we are likely to re-traumatise ourselves and remain stuck in our wounds. The key is to take the journey into ourselves, knowing what we experience may be unpleasant, but in doing so, we release the negativity and hurt from the past. By healing our inner child, we discover our true self hidden behind a facade of the wounded self.

This wounded self masquerades as an archetype in the form of: victim, soldier, hero, etc. We will carry these archetypal wounds throughout life without knowing who we really are, since we have identified with our trauma for so long. It becomes our new identity, and healing can be difficult without a shift in awareness. We must learn to become who we really are and not the characters we play. Are you beginning to get a sense that who you are is an intricate web of personas buried within your unconscious mind? It can take a lifetime to discover our true self and we ought to be kind and compassionate with ourselves throughout the healing journey. If this is something you identify with, I recommend journaling and observing your emotions regularly. Note your predominant mood and the situations that affect you. Consider your difficult emotions, as signposts pointing you to heal your inner child. It is once we undertake the journey into our inner child, that we discover the essence of our true self, beneath the concealed self.

https://ezinearticles.com/?Why-Healing-Your-Inner-Child,-Helps-You-Discover-Your-True-Self&id=10296124

Stockholm Syndrome and Addictions

To understand what a trauma bond is and how it applies to addiction, we will start with a brief lesson on the Stockholm syndrome.

Stockholm syndrome is a condition that causes hostages to develop a psychological alliance with their captors as a survival strategy during captivity.

These feelings, resulting from a bond formed between captor and captives during intimate time spent together, are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims. Generally speaking, Stockholm syndrome consists of "strong emotional ties that develop between two persons where one person intermittently harasses, beats, threatens, abuses, or intimidates the other."

Formally named in 1973 when four hostages were taken during a bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden, Stockholm syndrome is also commonly known as 'capture bonding'. The syndrome's title was developed when the victims of the Stockholm bank robbery defended their captors after being released and would not agree to testify in court against them. Stockholm syndrome's significance arises because it is based in a paradox, as captives' sentiments for their captors are the opposite of the fear and disdain an onlooker may expect to see as a result of trauma.

There are four key components that generally lead to the development of Stockholm syndrome:

1. A hostage's development of positive feelings towards their captor

2. No previous hostage-captor relationship

3. A refusal by hostages to cooperate with police forces and other government authorities

4. A hostage's belief in the humanity of their captor for the reason that when a victim holds the same values as the aggressor, they cease to be perceived as a threat.

So the important part to understand here is that even though the bond between captor and hostage seems illogical, there is a very logical reason behind it: survival and the need to bond.

The unfortunate experiments done on monkeys by Harlow illustrate the need to bond to survive. Baby monkeys were taken from their mothers at birth and given wood or metal "surrogate monkeys" covered with cloth to cling to. After a while, the baby monkeys saw these mannequins as "their mothers" and preferred them to live individuals. Then later when these babies grew up and had their own young, they had no idea how to parent and even threw their offspring against their cage and sometimes killed them. Yet, the little ones kept coming back to their mothers, preferring possible death to inevitable death and starvation if they were to stay away.

The way Stockholm syndrome is treated is through psychological counseling and the understanding that it was necessary to form an unhealthy bond in order to survive the trauma of captivity. It is a gradual shift in thinking, similar to healing from brainwashing. This does not absolve the victim from accountability but helps them break their unhealthy bond and cultivate new ones.

https://ezinearticles.com/?Stockholm-Syndrome-and-Addictions&id=9679803

The Truth About Beliefs - How The Masses Get Programmed

Hope Is In The Air

Addiction has been termed a "soul sickness." Doctors deal with the physical symptoms and ease the turmoil of withdrawal. Some insist the drinker go through it without helpful meds to "teach the alcoholic a lesson."

With alcohol, withdrawal can be fatal and should only be done under medical care. Alcohol cannot erase negative emotions, it suppresses them. When liquor is removed, all those feelings rise to the surface. One drinker described stopping as "slamming the breaks on a car full of emotional baggage."

With one in ten at risk and 88,000 Americans dying each year from "alcohol use disorder," doctors are finally looking at new ways to treat the addict while the government approves new forms of therapies. Trauma, auto accidents and organ failure are claiming so many lives. Relapse rates and multiple trips to rehabilitation clinics show that current methods need to be re-invented.

Ten percent of the population is too many to write off as "morally weak." As an alcoholic who couldn't stop, I didn't want to stay here any longer. I found life harsh and unrelenting. The greed, selfishness and indifference I found in some people took the wind out of my sails. A drinking lifestyle became an irritant to my soul.

New treatment options saved me. Eight years in AA provided some sobriety and a wonderful support system but I was an alcoholic that needed more. MAT-medication assisted therapy-allowed me to overcome the cravings and maintain long-term success.

Carl Jung said "Spiritum Contra Spiritus," which translates to "fight fire with fire." I begged God over and over to remove my desire to drink, all the cravings and any residual feeling of "turning to the bottle" to cope.

Up until recently, the first line of treatment for an addict seeking help was a list of nearby 12-step meetings. Alcoholics Anonymous had the corner on the recovery market because it was the only option offered. Today, some physicians understand the need for unique programs that directly meet the needs of the user.

No one woke up and decided to become addicted. Until the chemical hooks are deeply embedded, most don't know that they are hooked until stopping is attempted. Multiple 'serious' tries to get and remain clean are usually part of every addict's path.

Drugs, alcohol, illness, stress: all distort vision like a bad pair of glasses so one can't "see" what the right thing to do is. New ways are on the horizon and some are just beginning to enter the treatment world. Attitudes are shifting and fewer people damn the addict for self-medicating. Life itself brings the hope to heal.

https://ezinearticles.com/?Hope-Is-In-The-Air&id=9752343

Broken Hearts - What Are The Answers For Healing?

Throughout our lives, we all experience some type of trauma involving death, betrayal, failures, or discomfort. But for many of us the most traumatic experience that will change so many facets of our lives is a broken heart. A broken heart that will lead to permanent scars that will last for the rest of our lives.

For many people, broken hearts will leave them questioning their character, affecting their ability to trust, leave them in deep dark depression, isolating themselves from others, and building a wall so high around them that it's nearly impossible for anyone to get in. While all of these effects of a broken heart will be short term, many of these will do permanent damage to one's psych.

Many people argue that healing a broken heart is much like dealing with death and you go through the different stages of grief. While everyone will have unique experiences and will deal them differently, the lasting effects are nearly all the same. Two people that are very close to me have experienced broken hearts that have left them missing out on opportunities and have damaged them to the extent that relationships will most likely never exist again in their lives. For the sake of protecting the identities of these two individuals, this article will refer to them as Rachel and Chris.

Rachel, a female at the age of 26, experienced more than one broken heart. Her situation is very unique though. She was in relationships that were often physically, mentally, emotionally, and sexually abusive. Rachel dated the masters of manipulation if you will. In each of her relationships she became very codependent and convinced that she needed the person that she was with and no one else could be better for her. These patterns became a constant in her relationships to the point where she almost became attracted to that type or lack of better words, dependent on these behaviors. Now this statement does mean that Rachel was looking for these behaviors in guys she dated, it's more gearing towards the idea that she started to adopt the idea that these behaviors were more of the norm for her and all relationships.

In her last relationship, one that would end up in engagement, she experienced major trauma. The physical and sexual assault was taken to a whole new level. This time it resulted in suicidal thoughts, deep depression, the thought that she couldn't escape it, and even hospitalization. She was literally imprisoned by her significant other to the point that she was accepting the idea that leaving the situation was not even possible whether she wanted to or not. This led to a series of events that forced her hand to leave the situation. One of Rachel's parents took a stand and forced her to be removed from the situation without her having a say. Her mother literally drove and picked her up and said "your coming with me'.

Of course Rachel experienced a broken heart following her forced removal of the situation she was in. She experienced all of the effects of a broken heart; questioning her character, affecting her ability to trust, it left her in deep dark depression, isolating herself from others, and building a wall so high around her that it's nearly impossible for anyone to break down to get in. According to Rachel, her way of "coping" are characteristics of her personality type, an INFJ. While this statement may be true, in my personal opinion, I believe that she is using her personality type to overshadow what is truly happening. She is living with the fear of being in a relationship again because she would rather turn away from relationships as opposed to seeing that her idea of "no one is good in the world" is actually wrong. As a result she moved miles away from her home and begin living a life of solidarity.

Much like Rachel, Chris also experienced major broken hearts that have had lasting impacts on his life. While they share similar circumstances and had similar effects, how Chris dealt with his broken hearts, is very different than Rachel's.

From the time Chris was a teen, he experienced heartaches associated with relationships that mostly involved betrayal. All of these relationships resulted in him questioning his character, affecting his ability to trust, left him in deep dark depression, isolating himself from others, and building a wall around him that even the best of destructors couldn't break down.

Chris' last two broken hearts came from a marriage that ended due to adultery and a relationship that was on the break of engagement but ended due to the girl moving away. Both had lasting impacts on Chris' ability to let people in his inner circle. He often pushed people out and began to isolate himself from situations that he could not control. Therefore, Chris became extremely lonely and deeply depressed. His life became unmanageable to the point that he almost committed suicide twice, one of which he was nearly successful. In addition to suicide, depression, and building a wall, Chris began to lose trust not only in his self but in others as well. He started to adopt the idea that all people were born to hurt others and that egocentrism was simply a part of life. As a result, Chris stopped dating, became very cold hearted, and became emotionless to avoid attachment and eventually let down again.

Now fast forward nearly a year later. Rachel decided to move to a place that she had never visited before to continue her education and to begin a new life for herself by escaping the situation she was in living in her old town. Chris made a few changes to his lifestyle as well. He revisited his building blocks in his life to get himself re-established personally and professionally.

Now living in the same city, Chris and Rachel began working at the same place of employment. Call it just a coincidence or call it fate, they met, began talking to each, and started dating. The natural chemistry and their history helped to develop a special bond between them that most people thought made them inseparable. But before things could get any better, they got worse. The effects of previous relationships began to develop that wall that Rachel had let down to let Chris into the picture. This wall was caused by outside factors mostly influenced by people who had only seen Rachel in abusive situations. The feeling of never being able to trust again began to invade Rachel. While experiencing all of these effects from her trauma from previous relationships, she let a good one slip away. One that would have been her fairy tail ending. Instead of living a happy life with Chris, Rachel cut her contact with him altogether leaving her self in pain, hurt, emptiness, confusion, and a lack of a better word, lonely, all of which she had experienced with her traumatic relationships except this time it was out of fear that she had found happiness but that it was too good to be true.

Chris also experienced the same effects. After the short stent that resulted in a crushing blow to him, he went back to the ways of being cold hearted, no longer trusting people, and feeling like he was betrayed. Although this was a different type of betrayal, he classified it as the same as before because he experienced the same emotions. While he had every right to be upset, Rachel did not deserve to have been treated that way. Like Chris, Rachel also had the right to feel the way she did. However, if Chris had accepted, acknowledged, and respected Rachel's thoughts, feelings, and emotions, Rachel may have came back to him. Instead Chris took his hurt out on Rachel and said some things that reminded Rachel of the abusive relationships of her past. Although Chris is not like the guys of Rachel's past, in her eyes she only saw him just another guy who hurt her and would hurt her further down the road causing life long damage just like the rest of them.

The story of Chris and Rachel's broken hearts continue to this day. They are both struggling with the loss of one another. Now Chris and Rachel are dealing with how heal a broken heart which has been a struggle for the both of them over the years resulting in vulnerability and not knowing how to deal with their emotions in a way more conducive for themselves.

In conclusion, is there really a right or wrong way to deal with a broken heart? No one can really answer that but the person who is dealing with it themselves. Our friends and family provide us with support and their opinions on how to deal broken heart, but all of them have a difference in an opinions leaving the broken hearted in a state of confusion and placing them into a deeper zone of depression. For Chris and Rachel their search for healing will continue until their answers are found.

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Trauma and Unworthiness: How to Work with the Shutdown Response to Trauma

The World Underneath Your Hat or "What Are You Thinking Underneath That Leopard-Skin, Pill-Box Hat?"

Neurofeedback is a non-invasive peek into the "black box" of the brain. The substrate of our consciousness, including feelings, thoughts and actions, is the neuronal activity within the brain which contains billions of neurons synapsing together. This communication between neurons creates different brain waves as we attend to different aspects of our life.

Sometimes our brain gets trapped in an electrical pattern that causes problems like anxiety, hyperactivity, depression, addiction, and so forth. The central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) is the center of all other bodily systems so if it isn't working right then other systems reflect it. For instance, you might have stomach aches or insomnia due to the pattern the brain is firing.

These disruptive patterns have arisen from physical or mental abuse, chronic stress, emotional or physical trauma, anxiety and so forth. In response to these stressors the brain adopted a pattern to survive the threats it perceived. This maladaptive pattern presents a host of problems for individuals, but also an opportunity to retrain their brain waves through neurofeedback which uses EEG electrodes to detect the different brain wave patterns.

Slow frequencies, like Delta, range from.5-4 Hertz and are the sleep waves normally present when fully unconscious. An aberrant pattern is finding delta waves in the frontal lobe when you are awake which reflects a person with "brain fog."

Theta waves (4-8 Hz) signify a state just before sleep where thoughts are replaced by visual images. It is called the hypnagogic state and is suitable for hypnosis.

Alpha waves (8-12 Hz) indicate meditative awareness and are concentrated in the right hemisphere which is associated with holistic processing.

LoBeta (12-15 Hz) is an organizing frequency reflecting calm focus, such as a cat watching a gopher hole. Training this frequency gives people a locus of internal control so they can pause before reacting, rethinking their response.

Beta (15-22 Hz) waves predominate in the frontal lobe fostering alertness, computation, language processing, and focusing on details. Higher beta frequencies (23-38 Hz) indicate hyper-vigilance and anxiety due to PTSD, trauma or abuse.

Gamma waves (40 Hz) integrate all parts of the brain in brief flashes of insight.

One type of neurofeedback, called "infraslow," targets frequencies slower than delta. These brainwaves arise from the brain stem and balancing them regulates physiological state through the autonomic nervous system. Sympathetic arousal (fight or flight) dissipates when you balance the infraslow frequencies. Neurophysiologist Stephen Porges notes, "from a parsimonious perspective, the brainstem is a final common pathway through which most information comes into the brain and leaves the brain. It is useful to think of the brainstem as a building block upon which other processes are scaffolded. If we can't regulate physiological state, which is a brainstem responsibility, then we have difficulties accessing and processing higher cognitive functions."

https://ezinearticles.com/?The-World-Underneath-Your-Hat-or-What-Are-You-Thinking-Underneath-That-Leopard-Skin,-Pill-Box-Hat?&id=9917264

Managing The Heartbreak of Not Being Seen or Heard

Take a few minutes right now and think back to your childhood. Do you remember a time when you felt deeply unseen, unheard, misunderstood?

How did you feel at that time? You likely felt crushed, shattered, heartbroken, lonely and helpless over your parent, caregiver, teacher, sibling or friend. But these are very big feelings - way too big for a child. What did you do? Did you shut down and numb your feelings in some way, or did you cry, get angry, seek revenge or go into resistance?

Do you remember a different time, when you felt deeply seen, heard and understood? Did you ever feel this, or do you have no memory of ever being fully received? Was there no one you could turn to for help, comfort and understanding?

Too many children grow up never being fully received - never feeling fully seen, valued, heard and understood - never feeling grokked. ('Grok' is a term coined by Robert Heinlein in his wonderful book "Stranger In a Strange Land." We feel 'grokked' when we are deeply seen, heard and understood.)

When we didn't feel grokked, we needed to protect ourselves from feeling the shattering pain of this, so we developed our many protections to avoid our feelings and attempt to have control over others seeing and hearing us. But the conundrum of this is that we will never be grokked when we are protecting ourselves with our various addictive controlling behaviors.

The challenge for all of us as adults is to learn to manage the intense heartbreak of not being seen or heard. Learning to manage the shattering feeling of heartbreak in our body can be very hard - especially if we experienced trauma from abuse.

Learning to Manage Heartbreak and Helplessness over Others

The very first skill you need to develop is learning to be kind to yourself and hopefully learn to feel compassion for yourself. Kindness and compassion for yourself lets your inner child know that YOU are seeing, hearing and understanding yourself - that you grok yourself. When you judge yourself for your painful feelings, you are letting your inner child know that you are not seeing and valuing yourself. This rejection of yourself causes even more pain.

Even if you can't yet tolerate the feelings of heartbreak, loneliness and helplessness from not being seen and valued, and even if you can't yet feel self-compassion, practice being very kind to all your feelings - even if you feel numb.

Compassion is not a feeling we generate in our own being. It's a feeling we open to and invite in. It is a gift of Spirit, and when you open to learning about loving yourself with your higher self, you can consciously invite compassion into your heart.

If you know that you were traumatized and perhaps suffer from PTSD, it's vitally important to receive trauma therapy. You can learn the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) and the Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) online, and you can work with a facilitator with Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Somatic Experiencing (SE), or other very helpful and healing trauma therapies. The important thing is to heal your body enough so that you can tolerate feeling the heartbreak of not being grokked, and learn to manage it rather than avoid it.

Without being able to feel your feelings, you won't be able to see and hear yourself. You will continue to reject and abandon yourself as you were rejected and abandoned.

Deep healing comes when you learn to grok yourself - to see, hear and deeply value who you are and all that you feel. Often, this means that you first need to feel deeply seen and valued by another, which is what occurs in good therapy or facilitation.

https://ezinearticles.com/?Managing-The-Heartbreak-of-Not-Being-Seen-or-Heard&id=9403040

Quick Relief for Trauma and PTSD (By Helene Rothschild)

Do you struggle with trauma or PTSD? Did you feel unsafe in your childhood or adult life from abuse? Are you working in a field where you see tragedies that happened to people and animals? You may be, among others, a firefighter, police officer, nurse, doctor, or paramedic.

Are the traumatic experiences staying with you and affecting your life in negative ways? For example, do you have difficulty sleeping, dealing with your loved ones, or being in the present and in joy because the scenes are haunting you?

As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist for over 35 years, I have helped many men and women overcome their traumas using a process I developed. HART stands for Holistic and Rapid Transformation.

The therapeutic process uses the power of imagination. If you close your eyes and imagine a scary animal in the room, you will feel fear and your body will react as if it is really there by tightening. However, if you imagine a positive scene where the room is filled with things you love, your body will relax and you will feel safe. Therefore, the emotional and physical body does not know what is in reality, and only responds to what you imagine or visualize.

The other key factor in HART Therapy is the fact that we make decisions from every experience. Those positive or negative decisions affect our lives. For example, when you see a tragedy or experience trauma, you may decide that you and/or people are not safe. That negative thought can cause you to be very anxious, and keep you up nights worrying about your safety as well as your loved ones. Can you relate?

1. Relaxation

To begin, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and relax in a comfortable place where you will not be disturbed. Now rate your calmness from 1-10, 10 being high.

Then imagine you are in a safe place in nature or wherever you feel safe. What are you seeing or imagining? How do you feel there?

And now imagine a color that helps you feel safe and calm. (Blue or green are common colors). Allow that safe calming color to come into the top of your head and go throughout your body helping you feel even safer and calmer. Take two deep breaths.

2. Identifying the Negative decision from a Negative Experience

Now allow yourself to imagine that you are in a movie theater so you are detached from the scene. And allow yourself to project onto the screen a traumatic experience. What negative decision are you making from this negative experience? (Example, I and my loved ones are not safe.) And now white out the scene; the movie theater screen turns white. Take two deep breaths.

3. Creating a Positive Scene to Make a Positive Decision

Now allow yourself to visualize a positive scene. (For example, you and your loved ones are all safe and happy.) What new positive decision are you making from this positive experience? (For example, "My loved ones and I are safe.") Take two deep breaths and open your eyes. To feel grounded, rub your hands together and put them on your legs.

Now rate your calmness again from 1-10. Do you feel calmer? If you are not feeling better, then do the process again, because you may have made more than one negative decision from the disturbing event. (For example, "I am not good enough.")

The HART healing process can be helpful to quickly release any negative thought or image. You deserve to feel good, and you are good enough no matter what happens or does not happen.

https://ezinearticles.com/?Quick-Relief-for-Trauma-and-PTSD&id=9991069

The Day I Was Declined A Job Because I Was Passionate About It (By Suzanne Zacharia)

The day I was declined a job for which I was very passionate was one day when my self-esteem plummeted to a new low. Don't let it happen to you. Different bosses look for different qualities, often based upon their own flaws and insecurities.

That boss was not ready for my answer when he asked why I would make the best salesperson in his team. I simply said that as a single mother of two young children in a nationwide recession, I was passionate about earning money for my children and passionate about giving them a good life, and so I was passionate about selling for the company and would not stop till I exceeded my targets.

I overlooked a few factors which now are screaming out their visibility to me. I look at them now smiling, my own boss for 15 years, as well as having done EFT tapping to let go of the trauma. So, what did I miss? Well, for starters, the only females in the whole company were the receptionist and the low-paid lady who typed up stuff for the salesmen. The most obvious factor was when the would-be boss asked me in the interview whether I was single and planned to have more children. Of course, these days it is illegal to ask such a discriminatory question. However, I did answer that I was sterilised and had no desire to increase the burden on providing for my children and every desire to give them the best life I could, which is why I was at this interview.

The interview was for a salesperson. I could sell because I thought first and foremost of my children and their needs. I had not as yet learned the technique where you find out what the buyer wants and then sell it to them. But that was an easy technique to learn, and that would-be boss could have taught it to me in half a day's training, just like the one after him did, where I became world famous for my sales. I was not number 1 but consistently number 2 or 3 salesperson in a large sales organisation, so I guess I was pretty good. The only thing that stopped me for beating Mr Number 1 was conscience. We sold advertising that hardly anyone got to see to very small businesses, and my conscience would not allow me to take from a business by deceit what the small business owner could not afford to lose.

It took about 6 sessions of self-EFT to get over that job rejection. I wish I had learned EFT before going to that interview. EFT, short for Emotional Freedom Techniques, does just that, using a mixture of easy self-acupressure and releasing wording. Then I would have gotten up and told the would-be boss that he was a sexist thing that could not be described as a pig, because pigs can be nice, and then walked away with my self-esteem intact. There was no way he would have employed me anyway, He only employed male salespeople.

As a result of the plummeting self-esteem thing, I ended up taking a job which paid considerably less. I now run my own business and only take on passionate people who can convince me why they are passionate about the work and my company. The rest is down to the job of being a boss, part of which is good training.

https://ezinearticles.com/?The-Day-I-Was-Declined-A-Job-Because-I-Was-Passionate-About-It&id=9771171

Dr. Joe Dispenza: How To Wash Away Trauma

To Fully Heal, We Must First Find Meaning In Our Trauma

Make Healing Your Responsibility

Each of us carries wounds from childhood. For some the pain is intense, bringing with it a sense of relived trauma. While others may not be fully aware of their wounds, even when triggered by external events. Life is difficult and complex at times. We're not born with an instruction manual and must learn to cope with life as we go along. Has this been your experience in life? One minute, things don't make sense and the next something comes along that you're not prepared for? We never know what life has in store for us but we can use this to our advantage, much like a surfer anticipating the next big wave that will take them on a wild ride.

To heal the past, we must find meaning in our trauma, otherwise we become victims instead of co-creators of our life's experience. I've written in earlier articles of my strained relationship with my father while growing up. He was a strict disciplinarian and I couldn't live up to his expectations. This caused me emotional pain because nothing I did was ever good enough in his opinion. Therefore, I constantly sought to appease him to make happy. This worked for a short while, however, there was always something waiting around the corner to undermine him. I don't intend to paint a grim picture of my father. He was a wonderful man with great qualities, but his parenting style was the opposite to my mother's, which made it difficult to related to him as a child.

Have you experienced something similar with a parent or caregiver? No matter what you did, they were never satisfied and so you tried harder? This is the underlying basis to people pleasing, where the child tries to win the favour of their parents. Finding meaning in my emotional trauma meant forgiving my father for his heavy-handed ways. As Denise Frogman refers to in the title quote: I made healing my responsibility, even though the wounds were not my fault. It is been over two decades since my father's passing, yet it took me years to forgive him and find meaning in my experience. It took on momentum one day during meditation when I sensed his tough disciplining was a call for me to learn self-love.

Commit To Healing The Wounds Of The Past

Excluding childhood abuse, there are often important lessons contained within our childhood experiences. Sometimes, it means excavating the past like an archaeologist and sorting through the ruins. There was an Instagram post recently that caught my attention that said: "Nobody really tells you this but sometimes the healing hurts more than the wound." I can attest to this having worked through my healing and helped many others to heal their pain through coaching. This is where people tend to turn away and give up on themselves because the wounds are too difficult to face. Rather than run away, we ought to tune into them and make peace with what is holding us back. Is this something you're willing to give your attention to? It is why many don't take the journey into themselves to heal their traumas. Healing is a difficult and sometimes a long journey that requires a commitment to move through it boldly.

To find meaning in our trauma requires digging up the past and deciding what is worth keeping and what should be left behind. This can be difficult because no one wants to process pain, especially when things are going well. But if we don't turn towards our pain with openness and compassion, it will come barrelling down on us when we least expect it. It will strike us like a cargo train out of control and all we can do is brace for impact. So, we must decide to work through it at our own pace. In doing so, we heal the past and gain new insights about our ourselves. I discovered an abiding spirit of resiliency and tenacity throughout my healing journey. I never knew I could withstand the pain until I undertook the journey into myself.

How about you? Are you willing to heal your wounds and find meaning in your trauma? Perhaps some of you are already on that journey, working through it alone or with a trained therapist. Be kind and compassionate with yourself because healing is a courageous and worthwhile gift to ourselves. Discovering the essence of who we are, beneath our scars and wounds requires us to be sensitive to our emotional needs. Because the person who emerges from the pain is not the same person who experienced it. With this in mind, I'd like you to give some attention to the following questions: Are you truly committed to healing the wounds of the past? What do you hope to achieve through the healing process? Whom do you wish to become? Are there aspects of your past too painful to confront? It is once we take bold step towards wholeness that we transcend our trauma and find meaning in our experiences.

https://ezinearticles.com/?To-Fully-Heal,-We-Must-First-Find-Meaning-In-Our-Trauma&id=10246781

Are You "Home Alone?"

The home in your heart... where mind and body touch one another.

Some of us have a nurturing and empowering home in our hearts. It was built by our life experiences, in our early relationships. As we became adults, that inner home gave us a strong foundation and safe refuge. We can be alone, even under stress, without feeling disconnected.

And that makes us healthier.

"... strong relationships help build an internal regulatory system that modulates your stress response. In contrast, when those pathways haven't been or are not being stimulated, that internal modulating system for stress weakens. And with ongoing isolation, the firing of your stress response increases, leading to a state of chronic stress. Chronic stress weakens the immune system, which ultimately leads to more illnesses of all kinds." (Medscape, Can Being Lonely make You Sick. June 12, 2017)

The changes to your brain caused by the interaction between experiences, relationships and physical processes is called neuroplasticity. It's how the home in your heart is built. And it affects your physical health as much as your emotional health.

If you had a stressful, disconnected, even traumatic life as a child, you lived with a constant flow of stress biochemicals. That caused your brain to build more and stronger pathways to send and receive those biochemical stress messages. Your brain became "hardwired" for high levels of stress biochemicals. Stress became your default physical experience.

"When trauma and abuse are a part of a person's relational experience, then fear, distrust, and isolation are coded into the nervous system... These folks exist in a state of chronic disconnection that does not allow them to feel safe in any human connection. This can be lethal over time." (Medscape, Can Being Lonely make You Sick. June 12, 2017)

When our inner world, the home in our heart, was built by that experience, we often feel alone, but we can't find the connection we need. We feel anxious, or angry, or hopeless.

For most of us, though, it's not all one way or the other. We may have a safe inner experience much of the time, but under stress, or in certain situations, the home in our heart becomes unsafe. We don't feel loved or even loveable. We feel alone and disconnected, anxious and fearful.

Normal life stresses, like job changes that you can't control, relationship conflicts, the death of a loved one - even caregiving for a loved-one who is dying - these all cause measurable increases in stress biochemicals. They can overwhelm our resources, and leave us "home alone". If left unchecked, the increases in stress results in unhealthy remodeling of our brain and nervous system.

And once that remodeling happens, stress biochemicals become the "default" biochemical wash. Like drinking the water downstream from a toxic waste dump, your body experiences high levels of stress biochemicals daily.

Cancer. Heart disease. Stroke. Diabetes. Your risk goes up as your stress biochemicals increase.

But here's the good thing. This is where meditation comes in. You can put neuroplasticity to work for you. You can nourish and grow the home in your heart, no matter how it was built or the mess it may be in now.

Just like your mind/brain interactions can send out more stress biochemicals, your mind/brain interactions can also release calming, healing biochemicals. Your brain can build healthy new pathways, literally re-wire itself to reduce your stress reactivity, and give you a new default option.

Rewiring your brain takes work. Exercise, relationships, thinking patterns - they all make a difference, but meditation is one of the easiest and most powerful ways to create that change.

And it's totally under your control.

It's easier to rebuild that nurturing home if you're a believer, and if you feel safe with God. You begin to experience the connection, and realize you are never totally alone.

"Nothing before, nothing behind.

The steps of faith

Fall on the seeming void, and find

The rock beneath." (John Greenleaf Whittier)

Though maybe your belief about God had been poisoned with toxic waste too. Then you might run screaming. But whether you believe or not, meditation helps.

It's how your body works.

Meditation bathes your brain in calming, soothing biochemicals - a nourishing "biochemical chicken soup", instead of toxic waste. And day by day you begin to remodel your brain and build a safe and loving "home in your heart".

The more you meditate, the more it helps. The more you build a safe nourishing home inside, the more resilient you become - no matter what's happening out in the world. It's a powerful way to mitigate the negative effects of stress.

Stress happens. We had no control over it as kids. We have more control as adults, but even with healthy lives and positive coping, we will all experience stress, sometimes very powerfully and painfully, and for long periods of time.

But now you can choose. You can nourish your brain and body, even during times of painful stress. You can heal and protect your brain by building a safe, connected "home in your heart". You can give your body the resources it needs to recover from damage from the past, to comfort and protect you now, and to weather the storms you will face in the future.

https://ezinearticles.com/?Are-You-Home-Alone?&id=9739962

A Key To Healing Trauma

What do world-class-athletes and special-forces combat soldiers have in common? They both perform, very well, under high stress and pressure, what might for us be a traumatic experience. How do they do that? It is the very same process used as the key ingredient in healing trauma.

To understand how some people can perform so well under acute stress and almost unbearable pressure, without becoming traumatized, and how people heal from trauma, we need to understand a little bit about how our brain works. Without getting overly technical, there are two pertinent functions of the brain involved, our executive functions, and our emotions. The executive functions, such as rational thinking and planning are referred to as higher brain functions. Our emotions, such as feelings of joy, and fear, are more basic brain functions. When we are in high stress situations, we are often frightened. The more basic brain functions, primary of which is survival, become highly activated and over-ride our higher brain functions. This is a basic neurological wiring for survival. When we are in situation of perceived danger or very high stress, we don't think, we automatically react with what is called the 'fight or flight' response. If we cannot fight, and cannot flee, we are trapped, stuck, frozen. And that then becomes the trauma. Being stuck, frozen, for an extended period of time; not being able to fight or flee, not being able to act, in a high stress, dangerous, painful, scary, situation, is a traumatic event.

When in this traumatic situation of being stuck, trapped, frozen, unable to think or plan, and at the mercy of our emotional brain centers, our higher brain functions are actually shut down, offline, not available. It is as if our emotional brain has hijacked our higher brain, kind of like a classroom of unruly kids taking over and disallowing the teacher from performing their assigned duties. But, those unruly kids are being told there is a crisis! Because our higher brain functions have to do with planning, when they are shut down, we don't have a sense of past or future. We are in the immediate present, which in a traumatic situation, is scary, frightening and may be painful. So, any time we remember this traumatic situation, even months, or years, after it has happened, our higher brain function shuts down again, goes offline, and we believe the stress and danger is real, right now. The brain does not distinguish between memory and fantasy. It is visual imagery, rapid commentary, and complex changes in breathing, skin response, neuro-chemistry and awareness. The brain does want to resolve this trauma, and so we do have intrusive thoughts, memories, flashbacks, in an attempt to help us get unfrozen, to fight, or flee, or do something. But, what happens is we just get re-traumatized because there is nothing to fight, and no-where-to-flee; We are again stuck, traumatized. What if we could maintain our higher brain functions even in high stress? Even in neutralizing the trauma?

How do we get back our higher brain functions? How can we reinstate our executive functions? How can we think, clearly, and know that the trauma is not now, is not a threat or a danger anymore? There are two points to consider along these lines. One, as mentioned in Waking The Tiger, by Peter A. Levine, a classic book in the field of sexual abuse and trauma recovery, is learning how to 'shake it off.' Animals in the wild, pursued by a predator, and escaping, are not traumatized the next day, or next month, or next year. Somehow, they shake it off. Exercise, vigorous and demanding, is a way of shaking it off. There is an interesting proximity to the word 'exercise' and 'exorcise.' We need to exorcise the build-up of stress chemicals in the body which have had no outlet, no opportunity to fight, or flee, and exercise is a good way of doing that. The other helpful approach is learning how to relax the body. In a relaxed body, the higher brain functions are much less susceptible to being hijacked by the emotions. A lot of trauma therapy is based on pairing a relaxed state of body, and mind, with exposure to traumatic memories. This can result in the executive functioning of the brain, distinguishing between past, present and future, between seeing, and feeling, the trauma as something in the past, not the present; and that goes a long way in diminishing symptoms. The trauma itself is now seen as an historical event, one which does not pose a threat to the present. This is the key in healing trauma. It's not a trauma anymore. We need to relax before we can make the distinction between then and now.

We generally don't know how to relax the body well. It is something we need to learn how to do. By taking proactive steps in learning how to relax the body before a stressful situation, we are more likely to be the executive than the unruly child in that stressful situation, which itself can be an effective prophylactic to trauma.

https://ezinearticles.com/?A-Key-To-Healing-Trauma&id=9514495

How Gratitude Can Revolutionise Your Life

Trauma and Distressing Situations Can Offer Opportunities for Change 

A lot of times when a young person is asked what they are going to do when they leave high school, they can have a lot of grand plans. A young person can be optimistic, have hopes and dreams, and for a lot of people, life is fairly straightforward and is deeply satisfying. There are however, the odd few people where life throws out a curveball and a negative or traumatic life changing event can re-order that person's life completely. If that person is helped through the situation, and once a reasonable amount of stability has returned to life, a person who has gone through a great difficulty can turn an adverse situation into a blessing and a great opportunity. Gratitude can be a tremendous tool in a person's life who is recovering from adversity to help quicken the process towards a healthy and optimistic eventuality.

Gratitude Can Turn A Mediocre Life into an Extraordinary Life 

When your circumstances are seemingly ho-hum, and you feel that you are living in the mundane of things, that life has become repetitive, it may be time for a lifestyle evaluation, and part of that process uses gratitude towards helping to redesign or reestablish different perceptions of an otherwise awry type of existence.

Gratitude Works For Everyone 

Whether a person has had a straightforward start, and is now looking for more, or a person has had an extremely difficult setback, gratitude is a powerful weapon for life transformation and revolution. Gratitude works, because it begins to remove a person's perceived limitations.

Fear Brought About Because of Negativity 

If life has been seemingly unproductive, and you believe that you have not "done anything with your life" it only takes a quick look around in your circumstances to begin to evaluate what you truly do have. You are not a sum product of your achievements, you are a valued and wonderful individual who brings much needed joy and friendship to those around you. If you have friends and family who depend on you, and who enjoy your company, to them you are completely irreplaceable. Be grateful first for yourself as a person, and what you contribute to the lives of the people around you by your very presence. Don't be negative about yourself, start listing your positive qualities, and your talents, and invest time in yourself. Start to begin to say what you appreciate about yourself, and then extend this into your environment. Change begins with yourself, before it becomes externalized. Being positive will eventuate with a change in your external environment. When you begin to eliminate negativity, and replace it with affirmations about thankfulness regarding yourself and your wonderful individuality, you begin to lose fear, and develop more confidence and a calm demeanor.

Start Believing In Positive Outcomes 

Negative events don't have to lead to negative eventualities. Many people experience traumatic circumstances, but look to what they still have around them, and start being grateful for those being present through their circumstances, aren't afraid to reach out to others for help, and are appreciative of the little things. When negative events occur, it is important to retain a hopefulness for the future, and use the previous negative events as a template for being able to help others, and to empathize with others who have gone through a similar circumstance.

Gratitude Will Draw Positive Experiences

Sometimes life can begin to feel very mundane, and familiarity with a particular environment can lead to a lack of appreciation. Relationships, especially with significant others can start to wax and wane if they are neglected. If a person takes a fresh perspective on their situation, and becomes genuinely reflective of what gifts they have around them, like clean drinking water, a good steady paycheck, and friends and be grateful for the little simple things, like friends dropping by to say hello, life can start to be seen with new eyes. Little children look to everything with a sense of wonder, and they can teach us to renew our sense of joy and gratitude.

http://ezinearticles.com/?How-Gratitude-Can-Revolutionise-Your-Life&id=8714276

Stay Active After PTSD - Overcome Your Post-Trauma Predicament in 5 Easy Steps

Introduction

According to the National Comorbidity Survey Reports over 7.5 million people are diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder every year in the United States alone. Most of them suffer from the post-trauma predicament. A predicament is a security system developed by our instinct which prevents us from further trauma. We make a mistake when we think it is an unmanageable disease. Yes, it's definitely a complicated health and mental issue but we can bypass it using simple techniques.

What is a trauma?

A trauma is condensed stress. When an event of our life or a chain of events pile up a huge amount of insecurity within our subconscious mind, we experience a trauma. The major characteristic of a trauma is that it is more of a subconscious affair than a conscious matter. So, to deal with trauma we need to specifically work on our subconscious mind and generate a habit of feeling protected. To do that we need to understand that our subconscious mind is connected to a few things, like- our body, our memory, our environment and the community we live in. If we can manage all these aspects then we'll be able to balance rejuvenate our subconscious mind.

How does post-trauma predicament behave?

The post-trauma predicament is a security system developed by our instinct which protects us from further trauma. Yes, it's a security system that saves our butts. But in this process, it ruins us the other way. In a post-trauma condition, our body cuts the connection between our nerves and muscles. It stops the flow of oxygen in the Neuromuscular junction and we cannot move our limbs. We know this situation as a predicament.

Let's understand this in an example; suppose you want to check your email and you turned on the email app on your mobile phone but there's no internet connection. You can see the "loading circle" on the screen. Your device is trying to synchronize the app with your email account. And, it fails. You try again and the same thing happens. The email app in your mobile phone cannot load the inbox page because the connection between your mobile phone and the internet is broken.

Same thing happens with us when we go through a predicament. We try to do some activity, our brain initiates the process but the muscles cannot perform it because the connection between our nerves and the muscles is broken.

How to stay active?

Most of the P.T.S.D. challengers spend a good amount of time lying in bed and sleeping. They get out of bed, have some food and go back to sleep. If you are one of them then don't feel ashamed. It's totally okay. Your body needs that rest. You need to give yourself a minimum time to recover from the immediate shocks of the trauma.

1. Start with 'No-brain Activities':

(Use your sensory organs)

You should start by doing the 'no brain-activities'. After the immediate shocks of trauma, our body develops a practice of feeling stressed all the time. While feeling stressed there is more blood flow to the back part of our brain (mainly in the hypothalamus) and less blood flow on the frontal lobe. The frontal lobe executes all logical and analytic processes. So, it's difficult for us to perform actions. That's why we should start with no-brain activities.

Use your sensory organs to start working. Use your eyes, your ears, your tongue. You can start by simply watching TV or listening to music.

2. Engagement Is The Key

(Use your hands)

Next, you need to do physical tasks. It's the time when you introduce your hands with your eyes and ears. You need to practice what you have learned so far. Simply start singing, start dancing, try to enact your favorite scenes from your favorite TV shows, start cooking, start drawing, do make ups, start working out, literally anything that involves physical engagement. Just keep in mind you should pick one or two of the tasks you like. Do not overwhelm yourself. If you overwhelm yourself with a bunch of projects and cannot finish any of them then you might end up sabotaging yourself. You can schedule a routine that you'll cook in the morning and paint at night or whatever suits you.

Remember, you still do not have enough blood flow to your logical brain so your brain cannot handle more than one or two tasks. Don't set goals, don't pressurize yourself. Just hang out with your task and try to create a relationship with it.

3. Join a community

(Utilize The Power of Collective Humanity)

Next, you'll need to join a community. A community is always helpful. You get to meet a lot of people dealing with similar challenges like yours. You also meet people who have survived similar situations. You'll get to talk to them, you'll get to listen to them. They'll empathize with your pain. And, most importantly they'll recognize your achievements. Also, when we are around people who support us we feel more protected. It is a good therapy for a PTSD challenger.

So, join a community that shares similar beliefs and interest. The community should be a physical community and not an online community.

4. Start a Venture

(Use your legs)

Starting a venture is more of an advanced stage and probably the most difficult one. Most of the challengers fail to nail this one. But, the fact is if you are able to execute stage 4 you'll never look back. It's like a reward to yourself, it's a gift from the Universe. So, you have to start a venture.

Now, what is venture? Anything that is dedicated to a purpose and requires consistent engagement is a venture. If someone has a family he is a member of a venture, if someone works for a company then he is a member of a venture if someone works for a nonprofit group he is a member of a venture. Now you also need to be a part of a venture.

Either join an existing venture or create a new one. It's the best way to attract gratitude which will bring you recognition and empowerment. And, empowerment is one of the best remedies for a post-trauma condition.

5. Keep the ball rolling

(Maintain Continuity)

Now, you have to maintain the continuity. It is said that most of the trauma challengers fail to stay active because they fail to continue the process. It's a secret how to keep the ball rolling.

a. You Need A Strong 'Why'- define a purpose of your life. It's a way to hack the rules of the Universe. As a human being, we tend to stay active if there are people depending on us. If you can convince yourself that there are a few people depending on you, you'll more likely to stay active than if not.

b. Create a Community of Yours- create a support group of your own. They'll keep you motivated and even help you to start a venture. Your community should contain a core and a buffer group to help you in different situations.

c. Establish your actions with rituals- you have to establish the activities I taught previously. Rituals are the best way to do that. A personal 'Mantra' or 'Japa' can help you. Even lighting up a candle can help you to continue your journey.

JUST BELIEVE IN YOURSELF

It's all about what you believe. A trauma has a two-way effect. It affects our physics and our psyche. We do not have much control over our physics but we can control our psyche. And, by controlling the psyche we can govern our physics to some extent. The goal of a PTSD-challenger should be to get full command over their psyche and guide their physics to recovery.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Stay-Active-After-PTSD---Overcome-Your-Post-Trauma-Predicament-in-5-Easy-Steps&id=9657279

Staring at Destiny

Do you gawk at accidents or find your attention transfixed at the horror of events on television? You're staring at someone's destiny as these events unfold before you. Do you stare at your own destiny? You can become so enmeshed in events that you actually begin to feel the pain of the victims or their families even though they are strangers. While compassion and empathy are desirable traits becoming entangled or mesmerized by others tragedies is not a habit you want to develop in your own life; it leaves you susceptible to staring at your own destiny.

How is this possible? When traumatic or painful events happen in life it is easy to stare transfixed at those events, your attention riveted to what has happened. Your mind is incredibly powerful. It records events with better clarity than the most powerful video equipment. Every sight, sound and sensory perception is recorded in minute detail. You have instant recall for every infinitesimal event. If you allow yourself to stare at them, to replay them like a favorite movie, the most powerful asset you have is being used to voluntarily induce pain and invite despair into your life.

Trauma does not travel alone. It gained directions into your life through your emotional attachment, either to a person or the outcome of an event. They are tough taskmasters; they enter your life without any introduction, usually hurtling through the door without knocking. Their travel bag is filled with things you never hoped to encounter. Rarely does trauma approach slowly, preferring to crash the gates and bash you unmercifully. These are intruders who refuse to leave until you talk them out the door. Trauma must talk, it is accustomed to being in command; its very presence is forceful. It is necessary to limit and then terminate the time you allow these uninvited guests to control your life, your future.

Why do you choose to devote such an enormous amount of your time to staring at events that are horrifically painful to you? Emotion is the chain that binds. Either you loved or you cared about the outcome. The lock on the chain is your unwillingness to look away, to let go. You imagine you can't let go because you've become attached to the pain. It happens through emotion. Letting go may mean you did not care, or the fear that something that hurt you was true causing you to constantly reexamine every event to know the truth. You become attached to pain because you believe it is all that is left of something that mattered a great deal.

Do you choose to stay there, captivated by a movie that is sure to cause you more pain, to rob you of your future? Looking at the past destroys opportunities for the future. You have to be willing to let go, to look forward to change your future. Whatever has captured your mind, whatever you are looking at is your destiny. Look at what you want.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Staring-at-Destiny&id=9591117

A Key To Healing Trauma

What do world-class-athletes and special-forces combat soldiers have in common? They both perform, very well, under high stress and pressure, what might for us be a traumatic experience. How do they do that? It is the very same process used as the key ingredient in healing trauma.

To understand how some people can perform so well under acute stress and almost unbearable pressure, without becoming traumatized, and how people heal from trauma, we need to understand a little bit about how our brain works. Without getting overly technical, there are two pertinent functions of the brain involved, our executive functions, and our emotions. The executive functions, such as rational thinking and planning are referred to as higher brain functions. Our emotions, such as feelings of joy, and fear, are more basic brain functions. When we are in high stress situations, we are often frightened. The more basic brain functions, primary of which is survival, become highly activated and over-ride our higher brain functions. This is a basic neurological wiring for survival. When we are in situation of perceived danger or very high stress, we don't think, we automatically react with what is called the 'fight or flight' response. If we cannot fight, and cannot flee, we are trapped, stuck, frozen. And that then becomes the trauma. Being stuck, frozen, for an extended period of time; not being able to fight or flee, not being able to act, in a high stress, dangerous, painful, scary, situation, is a traumatic event.

When in this traumatic situation of being stuck, trapped, frozen, unable to think or plan, and at the mercy of our emotional brain centers, our higher brain functions are actually shut down, offline, not available. It is as if our emotional brain has hijacked our higher brain, kind of like a classroom of unruly kids taking over and disallowing the teacher from performing their assigned duties. But, those unruly kids are being told there is a crisis! Because our higher brain functions have to do with planning, when they are shut down, we don't have a sense of past or future. We are in the immediate present, which in a traumatic situation, is scary, frightening and may be painful. So, any time we remember this traumatic situation, even months, or years, after it has happened, our higher brain function shuts down again, goes offline, and we believe the stress and danger is real, right now. The brain does not distinguish between memory and fantasy. It is visual imagery, rapid commentary, and complex changes in breathing, skin response, neuro-chemistry and awareness. The brain does want to resolve this trauma, and so we do have intrusive thoughts, memories, flashbacks, in an attempt to help us get unfrozen, to fight, or flee, or do something. But, what happens is we just get re-traumatized because there is nothing to fight, and no-where-to-flee; We are again stuck, traumatized. What if we could maintain our higher brain functions even in high stress? Even in neutralizing the trauma?

How do we get back our higher brain functions? How can we reinstate our executive functions? How can we think, clearly, and know that the trauma is not now, is not a threat or a danger anymore? There are two points to consider along these lines. One, as mentioned in Waking The Tiger, by Peter A. Levine, a classic book in the field of sexual abuse and trauma recovery, is learning how to 'shake it off.' Animals in the wild, pursued by a predator, and escaping, are not traumatized the next day, or next month, or next year. Somehow, they shake it off. Exercise, vigorous and demanding, is a way of shaking it off. There is an interesting proximity to the word 'exercise' and 'exorcise.' We need to exorcise the build-up of stress chemicals in the body which have had no outlet, no opportunity to fight, or flee, and exercise is a good way of doing that. The other helpful approach is learning how to relax the body. In a relaxed body, the higher brain functions are much less susceptible to being hijacked by the emotions. A lot of trauma therapy is based on pairing a relaxed state of body, and mind, with exposure to traumatic memories. This can result in the executive functioning of the brain, distinguishing between past, present and future, between seeing, and feeling, the trauma as something in the past, not the present; and that goes a long way in diminishing symptoms. The trauma itself is now seen as a historical event, one which does not pose a threat to the present. This is the key in healing trauma. It's not a trauma anymore. We need to relax before we can make the distinction between then and now.

We generally don't know how to relax the body well. It is something we need to learn how to do. By taking proactive steps in learning how to relax the body before a stressful situation, we are more likely to be the executive than the unruly child in that stressful situation, which itself can be an effective prophylactic to trauma.

http://ezinearticles.com/?A-Key-To-Healing-Trauma&id=9514495

Celebrating the Life You Lost

Suffering through the trauma of a miscarriage can be extremely heart-wrenching. It will take you on a plethora of emotions. Sometimes those emotions will carry you as high as Mount Everest or as low as hell. Those emotions usually come back to back carrying you on waves. You will feel as if you are going crazy and sometimes you will feel as if you have completely lost it. The best I can tell you is to ride it out. Yes, just like actual waves, you have got to ride out those emotions. Of course, I will not recommend that you ride it out alone. Before I continue, please do not blame yourself for the loss. It was not your fault and even if you did do something that caused the loss, it is still not your fault. Do not blame yourself under any circumstances.

Because I know that you will blame yourself, please seek help and professional, qualified help is always best. Feel justified in changing Therapists if you are not receiving the support that you need. Please note that your friends and close family, no matter how well-meaning, they are not equipped to handle what you are going through. Especially more so if they have suffered a similar loss, they may not have dealt with their pain and instead have opted to bury the pain and expect you to do the same. So they may not understand what you are going on about.

When you get that kind of insensitive response, understand that you have to put your well-being first and step away from that relationship. You may have to sever that relationship which will add to the pain you are already going through. As a result you may now feel bitterness towards that person because now you have to deal with more pain, but it is better to see the truth about that friendship now. Hopefully, your partner will be there for you. But if not, it is even more important for you to seek professional help. Whatever your situation maybe, do not go it alone. You need support.

Support can also be in the form of books written on the topic of miscarriage written by women who have gone through that heart-breaking, heart-wrenching, soul-gutting experience. Find support groups online or off-line that will give you the forum to be open, to cry, to vent, to be angry, to heal and to even offer support to others who are in the beginning stages of their pain. Within those groups you will find healing, you will find purpose, you will find strength.

As you step into healing, you will start to find ways that you can honour the child that you lost. I call it, "Celebrating the Life You Lost". Just like everything else in life, using that life to serve a purpose may or can help you to heal stronger. Of course, there is nothing that can replace that precious life and nothing will make that loss feel better. However, you can name that child, give him/her an identity.

You can start a Healing Center for Women who do not have the resources to help them through the process of the loss. They may not have the medical resources and or the finances to afford those medical resources. You can use that experience to help you to reach out to other women who are at a loss on how to deal with the waves upon waves of pain that they are bound to feel. You may have not received the support you needed, but now you know what is needed and you can now use your time and life to give that to other women.

When you can find a purpose born out of that loss it will make that loss not feel in vain. You will be able to find added strength and be able to infuse that strength and love into other women and even the fathers who are also suffering the loss. Help those fathers feel okay in feeling and showing their emotions and help them through the fear of having that situation happen all over again.

Celebrate the life you lost in whatever way that feels true, healing and authentic for you. You will never get over that loss, but you can and will get to a point where the pain is not suffocating and overwhelming you. Every birthday, every anniversary of the loss will be a reminder, but if you celebrate that life and use that beautiful life to serve a purpose in helping others get through their loss, then it won't feel like a loss anymore. It will simple feel like a celebration of life.

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