There is only one decision you need to make;

either you are working at your Freedom,

or you have accepted your Bondage.

Robert Adams

May 2010 bring you all you need to support you in your healing journey.

Warmly,

Gloria

If you bring forth that which is within you,

then that which is within you will be your salvation.

If you do not bring forth that which is within you,

then that which is within you will destroy you.

The Gnostic Gospels

For example, take the parents’s need for respect, where the child learns not to say anything negative to the parent or assert their person and talk back to them, in order for their parent’s need for respect to be fulfilled.   Or when the parent needs the child to grow up too fast, and become adult like long before they are developmentally ready to do so.  This, so the parent can have their need to be cared for fulfilled.  In these ways the child begins to act in ways that are not authentic to themself, but rather in ways they sense on some level are expected by the parent.  They realize being loved for who they are just isn’t going to happen.  That in fact, according to Janov, “it is hopeless”.  As a result, the child turns to repeating back their words to the parent and acting in ways that are not authentic to themself, and therefore not aligned with the reality of their own needs and desires.  In time, not being aligned with their own needs and desires becomes the child’s normal way of being.

If love existed in the life of the child, they would be able to be themself, as love is about letting someone be who they are.  It’s the hopelessness of never being loved for who they are that causes the psychological split in the child, between the authentic and inauthentic selves.   The child denies the realization that his own needs will never be filled by being who they are, no matter what they do.  Substitute needs develop as a result.  These substitute needs turn up as symptoms like nervousness, worries, fears, issues with self-confidence, self-sabotaging thinking patterns, obsessions and compulsions.  All outward signs of burried pain.  As the pain accumulates within, repression builds in its own quiet way.   When the child is thoroughly repressed, they lose touch with who they are.  Humans, being the adaptive creatures that we are, find ways to adapt to the pain inside, and go on.  But the pain is still there, and it doesn’t go away as we grow up.  Do you see where this is heading?  The repressed pain that results from not being loved in a way that meets our needs growing up stays with us as an imprint that gets stored in the cells of the body.   In time, depending on circumstance, the child, or youth, or adult  find their own way(s) of coping with the pain, which can include one or more of the addictive behaviours.  In too many cases, making the choice to resolve an immediate condition like pain in the short-term, can lead to the development of a full blown illness in the long-term.  Over time, unmet needs and the pain inside that follows, can mark the birth of addiction.

Please note this post is not about blaming our parents for not giving us what we needed growing up.   Parenting philosophies and practices of their day were no doubt in the way of doing so, not to mention how well our grand parents raised our parents.   This post is more about continuing to cultivate an understanding of our psychological travels through life.  This, so we may recover and heal, and also, so love  may blossom in our hearts for ourselves, as well as for those we care about today.

“Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them.

Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it.

Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved, but hope for the patience to win my freedom.”

Rabindranath Tagore, Indian Poet/Saint

Ever wondered if there is anything you can do to grow out of the psychological conditions labelled ‘addict’ and ‘trauma survivor’?  Well, there are.  Eventhough each carry the burden of feeling trapped in a world of unending pain and suffering, each also hold the potential for relief and transformational change.  The question is how ready and how willing are you to do what you can do for yourself, right now, to move out from where you are and into a new condition of mind and body?  It’s a big question.  And for some one that rouses a genuine fear of the unknown.

What would happen if you stepped out of the warm emotional nest of an old identity, one you’ve been tending for a very long time, even if it’s been a painful one, and into an identity you’ve never experienced before?  What would happen to the comfort of the familiar pain?  Where would it go?  More importantly, how would you feel without it?  Exposed?  Frightened?  Relieved?  How would you identify yourself when the words ‘addict’ or ‘trauma survivor’ no longer apply?  Then what?  Who would you be then?

The good news is the movement out of a comfortable emotional nest of an old identity and into a new one is a natural process.  It can be a process that unfolds at a pace that is comfortable for you, where you can do what you need to do to take care of yourself, in the now, while you grow steadily into a new you.

What would this process look like?

• Creating safety and preventing relaspe, and getting clean time under your belt.  This lays the foundation for the emotional work you may know you need to do.
• Learning to regulate your emotional experience in order to be in control of it once again.  This will help you to feel safe through the healing process, and to prepare yourself for future emotional work.
• Creating a container for your felt experience through your body to learn to be in the present moment as it is, unfettered by wishful thinking about the past or future.  The present moment is your point of power for healing and forward movement.
• Enlisting the support of compassionate others who are both walking the same path as you, and who have walked this path before and  know the way through.

Together, this approach will meet  you where you’re at to enhance your power to change by working with, and not against, your natural healing instincts.  It will help you to grow into the person you already know you are deep inside.  Stay tuned for details about an innovative new program being designed to support you through this life enhancing process.

Dr. Gabor Mate, a physician working with people struggling to live with and overcome alcohol and drug addiction on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, an area in the poorest postal code in Canada, writes in his very very good book “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts:  Close Encounters with Addiction”, that ‘Addictions always originate in pain, whether felt openly or hidden in the unconscious.  They are emotional anesthetics.’  He goes on to say ’Not all addictions are rooted in trauma, but I do believe they can all be traced to painful experience.  A hurt is at the centre of all addictive behaviours.’

Through chronic addictive behaviour, over time the unhealed hurt can lead to things like arrested emotional development, arrested vocational development and its tethering to underachievement and  underearning, fragmented relationships, impaired health and well-being, spiritual disconnection from self and the world around them.  It can lead to acting out the unhealed hurt through violence toward self, other, or community property, which  can lead to jail time and loss of freedom.  It can lead to the loss of time, and with it the loss of opportunities to cultivate a life worth living.  Addiction devastates and destroys life in those who seek it, and in those who love the ones that do.  How many of us are not touched by the life of someone who is engaged in addictive behaviour?  Has such a behaviour taken hold in yours?

In our next post we’ll take a look at what can be done to heal the hurt that leads to the development of addiction.  In the meantime, take care and stay safe.  As always, we welcome your thoughts below.

What can make matters even more confusing to the trauma survivor is our society perpetuates old misinformation about what trauma is.  It contains a number of misleading beliefs that can barrier you from getting the help you need to move on emotionally to live a fuller richer life.

Here are a number of misconceptions about trauma that our society holds true:  

• You cannot recover from a traumatic life event.
• You need to abstain from an addictive substance or behaviour before you can begin to deal with trauma.
• Your body needs to be in danger from someone, or something, in order for the event to be considered a traumatic event. 
• You are responsible for the traumatic event(s) that you’ve experienced.  It’s your fault.

Do you believe any of these myths about trauma are true?  Are any of these myths in the way of you getting the help you may need to heal?  For instance, do you believe you cannot recover?  Do you believe you will be living in the same frightening state of mind forever?  In the relm of psychological healing, our beliefs hold the potential to pave the way to the coveted state of well-being, or on the contrary, keep us locked in a painful and constricted psychological reality.  The truth is, you can recover.  Many people have done so before you.  As long as you are breathing, there is hope.  And, depending on your circumstance, the healing process can begin while you are still engaged in an addictive behaviour.  You don’t have to stop the addictive behaviour before the trauma work can begin.  The two can be looked at at the same time.   

Furthermore, trauma is actually a psychological experience of an event where any visual harm to your body may, or may not, have occured.  Consider mental and emotional abuse for example.  While you cannot see its effects on the body, you sure can feel its effects in your soul.  It’s your subjective experience of an event that defines it as a traumatic one, not whether or not there are bruises on your body.  And if there are bruises on your body and your gut is telling you you’ve been traumatized . . . you have.  You are not responsible for the traumatizing action(s) of another.  Ever.

You might want to pause here for a moment and . . . take a big breath in . . . hold it in for a moment . . . and  e-x-h-a-l-e   d-e-e-p-l-y . . . before we move on.  Now that a number myths about trauma have been clarified, what’s next?  One option could be to allow yourself to search out the kind of support that would be meaningful to you at this time in your life.  This could include finding a competent therapist who is trained in trauma to help you navigate your way across these potentially stormy emotional seas.  It could also include finding a skilled Yoga teacher who understands the healing process who would provide you with a safe emotional  environment where you could self-explore and resolve long held memories from the past.  The point is to consider getting the help you need when you need it.

One final note before we say good-bye.  Our mission here at psychologicalhealingandyoga.com is to support you in healing the effects of trauma and addiction.  As time goes on there’ll be ’home grown’ products and services available through this venue designed with you in mind, to enhance your power to change.  They’ll be created from only the best cutting edge information from the fields of trauma, addiction recovery and Yoga, and will include skilled and innovative support to help you make your way through an emotionally challenging period in your life.  To learn more about our developing work, stay tuned for future NEWS updates.  In the meantime, take care and stay safe.  As always, I welcome your thoughts below.

One way of liberating feelings from our bodies can be through the practice of Yoga. It works in a way traditional talk therapy doesn’t, through bypassing the thinking mind and accessing the body directly where feelings are stored. It is a safe, gentle and effective way of allowing our feelings to emerge in the present moment, being with them there, and holding this experience as a pathway to liberating them from our bodies (and by extension our minds, as the two are intimately connected). For those of us who feel the need to share our experience, talk therapy provides a wonderful environment for sharing the experience of what coms up as we allow the healing process to unfold. It too is safe, gentle and effective.  Each method will usher the willing participant into the heart of healing, and as a result, an enhanced state of well-being.

I’m in the process of writing a document called ‘Ten Secrets to Psychological Healing’. It will be available soon to those of you who elect to subscribe to the site.

Some Buddhists call it ‘mindfulness’, paying attention to the moment on purpose, and without judgement. 

Some trauma experts refer to it as the path of awareness, that brings the survivor to the painful truth of their experience.

And then there are those in the recovery community who refer to it as ’radical honesty’, the practice of being present to the experience of dishonesty, when it comes to healing from destructive and addictive behaviours.

Whatever it is called, it serves a similar purpose.  It serves as an opening to the potential for a new tomorrow.  Radical honesty, mindfulness, bare attention, the path of awareness, are portals out of personal suffering.  If you can be here now, and bare what it is you find there, then you’re on your way to a more peaceful and clear sighted tomorrow.   Are you?