http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smjWQninbUY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8SclCQFh1Y
Month: December 2015
Healing from childhood sexual abuse (part two)
In the first blog on this topic we focused on the fact that a lot of healing is required to release the buried emotions and pain that result from childhood sexual abuse. We gave some advice on how to move through tough emotions that surface and demand our attention.
Today we talk about the wider implications. When one has been sexually abused as a child you can lose the sense that your body is precious and should be treated as such. You can forget that sexual intimacy is meant to be loving, kind and about connection with self, other and God. It is a sacred act resulting in union between man and woman. It results in conception, birth and parenthood. It is a sacred act necessary for the continuation of the species. It is meant to be enjoyable and safe.
For those who have been sexually abused as children sex does not feel sacred or safe – It can feel scary, dirty or carnal. The sacredness can be regained once healed, but for many who have suffered abuse sex feels like a threat, dangerous, or worse, meaningless – something you do just to please your partner or to get attention from another.
Many who have been abused as children continue to let themselves be abused by others. They don’t know how to set boundaries or say no. They don’t know that there is a choice to say no or that sex can be different to the physical act that they have experienced. It can become an addiction, a seductive tool used to get what you want in life. This really devalues your body as it is used by others. But someone who has been deeply hurt may be so numbed from their pain and hiding from their true feelings that they don’t even notice that they feel devalued, used, taken advantage of, etc. In essence they let the abuse continue, not knowing that they deserve better.
Some do the oposite. For some the abuse was so terrifying that they won’t let anyone close and sex becomes something that simply doesn’t happen as it feels too dangerous. In between these extremes is the person who can have sex with their partner, but may not feel much physically during the act, their mind wanders thinking of other things, so energetically they are not present or fully participating in the act – they have left in their minds to a safer place.
It takes much healing to get to the space where you can be fully present during sex, enjoy it and see it / feel it as a sacred process of surrender – allowing yourself to merge with your beloved partner and God. God is of course not involved in this, but the energy of union, of oneness, of love, is God and it is through the sexual act that we become most vulnerable and intertwined with another – we become one with them and therefore return in the moments of deep connection to Source, to our true state of oneness with all that is.
Another aspect of life affected by childhood sexual abuse is our self image of what it means to be a man or a woman. It will affect what we think about ourself, our worth, our appearance, our attitudes, etc. It shapes our view of the world to one that is less than loving and kind, less than supportive and caring. All of this has to be worked through as we learn to love ourselves and dress according to our personality or being. For many years a sufferer of childhood sexual abuse may dress as a tomboy to avoid feeling feminine or threatened by further abuse. Baggy clothes are common, trying to hide the fact they are a woman or young teen.
Of course those who have gone the opposite direction dress provocatively revealing their sexuality to all, showing they have power over others by alluring them. That is what the provocation is truly about. It is the person’s way to attempt to feel powerful, to have control over others. That way if they feel they are in control it is less scary than thinking others can control them. It is just a form of self defense.
Both responses are okay and understandable as a result of what they have been through. The goal however is to heal and find balance, where you can just be you and dress how you like because you want to – not because you are trying to prove anything to anyone else or to get approval.
When we heal fully we come to a place of self love and acceptance where it doesn’t matter what others think. When we are in this healthy place we can live our life doing what we want, being present to the moment and enjoying all that comes. We are not preoccupied with the past or the future. Our body is relaxed, not on guard, not scanning for danger or looking about needily or for protection. We are at ease, peace, trusting, flowing with life.
You can get to this stage and you will. All human beings will. It just takes time and effort – a willingness to keep dealing with whatever emotions surface and releasing them to the light, so that your body is ‘lighter’ and you do not feel so burdened, weighed down, heavy from it all – which is what depression is. It is a person feeling ‘de-pressed’ – pressed down by all the weight of their life, their stories of what has occurred to them and their fearful, angry, shameful reactions to it. “Depression” is calling you to “deep rest”. It is your body’s way of saying I need you to stop now, to feel and heal this, to let it go. Enough running, pushing it away, trying to pretend it isn’t real. Stop, feel and heal. REST then you can feel better, find peace and happiness. This is what is needed. You deserve it. You are allowed to have it and you have done nothing wrong. Any actions that you have taken resulted from your pain, your past experiences. You had no control over what occurred to you. You did your best to cope and live life. If you did some things you are not proud of, forgive yourself. Forgive and free yourself of any shame or guilt and choose to behave differently from now on. Know you did the best you could at the time. Let yourself off the hook and let yourself have fun and enjoy your life. You deserve to do so, to be free of the past and making the most of your now.
A big part of healing from sexual abuse is learning to trust another, to let a partner close to you – to be able to determine when it is safe to do so and the person is someone who is trustworthy, who will treat you well and who wants to be in a loving, intimate, connected, heart-felt relationship with you.
Recognise however that if you are not in such a relationship with yourself you are not likely to do so with a partner. Are you loving and supportive of yourself? Do you respect and treat yourself well? Do you lovingly speak to [yourself] and honour your own needs? If not, don’t expect a partner to do so. Their behaviour will reflect the way you treat yourself. If you treat yourself poorly you are role modelling to a partner that they can do so too.
Part of healing is learning to see the truth that people may treat you poorly if you let them, but as you heal and become more whole, you won’t attract that behaviour in. You simply wouldn’t get into the relationship as you would know deep in your core, your intuition and gut feelings, that that person is not suitable for you as a partner. But in order to access your knowingness, your intuition and gut feel you have to be connected to yourself, to listen to your feelings, and identify your needs. This requires learning to be fully grounded in your body, present within it. You can do this by simply closing your eyes and focusing on your breath in your belly. Get used to breathing deeply and witnessing your body’s reactions, practice feeling/listening to what is occurring inside you. Throughout the day notice whether you are in your body or if you have floated off into your mind or escaped into fantasy / left your body, so to speak.
There are many techniques you can use to help you settle back into your body. One that I use is Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE). It helps the nervous system to relax and unwind, so that the body drops out of hypervigilance, fight, flight, and freeze, so it can return to its normal relaxed state.
TRE is a simple set of exercises you can do on your own at home to start the body’s natural stress, tension and trauma release mechanism. We have an inbuilt mechanism to shake off all the tension and trauma. It uses up all the fight and flight chemicals, like cortisol and adrenaline, that get stored in the body every time we get triggered and don’t act.
If we did run or fight back these chemicals would get used up, but if we freeze or we push through forcing ourself to stay present in a situation where our body is uncomfortable and telling us to flee, then those fight/flight chemicals stay within, adding to the muscles clenching and tension patterns in our body.
Using TRE helps the body to relax, to let go of those patterns, to feel safer and more peaceful within. When that happens the mind also relaxes and our defences melt as the mind is no longer being sent danger signals by the body. It no longer senses threat at every corner.
There are other techniques you can use that also help the body to calm, such as spending time in nature, meditation, gentle exercise like yoga and much more.
Learning to be present to what is occurring in the moment and being grounded in your body is a major step in healing as you can then feel and process what needs to be let go of. When you are present in this way, you can get inner guidance as to what to do and how to improve your experience of life.
The answers are all within you. Your soul knows what you need to do and it will talk to you. Listen to your heart and follow its guidance. This is the goal to reach to live as happily ever after as possible. Healing from childhood sexual abuse takes time and effort, but it is worth it, to find the freedom and peace that awaits you when you heal. Blessed BE. Amen.
By Jodi-Anne (23 Oct 2015).
Here is the link to part 3 of how to heal from childhood sexual abuse.
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.
What is the point of life?
The point of life is to grow and enjoy yourself in the process, to open up to love and life fully embracing what comes, trusting it is helping you evolve into the healthiest and happiest version of yourself you can be.
Life is not about achievement of money, success, qualifications or possessions. It is about living authentically as yourself with an open heart. Do you stop to help the struggling stranger or do you rush by? Do you notice the beauty of nature and stop to smell the roses and watch the sunset? Do you make the time to connect deeply with those you love? Or does life keep passing you by as you rush from one thing to another? Do you eat as you go focussing more on completing your task, rather than nourishing your body? Do you even notice your body and its messages, the signs it gives you asking you to rest, slow down or have fun? Do you exercise it and pamper it? Do you show yourself and others love? These are all questions about life and the quality with which you live it.
Life is not meant to be a race with winners and losers. It is not meant to have classes or divisions between its inhabitants – you are all part of nature, all connected, so why fight each other? Do you realise that hurting others actually just hurts yourself? The point of life is to come to a place within yourself where you worship all of life, accepting it all as part of God’s plan and the unfolding, evolving, Universe.
It all happens perfectly. Tragedy invites us to feel deeply, to open our hearts and breathe through any emotional pain. It invites us to connect with others and support each other through it. It helps us evolve into more loving people, more compassionate to others, knowing what it is like to live through heart ache and loss, to have felt vulnerability and pain, to have been humbled by life events which show us how little control we really have. The point of life is live through these situations and embrace it all, the desired and undesired aspects. All of it is life, all of it happens as it needs to and we just respond, hopefully with love and grace, accepting what is. If not we get the chance to practice till we can.
There is no race, no grand prize or destination. The journey along the way is the prize, the enjoyment of heart-centred living is the gift and prize sought after by those who don’t yet know the ecstacy of feeling such peace and bliss in one’s body, the feeling of ease and flow. Everyone has it, but just may not notice it, as they rush through their day, pushing away their feelings and intuition. Many simply don’t listen as they sense it is too hard to change or feel what is inside, but doing so is the point of life. It is what we are here to do.
Don’t accept the unacceptable. A part of you dies inside when you do. It falls away, a part of your wholeness flakes off as you swallow your voice and don’t speak your truth, when you let someone treat you poorly or allow yourself to be walked over. It is time to find the courage to speak up and step up to say what you truly want and feel what you need to feel. It is time to fully be you and shine, that is the point of life and it is very good. It is all very good, so relax and enjoy it, as you grow fully into living from your heart and being authentically you in the world. Blessed BE. Amen.
By Jodi-Anne (17 Oct 2015).
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.
How to find freedom from the past?
Freedom from the past occurs when you are no longer affected by it, when you have processed all the emotions and judgements about it and can accept it peacefully as part of your process of evolution and becoming a light being filled with love and acceptance of all things.
In truth there is nothing wrong or bad, it is all helping you grow and evolve, moving you forth on the evolutionary scale. Those that experience the most traumatic starts to life are brave souls who have come to Earth determined to take a large evolutionary jump – doing in one lifetime what others may do in several.
When you look at the big picture like this, it can help release the ‘sting’ associated wtih painful events. You can look for the gift within them, the learning and skill development. Through the hardest things we learn h
ow strong we can be, we find strength we didn’t know we had. We might reach out to friends or God and allow deeper connection within and without. We may allow our vulnerability to show and surrender to the path. Our ego mind loosens its grip, knowing it can’t control anything. We learn to feel and connect with our hearts and in time to operate from the heart space, living as a being with integrated heart and mind – one who sees duality in the world and accepts it knowing it is just a teaching tool. Without up we wouldn’t know down. Without sadness we wouldn’t know joy or peace. We need the opposites to feel things. Without pain we wouldn’t know how good it feels to be at peace or to be loved. We need the opposite to enable us to grow. So see it from that perspective. It isn’t evil and dangerous. It is just people / souls playing a role you asked them to play to help you experience and grow in a particular way.
Life is like a movie with characters playing the parts required for your advancement. Just because they play the role of violent, addicted man or betraying partner, does not mean that is who they are. It is just one aspect of them, of their totality, and it is the part called forth this lifetime.
Everyone will experience all aspects of life. It is not a kaleidoscope of joyous events, getting happier and fluffier as you go. It is the opposite! As you advance you choose more challenging roles so you can see how far you have grown. You see whether or not you can choose love and peace in the midst of turmoil. You see whether you can be loving and happy, despite what is occurring around you and when people disappoint you or hurt you. You choose life plans that show how far you have come and how far you still have to go. So it is never going to be all roses and cups of tea. Life is meant to challenge you to help you grow, to move forward and evolve.
The thing is, as you evolve more and more, you become more peaceful and heart centred so even very challenging events can be moved through with ease and grace. You simply don’t react to them with judgement or strong emotion. You witness it, look at what is occurring within you, what is coming up to be processed inside, you do it and return to peace and balance. So even the big challenges only knock you off centre for a short time.
It is like a large wave on the ocean. It looks daunting when it is coming towards you, but if you just float and allow the wave to wash over you, it passes and you are are left in calm waters. That is what is occurring. You are learning to just ride the waves of life, rather than panic, fear them, fight against them or judge them. You are learning to just look at them, accept them and allow them to pass through. No resistance. No taking it personally or creating drama about it, no feeding the ego or victim mentality, no why me questioning. Just acceptance and flow with what is. Life will keep bringing you challenging events until you can ride the waves smoothly. Once you have mastered it, you no longer need the challenges to occur. Instead of just floating in the water, then you can play, surf, show others how to move from pain to peace and enjoy life.
Nothing is out to get you. Nothing is done to harm you or physically destroy you. It is all helping you evolve and grow. You are not your body or your mind, you are your soul and you will move from this lifetime to the next and experience a different aspect of life to master and grow from. This is just one movie in a library of thousands. As you start to truly understand and see the process unfolding the past does not bother you so much. You become immune to it, in the sense of seeing it as one little speck of dirt on a beautiful piece of furniture. You choose to see the beauty, the whole picture, not focus on the dirt or the little flaw in the wood. You see the magnificence of creation and give thanks for being a part of an expanding, evolving Universe reaching towards harmony and peace for all. You become a Wayshower, a Light Bearer demonstrating the process for others. And in time you may even become thankful for your past and those challenges that helped you grow and become all that you can be. This is freedom from the past. It no longer has a negative emotional charge, it no longer adversely affects you or your life experience. This is freedom from the past and how you achieve it. It is a long process from the perspective of a human wanting to be happy, but it is a quick process from the perspective of an evolving soul that lives for eternity. One lifetime, a 100 years, in amongst eternity. It is a gift to experience tragedy and grow through it. It won’t feel like that at first or for quite some time, but it will eventually feel that way.
May you find peace quickly and enjoy your journey as much as possible. Blessed BE. Amen.
By Jodi-Anne (08 Oct 2015).
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.
Epigenetics – explaining how we can inherit trauma and tendencies for anxiety and depression from earlier generations in our family.
Here is a great article explaining how our ancestor’s negative experiences affect their DNA expression, which can be inherited by future generations. For instance, if Grandma was raised in an abusive, alcoholic home or suffered some other trauma, some of that trauma and reactions to it can be passed onto future generations, predisposing them to becoming anxious or depressed.
What is the role of the inner child?
Each of you has your child-self inside you, the memories and feelings of what it was like at each age of your life. These memories and feelings still affect you today and can sabotage your life. If you are wanting to do something new, to take a risk and explore a new aspect of life, these younger parts of you may try to stop you if they don’t feel safe, if they remember taking risks before led to lots of pain or change = loss, heart break. In this sense they are trying to protect you and keep you safe. If you want to go ahead with your risk taking you will need to talk to and work with your inner child to reassure them that you are aware of the risk and you are taking steps to ensure it doesn’t go badly.
You literally can talk to, cuddle and hold your inner child. Close your eyes and feel them inside you. They may be hiding from view at first, but as you talk to them and try to connect with them they will come out from the shadows to talk to you. Ideally you want to build a healthy, loving relationship with your inner child. Check in with them daily, even if it is only a few minutes. See how they are feeling and ask them what they need. If you have been working really hard they may want you to rest and have some fun. You can visualise going to the partk with them and playing on the play equipment or having a picnic by the sea. There is no limit to this inner contact and its possibilities. As the child learns to trust you it will relax and play more on its own, not needing to interrupt your plans with its fear, concerns or anger. Ignoring your inner child is a recipe for disaster. It will throw a tantrum and cause you to behave in less than ideal ways. Better to meet your inner child’s needs first so this doesn’t occur.
My child was very scared and grumpy at first, feeling alone, neglected and abandoned. She wanted icecream and attention. She wanted to be heard and listened to as she told me all of the things I had done that hurt her. She then wanted the chance to dot he same with my parents and others whose actions had affected her. This can all be done through guided visualisations.
Basically your inner child wants you to become the good, attentive, loving parent to it. They may feel you didn’t receive enough love and attention when little and they want to receive that from you. If you give it they become contented, happy, joyful, playful and help you go through life seeing the beauty and innocence all around us.
Many of us had to grow up too quick. Many kids learn very young to shut off their childlikeness and innocence to focus on the needs of others – to watch out for danger in an abusive home or unsafe environment. Many end up taking care of their parent who may have been depressed, suicidal, or otherwise unavailable. Many kids become much older than their physical age by taking on some role in the family, it may be caring for siblings if the parents don’t do it. For whatever reasons, many people do not experience the beauty and innocence of childhood where life is all about exploring, learning, playing and having fun. Those inner children who missed out on that, who grew up too quick, may still be trying to control what happens to you, continuing to play the role of watcher, protector, guardian. They may be scanning for danger constantly or fearful of what might occur. They need you to take over, to be the adult, and to allow them to finally be a child and do age appropriate things. Then they can relax and play. They can open their hearts back up and have fun. They can let go of their grudges and resentments. As they heal we obtain the freedom to be more adult-like, to operate from the present, as oposed to being affected by the past.
The role of the inner child is to show us what we still need to heal and to help us return to our state of innocence and peace. They remind us how to live life in the moment in awe of the natural world around us. They remind us how to play, have fun, love unconditionally and just BE. They have a very important role in helping us return to health and wholeness. Love them, take time to be with them and your life will blossom, as you do so internally. Our inner children are very important and deserve to be rescued from the pain they have been trapped in for decades. Set them free and you also free yourself. Blessed BE, Amen.
By Jodi-Anne (22 Sept 2015).
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.
Insights into addiction – it is all about the pain
These are insightful videos by Gabor Mate who explains that emotional pain and trauma underlies addiction. He also explains how trauma/addictive tendencies get past on through the generations unintentionally when addiction affected parents are not able to be present and available to their kids.