Life can be fun if you let go of the seriousness, the shoulds and have tos.You can still achieve your tasks, but in a more relaxed way. Take the time to smell the roses, to notice the leaves moving on the trees, to be present to the sun on your skin and the feel of the wind in your hair. Be in the present moment and allow what is to be felt, enjoyed and valued.
Too few of you value or even notice the simple pleasures in life. You are rushing from one man-made construction to the next, one scheduled event to the next. You push yourselves way too hard and are then depleted energy wise, with no reserves left to go play and have fun. So you collapse in front of the TV or numb out on your electronic devices, passing time in a way that while acceptable to you is really a dull version of what is possible if you met with people face to face.
Meeting face to face, in person, allows true connection and touch, a warm hug, a laugh and genuine smile, a gladness for your existence and theirs. It enables your hearts to connect and open and for love to flow. You may just go for a walk or sit and talk, it doesn’t have to be an expensive or fancy activity. Just being together can be fun and it is this connection that most of you crave.
Many people are very lonely. They sit alone at home and feel sad, unloved, bored and uninspired. They could do anything with their time, but they don’t know what to do, so they do nothing and then feel even more blue. Make the most of your days. Reach out to others and connect. Call a friend, see if someone is available for coffee. Your to do list can wait. You are allowed to have some time off. You deserve it, you are worthy of it, and you can have it. You just have to choose.
Go the museum, the zoo, the theatre, there are a thousand things you can do, just choose. Make a list of things you would like to try and do them one by one.It can be easy and fun. It doesn’t have to be complicated. You can choose to enjoy life and have fun each and every day. It is up to you.
The baggage and habits that hold you back, that keep you stuck in the same old space, won’t disappear over night, but it will get easier each step you take. Take those steps, take that leap of faith and trust life to bring you all you need to survive, to serve, to thrive, for life can be fun, you just have to let it be so. Alter your thinking and actions and have fun. It is so good to do.
When you have fun your heart smiles, chemical endorphins are released in your body and your body feels better, healthier, happier. Fun is good medicine. Have some today and every day!!! Take the pressure off of yourself and live a simpler life, where you value yourself and others, where you connect more deeply, where you love each other and are there for each other.
Enjoy life more and thrive. Let the good life in. It is always good, it is just our thinking that makes it seem otherwise.Challenges come and challenges go. These help us evolve and awaken to love, to life lived as a vessel of love, being of service to all. It takes time to heal and release your past hurts, your conditioning, but it is worth the effort. It truly is. Having fun can be easy when your body and mind is at peace, relaxed and present in the moment.
When your body is tense, stressed, or traumatised it is harder to be in the present moment. Part of your energy is tied up in the past, in worry or anxiety, in fear and frustration. You can release this underlying tension and discomfort quite easily using Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE). TRE is your body’s natural mechanism for shaking out tension, stress and trauma. When your body and nervous system relax back out of fight, flight, freeze into relaxation it is much easier to enjoy life and have fun as your body is open to it. It feels safe to relax and play, to interact with others and to enjoy life.
Take action to resolve your past hurts and conditioning, so you can have that inner freedom and peace, that natural joy. You will reach that space in time, for that is what the process of life is, a cleansing of the heart to enable evolution, raising of consciousness, and becoming the embodiment of love – to vibrate at that frequency consistently and manifest Heaven on Earth. It can be done. It will be done. You will see and soon. So be it. Amen.
Some are and some are close, still maintaining a heart to heart connection between family members. In today’s world people are very busy, achieving, being better than others, obtaining things / material objects. These advances in gadgets, in stuff, are valued more highly than taking the time to BE, to connect with friends and family in real life. It is quicker, easier, more hassle free to just connect on social media and keep your physical distance, to have space for self, to rest and recover after working hard all day or facing your own emotional turmoil.
We are here on the planet to go through our awakening and this requires events to hapen to get us to stop and rethink our choices. It requires events that totally alter what we see as important and valuable in life, that is why the tragedies occur, the near death accidents or illnesses, the loss of relationships, family members or careers, the bankruptcy and crime. It all occurs to get us to stop and feel.
While we are busy living normal life we are often on autopilot, we go about our days the same way, over and over. It is comfortable, relatively easy, we don’t have to expend too much energy. Our comfort zone is stretched if we are asked to do much more and we may resist by shutting out that person and their demands or whatever it is that is asking us to stretch. It is easy to get lazy, to just rest and watch TV, to cuddle your pets or children or partner and to switch off from what is occurring to everyone else and the larger world. This is not callous, not personal, it is just human nature, to care for those you hold dearest and to draw a boundary around them and your way of being and to keep that safe, happy and easy.
Anyone wanting to come into your space may find it hard, if your boundaries are very strong. You simply don’t let them in, there is no time available for catching up or getting to know each other. No time for interaction. This is not necessarily a personal rejection, it is just that the person or people inside the circle are contented with their lives as they are and do not see the need to let anyone else in.
This may change in time, they may become more open and available, a career change, a new child, a special event, starting a hobby, or a loss of some kind may lead them to open the door a little wider. Their circumstances may change and they may need more people to help them, if someone was ill, if there was a new child or if their was unexpected loss in some way, whether that be a death of a loved one, loss of a job, crime and loss of posessions or finances. These losses occur to get people to open up, to step out of their comfort zone and to expand their consciousness. These life changing events kick-start the next phase of your evolutionary growth. They are meant to occur and they serve us. They shake us up and get us moving again.
If you are upset that people will not let you in, that the door is closed, their boundaries too high, then look within yourself, look within and see why you are upset. You as an adult don’t need these people, you just want them. You can survive on your own. Any pain you are feeling is a trigger to heal that pain inside.
Many of us in childhood did not get our own needs met. We were left with an emotional deficit and we are hungry, starving for love and acceptance. We try to get it from many places and one of those is our families. We assume that they are our blood and we should be close, together, supporting each other. We should be happy, friendly and caring of each other. But this is just your thinking, your judgement.
You chose to incarnate into your specific family for a reason. If you chose a family that is disconnected, you did so for a reason. Perhaps you wanted to learn independence, self reliance and contentment outside of the family realm. If your family was all loving and kind and life was easy, you would not evolve at the rate you do when life is challenging. The challenges occur to help you go within and heal, to reconnect with your own divine nature and that of Source.
As you heal yourself you find that you don’t need love from others, you realise you are love, that is your true nature, and the nature of the Universe. We are surrounded by love and support all the time, but we don’t see it until we heal all the pain and trauma through which we view the world and those in it. We judge based on what is inside us. Each person, each family is doing exactly what they need for the evolution of its members. In time as they all heal and become one within themselves, love will flow freely throughout that family system. Until then there will be blockages, their will be conflict or separation.
You can’t force people to change, to heal, to let you in. What you can do is choose to love them anyway and to focus on healing your wounds and reconnecting to peace and love in your heart, so energetically love flows from you to everyone, instead of pain and judgement, shaming or blaming of those involved.
Try to be compassionate, try to accept that each is doing what they need to for their evolution and each is awakening at their own speed, evolution cannot occur over night, it takes time, lots of time and different people have different abilities to do so. We need to learn the skills to change our thinking patterns, our subconscious beliefs, our conditioning and emotional density. We need to learn how to take responsibility for our own lives and make the best out of what we have. We need to learn the power of gratitude and positive regard, seeing the best in things, as opposed to the worst.
Life truly can be Heaven on Earth if we do the work to heal ourselves. When we do so we make it easier for others to do the same. Energetically our freedom radiates out into the family system affecting others, making it easier for them to do the same. This is how we can help and make a difference – by loving everyone as they are and accepting their choices and journey. We can focus on our own healing and evolution and know that when everyone’s hearts open back up love will flow freely between us all and families will be more harmonious. This will all take time and we can’t force it.
Don’t torture yourself by judging your family. Heal yourself instead, enjoy your life as much as you can and the doors will open in time, allowing greater connection to those you love. First you do the work internally, energetically and then it manifests in the outer world. Choose peace and love – that is what the world needs and what you are craving. You have to give it to you. You have to heal your blocks to receiving and to letting people close.
When you are healed and energetically open people will come, some of your blood family and some your Soul family, those who resonate with you, love you and want to be with you. These are your true tribe or family. The ones you birthed into were just the catalysts for your evolution and growth. Know in your heart you are okay, you are loved and you are held dear by all who know you, it may not seem like it, but the love is there, just waiting for you to heal enough so you can feel it. May that day come soon. Blessed BE. Amen.
Yet another article with the science showing what survivors of child abuse have always known. Abuse in childhood leads to significant physical, emotional and mental difficulties in adulthood. The good news is that more and more people are recognising this and that we can’t simply “get over it”. Abuse changes the way a child reacts to stress and constant exposure leads to changes in the child’s DNA resulting in the ‘fight or flight’ system being always turned on. The ongoing, chronic stress unfortunately leads to inflammatory and immune responses that damage health as adults.
Joan Kaufman, director of the Child and Adolescent Research and Education (CARE) programme at the Yale School of Medicine, recently analysed DNA in the saliva of happy, healthy children, and of children who had been taken from abusive or neglectful parents. The children who’d experienced chronic childhood stress showed epigenetic changes in almost 3,000 sites on their DNA, and on all 23 chromosomes – altering how appropriately they would be able to respond to and rebound from future stressors.
Likewise, Seth Pollak, professor of psychology and director of the Child Emotion Research Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, uncovered startling genetic changes in children with a history of adversity and trauma. Pollak identified damage to a gene responsible for calming the stress response. This particular gene wasn’t working properly; the kids’ bodies weren’t able to reign in their heightened stress response. ‘A crucial set of brakes are off,’ says Pollak.
It is great that science is catching up. They are also recognising that there are many ways to heal which can help survivor’s bodies relax and not be in ‘fight or flight’ all the time.
Science tells us that biology does not have to be destiny. ACEs can last a lifetime, but they don’t have to. Just as physical wounds and bruises heal, just as we can regain our muscle tone, we can recover function in underconnected areas of the brain. If anything, that’s the most important take-away from ACE research: the brain and body are never static; they are always in the process of becoming and changing.
Even if we have been set on high-reactive mode for decades or a lifetime, we can still dial it down. We can respond to life’s inevitable stressors more appropriately and shift away from an overactive inflammatory response. We can become neurobiologically resilient. We can turn bad epigenetics into good epigenetics and rescue ourselves. We have the capacity, within ourselves, to create better health. We might call this brave undertaking ‘the neurobiology of awakening’.
Today, scientists recognise a range of promising approaches to help create new neurons (known as neurogenesis), make new synaptic connections between those neurons (known as synaptogenesis), promote new patterns of thoughts and reactions, bring underconnected areas of the brain back online – and reset our stress response so that we decrease the inflammation that makes us ill.
In the article they specifically mention ‘Meditation, mindfulness, neurofeedback, cognitive therapy, EMDR (eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing) therapy’ as some of the tools that can help survivor’s to calm their bodies and reprogram their minds.
I have found a wide range of techniques helpful including:
Energy and body work, such as crystal bed sessions or reiki, to help the body unlock and relax;
Psych-K or Lifeline Technique to release trauma and reprogram the subconscious mind so you can change negative beliefs about life and the world into positive ones e.g. so you are not always expecting the worst and you can start to feel safe, so you believe that you do deserve good things and that people can treat you well;
Mindfulness and meditation techniques to still the mind and create space to witness what is occurring instead of reacting automatically;
Skill development including thought stopping, boundary setting, inner child, and self love skills, so that you no longer allow yourself to be abused by others or by yourself;
Family Constellations to heal the trauma in the family system and reconnect with love, thereby allowing greater lifeforce and harmony within.
There is lots that can be done. While adverse childhood trauma does have a massive impact on your life, it can be healed.
In this short video Nadine Burke Harris explains how adverse childhood experiences impacts the health of the child and continues to do so over the lifetime of the person. She explains in scientific terms why this occurs and ways the impacts can be reduced. She believes that this is a public health issue and should be addressed as such with multidisciplinary teams available to help affected individuals to heal the trauma and reduce the impacts.
The pain is what leads to the growth. I know it is hard to accept, but without it people would simply live superficial, easy, materialistic lives. They would be caught up in seeking pleasure and never question the status quo.
It is the pain that makes people wake up. It is the pain that gets them to slow down and reflect on life. It is the pain that humbles them, brings them to their knees and gets them to accept they can’t do it on their own. It is the pain that leads them home to God, to peace and happiness. It is the pain that saves them and turns them to the light.
I know it is extremely hard and challenging when you have suffered severe pain and tragedy, when your emotions are spent and your body exhausted. I know it is devastating to see the suffering in the world, to feel the pain of all those around you, but it is the depth of suffering that will lead you to stand up and shine your light the brightest, to help reduce the suffering of others.
As each person comes out of their tunnel of darkness, they can show the way to others. They can stand in the face of the other’s pain and say “You can survive this. I am proof and I am here”. It is the pain that leads to your ability to overcome and to stand strong. It is the pain that teaches you to reach out for others to support you and help you through. It is the pain that brings you to your knees and then that enables you to empathise with other’s when they are on their knees.
You learn we are all the same, we all go through it, we all need help and support sometimes. You learn we are one, the Universal experience is that of pain and suffering and overcoming it and embracing the light. That is growth, that is evolution. There is no other way, no other way to achieve that depth of understanding and compassion. Each goes through it, each matures as a result of it and each gets stronger and shines their light more brightly because of it.
Each lifetime you explore a different aspect of life and round out your experiences. They do not all involve suffering, but some must for you to evolve and grow. You also have lifetimes full of pleasure and happiness. These are good, but slower in growth terms, as it is the challenges that lead to growth. It is those few key moments, where you get to choose to act or not act, to help or not help another, to choose love or fear – those key decisions and turning points, that life is all about. The day to day stuff is relatively unimportant and meaningless from an evolutionary point of view.
Without the catastrophes change would not occur. The Earth needs the earthquakes and volcanoes to make new land, to change what is. Floods and storms create the new on Earth. It all serves a purpose, it isn’t a catastrophe. Sometimes land needs to be split apart and what has grown there is wiped out and started again. that is life. Species die and are wiped out, pollution occurs. It is all part of it. We aren’t meant to live completely rosy lives full of health and happiness.
We are meant to face great challenges, to see if we rise up and behave greatly. We all face our demise with old age and have to surrender control as our bodies weaken and become frail. We are all humbled one way or another. We are all led to question life and why what happens does happen the way it does. We are all led to question God’s existence and whether we believe in him/her or not.
We are all led to the altar, but only some knock on the door, only some enter the kingdom, many turn away, many don’t knock out of fear or anger, pride or jealously. They don’t knock and therefore don’t get an answer. God is there waiting to answer their questions, but they have to ask. Without asking there is no call and therefore no response. It isn’t God’s fault we don’t ask, he is there encouraging us. But he waits patiently knowing everyone will knock eventually. It just takes time, different amounts of time for each to grow weary enough, that they gladly surrender and come home to his arms, his heart and choose to live in peace, accepting what is and flowing with life. While we still fight against what is, we are held separate from God’s love, wishing life was different or rebelling against it’s seeming unfairness.
Each person gets what they need for their evolution and growth.Yes it is hard, yes there is a great deal of pain and suffering, but it leads you home to the light in a way that cannot be obtained any other way.
Move through the pain to the light and you can help others learn how to do so too. You can help reduce the suffering in the world by guiding others through their tunnels of darkness in the quickest way possible, so they can enjoy life again and see the light.
You don’t have to stay trapped in darkness any longer. You see the door, walk through it into the light of day, of surrender to what is and living each day being grateful for what you do have and focusing on what is good in the world. Focus on the good and you will feel better. Be and spread love and you will feel better. Focus on the beauty of creation, of nature, of life and feel that in your heart. Fill your heart with love and joy by allowing that to be your experience of life. Do things that bring you joy, spend time wtih people who you love and feel love from. Focus on and multiply the good in your life and it will become your predominant experience of what is here on Earth.
You do not need to stay stuck in pain. The pain is just a stepping stone moving you towards the light. Take the leap and move forward into peace and joy and leave the past and suffering behind.
Focus on the now and all that is good in your life and the world. That is how you move out of pain and into peace. Feel what you need to feel then move on. Do the emotional release work and releasing your conditioning and mental programming. Release it and find peace. Clear our the trauma and tension from your body. You can use Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) to help you to do this, to activate your body’s natural, inbuilt mechanism for releasing stress, tension and trauma. Release these stuck energies and it’s easier to be in the now, to be present with others, to enojy life. Release it and move forward. You can do it and you can help many others to do it too.
You are each a role model for those around you. You are each a catalyst of growth for many. You have a greater influence than you realise. When you choose to shine your light, all those in your local vicinity receive a wave of higher vibration energy, which helps them to let go of their pain and move forward.
So your vibration helps to free them of their suffering, to loosen the grip on the ties that bind them, the inner knots and tangles inside, these slowly unwind, free up and you are helping them do it by shining your light. So realise that you serve many and your suffering has led you to this service, this gift of light that you give to others.
It does all serve a purpose, even if it appears random and senseless at first. Know you are loved and there is help all around you, waiting for you to let it in. Let the light in and choose peace, for you truly can have it when you let go of the past, your judgments on what is and flow with life. So be it. Amen.
If you were abused as a child, you were constantly told or shown that whatever you did was not good enough, not acceptable, basically wrong.
Even though the issue was really the emotional state of the parent / abuser, to you as the child, it would have seemed that you were the problem, that there was a fault, a flaw, an imperfection with you. You probably beat yourself up a lot, trying to work it out, “What exactly is it that is wrong with me?”.
An abuser is likely to have told you off for what you said, how you stood and looked at them, for being defiant or a smart ass, for talking back, and sometimes for simply breathing and being alive. In essence it felt like everything about you was wrong or not good enough, not acceptable or okay.
This sets up a pattern of self-loathing, even if you believe the abuser is full of shit, making it up, f*cked up. Even if you do place the blame on them, part of you still wonders “Am I to blame? Is something i’m doing provoking them? How can I change who I am to be less offensive?”
You certainly change who you are by watching carefully all that occurs, trying to make sense of a situation that does not make sense. You lose your innocence, your spontaneity and start becoming the watcher, the cautious one, the guarded and over protective one. In essence, you lose access to your soft, vulnerable, innocent self, your authentic self, as all these defense mechanisms kick in to protect you.
As a part of keeping yourself safe you will have developed a very strong inner Judge and Critic, who keep watch and tell you when you are doing something wrong. They become very strict monitoring your every move and they work with the inner Controller and Pusher to modify your behaviour and control your every move.
When this team of sub-personalities take over life can be very bleak. They push you to do what they think will protect you best. They watch you and criticise you first, before any one else gets a chance to, because then they can force you to modify your behaviour to be less susceptible to getting told off or abused from others. However, you are now being abused from within. There is no kindness, no rest, no fun, when this is the team controlling your ship. If these have become your dominant sub-personalities or primary selves, life becomes very painful indeed.
This inner team of voices hounds you, day in, day out, telling you what you could do better, how you should have behaved, or what you should have said. What you did do or say is never enough. It could always be better. This team thinks they are helping you avoid confrontation. They are in essence trying to help, but it is a painful process.
The habit of feeling wrong, bad, not good enough, can become so strong that you come to think of yourself as a bad person, an unworthy human being who doesn’t deserve to be alive. It is very cruel and unnecessary.
Once you are an adult and no longer in your abusive childhood home, you don’t need this barrage of judgement, criticism and control to continue, but it does until you learn how to switch it off. You do so by becoming aware of the patterns, listening for those inner voices and urges, and simply choosing to ignore them.
When the Judge comes in and says “That wasn’t good enough”, you can simply reply “I know I could have done better, but it was good enough”. When the Critic comes in and says “You are terrible, you should have …….”, you can simply say “I am no longer willing to put myself down. I am not listening to you”. As its voice ramps up, you can say “Look, I know you think you are helping me, but you are not. What I need now is for you to have a rest, a holiday, to go away and let me live in peace. I can handle it now. You have done a good job in the past. When I was in danger, you did keep me safe. But I am not in danger now and I need you to turn down the volume, so I can focus on enjoying life more and have more fun, friendships, inner peace and joy in my life. The war is over! You helped me survive it. But now it is a time of peace and you deserve to rest, to go on holiday, and to let other aspects of me come to the fore, to guide me in this phase of my life. Thank you for all that you have done, but it is time for a change of guard, a change to who is the dominant sub-personalities operating in my life. Please step back and let this change occur.”
When you can do this, have these inner conversations with those parts of yourself, they will listen. They will watch and test whether you mean it. They will observe whether or not you really are safe without their feedback and constant response. If they can see you truly are okay, then they will back off. It is not all of you beating yourself up. It is just these parts of you and they were doing it, trying to help you.
Likewise, the Pusher was trying to get you to do certain things to keep you safe, or to achieve certain things because then you might finally get the recognition you deserve, or break free from dependency on others through a successful career, financial independence. These parts of you were helping in the only way they knew how. They didn’t realise it harmed you or caused you pain. They simply didn’t notice that or felt it was a minor, acceptable outcome, for a higher good. Their focus was on the goal of keeping you safe, avoiding abuse, and therefore safe and isolated from other people, from your heart and the pain within it, and from all the softness of life. This was their job to keep you safe. They have worked hard, thank them and let them know the war is over. You have won, largely due to them.
Many of us have been free of our abusive childhood homes fro decades, yet we still act as if we are there, constantly looking out for danger, reacting in fight or flight and being wary of all that occurs around us. It is a painful way to be. We have to learn how to turn these defense mechanisms off, so we can finally relax and enjoy life. Talking to your sub-personalities, thanking them for how they have helped you and explaining what your new goals are and ways they could help you now, is a big part of this change.
Instead of telling you off all the time, the Critic can be asked to monitor when your body is getting tired and to let you know to rest. It can be asked to gently let you know when you are being too serious and you need to lighten up and have some fun. You give them a new job description, so to speak, so they can still serve you, but in ways that help you to achieve today’s goals.
You can ask the Pusher to help motivate you to exercise and eat well or to connect with others, instead of isolating yourself. You can ask the Judge to remind you when you are being unkind to yourself or others, or to alert you when there is an opportunity that would be beneficial to accept.
You ask this inner team to become your greatest supporters, to show their love for you, by helping you achieve today’s goals. The past is the past. You don’t need to live there any more. Time to upgrade your inner workings to reflect life now, and life now can be full of love, joy and connection.
One way I found extremely helpful to shift this patterning was Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE). These inner parts were still strong because of the stress, tension and trauma in my body. This tension led me to feel stuck, wound up, anxious, on edge, looking for danger, because my body was still braced against it. My body was sending signals to my brain that I wasn’t safe. Hence, those inner parts were sensing that they were still needed to protect me as it felt like I was in danger, when in reality there was no external threat just the inner pain still active inside.
TRE helps to discharge the tension, stress and trauma. It helps to complete the overwhelm and trauma activations from the past so that the nervous system and body calms back down, so that you come out of freeze, move back out of fight and flight, into a relaxed way of being. Bit by bit your body ‘shakes’ out the tension and calms down, so in time you do feel safe, you are able to relax and peacefully connect with others, knowing the past is over, gone and life can be different now.
When your body calms and feels safe the inner parts relax because they see that they are not needing to defend you or be on high alert. They too relax and this enables you to enjoy your now and meet people anew without the old threats interfering. It is well worth the work to heal so you can joyfully live in the now doing what you want without the old defense mechanisms activating. Blessed BE.
(For more on sub-personality theory, see Hal and Sidra Stone’s Voice Dialogue).
Emotional abuse is just as devastating as physical or sexual abuse. It damages the psyche and deeply affects a person’s self worth and feeling of safety. It leaves individuals afraid to interact with others and sets up a condemning pattern inside, where they repeat the abuse to themselves, by calling themselves less than loving names and treating themself in less than loving ways.
While devastating at any age, emotional abuse while a young child (0-6 years) of age is most damaging, as this is when children simply believe and absorb anything they are told. It goes straight into their subconscious programming and they are conditioned to act it out their whole life, unless they learn how to change their subconscious beliefs.
Such negative conditioning can have devastating affects throughout their life. If they are told they are ugly, unwanted, not needed, not liked, a failure, hopeless, that the problems others are facing is their fault, etc, then they will believe it and subconsciously they will play it out in their life – at school, at work, in relationships.
When things are going well the conditioning will cause them to act out and self sabotage. If on the brink of success, and the conditioning is that they are a failure, they will find it very uncomfortable to succeed. They will most likely fail shortly thereafter, if not before.
So they may get the promotion, but then find they can’t cope with the job or do something to cause themselves to be demoted – be late continuously, get sick, make a critical mistake or simply leave the job as they don’t enjoy it. This form of self sabotage happens unconsciously and repeatedly until it is changed.
If a child watched one parent being abused emotionally by the other, then the child learns that is how relationships are. They will accept poor treatment from others as they don’t realise that they deserve better or that there can be loving, safe interactions between people.
Worse, the parent who is constantly belittled is likely to withdraw from the child. They are likely to sink into depression, if not addiction, as a way to cope with their unhappy situation. The child therefore becomes neglected as well as suffering from witnessing and receiving the emotional abuse.
If the parent sinks far enough into depression and doesn’t have the strength to stand up for themselves or leave the relationship, then this destructive pattern can continue for years and usually does. A child in such a situation gives up hope. They may have tried really hard to be a good boy or girl, in an attempt to make things better. They may have tried helping out around the house to make life easier for the parent, and in an attempt to reduce the catalysts for fights. The child tries to be the peace keeper.
When that doesn’t work, they may try to rescue the parent, to help motivate them to leave or by standing up to the abusive one. But of course the child is a child acting like an adult, and the actual adult is stronger, more powerful, and can be vicious. The child is dependent on the abuser for their home, food and other necessities. It is a no win situation.
And in this situation the child has lost the ability to be a child and enjoy their childhood. their thoughts are not about their friends, toys, school, sport, playing games or having fun. Their thoughts are about survival and staying alive. Worse about keeping the depressed parent alive, if they have attempted suicide as a way to escape the abuse. The child becomes numb, simply going through the motions, withdrawn in a shell of self protection. Their life is a series of painful events, marked by even more painful events when the emotional abuser turns the focus on them, and lets rip with a torrent of cruel and mean statements about the child.
As the child grows they may come to hate the abusive parent, they may wishe they would die and even fantasise about hurting or killing the parent. This is just an attempt to gain back the power they have lost, to feel stronger, more independent, not so crushed. Few would actually act out such a fantasy.
Emotional abuse is just as devastating to a child as other forms of abuse. It sets up similar fear patterns, mistrust patterns and self loathing patterns. This damage will take years to heal. It will take many decades for the person to become fully aware of their conditioning, to feel and release the emotional pain, and balance backup to a state of self love.
They will have to learn to monitor and change their thoughts to more loving and supportive ones. They will need to change their subconscious beliefs, so that they do believe they are worthy of love, they are a worthwhile human being and they are deserving of good things.
It will take a lot of time to learn to be kind and loving to themselves. This softness will not be natural as they have grown up in harshness. So it will take time before softness feels safe and acceptable. Keep practicing until it does.
Harder still will be the ability to trust others. Mistrust will be so deep. Self protection and isolation so automatic, that it will take a lot of concerted effort to break free of it and be able to let people truly close and truly know them.
It will take a long time for the person to actually know themself – what they like to do, their interests and what is fun for them. At first this is such a foreign concept, as life has been about struggle, survival and avoiding further abuse. It hasn’t been about having fun or doing what they like. So they have to learn how to have fun, how to do a hobby and relax and enjoy it.
Their bodies are often armoured, hard with locked up muscles from keeping all the pain inside. The softness is buried beneath the armour and much work needs to be done to help the body relax and come out of its permanent state of fight, flight or freeze. The body is also likely to be exhausted from the constant stress, trauma, and lack of exercise, good food, etc. When locked in fear the breath often shallows, so the body does not get as much oxygen, it can’t digest and absorb the nutrients as well, and the adrenals get over worked and depleted, resulting in fatigue. Good diet, exercise, emotional release work and body work to help dissolve the armour and trauma all help.
Your nervious system which has been in constant fight, flight, freeze is wound up tight, constantly activated, pumping adrenaline and cortisol through your body, or if you feel there’s no hope and you’ve started to give up and shut down, then your body is pumped full of opioids to numb you.
A range of actions can help your nervous system to calm – deep breaths, time in nature, but most importantly Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) which activates the body’s natural stress, tension and trauma release mechanism, so that the body can complete the unfinished trauma reactions and return to its normal, calm state. It is well worth doing to help you find greater peace.
Once the nervous system calms and you are no longer in constant fight or flight, your mind will soften as your body will feel safer and your mind won’t feel a need to be so defensive, so your defences melt and you can open up to play, to softness, to enjoying life interacting with others.
There is much that can be done to heal from childhood emotional abuse, but it takes a lot of time and effort. If you are going through this process, be as kind to yourself as you can, understand that you are undoing a lifetime of conditioning and it will take time.Every step you take is helping. Every day it wil get a little bit better. If you feel discouraged seek help, join a support group, see a counselor, or start a fun activity to help balance up. Love yourself and your life will improve. It takes time, but it is well worth doing. Good luck, I know how hard the journey is. I also know it can be done. Blessed BE, Amen.
When someone has been raised in a violent, rage-filled home it is understandable that they automatically expect the worst to occur, because in their childhood home it did occur.Any small provocation could turn into World War 3, and as a result, the child learns to brace itself ready for what is to occur. The body goes into fight, flight or freeze ready to protect itself from the danger that was always present.
Even if the rage and terror only occurred occasionally, it is likely the child would be on high alert, as you never know what will trigger rage and horrible experience for them and the family. This fear of what may occur and usually does occur leads the child to not be able to relax and enjoy life.
Good events often turn bad or nasty once the drunk parent loses their temper, so having fun feels unsafe, dangerous to the child or doomed to end badly. This is why many children raised in alcoholic or drug-addicted homes don’t know how to have fun. They tend to isolate preferring to stay home or alone as this feels safer than risking interaction with others or having fun.
The reactions of children are not exaggerated. They respond to what occurs in their environment. If danger, violence, hurtful events occur often enough an association is built up in the brain that pain is what life is about. It becomes the dominant neural pathway and belief of the child, so naturally, they expect the worst and they do so because it often happened.
It is very hard to change this deep patterning of expecting the worst. It is not as simple as changing a thought. Every fibre of your being is used to violence, danger and preparing to protect itself. The terror, the helplessness and powerlessness of childhood abuse are catastrophic. A child in an abusive home will literally shut down, numb out, and fantasise leaving and having a better life.
The fantasy leads to resentment, shame, guilt and blame. It leads to more longing and feeling not good enough. Your family, yourself, your life are all judged as not good enough and as needing to change. This frustration at what is can become an explosive rage at the unfairness of life, of your experiences. You can then become violent, filled with hate and the cycle repeats. The child then grows into an adult with volatile tendencies and may become abusive to their families, existing and new. This is the repetitive nature of abuse in families.
The abuse comes from emotional pain that has not been dealt with. The sadness, the rage, the helplessness is all bottled up inside. If allowed out explosively it is destructive. If kept inside it is deadening, life becomes a numb, painful place where you just go through the motions, doing what you have to do, but not really feeling or enjoying anything very much.
Deep depression and sadness can occur as you realise how much you are missing out on, as you can’t shake off the doom and gloom and it feels like life never changes or improves. It can feel hopeless and people often wonder what is the point of going on. Here is the risk of suicide. Children who were abused can grow up feeling unloved, unwanted, unnecessary and feel like there is no point living, that no one would really miss them, etc. STOP! Stop this thinking. You are deeply loved, deeply, deeply loved, by God and many of the people around you, they just may not show it to you in the ways that you would like. Most parents do love their children, just their own emotional pain and addictions stop them being there for the child, stop them being tender and caring.
To stop expecting the worst to occur we have to learn to be kind and loving to ourself. We have to make the effort to do fun things and to enjoy life. Try out a hobby, a sport, an activity of some sort and find what makes your heart smile.
All the negative emotions and painful experiences will need to be released, so you can return back to a state of peace and calm. This will happen slowly and naturally. Don’t push it, force it, try to make it happen sooner. Remember to be kind to yourself in all you do.
When an emotion comes up, feel it, then let it go. Don’t hold onto it. Don’t go into judgement about it or the people involved in the remembered situation. Judgement just keeps you stuck, feeling justified in your pain and dysfunction. Judgement and blame are just ways to stay stuck in your head, ruminating over what occurred, instead of being in the present moment and listening to your heart.
When you have experienced deep pain and trauma your heart is often filled with such sadness that it is hard to feel it and sit with it. If you need help processing your emotions get it. You need a safe space in which to rest, to feel what needs to be felt and to release it safely – a counsellor, a friend, a family member, a space in nature that you connect with.
There are lots of ways to release the emotion – drawing it out, singing, running, crying, whatever works for you to shift it from locked inside your body, to being released outside of you. The concept of emotional transformation is to lovingly release what no longer serves you. You just feel it and breathe through it, until your body calms back down. You do this every time you are triggered and notice your body going into restriction, bracing itself for the worst to occur. You do this every time you feel the emotion from the past bubbling up to be released.
The more you clear out the old buried emotion and trauma, with love and kindness, you create a space for new energies to enter, for joy and peace to take hold, for love and kindness to become your dominant experience.
One way to help your body gently release all of the buried tension, trauma and stress is to use Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE), to activate the body’s natural healing mechanism.
Just as your body will automatically tense at the threat of danger, react with fight, flight or freeze, it also has a process for coming out of that reactive, hypervigilant state back into calm, peaceful relating.
The process the body uses to do this is called ‘tremoring’. It literally shakes out the stress and tension that has been stored in the muscles of the body so they can relax.
All of the fight, flight chemicals, such as adrenaline and cortisol get used up with the shaking. When we get triggered and our body wants to run away or fight back but we don’t do so, those chemicals stay in the body. It is these that add to the tense muscles, the contractions and shallowing of breath, the frozen states within us.
TRE is a gentle process enabling the body to heal itself, to unwind the tension and calm back down. Once you have learned how to do TRE you can use it at home for free whenever you want to calm your body and release daily stresses.
As you release the old energies you make way for new lighter energies to enter. This makes it easier for you to move forward, to try new things and not feel so threatened.
As you’ve got less pain inside your defence mechanisms start to soften, the self-protective processes aren’t as strong as your body is no longer signalling your brain that you’re in danger all the time. As the signals ease off your mind and body relax and you can see more clearly what is actually occurring around you.
When your body is full of trauma and pain you see through that lens and you see it outside of you, see the risk of pain everywhere. It’s not that the world is a horrible, dangerous place. It’s just that’s what you see because of the pain inside you. If you clear out the pain you can see the beauty and joy in the world more easily as your body now has room for these to enter.
If you’d like to learn more about TRE visit the TRE page of my website. It would be my honour to help you learn this life-changing process to help you calm your body and enjoy life more.
As your body becomes clearer you start to expect love and kindness, it becomes your new norm. First, it comes from how you treat yourself, then it will come from those around you – as like attracts like. Vibrationally those around you will mirror what is locked inside you.
You don’t ever need to accept poor treatment, just walk away, send love and know that it is not personal. Anyone who hurts another is in inner turmoil and is just as mean and cruel to themselves. Such people need love and acceptance, not judgement and rejection. It is okay if you can’t do this yet. If you feel you still need to defend or protect yourself from others and the outside world. Your defensive patterns and automatic reactions will soften as you heal, as you start to experience kindness and peace inside.
It does require a lot of self-love and self-kindness, which you may not be used to doing. You have to cultivate this habit, you do so by tuning into your body and what it is feeling and what it needs. If it needs to rest then rest. Don’t push through till you are absolutely exhausted. Rest. Be kind and tender to yourself. Become the loving parent you didn’t have – be that for yourself.
Learn to have fun, try things out. Don’t be surprised if you don’t feel much fun at first – you are used to social situations being challenging or threatening, so it is going to take some time for it to stop being the automatic reaction and for fun to take its place.Keep doing things and you will notice in time that you are relaxing, you are having fun, and all is well.
You don’t have to stay stuck in pain or isolation. This does not help you. It just avoids the work needing to be done to find freedom and peace. There is much you can do to change negative beliefs and programming so that you do expect good things from life and you do enjoy whatever you experience. These belief changes will help, but the trauma and pain need to be released too. You can try to think positively as much as you like, but if you haven’t done the deep healing work, you are just playing around the edges, like the tip of an iceberg. You can make the tip look nice, but there is still much more to be done underneath the surface.
The most important thing to realise is that your reaction of expecting the worst to occur is a normal, understandable reaction for someone who experienced constant or ongoing terror as a child. You couldn’t relax or enjoy life because of the abuse occurring, the rage-filled or drama-filled atmosphere of your childhood home. So your reaction is normal and it can be healed – it just takes time. So be kind to yourself as you go along the healing journey and don’t give up. With every step you take, every emotion you release, your life is getting better and better. Your vibration is rising as you have less emotional density locked inside and therefore you will attract differently.
It is a long journey and sometimes it feels ridiculously long and tedious, but it is a path you have to walk if your life started harshly. You can find your way to peace and happiness, it just takes time, self-love and peaceful thoughts. Do the work required and you will be rewarded with a much more peaceful experience of life. You can have a life filled with positive events and experiences, and as that becomes your normal day to day occurrence, you will learn to expect the best to occur each day and you manifest heaven on Earth. Remember it is possible. It just takes time and effort. You can do it. You deserve it and you can achieve it. Blessed BE. Amen.
In the first blog on this topic, we talked about the impacts of abuse and mentioned some tools for healing. In the second blog, we focused on the impact on your sexuality and ability to interact lovingly with others. In this third blog, we focus on the pain and releasing it from the cells of your body.
When great trauma occurs it is often too intense for the person to cope with. They escape it in some way. It may be by pushing the pain down in their body – swallowing it, holding it deep inside locked in the cells and muscles of the body. Others push it out, try to escape it by pushing it away, pretending it didn’t happen, not wanting it to touch them ever again. This keeps it in the person’s energy bodies and it does still affect them and touch them, just energetically. It is like the black cloud walking along behind or above them. Either way, the pain and trauma stays with you.
You can tell the trauma is still there by the bodily reactions when someone comes close to you.Do you react in fear? Does your breath stop or become shallow? Do you flinch? Do your muscles tighten? Do you try to shrink and become smaller to avoid their touch? Do you become angry and resentful? Do you puff up trying to become bigger to warn off the person and protect yourself?
Clearly, any of these reactions show that the body is not relaxed and at ease, the body is not feeling safe or trusting of other people. This shows the body is still locked into the trauma and is in a state of fear, not love, not peace, and certainly not joy. It can be. You just have to release the trauma out of the body.
The trauma is stored within the cells and muscles of your body. That’s why you get tight muscles. They’re literally frozen, tensed up in fear, ready to react to defend yourself, run away or freeze and be still so you hopefully can hide and not be seen.
It is exhausting for the body to be tense and on hyperalert so much. This tension and the trauma underneath it can be released out of the body so that your body relaxes and so that your mind doesn’t feel a need to be so defensive. Relaxing the body results in the mind softening and your defences melting. We literally thaw out the frozen parcels of trauma stored within the body so they can melt away.
One way to do this is through ‘tremoring’. Your body has an inbuilt shaking mechanism to help shift out the trauma and tension from your body. All mammals have it. The shaking uses up the adrenaline and cortisol, the fight or flight chemicals that were created in the life-threatening moment. If you couldn’t run away or fight back at the time, then these chemicals didn’t get used up. They stayed in your body resulting in the tension and clenched muscles.
Your body was primed, ready to fight or run, but it didn’t get to and afterwards the body didn’t relax fully. It still felt on edge, nervous, anxious, because these chemicals weren’t discharged. The trauma activation never got released. Later when we get triggered, when our body startles easily, is on edge, even if there is no real danger, it is because of these unfinished trauma activations.
You can use ‘Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) to help the body complete these activations, to use up the fight or flight chemicals through shaking, resulting in the body finally being able to relax, to know the war is over, that you survived and you’re okay.
TRE is a very simple process and once learned you can use it yourself forever for free, to release stress, tension and trauma. If you’d like to learn more about TRE click here to watch some videos or to book in an appointment in person or an appointment online to learn TRE. It is well worth doing so your body can finally relax.
Another important process for helping the body to relax and to complete the trauma stored within is inner child recovery work. When you get triggered or scared it is actually a younger part of you that is triggered and scared.
By becoming conscious of your bodily reactions it enables you to start self-soothing. You can tell yourself “You are safe, it’s okay I’m not in danger here”. You can self soothe by holding your own hand, so to speak, or lovingly stroking your arm or your hair. This calms the body, to know it is held and cared for. I have literally stroked my own hair at times of distress and it feels like a safe adult is brushing the hair of a vulnerable child, and this act of self-kindness leads to a softening of the emotion and relaxation back to peace.
Basically, you become the protective, loving parent of the scared child within you.There is literally a scared child inside you and an angry one and a mad, bad, stomp on all the bad guys one who wants to punish those that hurt people. These are the parts of you from the time that you were that age and experienced those things. You can easily access these inner children by closing your eyes and asking to see them.
At first, they may be hiding from you, you might just sense a closed door or a room of furniture with the inner child hiding behind the sofa, just peeking out at you. You need to win their trust, to have them feel you are safe, you will be there for them and they can tell you how they feel and what they need and you won’t reject or abandon them.
In time as you imagine sitting and talking with them, they will start to trust you and come closer, they will start to share their deepest secrets about what hurt them the most. Listen to them, reassure them you love them and that they were not at fault. It was not their fault if someone older sexually abused them or interfered with them. Many inner children may be confused. They may have allowed the contact to occur because the perpetrator was being nice to them, showing them love and tenderness when others weren’t. When it is a parent, step-parent, Uncle, Grandpa or family friend involved, it is extra confusing to the child as that person was known to them, was a safe space, but then all of a sudden wasn’t.
The child may not have thought what occurred was wrong, they may have thought it a game, only to find out later it was labelled as bad or sinful. There are lots of different scenarios.
The point is your inner child is likely to feel confused and until that is cleared up, they won’t feel comfortable trusting anyone else who enters your life. They will always be cautious and on guard, wondering if this new, supposedly safe person is going to one day hurt them like the family member did. Therefore, they don’t relax, they keep their guard up and stay alert for danger.
In this way, they refuse to let love in. Even if the other person is genuinely authentic in their caring for the person who has suffered abuse, it is difficult for the abused person to accept it, believe it or reciprocate it. This, of course, has detrimental effects on relationships and prevents true intimacy and the feeling of being loved for who you are. Without love coming in from within – to ourself, or from without – from others, our cup becomes empty and we can fall into despair, depression and feeling worthless, unloved, unwanted and think the world is a horrible place.
Yet the love and the light is there, good people are all around us, we just have to learn to let the love in, and to do so we need to allow ourselves to feel vulnerable, to take the risk to love and receive love, to surrender to life and its process of awakening.
While the inner child is still confused, scared, angry or ashamed this process is blocked or minimised, often to the point of almost complete annihilation. Anyone who dares to show you love or acceptance becomes seen as a threat, a bad person or foolish one because if they truly knew you, you think they shouldn’t love you, and hence if they do they must not be very wise, smart or worth much. So you judge them and push them away.
To stop such patterns you need to heal your heart, talk to your inner child, send it love. Any time you feel scared, know it is your inner child asking for reassurance, wanting to know you are aware of its concern, and you are taking care of the situation, that you will keep them safe and it’s okay for them to go play or have a nap. They may prefer to stay with you, clinging to the back of your leg, watching to make sure you do handle whatever interaction is occurring that has led to their nervousness.
In time, once they have seen you do handle it and keep them safe, then they will relax and go play, they will become a joyful, innocent child again and this frees you the Adult to also enjoy life again. Your body relaxes, so much so, that when someone approaches you, you do not react with fear or hesitation. You can welcome the person and interact joyfully, peacefully, light-heartedly. It takes a long time to reach this stage, but it is worth the effort.
All it takes is becoming conscious of your patterning and comforting your self, your inner child, becoming the good parent to it and guardian of it, and in time it will relax. Then the pleasure is amazing. You can stare at the leaves moving in the tree and feel transported into a magical place again, you can feel the awe and wonder that a little child feels for life. You can see the beauty and love all around you and you can let it in.
You can let yourself receive love and goodness and the Universe pours it into you. It always has been doing this, but our defences have stopped us receiving it. With those defences melted away, we can finally accept the goodness and allow ourselves to have a happy life, with friends, love and peace. It is wonderful to do so. Blessed BE. Amen.
Many people are very lonely. They sit alone at home and feel sad, unloved, bored and uninspired. They could do anything with their time, but they don’t know what to do, so they do nothing and then feel even more blue. Make the most of your days. Reach out to others and connect. Call a friend, see if someone is available for coffee. Your to do list can wait. You are allowed to have some time off. You deserve it, you are worthy of it, and you can have it. You just have to choose. 
