Tag: conditioning

How to move through your deepest wounds and fears from childhood patterning?

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Healing from child abuse, Personal Development, Self help techniques, TRE - Tension & Trauma Release Exercises
girl in white long sleeve shirt and black skirt sitting on swing during day time
Photo by Skitterphoto on Pexels.com

(I asked this question and received the below answer via automatic writing 26 Nov 2021. Some of it is specific to me, but the guidance on the healing process is relevant to all so I thought I’d share it. I hope you find it useful.)

Your deepest wounds are those core hurts that you experienced as a child, those events and feelings that cut you like a knife and have been bleeding ever since. When wounded this deeply it affects your whole life. Part of you is frozen in pain, terror, rage, and fear. Part of you is stuck, trapped, hidden away and you spend a lot of your life force energy keeping it buried and building self-defence mechanisms to protect yourself from ever being hurt like that again. You live in fear of what could occur and pain from what did occur and there is little room left for joy, fun, friendship, love, trust, surrender and growth.

It takes a lot of courage to dismantle these defences, to open up to love, to live life with an open and unguarded heart, to return to your original state of innocence and joy. The vulnerability involved in risking exposure, connection, the possibility of more hurt, rejection, or loss can feel too much to give in to, to surrender and step into. This is why many people stay stuck their whole lives. They stay frozen internally, numbing their pain and the disconnection from their true self and heart with addictions and other distractions, such as keeping busy, fighting for some cause, working too much or being of service helping others while continuing to neglect their own needs. Sound familiar???

To move past this, to heal and relax and enjoy life there is no magic wand to cure it all. You have to shift it bit by bit, layer by layer, to release out the stuck, stagnant energy, to feel and release the emotions, to comfort and rescue the younger selves who went through it, to show them you have survived, you made it through and you’re doing okay. You have to start taking care of yourself, honouring your needs for rest, play, pleasure, connection with self, others and Earth. You need to make yourself your top priority, to eat well, exercise, have fun, rest and recreate.

You see healing occurs at the rate your body can process and integrate it. If you are pushing yourself too hard, if you are exhausted, empty, collapsing in overwhelm and despair or angry and rageful at feeling so bad despite all you do, if you are in one of these overactivated, exhausted scenarios then your body is not capable of processing and healing your deepest traumas. You simply don’t have the energy or internal strength to face, feel and release it.

So to heal your deepest wounds you really have to stop your overactive, distraction-filled lifestyle and create space and time for going within, connecting to your body, listening to its messages, feeling and breathing through the emotions, connecting with, supporting and nurturing your younger selves.

You know the techniques needed. You know how to guide yourself and others to do this release work. You just have to be patient and take it day by day, week by week, step by step. Your body lets up the residue it feels you are ready to process. It only lets it up when it feels you are capable of handling it. Otherwise, it stays locked in your cells, buried in your body, waiting for when you are ready. If you want to move through your deepest patterns you need to help your body to feel safe, to trust you are ready to handle it, to face it.

Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE) helps greatly here as it calms your nervous system out of fight, flight, and freeze back into calm, social engagement. It helps to release the stress, tension and trauma in a gentle way, shaking it out, releasing it so your body can relax, your mind can calm and your breathing can deepen. As you start to feel safer within it is easier to feel the emotions and clear them out as they no longer seem so big or intense.

Yes, it is challenging as deeper layers of conditioning surface and you reach your core wound, the one that hurt the most. Of course, it was this one that was buried the deepest and will be the last to surface before you breakthrough to a more peaceful life no longer affected so much by the past. Of course, it gets harder in some ways the more you heal. But even though the issue arising is harder you have the tools, the knowledge and skills to process it, to breathe through it and to integrate the shifts and changes.

So have faith it will shift. Keep tremoring, using your TRE and doing your embodiment practices, yoga, meditation, time in nature, time with friends, etc. Keep comforting your heart, body and younger selves when triggered. Keep doing what you are doing and face whatever arises knowing it is shifting out, that more and more of your body is clear from the pain, that there is less frozen energy inside, that your body is getting healthier each day as you drop out of fight, flight, freeze (sympathetic) survival mode and into rest, digest, repair (ventral vagal parasympathetic mode).

You are doing what needs to be done. You just need to be patient, to nurture yourself and rest, so your body can integrate the shifts. Stillness, rest is key, connecting with your body, feeling and releasing it all is key. You know what to do, it just takes longer than you would like, that’s all. Trust your process. You had a severe amount of childhood trauma to clear and it does take time and energy to move through it. This is your work for yourself and to assist others. You had to experience it fully, deeply to be able to understand what others go through to be able to help them process their hurts and come back to their authentic selves, their pure hearts, and a state of joy, with connection to self, others and Earth. It is all okay, all happening as it needs to. Trust your body and its wisdom. Keep doing what you are doing and celebrate the freedom and liberation you feel more of the time now. Celebrate the progress rather than be annoyed at the residue. You will clear it out. You will live your life more fully.

If you have suffered extreme wounding as a child healing becomes the major task of your life. It doesn’t matter what you had hoped to do in life. You have to surrender that and work with what is. You have to honour your body and meet its needs. You have to give to yourself what you missed out on so you do feel loved, heard, seen, accepted and cared for. That’s your job. That’s your purpose, to come back to wholeness and peace. The rest of life is superficial by comparison.

So don’t compare yourself to others. You have no choice in the sense that pain from childhood persists. It won’t stay buried. You have to feel and release it. You have to face it eventually. Most do they just need to learn the skills of how to heal, how to process it and shift it out of their bodies. This is where you excel and it is what you will do, teaching others for the rest of your life. You will love it and find it very rewarding. Blessed BE.

How do we heal from child abuse?

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Conscious Evolution, Healing from child abuse, Personal Development

This week I’m sharing a video on healing from child abuse, on the difficulties involved and the ways forward. It helps to know you’re not alone, to see your reactions and challenges are not abnormal, but a consequence of what you’ve experienced. All of your defence mechanisms and conditioning can be healed so you can enjoy life more, feel safe and live life happily and peacefully. It takes a lot of work but you can do it. I hope this video gives you insights into the process and the next best steps for you. Many blessings, Jodi-Anne

If you would prefer to read the blog the video is based on you can do so here.

Tension and Trauma Release Exercises helps hugely with this release of blocked, trapped energy within the body. TRE is a process that activates the body’s natural mechanism for releasing stress, tension and trauma. The body will systematically shake out the contractions and release the stiffness enabling the body to come back to life more, to move through the emotional residue and open back up to love, laughter and play.

As the buried tension and emotions are released the body starts to feel safer, no longer under threat as the old trauma activations are completed. The past is known as the past. It no longer feels like it could happen again at any moment. The hyper-vigilant defensiveness softens and the person is able to be in the now more fully, not distracted by the past or worrying about the future.

The safer the body feels, the more space there is to focus on what you actually want to do and be in life, instead of automatically reacting to triggers from the buried trauma and pain.

It is worth the effort to heal the trauma so you gain that freedom to be you, to enjoy your life and have fun. TRE is a great tool to help with this. With consistent use of TRE your body will slowly unwind the tension and trauma patterns so you can move forward. 

In this video, Jodi-Anne explores ‘How do we heal from child abuse?’ It is one of over 100 questions she has asked about life and channelled an answer through automatic writing. All of these answers to questions about life, how to live peacefully and happily are available for free on the ‘Life Insights‘ page of her website.

What does it mean to be free of the past?

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Healing from child abuse, Personal Development

Here’s a video exploring what it means to be free of the past, how you know when you’ve broken free of it and are no longer being affected by it so much. I hope you find it useful.

To be free of the past means to no longer be affected by it, which means you no longer think about it, cling to it, or be affected by it in your current day to day actions. It no longer informs your thinking, attitudes or expectations of what is to occur in the future.

To be free of the past means you are completely present to the moment, living now. Your energy is here now, not split between worry about the past and future, with only partial attention on the now.

When you are present now you can notice the signs and synchronicities that occur all around you, giving you feedback about how you are progressing in life and guiding you forward as to what to do next.

When you are present to life in the moment you notice your inner guidance, your intuition, and your body’s signals about what it wants from you. Your body will tell you what food is most beneficial to eat at each meal. If you are lacking a particular vitamin or amino acid you will get an inkling to eat a specific vegetable or meat if you need protein. Your body will tell you. You just have to be quiet enough in your mind to hear it.

Likewise, your body will tell you whether or not someone is being honest with you, or whether or not you should trust them. You will get messages to go certain places with no explanation of why. If you follow the inner advice you may be shocked that you bump into someone important to your goals at that place or find the perfect book to help you along your path.

Living in the now enables you to meet people a fresh – to not have tainted views of them based on past experiences. It means you can be friendly and kind to all with no baggage or preconceived notions of who they are.

There is much to gain from living in the now and breaking free of the past. But how do you do it? How do you let the past go? You do so with every breath, every thought, every action. You do so by paying attention to your now and calling your mind back to now whenever it wanders to the past or future. You do so as a loving discipline, centring yourself back to the now with your senses – focusing on what you see, feel, hear, taste and smell.

You can use Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) to help you to clear out the past energies, the tensions, stresses and traumas that have accumulated throughout your life and weigh you down.

It is these old stagnant energies that lead to our fears of events happening again. We still have the emotional pain inside and want to avoid feeling it again. It is all this past residue that keeps us away from living more fully in the moment.

TRE can help you to ‘shake out’ these old energies, thaw out any frozen shock and trauma so that you can finally discharge that energy, let it go and focus more on your now. When your body is more relaxed and feeling safer, it is easier for you to live life from a more joyful place, connecting with others and having fun.

Your interactions with people will feel more satisfying and fulfilling as you will be connecting more deeply, intimately, seeing into each other’s soul, your essence, rather than distracted, surface chit-chat. Such deep interactions fill your cup with love and attention – you feel seen, heard, valued, loved and this fills you up.

You no longer need to scream out for attention or to be heard. You are seen and heard, first by yourself, then others. So make the effort to be more in the now. You will be surprised how much more enjoyable the day is, how much less stressful it is, and how much more productive it is. Achieve one task at a time without pressuring yourself by worrying about getting it all done. One step at a time is enough.

You don’t need to see the whole path in front of you, just the next few steps. When driving at night the car’s headlights illuminate the way in front of us, but we can only see a short distance ahead. We drive on trusting the next part of the road will be illuminated when we approach it. We don’t waste energy worrying if the road is there or not. We trust it is.

Similarly, life leads us forth and we cannot get lost. The path we are to take is determined and we are guided to it. It is predestined, chosen before we birthed. It just plays out like a movie. We are the lead character and live through each scene, each chapter of our life. We are all held safe in God’s arms as we journey forth on this path of evolution and growth.

There are potholes and obstacles on the road, but we are guided around them. Sometimes one’s car breaks down and we have to rest and repair it. This is all part of life. Some journeys are long and tedious, some are short and joyful. You never know what is going to occur on each drive. It is part of the mystery and adventure. Even unexpected setbacks, accidents and tragedies are part of God’s plan, leading us forth, on this evolutionary journey.

Through pain, we wake up to what is truly important in life. We let go of the mundane, rat-race and focus on what we really care about, what we are passionate about and what makes our heart’s sing. Life is that journey to our singing hearts. Before the music is pitch-perfect we have to clear out the baggage of the past and be able to live in the now. It is worth the effort. Blessed BE. Amen.

In this video, Jodi-Anne explores ‘What does it mean to be free of the past?’ It is one of over 100 questions she has asked about life and channelled an answer through automatic writing. All of these answers to questions about life, how to live peacefully and happily are available for free on the ‘Life Insights’ page of her website.

How to accept divine timing and your growth rate?

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Conscious Evolution, Personal Development, Self help techniques

It is not up to you how fast growth occurs. It takes a lifetime to achieve the growth your soul has come to experience. Events will occur to create the shifts needed, for awareness to dawn and self love to occur. This will all happen at the destined time. You can not influence it. You think you can by going to that workshop, doing that healing, but we tell you it still occurs as needed. It is your soul guiding you forth. It is your soul giving you the urge to do the workshop or healing. It is all occurring as it needs to.

Let go of the judgement, the impatience and flow with the process, accept what comes and what goes. It is not up to you. People will come and go out of your life, behave in certain ways to trigger you. Everything that is needed for your growth will come, because it has to for you to evolve as needed this lifetime.

You can’t get it wrong or miss an important event or person. It will all occur as it needs to. You just judge it with your mind, assuming you should be doing more or be more advanced by now. There is no more advanced, there is no better than or worse than, don’t compare your self to others. Don’t assume how you should be is anything other than how you already are.

You humans make it so hard for yourselves. You are determined to see yourselves as not good enough, but this is just your thoughts, just your conditioning. Change it, so you are accepting of yourself, so you know you are exactly where and how you need to be right now, so you can be kind and loving to yourself. That is what is needed so you can enjoy the process more, so you can enjoy the journey.

You will get where you need to be regardless, but you affect your experience of it with your thoughts. You create suffering and angst with your thoughts and judgements.

If you’re struggling to cope with the stress of your daily life you can use a wide range of tools to help yourself release the stress, lighten up and enjoy life more. When you do this it is easier to accept what is, as it is no longer all consuming, all pervasive. the challenge is balanced by your doing more relaxing and enjoyable activities as well. Whether it’s time alone, time in nature or with friends, whether it is exercise, dance or doing something creative. Find what makes your heart sing, helps to cheer you up, refuel you so you can keep moving forward day by day. Do what you love and it makes it easier to bear nearly any circumstance you face.

If you’ve experienced heartbreak, trauma and loss that has devastated you then you may need a different kind of support. Whether that be guidance and support from a counsellor or use of embodiment activities like Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) to help you reconnect with your body, shift out the stress tension and trauma, so your body and nervous system calms and you can finally have peace within. There’s lots you can do to support yourself as you face whatever challenges life brings you.

Accept what is and flourish. Deny it and struggle. Rally against it and feel helpless, depressed or worse suicidal. Accept what is, knowing it will pass, that it is just a phase of growth and you will have peace. Accept yourself and your journey and you will have joy. Accept those around you and trust they are guided forth in their process, that they are all doing exactly what is needed for their evolution and growth, then you will have love overflowing in your life – from you to others and from others to you. Accept what is and have peace.

Foster greater acceptance and trust, faith that it will all work out okay and you will have excitement, anticipation and positive feelings of the future. The choice is yours create negative feelings with your thoughts or positive ones. The same outcomes will occur, just your experience of it, your sense of joy or suffering will differ. Which will you choose? It is entirely up to you. Blessed BE , Amen.

By Jodi-Anne M Smith (21 April 2017).
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.