Unfortunately, many of us will suffer an unbearable trauma at some point in
our lives - a serious illness maybe, or a severe injury, or the loss of an
irreplaceable loved one.
I often hear people say - after intense pain, abuse, suffering or loss -
things like....
"I can never get over this!"
"I am damaged for life!"
"I am emotionally & mentally scarred for life!"
How true are these statements?
Can these self-fulfilling, self-perpetuating prophesies ever be turned
around?
I said these things to myself once...two decades ago, after experiencing a
terrible and terrifying trauma - a trauma, or rather series of traumas,
that
were well-beyond my worst nightmares.
I was 37 years old at the time and I had already seen quite a bit of
suffering and death in my life and survived. Maybe I was beginning to that
think I could take most anything life threw at me!
For 8 years I lived my own predictions - I never recovered. Worse than! -
I
actually deteriorated....
Down and Down!
"Down and Down" until I lost almost everything that was dear to me -
marriage, home, family, leisure interests.
Just when I thought things could get no worse and was pulling out all the
steps to rebuild my life, I cracked up completely and ended up in an acute
psychiatric ward.
I fulfilled the worst predictions of "post-traumatic stress disorder
(PTSD)" - the worst outcome i.e. "steady decline and no recovery" - no
recovery of my lost quality of life, my ravaged self-confidence, my
wiped-out self-esteem.
Years of psychiatry, psychotherapy and medication made little difference -
there was no going back to the self-assured, coping person I used to be,
and
no going back to the quality of life I had once enjoyed - or so it seemed.
Just when it seemed that I would for sure be a "head case" for the rest of
my days, I saw a poster for a "change your life" weekend workshop. I was
still on medication and expected that the workshop organisers would not
want
to take on an ex-psychiatric in-patient. Still I took a risk and filled in
my application form. To my amazement I was accepted, and for the first
time
experienced some "real healing" - a combination of complete acceptance
(unconditional and undemanding love), mental health education, shared
personal stories of pain and loss, cathartic release of long-held-in
emotions, dancing, singing, joyful "inner child" play, meditation and
visualisation techniques.
That pivotal weekend workshop of healing happened 14 years ago. It was the
beginning of a decade-long journey (a joyful and magical adventure) in
which a succession of healers, teachers and loving companions came into my
life and helped me to heal my wounds.
How can we live with an unbearable, irrecoverable wounding?
==========================================================
There are 2 secrets...
1. The simple fact is that our painful memories are just electrical
recordings in our mind. Fortunately our mind is not the "read-only",
indelible memory tape that we think it is - our mental/emotional/imagery
memory can be transformed - the transformation of "healing" - it can be
transformed into a pain-free and more wholesome story than was originally
recorded.
What is more, this healing does not have to be achieved through some kind
of
hypnotism jiggery-pokery of implanting a false memory. The transformation
of
a traumatic unbearable memory into a memory we can live with, can be
achieved by entirely natural means - we have an inbuilt natural capacity
for
healing which goes way beyond what most of us can ever imagine.
2. Part of the journey of healing unbearable experiences involves
transcending our present reality (expanding our consciousness) to a new
and
more mature (enlightened) world-view where apparently senseless,
incomprehensible and unforgivable occurrences begin to make sense - in the
great scheme of things.
We call this expansion of consciousness: "transcending duality".
Transcending Duality - Free meditation class
---------------------------------------------
If you would like to gain a glimpse of the expanded consciousness we call
"transcending duality", you are welcome to join the free meditation group
I
will be leading in Cambridge on February 17th 2006, entitled:
"Be Still and Know Both Dark and Light"
Details of the meditation group can be found here:
www.sunflower-health.com/workshops.htm
Catharsis as a Tool for Healing
---------------------------------------
More about "cathartic healing techniques:
www.lovehealth.org/tools/catharsis.htm
[catharsis techniques should not be attempted without experienced
supervision/sup****t and under the advice of your healthcare professional]
May all your traumas be small and bearable!
Michael Meredith
|
