Archive for Trauma

9 Survival Skills for the Holidays

Posted by GuruMeher Khalsa 
· November 21, 2015 
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I hope you get along great with your family, but in that crucible of survival many habit-forming harms happened. Even if outright abuse was avoided (and the statistics are sad), our subconscious holds the shocks and shapes our lives to react like tsunami survivors.

Many of us return to ground zero this time of year, so gear up for those triggers and know how to become immune. That is, to live as you, free of the fear and smallness you once (and may still) live with.

Studies of disaster survivors reveal the 9 key traits and abilities that determine who dies, who survives, and why. These apply to all of us. It turns out that all of them are skills we practice in Senses of the Soul! You are a survivor of your own history. Here are the factors proven to be essential for survival and recovery.

– Be present and self-aware in your body and senses versus checked out and lost in thought and emotion.

In order to take care of yourself, you need to be mindfully in touch with what is really happening and what you need. Awareness precedes effective remedy.

– Humbly respect the powerful forces in and around you and respond accordingly versus careless, arrogant, ignorant, naïvete.

When you don’t underestimate or ignore the impact of events and your own feelings by trying to muster on like nothing’s wrong,  then you can be honest about the harm, the pain and the desire to be strong.

– High level of Self-care, kindly & compassionately attending to our own well-being versus neglectful, care-taking-of-others, doormat or martyr behavior.

Enough said. Take care of yourself. Compassionately know what you feel, what you need and figure out how to get it. Catch up with neglected needs, then take care of new situations in real time.

– Take Responsibility for your situation, taking initiative to solve versus blaming, complaining or waiting helplessly for someone to save, fix, or take care of you.

When you sit still, go inside, allow and confront consciously the darkness and pain inside, do all that you can to deal and heal yourself…you are always rewarded with relief and elevation.

– Resilience and Hardiness.

By practicing yoga and meditative exercises that challenge our body and confront our imagined weaknesses, we proactively take on a body/mind fitness training that repeatedly shows we can handle ourselves. This builds strength of will, trust in ourselves, and reserve capacity to call upon when hard times hit.

– Hope and Purpose; a reason to live which will sustain us and give extra energy when times are tough.

When you are in touch with your deepest longings and needs and your highest aspirations – the soul’s purpose – you will never be without motivation and hope. This take patience, practice and subtlety to go deeper that the many daily emergencies of the earth.

– Connectedness versus isolation and loneliness.

Our primary work is to be connected to ourselves for emotions and soul. This is the most reliable and highest form of connection, and makes it easier to connect to everything outside ourselves.

– Locating our self, Knowing that we have a place and where we are in relation to everything else.

With SOS we do this continually, to know what we’re feeling and why, and we discover a greater sense of the vastness of the universe and our very important place in it. We create a sense of safety not from the world alone but within ourselves.

– Managing emotions versus getting lost in them.

Well, this is our entire Senses of the Soul skill set.

So for your holiday survival and healing, practice these, starting with what ever is most missing from your repertoire. Stand strong at ground zero and heal thyself!

 If you would like a hand’s-on results-guaranteed training in these skills, join me for Emotional Liberation 2016.

And be happy these holidays by removing whatever is blocking it!

In gratitude, GuruMeher

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Categories : Trauma, Uncategorized

Define and Defy Your Trauma

Posted by GuruMeher Khalsa 
· November 18, 2015 
· No Comments

We all have our history of hurts. What happened to you? Your story shapes your life for better or worse. Your recovery process from life’s traumas leads you to suffer or thrive. We either learn and grow or remain hurt and damaged. So let’s understand this natural, lifelong process, and do it with skill. Yes, Survival and Recovery are learnable skills, and we all need them!

You were born with all the equipment you need to heal, to become strong and whole in any circumstance. Your emotions, especially the heavy ones that don’t feel good, are essential partners in the healing process.

“On the occasion of every accident that befalls you, remember to turn to yourself and inquire what power you have for turning it to use.”  – Epictetus, c.100 AD

There is no one who doesn’t have this work to do; so let’s be compassionate and patient, but get to it. Even if the accident happened long ago, it’s never too late to learn.

Let’s define Trauma: it is both the event that harms and the mark left upon us from the event. Both the blow and the mark it leaves may be physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.

Now, a working definition of successful healing: I am safer, stronger, wiser or more conscious in some way than I was before.

How? The physical body heals itself under supportive conditions. Our emotions are designed to do the same for our mental/emotional health – when we work well with them. That is, when we consciously feel and intuitively follow their guidance.

The same emotions you had at the time of the trauma recur or persist for your healing. So, the emotions you feel now in regard to any current or past event open an opportunity, like a portal to the past, to heal all previous events that brought up similar feelings. When you know now what you didn’t know then, and can handle now what you couldn’t handle before, the purpose of the event has been fulfilled. In this way pain is a remedy. No one is forever damaged!

Here is a practical trauma and recovery model to work with:

-We begin life clear, innocent and fresh, but vulnerable and impressionable to whatever may come.

-The impact of harmful events leaves impressions on us about how life is here on earth.

-These survival-based, adaptive assumptions create deep beliefs we are not aware of, but which rule our actions.

-In response to those deep beliefs, we adopt coping mechanisms (much like grabbing the first floating object to save us after a shipwreck) in unconscious attempts to stay safe and manage life.

-These behaviors work to get through life, but their negative affects accumulate.

-When we can no longer take the collateral damage to our lives, something breaks down. That is the call for recovery, an opportunity to change.

-When informed support for an upgraded strategy is available, we can change!

-The earlier beliefs and behavioral habits are tenacious in their primitive attempt to save us, but they can be replaced through conscious effort.

Now you try. Here is a worksheet to map your own trauma-based behaviors. Replace the (example) with your own.

– Memory of your innocence before trauma hit:

(Really happy at 5 years old, remember playing with Mom.)

– Traumatic events:

(Mother was stressed and under attentive to my needs. There was a lack of care that I received.)

– Beliefs about yourself and the world:

(I figured that I don’t matter, I am unwanted. I am on my own here.)

– Your belief- based behaviors (Coping mechanisms you adopted to survive, given your belief):

(My coping was to withdraw, be silent sweet and take care of everyone else.)

– The cumulative effects of the long term behavior originating from these beliefs:

(The effect is that I have little time, health, money or love for myself. This confirms my belief that I don’t matter/ no one cares, which locks in the limiting behavior.)

See it now? Next week we’ll look at the 9 essential factors in recovery!

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Categories : Trauma
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