Blood Spatter

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Break the bread

Roughly

With both fists

Digging in

Crumbs

Falling over your feet

Then spit the wine

straight out

of your mouth full of lies

Harshly enough that droplets

Slide down your hair

Like blood spatter

At a

crime scene

Red

Staining

Your teeth

After all

Isn’t that what

this relationship

Has really meant to you?

Or did you allegedly

Love me?

Consume the last

Bits of crumbs

Lick them from your

Exposed toes

Go ahead

You might as well

Those are the last

Remnants of what we had

There will be no more

Feasting for your hunger

You will always

Let the need drive you

And so you sink

As I expected

Slithering back into

The dark hole

That becomes you

 

 

C-PTSD from Emotional / Mental Abuse

image from Pinterest 

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Trauma during childhood and teenage years leaves fractured pieces of yourself, existing  in time. As you begin to accept those child parts that feel abandoned, you will begin to realize that time is not as linear as we have been programmed to perceive it. 

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All of those parts of you exists now. You can reach out to them and bring them into yourself to integrate those fractured parts, so they do not feel rejected and abandoned. 

This will help you to be more in the present, so that you can think more clearly and see what you want and what you can do with your life. 

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C-PTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) is caused by being in on-going emotional / mental abuse from people that you feel entrapped with. There is no way to leave the situation, when you are a child and you are stuck in whatever situations your parents put you into. ..

Emotional abuse and other kinds of abuse cause emotional wounds. These wounds do not heal on their own. They need to be cared for and attended to. 

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image from Pinterest

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These emotional wounds are not able to heal while you are still in the abusive situations. Usually children are so used to the way they are living that there is no real frame of reference to know that you are being abused, or the degree to which the abuse is. 

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Wounded children feel abandoned and left behind by their adult self as well as by everyone else.   

There is a need for proper integration of these child parts into the whole of yourself. It is like there is still a wounded child inside of you that is waiting for someone to rescue them. Doing inner child work can help the fractured parts to become integrated. 

In many cases, many of the memories of emotional abuse during childhood are blocked out and not filed as normal memories. Some things are remembered and many more traumatic events are left unresolved and unhealed. 

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 If you have C-PTSD from childhood trauma, abuse, or chaotic events, your may have fractures and wounds in your subconscious. This can cause depression, anxiety disorders, OCD and other kinds of mental illness.

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The feeling that you do not belong anywhere and that you are out of place can come from the fractured child parts feeling abandoned. They need to be accepted and nurtured. 

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You can connect with that child that still resides within you. Tell them that you love them and that you are now able to hold and protect them. Let me know that they survived the situations that they are still feeling stuck inside of…to repeat over and over. 

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You can allow the child to take you hand, and give them permission to stop living in that trauma…repeating the event and the feelings over and over. 

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This will help to ease some of the emotional flashbacks that you experience as an adult. The emotional flashbacks are the child’s way of being heard and telling you that they need to be protected from experiencing similar fear to the originating event. Any similar situations can trigger you to be transported right back the the fight or flight feelings, and chemical response as the original trauma. 

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 Life Coaching sessions are available by appointment, usually scheduled a weak ahead of time. See the gentlekindness coaching web site and contact me with a message. 

I am working on some hypnosis audios for healing the wounded child and helping the fractured parts to integrate. If you want to get updates about the audios, feel free to follow the Facebook Page,or to sign up on the contact page at the Gentlekindness coachingweb site. 

Insomnia from Narcissistic Abuse Sleep Meditation

Shamanic Approach to Healing from Emotional Abuse

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.image from pinterest

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I recently came across the Native American Shaman  concept of Soul Sickness. I found this idea very interesting and it seemed to coincide with other things that I write about. There is a phenomenon that occurs with many abuse victims, which is a kind of leaving one’s own body during the abuse. 

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The idea is that the victim’s brain cannot accept the level or type of abuse into their reality.

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In order for the brain to protect itself from trauma, it takes itself into a derealization / depersonalization state. This is something that you may have experienced if you ever in an abusive situation, or even any life threatening situation. 

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Depersonalization is a state the brain goes into, in order to protect you.

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The feeling of this state is likely somewhat different for different people, but there is similarity in the way people describe this state. The feeling is as if one can see their body and how it is involved in the event, but it is as if the body belongs to another person. 

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The order of the events is processed, but it is like someone else is doing the motions, and handling the things that are happening. If someone was hitting you, then you would see the body being struck, but not really relate to that body as being your own. You could block your face from being hit but it would feel like someone else was actually controlling those hands which no longer feel like you are attached to your hands.

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Derealization is the feeling that the whole scene is like you were watching it in a movie. You may not even really know for sure if it were really happening. You might wonder if it is actually a dream or a nightmare that you are actually in. The scene does not feel like you are an active part of it. It is more like observing a dream or watching a movie. 

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Soul Sickness. as the Shamans see it, is when the soul has become ill, or parts of it have left the body all together. During a situation, such as sexual abuse, the soul was going to be damaged by experiencing it, so rather than be there for the trauma, it just left the body entirely. 

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This idea of part of you leaving the situation, because it could not endure it, is the same as the derealization and depersonalization experience. The person is there, but not all of them is there to be traumatized. 

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But trauma is sustained nonetheless, because the very situation of being forced to go into a derealization state is traumatizing. If the soul, or part of the soul was forced to exit from the body, then you were left with something missing.

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Either way, there is a damage sustained by the soul, or the spirit part of you, in a addition to your brain and body. 

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It is often discussed these days that mental abuse is the worst part of physical or sexual abuse. It is clear that the emotional / mental trauma is even worse than the physical experience, or the bruises which are left.

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Even the women who have had acid thrown in their faces, now live with extreme mental pain, and humiliation to have to be forced to exist every day with those scars….reminders of the cruelty and heartlessness of the men who inflicted them.

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The Shaman theory is that the soul has left the body and now the person lives as an incomplete person, because that important part of them has fled. The soul need to be retrieved. 

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They believe in doing rituals called Soul Retrieval, in order for that person to get the missing part back. Before the soul retrieval, the person will live with depression. anxiety and all manner of mental, and physical illness. The soul retrieval process is to help the person to become whole again.

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 Many abuse survivors experience a feeling that something is wrong with them, even years after the abuser has left.

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There is sense that they are different than other people, in a way that makes them carry toxic shame. This is very difficult to explain to anyone who has not been through abuse.

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During verbal and emotional abuse, people are called names, degraded, gaslighted, demeaned, and treated as non-humans. Their humanity is stripped from them, as is the humanity stripped from people who are sexually and physically abused. 

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The experience of sexual abuse is too much for a person to bear that their own body was involved in the acts, so they detach from their bodies in a way to not be a part of the sexual abuse. Later on, this can lead to eating disorder, cutting and other kinds of self harm. There is a disharmony between the body and the  mind. The mind no longer accepts the body as its own. 

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The missing link between the mind and the body could be spiritual in nature. I think that it makes sense to try to include a spiritual element to healing from abuse. When someone experiences rape, or the on-going abuse of a narcissist, they are broken in some way. There is a lack of wholeness that stays with you. 

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While medications for the depression, and anxiety disorders, which usually follow abuse, can be helpful, it is not the entire picture. We are spiritual beings, and having your soul raped by a personality disordered person, is traumatizing on every level. 

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I believe that healing needs to be all encompassing of the entire person.

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A holistic approach to healing is more likely to generate healing, than by simply dealing with it from one angle. If you are healing from abuse, I would recommend trying a variety of healing modalities.

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Traditional therapy and medications need to be complemented by healing methods which speak to other aspects of the entire person. We are emotional beings and mental and physical beings. But we are also spiritual beings, and the spirit is sensitive to being traumatized by abuse, just as much, or more than the other aspects of ourselves.

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Most people that have been abused feel that there is a darkness about it.

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There is a malicious, dark element to abuse that is carried by the survivor. It is hard to explain to people who have not experienced it.

 It is like a feeling of darkness that is carried with you. 

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I think that this darkness has something to do with the spiritual aspect of abuse.

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When someone who has a darkness about them, invades your personal freedom, and boundaries, there is something that you pick up from them. The darkness feels like it follows you into your nightmares, and lingers around you. 

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I do not think this darkness can be ignored, if we are to heal from abuse. Many people do not speak of it, because it is so hard to define and explain. It is beyond the physical world. 

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So, let us treat ourselves as whole humans, including all the aspects of our humanity.

You have innate self worth, and that reality was stripped from you be a person that has elements of darkness about them.

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It does not make you dark like they are, but you may be carrying that feeling that the abuser’s darkness somehow was stuck to you and you are doomed to carry this darkness in your mind .

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There is nothing wrong with you that makes you less worthy than other people.

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You would not feel that way, if it were not for the abuse you endured and suffered through. Psychopaths and narcissists have a way of leaving a part of themselves to haunt you, but it is time to get rid of that. 

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It is unfair for you to have to carry toxic shame, feelings of darkness and low self esteem, just because someone decided to use you as an object for their own dark designs. They wanted to strip you of your power to blossom and to be free. We do not have to let them have their way, years after the abuse is over. 

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I wish you all healing and peace of mind, as you continue on your journey of healing, love and empowerment. You have a greater purpose in the world than you are even aware of. You are a light that can bring light to others. 

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Namaste,

Annie – Holistic Methods for Healing from Abuse …join the emailing list at the link below

gentlekindnesscoaching.com

Moments of Clarity – Guided Meditation Poetry

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image from pinterest

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You can feel the sensual texture

Of the cold grass under your feet

Its wetness between your toes

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The healing warmth of sunlight

Streaming its goodness

Onto your neck and shoulders

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And down your arms

Ahead in the distance you see

The most perfect house you can

Imagine with every detail exactly

The way it would have been

If you had built it in a dream

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You create, conduct and orchestrate

Each tiny sound that you hear

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The sounds occur at once with

Your inner hearing and desires

Each birdsong and the whisper

Of the wind through the

Rustling trees that stand strong

Yet sway with a dance-like magic

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As if they are at once set upon

Their wisdom and beliefs yet

Able to adapt and flow with the

Unexpected and the unpredictable

As if they innately realize that

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Resilience has the characteristics

Of water as well as of rock…

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You venture forward towards

That beautiful dwelling and at once

You recognize it is yours because

It has every tiny detail

In just the perfect way you would

Want it to be and have dared not

Even think to dream of having but

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This is the moment to dream

In perfect clarity and minute detail

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Yes surely this is the moment

For dreams to become clear

Because we exist in both realms

At once the waking world reality

And the dream state of illusion

Where we dare or where we don’t

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Where we can accept what we see

Or create something new

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Create

With the paint brush of your imagination

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Because the more you believe

Is possible in your dreams

The more you will manifest here

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 The physical world that seems unalterable

Compared to your dream reality but

But is actually less solid and set

Than you have been conditioned

to believe and to perceive

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By others since the day you were born

But this very moment is not the

Time for thinking nor regret

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It is not the time for blidly following

Anyone or anything

Because this moment

Is the only moment there is

The moment that can influence future

but not by worrying about future

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This present moment 

That you have been conditioned to discard

For past and for future moments

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And interpretations of those

Invisible realities which they will

Tell you are more important

Than the only moment which

Really exists which is now

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So revel in its power asleep

Create in its power awake

And open your inner eyes to see

What is hidden but in plain sight

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chronic Pain, Fatigue and Mindfulness

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Itching

Fatigue

Rashes

Skin pealing

Arthritis

Back pain

Insomnia

Hang nails

Infections

Pink eye

Vomiting

Hair loss

Things our higher spiritual self does not have to deal with.

No wonder we become distracted, redirected and forgetful about being in touch with our higher consciousness level selves.

We can’t even call them on the cell phone, never mind ask them to relate to what we go through.

Getting into a higher level state requires detaching from our  physical selves. It is like ignoring the squeakiest wheel. ….and as we know, the squeaky wheel gets the attention.

We can have wonderful intentions of growing towards a higher consciousness level and then we develop some new pain or disorder…whether mental or physical.

We are subjected to all manner of mind control and persuasion techniques by society and the manipulators within it. And our bodies take more and more of a beating as we age.

Beating yourself up over not being able to get yourself out of your physical self and into a spiritual state, is another beating you should not have to endure.

It is effectually a beating of the consciousness by the consciousness…

A beating of the sub conscious by the sub conscious….

A beating of the mind by itself.

It is a paradox that you must accept the pains without the ego being involved because becoming one with higher consciousness means letting go of and identity with the self….yet repressing feelings about suffering only makes the suffering grow.

So we have to accept the inner child in order to heal…accept suffering as part of existing in the physical realm….sit with our pain to comfort it to ease it….walk through painful experiences to get to the light on the other side….and detach from the ego and identifying with our identity in order to achieve a higher consciousness…..

Yet in detaching from our ego we are acknowledging our identity with it…..so we first have to recognize the ego as a construct that is heavily influenced by brainwashing, false beliefs programmed into us, and manipulative people with their own agendas to serve..

We then can understand that many of our automatic  thoughts and attachments come out of this programming. …making the majority of the tapes running in our subconscious mind basically bad viruses…..and our conscious negative thoughts results of the viruses…..

Then we can begin to understand that We Are Not Our Thoughts….

Once we begin to accept that we are not our thoughts, we can open the subconcious mind to new formatting….better programming….we can alter and add new beliefs…and delete contaminated beliefs…..

A new understanding begins to arise at the back of our brains where those core beliefs are housed….that if our thoughts are not us, then we can observe our thoughts and evaluate their validity….

Holding onto beliefs that no longer serve us is not neccessary. We will not simply stop being ourselves by changing our core beliefs. It is the attachment to those addictive beliefs and thought patterns that keeps us controlled by others….and by our physical existance…..

We are not, in fact, the sum of our thoughts. We can rearrange the furniture in our brains that we call our thoughts. Rearranging the furniture, throwing out old pieces, adding new pieces that better serve our house….

The house remains, even when the things inside are altered.

So who is doing the altering and rearranging? It is not our physical selves….It is not our thoughts that are observing themselves….

Once we begin to realize this, then we catch a glimpse of what is doing the observing….It is not within the brain or the physical body….

It is that higher self…the higher consciousness….that can be awakened to observe and repair the subconscious …where suffering is at its roots….

Thoughts about suffering seem to create more suffering…and fear that the suffering will get worse….or continue to last is the root of the most painful mental and physical suffering.

Yet somehow you are beginning to suspect the most curious thing of all….that by entering this kind of trance….the one you have allowed your mind to enter while reading this….you were able to detach from your physical suffering for a few minutes…..

And so we took the journey together….just you and I….in a higher realm of consciousness….

Namaste..

Self Esteem Recovery

Manipulative People – Reaction Seeking Behavior

Emotophobia from Emotional Abuse

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image source Pinterest

Emotophobia is the fear of unpleasant emotions, not to be confused with emetophobia, the fear of vomiting.

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There is little online about emotophobia, so I thought this would be a great topic to write about. People that suffer from emotophobia need to understand what it is and what causes it. It is the first step to healing.

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The few articles I found offered the suggestion to “stop treating negative emotions as if they are your enemies and can harm you.”

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This implies that emotions themselves cannot harm you. But abusive situations are different from normal ones. There are two basic reasons that people who grew up with abuse can end up with emotophobia. 

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The narcissistic parent does not allow their child to be an individual. When the child expresses their feelings and thoughts that are different that the parent wants them to be, the parent reacts with punishment of some kind. 

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Emotional punishments are typical from narcissistic parents, when the child asserts their boundaries, their feelings, or otherwise asserts their identity as an individual. 

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Living with a parent that can suddenly explode, means to be on constant vigilant duty to protect the parent from becoming upset. In some cases the child has to take on the parenting role. 

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Part of keeping the parent from becoming upset, is to keep any negative feelings of your own to yourself. So you are basically brainwashed into thinking that all negative emotions are bad, both yours and those of the people around you. 

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Saying “No” to people can be difficult because it brings up the symptoms of the C-PTSD.  Adrenaline and cortisol are released into the body, alerting the person that there is a threat. Even if the threat is imagined, the physiological response is the same. The feelings of panic in the body are the same as if there is an actual danger or threat of danger.

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People with emotophobia are wired to control their own emotions and the emotions of the people around them. We feel responsible to comply with people, in order to keep them from becoming angry or upset. This is called People Pleaser Syndrome.

 

There is an association between someone becoming upset and being hurt yourself. Complying with other people helps to keep the PTSD response at bay. The anxiety that an abused person feels when they are near someone who is becoming angry, can be overwhelming. 

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image source Pinterest

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This anxiety is then coupled with the fact that you are not “supposed to” express how you are feeling. So when the adrenaline kicks in from the PTSD response, the person just wants to shut it down as fast as possible.

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It is better to avoid it all together and just keep the people around you content. At least that is how it can feel.

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.For people that have emotophobia, emotions were the enemy and they were followed

by consequences.

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People that grew up in mentally abusive childhoods were not permitted to have emotions like other people are. It is not safe for them to express their feelings 

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The expression of emotion, which represents being an individual, is often punished by abusive parents.

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Adults who were emotionally abused as  children do not always recognize the abuse. They think that if they were not physically injured by their parents that everything else was okay. You may have felt that something was wrong when you were a child. If you did then you probably were emotionally and mentally abused. 

Narcissistic parents and other overbearing, manipulative parents do not want their children to develop independent thoughts and ideas.

They do not want their children thinking in terms of their own needs at all. When their children expressed feelings, the parents retaliated.

Punishments from the silent treatment to aggressive verbal abuse of the child are used.

Physical consequences may also follow as a matter of course, when a child showed anything resembling disobedience, including not feeling what they were told to feel.

These mentally abusive parents, want the focus on themselves and their needs. They demand for the child to cater to their ever changing desires and demands.

In order to survive in this type of environment, the child must learn to constantly read the parent’s body language and tone of voice.

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They must anticipate the desires and moods of the parent. If they fail to do so, it is met with negative consequences.

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If the child expresses disagreement, or unhappiness with the parent, they will likely invoke the anger and wrath of the parent.

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image source Pinterest

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Even a facial expression of disagreement with the parent can bring out their anger.

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For their own protection, these children and teenagers learn to disguise their feelings and push them down.

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They do not want the parent to see their feelings because it will be used against them.

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If you grew up in this type of environment, then feeling negative emotions was the enemy. It is not something we have suddenly developed an irrational fear of as adults.

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This environment causes C-PTSD, which is Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, in many people. This is carried over into adulthood.

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So, the advice to “stop treating emotions as if they were the enemy” and to tell people that feeling emotions is safe, does not make sense to someone with C-PTSD from childhood mental abuse.

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Adults can also develop emotophobia from ongoing abusive relationships with a partner. Women become afraid to disagree with their partner because they fear his anger.

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Abusive people do not tolerate independence from their partner. When the victim asserts the fact that they are an individual person, it is met with extreme resistance or anger from the narcissist.

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Again, the brain rewires the neural connections to avoid showing negative feelings. This is a necessary survival tactic at the time.

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It is not easily undone. The subconscious brain wants to do everything to protect you. Living with an abusive parent requires the brain to alter neural pathways, in order to make you hypervigilant about the parent’s emotions.  It learns to focus more on their feelings than on yours, so that you can survive.

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It takes years to develop this survival tactic and to detach from and avoid negative emotions. The brain becomes wired to discourage entering into situations that may cause negative emotions.

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To undo what was a learned survival skill takes a lot of work in re-wiring the brain.

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Telling someone “emotions are your friends” does not work, especially without any idea why the person feels such anxiety about emotions like anger and sadness.

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The problem with emotophobia is that having it makes you easier for people to manipulate. People that want their way all the time, can use emotional manipulation to make you want to comply, rather than experiencing the pain of the emotophobia symptoms. 

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Realizing that you allow people to have their way, in order to avoid upsetting them is the first step to healing. Then you can understand that people get upset sometimes and unless you are in danger from them in some way, you can endure the feelings you will go through when they react to you. 

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You can begin to recognize when someone is trying to emotionally manipulate you. They will not take no for an answer. They use shame and guilt to get you to do things. Another sign is that their reactions to things will be far out of proportion to the “slight” they should be perceiving. 

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You have just as much of a right to your boundaries as anyone else does. People should not get their way just because they play on your fear of upsetting them. Experiencing emotions such as sadness, fear and anger is normal. You can learn that you can sit with emotions and get to the other side. 

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**for information about coaching, hypnosis, and NLP for people with C-PTSD and emotophobia see my web site HERE or follow the gentlekindness facebook page HERE

How to Live with Emotional Trauma and PTSD

image from pinterest source here 

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People who have mental pain, have trouble in day to day situations, where other people seem to float right through.

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Everyone around us seems to have a better handle on just getting through life, than we do. It is so easy to become discouraged by watching other people do things that we either cannot do, or cannot do without mental anguish.

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People are good at things that they have had the background, the support, and the early wiring to be good at. Even the things we learn when we are older, are easier to learn if we were wired properly when we were growing up.

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A lot of the people you are comparing yourself to had parents that helped them to follow the normal development stages and they also had the mental stability to process all of the stages properly, in order for the neurons in their brains to be set up to do these things.

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There are chemicals involved in every process we do. The chemicals in our brains are dominating our feelings and our feelings affect how well we can do things.

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We have behavioral patterns and they are also linked to the organic connections (neurons and chemicals) in our brains.

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If there is any trauma, abuse, neglect during childhood / teenage hood, we can end up with things that are not wired properly. We also end up with the chemicals sending the wrong signals and we feel depression, anxiety and worthlessness about ourselves.

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Your feelings of not being as good as other people are conditioned behavioral patterns of your brain. Past trauma, abuse or neglect may have caused these patterns.

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Your inability to things that other people do, may be related to feeling inadequate to do them, feeling depressed, anxiety etc. This is not your fault that you have these chemical, neurological responses to doing things.

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If you feel anxiety about something and someone else does not feel that, then of course they will be able to do that thing, better and more easily than you can.

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It is not fair to yourself to compare your brain on depression or anxiety with their brain that is functioning perfectly well. It does not mean that you can never learn to do it, but it means that it is much harder for you to do things, than it is for them.

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When we have mental illness issues, it is more fair to us, if we so not compare ourselves directly with people who do not have any mental illness or trauma in their background. I have recently come to believe this is true

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I spent many years wondering why I felt so inadequate to everyone and why I felt so out of place.

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I had so much trauma in my back ground that I could not keep up with the people that had brains that functioned normally. It was not that I was not as smart, but it was because my brain was and is so traumatized.

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I am learning that we have to be kind to ourselves. In order to be kind to ourselves, we have to understand and feel compassion for the fact that trauma, abuse, neglect, depression, anxiety and any other mental issues, does cause us some disability.

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We cannot always compete with the other people. There is no reason that you have to do things the way other people do them. 

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image source here

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We can learn to heal and to slowly re-wire our brains. But mostly we have to talk to ourselves like we would talk to someone else that we knew was having trouble feeling as good as everyone else. You are as good as everyone else, whether you can do everything they can do or not.

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We all have gifts and are good at things. You might be good at something that those other people suck at. I bet you are better are being compassionate for another human that feels depressed and worthless.

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The ability to be compassionate is not a gift that a lot of people have. Compassion is a lost art these days. People who have mental suffering can often also be compassionate to others who have depression and anxiety. That makes you better than them at something.

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You are also probably better are being introspective and analyzing things.  Many people  just go with the flow of what everyone else is doing and they do not think for themselves. If you can think for yourself then you are better at that too.

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I think that we are just better at different things than most people are. There is room for us in the world too. The world cannot be balanced, if all of the people just follow the crowd and just act the same way and believe the same things.

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Once we begin to be accepting of ourselves just the way we are, then we can begin to re-wire some of the trauma that we have.

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People with psychological trauma usually end up with some kind of post traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, OCD or other mental disorder. We can learn to show kindness to ourselves.

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We can learn to be functional, compassionate people. There are plenty of things we can be good at. If we cannot answer the phones for a job, because we have social anxiety then so be it.  If we cannot work at certain types of jobs because we are constantly triggered onto post traumatic stress there, then so be it.

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A person with an eating disorder may not be able to work in a bakery. Well if they cannot do that, it does not make them less than anyone else.

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It just means that they cannot do that activity safely  because of their disorder. Someone who has a phobia of open spaces cannot work in the mall. So, what of it?

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We are okay the way we are. We are trying to heal. We are trying to connect with others. If there are things we cannot do, then so be it.

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It is not because we are less than anyone else. They did not grow up, or have the adult past that we have had. Someone else may not have survived your situations as well as you did. How do they know what it is like in your world?

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We all need a break from feeling shame, inadequacy, and worthlessness. We need to show ourselves some kindness and compassion in our thoughts about ourselves. We are doing the best we can with what we have to work with. We have to work with our brains being the way they are, right at this very minute.

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Blessings to all,

Annie