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Tag: healing from domestic abuse
It Was Just the Caress of the Breeze
image from Pinterest credit here
I felt the gentle caress of
your hand against my cheek
And then I realized
it was just the playful breeze…
I heard the familiar sound
of your voice in my head
But then I realized…
You were miles away and
I no longer had to
listen to you lie
image from Pinerest credit here
Gentle Kindness Coaching Facebook – Overcoming Emotional Wounds
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for…
Survivor’s of narcissistic abuse
Survivor’s of Psychopathic Abuse
People with C-PTSD from Trauma and emotional abuse
Adult Children of Narcissistic Parents
Daughter of Narcissistic Mothers
Sons of Narcissistic Parents
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People Pleaser Syndrome
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Depression and Severe Anxiety Disorder Looking for Healing
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Light in Darkness
Step lightly and tread a gentle path
You never know what you are walking on
Until you are mindful of it as you go
Listen and see with watchful eyes
Your heart will speak the truth
Be open to seeing more than others
Tell you is around you because
There is always much more than
Your eyes can see if you rush
Breath in your surroundings to perceive
Without biases , without assuming
Things are what you are expecting
If you assume what is there…then
That is what you will see….
Presupposition can murder the senses
And dull your ability to see truth
Sometimes more beautiful than
The others can perceive it to be
And other times darker and more sinister
But see what you are able to see
Never allow others to do your seeing for you
Or give meaning to things without your consent
Your perception becomes your reality for the time you are perceiving it to be
You must see what you need to
And not let others influence you in a way that distorts your truth
Or tarnishes your vision
Walk gently and look freely
Choose your own meaning and feel your emotions
Your spirit is resilient but the mind can be interfered with …
If you are not mindful
Walk gently for you know not where you are walking
Or what you are stepping on
Unless you are aware as you go
Create your own manifestations, and build your own bridges to walk over the water
Until you can walk upon the water with faith…
And without fear
Do not bury your feelings or let others minimize them
Do not allow others to discount what you feel and what you know
Walk softly but speak the truth loudly when it is necessary
And speak the truth gently if it is harsh o
Have compassion when no one around you does
Believe in what is right when others turn their back
Always believe in yourself especially when others shun you
Believe in your intentions when others try to shut you down
What you see and what you feel is yours …and yours to value
Stand up when others have fallen
Stand up when others try to make you stay down
Live with kindness and speak with truth and light
If you let the darkness make you hard to see
The ones who need your light cannot find you
Your light is very important to the ones lost in the dark
Let fear be comforted by truth …
Not the truth of darkness…
But the truth of the light that is within you..
The light that sometimes barely breathes and flickers in the dark
But cannot be extinguished
By anyone
Let your light comfort and inspire
Allow it to flicker like a flame…
Next to fear and sadness
To give them hope
Your light is always within you
Even in the darkest of times
When it is hard to see
No matter how small it may seem at times
Your light has great power and strength
Compassion will flame the fire
Self Hypnosis and a Teal Swan Video
I really like this video by Teal Swan. It is about a kind of self work that involves bringing a higher vibration of a optimal “future self” into the present with you, and then that higher vibration can integrate into your present self.
The only thing I would say about this idea,in addition to what Teal says if that you need to be able to self hypnotize for this to work.
If you are interested in learning self hypnosis, or you want to experience being hypnotized for self help work, you can contact me through my web site gentlekindnesscoaching.com
I can do a guided meditation with you and I can also teach you how to do a guided meditation with yourself.
Enjoy Teal’s video here
Your Unique Gift to Shine
YouTube Channel
Visit my YouTube Channel for videos about healing from narcissistic abuse, domestic abuse, narcissism, and psychological abuse and overcoming abuse.
You are not alone. Living with a narcissist can make you feel like you are crazy. Mental abuse can cause psychological, emotional, cognitive, functional, and physical symptoms.
The mind and the body are connected.
Abuse is all encompassing.
It takes time to heal and people that have not lived thought this kind of abuse will have trouble understanding. They will not understand why it is taking you so long to just get over it.
Connect with other people who have been through this. Validation is key to healing from abuse. Mental abuse can have effects that are just as devastating as physical abuse.
Living in an abusive relationships can lead to depression, anxiety disorders, PTSD , avoidant personality, derealization disorder, and in some cases suicidal thoughts.
Learn how to identify abusive personalities and avoid abuse in the future.
Discover techniques for resisting attempts to emotionally manipulate you.
For a one-on-one coaching visit gentlekindnesscoaching.com
Time for all good little Insomniacs to try to Sleep
I have had insomnia for a long time now. I am not sure about all of the reasons for it. I do attribute it to PTSD and anxiety. There is also a feeling of not wanting to go to sleep because I do not want to deal with what tomorrow will be like. Things are starting to get better in my life but there is a habit of dreading the next day.
So I wonder how many other people stay awake to try to put off the inevitability of waking up in the morning. We know rationally that staying up will not change what time we have to wake up or whether or not we have to wake up…yet it feels like we can just stay in the quiet of our room and never have to leave…if we just don’t go to sleep.
Then we end up sleep deprived and the day is harder than it had to be. As we stay awake later and later, we begin to think about how it will be harder for us tomorrow, if we don’t go to sleep soon. But still…we stay awake and refuse to sleep.
Once we actually turn things off and try to sleep then comes the next problem. The quiet and the dark are peaceful to some people but…if you come from a background of abuse, mental illness, depression or anxiety…then the quiet is not always peaceful at all.
In the quiet you can hear the thoughts in your own mind and they can torment you in a way that is hard to explain. Thoughts that involve intrusive negative thoughts, flashbacks, catastrophic thinking, and severe anxiety can become too much.
So back on goes the laptop, the cell phone, Netflix , YouTube, WordPress or whatever distracts you from your own brain that wants to torment you to death.
So then it is 2 am…3 am…4 am….5 am….and maybe you will sleep before the sun rises because there is something about being awake when the sun begins to show itself …that feels like a defeat. Then on the other hand …sometimes it feels safer to sleep in the daylight than in the night.
If you ever lived in an abusive situation then you can relate to that feeling that sleep makes you vulnerable. You cannot see someone coming up to you…you cannot know if someone is watching you….if you are asleep. So sleep itself can feel like a dangerous thing.
You begin to wish that you did not have to sleep at all…ever.
That you never had to close off your senses to predators that may approach during the night, while you are not suspecting them. While you are unable to protect and defend yourself.
If you have PTSD from abuse, it is hard to shake that feeling that being asleep is unsafe…even when that person that you once feared sleeping in the same house with, is no longer a threat. But the threat can still live in your mind as if it is a living thing.
So once again I bid you all good night and wish you peace of mind…as I wish myself peace of mind too.
Much love,
Annie
PTSD Neurology meets Psychology
The following definitions of the Hippocampus, the Amygdala and the Pre-Frontal Cortex are from a worksheet provided online from the Get Self Help web site. The link to their site is getselfhelp.co.uk.com To see the actual worksheet you can check out THIS LINK. There is a picture diagram of the brain ans I think many of you would find it very helpful.
You can see a good diagram of the brain and how trauma affects the brain at this link – TraumaBrain
The way I want to write this post for you is to give you the definitions and then underneath each one of them I will write something that explains it in my own words, as well as adding some opinions and ideas.
I will write anything that is my own take on things in this purple color and the definitions will be in this blue color, so that you can tell what is quoted from the worksheet.
Hippocampus The hippocampus processes trauma memories, by recycling the memory, mostly at night via dreams, which takes place over weeks or months. It then transfers the integrated stored memory to another part of the brain. High levels of stress hormones causes the hippocampus to shrink or under-develop, resulting in impaired function.
Childhood trauma exaggerates this effect. The trauma memory therefore remains unprocessed in the hippocampus, disintegrated, fragmented, and feels ‘current’ rather than in the past. (Some people may be born with a smaller hippocampus making them more vulnerable to develop PTSD.)
The hippocampus is a funny sounding name for a part of the brain that a lot of people are unaware of. Unless you have done research about PTSD and neurology, you probably have not come across this word. I am aware that some of you have done quite a bit of research about these topics, and for those of you that have the terms will be familar.
Do not feel intimidated by any of these terms.
Neurology is somewhat complex but you are perfectly capable of understanding the basics of how the different parts of the brain function and interact with each other. Having a general understanding of how the brain works is important when you are struggling to heal from abuse, trauma and PTSD.
In my opinion there is a lot of healing that be attained simply by developing an understanding of how your brain responds to trauma and abuse.
Let go of any feelings of shame about your PTSD
You can see that there is no reason for feeling shame about the symptoms you are experiencing. Understanding how PTSD works in the brain will also allow you to feel that you have more ground to stand on when you are trying to interact with other people in regards to your PTSD and your symptoms.
Integrated Memories and Experiences
The hippocampus has the job of helping you to integrate memories. It goes through the memory of your trauma many times and often causes you to dream about the memory. You will think about the memory and the hippocampus tries to help you to make sense of the memory in order that it can be integrated into other parts of your brain as an integrated memory.
Integrated memories are felt as though they happened in the past. They become part of the brain and your remembered experiences. The memories are assigned meaning by associations that your brain makes between the event and other information that the brain believes to be true.
Non-Integrated Traumatic memories are memories in which the process of integration has been interfered with. Traumatic situations cause high levels of stress on you. Chemicals are released by the brain and circulate throughout your body.
Being in an extremely terrifying situation can cause the brain to be unable to do its job in the normal way. thus the memories about the trauma do not become integrated properly.One traumatic event can cause PTSD.
This may be a situation where you felt your life was threatened, or a situation that you could not accept into your reality due to the horror or feeling of unsafety at some level.
We can feel our safety threatened in many ways including physical safety, mental and emotional safety and psychological safety.
Complex-Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is an on-going situation of abuse and trauma which causes layers of memories. C-PTSD is multi levels and layers of PTSD. There were many situations which causes it.
You felt entrapped and unable to remove yourself from situations that were threatening to you over many months or many years.
These memories are from different time periods and often abuse was inflicted by different people. Mental and emotional abuse have the same level of interference with the hippocampus and memory integration as physical abuse.
Amygdala The brain’s ‘fear centre’. The amygdala helps to store memories, particularly emotions and physical sensations. It also controls activation of stress hormones – the body’s fight or flight response. In PTSD, the amygdala becomes over-reactive causing frequent or near constant high levels of stress hormones.
The amygdala is the “Fight or Flight” center of the brain. Most people have heard of the concept of “fight or flight” and have a basic understanding of what that is, but do not realize the importance and the implications of any interference with this function of the brain.
Situations such as emotional abuse or neglect during childhood will cause for the amygdala to become disregulated. This is also true with living with an abusive partner, or being in any situation where you feel in danger for extended periods of time day after day.
The fight or flight mode is designed to get you out of a dangerous situation quickly. The on-going situations like being in an active military situation, cause the stress hormones to be released on an almost constant basis. This is not how the system was designed to work so it causes disregulation.
Pre-frontal cortex The pre-frontal cortex helps us to assess threats, manage emotion, plan responses, and control impulses. It is the centre of rational thinking. Childhood trauma causes under-development of the pre-frontal cortex, which results in impaired ability to assess threat through rational thinking, manage emotions and control impulses.
The pre-frontal cortex helps us to asses threats and to know what the danger level is. If you have PTSD or C-PTSD, your normal ability to identify and asses threat and danger has been corrupted. Flashbacks from PTSD appear to the brain as real threats in real time. The stress hormones are then sent into the body which cause the feelings that happen with PTSD.
These parts of the brain are responsible for protecting us from danger. When there is trauma or abuse, the parts become over-reactive. Understanding about the brain can help to deal with PTSD. At least you can know that there are real organic differences in your brain.
When people do not believe that your symptoms are real it can be re-traumatizing. Having some information to share with people can aide in communication about the disorder if someone is willing to listen and understand you.
Blessings,
Annie
Ulcerative Colitis, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Juicing / PTSD and Bowel Disorders
For ulcerative colitis or irritable bowel syndrome, juicing with a juicer is a good method for getting nutrition without irritating any flare ups. If you are in the middle of a flare up it is recommended to go down to liquids for a few days and then soft foods, until the flare up is able to heal.
The body wants to heal itself and it can do this better when the problem is not being irritated by wrong foods.
Here are some recipes for the juicer that contain green veggies. This is a great way to get your vitamins without eating solid foods.
This is great video that talks about diet and home treatment for flare ups of ulcerative colitis. I liked this guy. He was very down to earth and knowledgeable.
You can use apples to sweeten your juice because green juice does not always taste the way you might like. You can use any color of apples. The following recipe is from All Recipes.com and it calls for green apples.
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/230642/healthy-green-juice/
Basically this recipe calls for green apples cut in halves, 4 celery stalks , 6 leaves of kale, half a pealed lemon, 1 inch of fresh ginger and a cucumber. Put them through your juicer and then add extra apple if you need more sweetness.
I have been struggling with colitis for several months now. I was hospitalized once and I have taken antibiotics for infections a few times. It is a very frustrating disease that can cause fatigue and weakness in the body and even joint pain.
If you are having unexplained abdominal pain, changes in bowel habits, and pain in your joints resembling arthritis pain, you might have colitis. Arthritis and colitis often go hand in hand. This is the case with me. I also have moderate to severe arthritis, depending on which joint we are talking about. Some places it is more severe to the point of extreme pain.
Your general health is important and it affects your mental health. There is no way to separate the body and the mind. Any sickness in the mind will cause physical symptoms. Any sickness in the body will cause mental / emotional symptoms.
If you have PTSD or C-PTSD then you are prone to develop problems with the bowels. Anxiety disorders if any kind also can cause bowel disease and other problems. If you are recovering from narcissistic abuse or domestic abuse you are prone to develop problems with your bowels.
PTSD can crash your immune system. There are many physical problems, diseases and infections which can occur when your immune system is compromised by PTSD and trauma.
Depression and anxiety also lower your immune system and make you susceptible to disease and illnesses including ulcerative colitis.
Financial problems cause anxiety and depression, so you could say that financial stress can also cause infection and disease. Financial problems often follow someone after they get out of an abusive relationship. So then you are particularly prone to a crash of your immune system because you have the financial stress along with PTSD from the trauma.
I wish you all good health and peace of mind,
Annie
GentleKindness 