Dealing With Trauma

When you've been through so many horrible experiences in your life, it can be difficult at best to deal with them, try to heal from them and not let them take you under.  Dealing with trauma is not easy and if anyone tells you it is, don't buy the iceberg in the middle of the swamp they are trying to sell.

Sorry, if anyone thinks I'm off my rocker here, but I've had to deal with trauma.  Yeah, I've done a pretty good job keeping the hungry tigers at bay, but sometimes the trauma is just hard to deal with, let alone heal from in life.

I keep trying no matter what.  Some days, I want to give up and say enough is enough with this.  It can be exhausting at times and horrifying at other times.

I don't want to give the impression that if you've been through trauma, life is pointless or hopeless.  It is not!  As hard as it gets, there is hope that you can go on long enough to heal from it and find a measure of happiness and meaning and purpose in life.

Kept putting one foot in front of the other...

When I was really processing the heavy parts of trauma, I often felt exhausted and I wondered if I would ever get through things.  Sometimes it felt hopeless and sometimes my energy level didn't seem enough for what I needed.  In those times, I kept putting one foot in front of the other knowing that "this too shall pass".

In those difficult moments, I turned to nature.  Any time I could get to a park or the mountains or oceans, I would go.  Anytime I could just spend a moment outside in the sun, feeling the warmth of the sunlight or the breeze upon my face, I would do it.  If there was just a moment where I could walk down the sidewalk and escape the difficult moments of the day, I would go.

Creativity helped me deal with trauma...

I used creativity to help me deal with trauma.  Creativity through writing, drawing, painting helped.  It gave me an outlet.  If you're not one that likes to write, draw or paint - that's perfectly okay.  There are a hundred million other ways to be creative.  Just find the one that works for you and use it to help yourself.  Creativity helps you process.  It gives you a channel for those things that are so hard to put into words.

Dealing with trauma is not about ignoring it.  It is about embracing it and allowing yourself to go in and heal from it.  I still remember the therapist that told me how happy she was that I stuck with the therapy.  She told me that all too often, many will quit therapy long before they should.  No, it isn't easy going to therapy and opening these wounds up, but in order to heal - you just can't wish it away.

Dealing with trauma is not one size fits all.  You have to find what works for you and then do it.  Don't wait for others to tell you what works.  Seek out the things that help you and if it is not working, find something else.  Don't be like the friend of mine that was seeing therapists every day of the week and exclaiming nothing was working.  My advice to him was to stop what he was doing and find something that did work.

Therapy that does not connect the body with the mind may help to a degree, but it will be lacking in potential.  The body stores the memories and they can only be accessed and released by doing work on the body.  There are some great therapies for trauma healing such as the Unified Therapy with Dr. Paul Canali.  It is highly effective work and it does not take too long before you begin to see and feel a difference.

In dealing with trauma, I have found that most of the times I had no answers in what step to take.  I just searched and sought out things that would help.  I tried to recognize how my body, my gut, and my heart felt about whatever therapy I was doing.  I am a highly driven person and so I constantly evaluated if what I was doing truly worked.  If it didn't, I found something that did.

But most of all - don't accept that trauma has to ruin the rest of your life!  There is healing and growth from it.  There is a way forward.

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2017 by Don Shetterly

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The Hunt For Creativity

Fragments Of Awareness

This past weekend, I went to a couple of events that had creativity on display.  While they were two totally different events, the hunt for creativity might have left some empty handed in one event, but fulfilled in the other.  Generally speaking, we have lost our creativity in this world.  What people consider to be creative is usually nothing more than a lot of bright flashing lights, fast moving images and video with sounds that have been regurgitated.

In the one event this week, the items that were displayed looked almost the same from one booth to another.  The colors were even similar and the items were hard to tell apart.  The atmosphere was more subdued and the excitement level of energy was low.  Yet, it appeared that these people poured their life and soul into what they were doing.  It just lacked creativity.

Are You Mindful and Creative?

At one time in my life, to be creative in my mind, meant to be a painter, a writer, a musician among other things. Creative meant to me, something you did in your spare time that was only for these things. Outside of that, I always figured that creativity really had little place in my everyday life. Sure, many of the companies I have worked for gave lip service to thinking outside the box, but few rarely nurtured the concepts past an evaluation period or company meeting.

For most of my life, I did not think I was that creative. It was not something that was allowed to be in existence while I was a kid growing up except for when I put together model semi trucks or various crafts my mom would buy me for Christmas. It was always about finding a job that you could make decent income at and functioning in life like our society requires us. There was no time for creative moments unless you did them on your own time and there was no support for this.

Yes, I was able to practice and learn the piano as a kid, but whenever I tried to be creative and just play from my center of creativity like I do today, it was often met with criticism by those who could not even play one note. I still remember the time I was creating in the moment with some music and while it wasn't a polished piece of music at that moment, my father made sure he told me that I made many mistakes. This was not helpful and it led me to hide my create in the moment capacity if anyone was around within hearing range.

Following the rules of society, I went to college and pursued a degree in a field of study I enjoyed. After graduation, I found a job that was fun and rewarding which turned into a more technical computer role. As I began to look at life and evaluate where I was, I saw myself as someone working on a computer in a solitary office cubicle for the rest of my life. I did not see the creative side in me at all and so I brushed it aside. It was not until events later in my life that I began to embrace the creative side of myself which had always been there. I just had not been open to seeing this side of myself because I did not feel it would serve any purpose to accomplishing what society expected of me.

And as I evaluate all of this while I just started reading the book "On Becoming an Artist: Reinventing Yourself Through Mindful Creativity",
maybe - just maybe - I'm more creative. In fact, I know I am more creative than I ever let on to be. I'm just beginning to embrace that creativity and allowing it to be more of who I am, rather than something I pull down off the shelf when I feel like I have the time.

In the book, I am seeing that to be mindful is to be creative and to be creative is being mindful. Being creative gives us the essence and enjoyment of life that we so deserve. Yet, if we only attempt to use it on occasion, we are missing so much for our lives. Being creative and being mindful is not just for a select few but it is present in each one of us, if we allow it to be. It does not matter how we choose to be creative but that we choose to be creative and mindful. Creativity and Mindfulness are like partners that go together.

Page 4 - On Becoming An Artist - by Ellen J. Langer
This book is about the roadblocks that stand in the way of our natural creativity. It is intended to be a guide to opening up creative engagement on a daily basis in all that we do.