Asleep and Numb by Happy Thoughts

At one time in my life, everyone thought I had it all together.  I learned from my Mom, who always put the happy smile on in life.  Even if she was sick as could be, she would not let anyone know it.  I did the same.

I constantly immersed myself with happy thoughts and portrayed a "false reality" to the world.  My friends just thought I had it all together and were shocked when I ended up in the hospital with Conversion Disorder.  I still remember them pointing this out to me.

There is nothing wrong with happy thoughts or inspirational messages.  We all need them and they can lift us up sometimes.  Affirmations can help us focus.  However, they should not take over for the reality we project to the world.  Unfortunately that happens all the time in our lives, and especially on social media.

In this example from the blog post on June 13, 2017, Mirabel does what I used to do.  So she only shows the happy smile and shares the happy thought online, avoiding anything and everything that is hard for her to deal with in her life.  Unfortunately Mirabel doesn't realize just how asleep she is.

No, not everyone wants to see our doom and gloom.  Yet if we show the real side of our lives, others can more readily connect with us.  They can learn from us and often help provide support for us.  Together, we can do much more when we are real, not when we are fake.

I constantly see people putting down and belittling others for not being 100% positive all the time, and I weep for them.  That is not being human.  That is being unreal and disconnected and asleep.  It is numbing yourself to what your life is.  There is no way to move forward if you are numb.

Show the happy smile, but also show how you're climbing up out of the depths of despair.  Show the happy smile, but be real and authentic with people.  No one enjoys being around someone that lies to them or paints an inaccurate picture.

Yes, it takes courage to not just be numb and asleep when it comes to how we feel and what is going on in life.  It takes vulnerability, like what Brene Brown talks about.  Through moments of being real, we often lift ourselves and others up to a stronger and more powerful vantage point.

The world needs real people.  The world does not need fake pasted on smiles.  There is far too much of that on our planet today that is taking us over the cliff.  May we awaken from our sleep and realize this before we've gone past the point of no return.

Make sure you check out the first part in this 11 part series

 Part 1 is "Are You Asleep"

 

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2017 by Don Shetterly

• Permission required before any part of this blog post is reprinted, reworded or used in any form. 
• You are welcomed to share the LINK to this blog post.  

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Some Days I Struggle

I know with all that I've been through in the past that life is not necessarily easy.  I have my good days and bad days.  Sometimes the struggles of the past come up to haunt me and work hard at pulling me under.

Sometimes people try to make it look like all they have are great days, but I know that this is anything but the truth.  I get irked when people try to paint happy thoughts while you're in the midst of the mud and muck making your way to dry ground.

We need more people who are honest and real, instead of those that try to gloss over the moments of difficulty and pain.  The pain has to come out and the more we hold it in, the more we harm our mind, body, emotions, and spirit.  

Below is a list of things I struggle with in no particular order.  I know, we all have our list of things.  I'm just verbalizing mine.  They appear in no special order.

My hope is that by verbalizing mine, it will start a conversation to help others share their lists and give them some measure of healing.  We need one another to lean on, not to chastise and brush off.

I struggle to:

• Accept the quietness of friends who barely speak to me at times wondering if I've done something wrong or they are just lost in their own moments of life.
• Find a way to make it in this world on a consistent basis even though I know I have many talents and skills.
• Do the things I want, not necessarily the things that I have to do.
• Feel the disappointment of those I look up to who don't feel I measure up.
• Accept the pain of a past that is so horrifying that it is difficult to even think about or view some days.
• Deal with those that desire to take advantage of my niceness because they can't balance their needs and desires and honesty in being human.
• Know that my biological family thinks I'm the worst person around because I dared to spill their secrets by trying to heal my own life.
• Grasp everything that I've experienced in life because often it is so overwhelming and too difficult to understand or comprehend.
• Try and hide all the triggers that possess me while trying to heal and remove the power they hold over me.
• Understand why people who claim to have been my friend in the past desire to walk all over me as if I'm nothing more than a doormat for their life.
   
• Realize that anyone loves me and that I truly matter even if I know I they do and even if there are some that show they love and care about me.
• Find answers in the many questions that my mind does not seem to solve or my life seems to demand to know.
• Understand why I hear, sense, feel and see so much but yet it all seems all like a confusing mass of information that I can barely process.
• Comprehend how people can be so mean to one another and not even realize it while they shout insults with such force and velocity and exclamation.
• Make sense of a world that honors religious beliefs but yet those same religious beliefs are hurled as arrows against others, while harboring their own faults in a safe harbor as if they don't exist.
• Understand how to forgive all the pain that was inflicted upon me when the ones who did it act as if it was okay, they are righteous, and I'm the one that caused the problem - not them.
• Not fully understand why others cannot see what I can see and understand what it is that I understand.  It all seems so simple, but to others, it is not.
• Write the words that will help the most because it feels like my words are never enough in a world of turmoil, torture, pain, and disrespect.

I continue to work on these things each day because as I know, I'm a work in progress.  I know that we aren't on this earth to just wait out our days until we die.  We are here with a purpose, but sometimes that purpose is so clouded by what we've endured in life.
 

I'm not one that settles for what is or for the easy meme and saying that will magically make everything seem like it has disappeared and is better.  Instead, I'm one that keeps questioning and going deep within myself to learn more, grow more, and understand more.

Yes, some days I struggle, but it in that struggle that I remind myself - I'm becoming more than I am today.

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2016 by Don Shetterly

• Permission required before any part of this blog post is reprinted, reworded or used in any form. 
• You are welcomed to share the LINK to this blog post.  

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Anger As A Child Abuse Survivor

I feel very vulnerable when I write and share this.  After all, aren't I supposed to be healed because I'm a healer?  Aren't I supposed to be able to move past my anger if I'm a healer?  Unfortunately, anger from being a child abuse survivor is operating at peak performance.

I'm admitting it.  I have an anger problem, damn it!  I try to hide it.  I try not to show it.  Heck, for years I just stuffed it deep down inside.  It was much easier for me that way.

Anger was always taught to me from an explosive father that would yell, scream, abuse anyone close to him including my mom.  If there was anything near by he could pick up, he would use it to knock some sense into us.  I've been hit with boards, shovels, garden hoes and probably far more things than I can even remember.

It was the way I was taught about anger.  I was scared of anger and even beginning to show it.  As I went through therapy and healing, I started to be brave and let it out.  Unfortunately the flood gates opened and broke and now it seems like my angry outbursts show up all too often.

I'm trying.  I'm trying to get it under control and make sure it doesn't consume those around me.  Some days I do pretty well and other days I kind of suck at it.

I still struggle to find an effective way that helps me release it.  It feels like a pressure cooker inside of me that is going to go off no matter what I do.  Thinking happy thoughts, meditation, breathing - most of it doesn't work.

While I hate admitting it, I really want to unleash the anger on those that hurt me and despise me as a result.  I want to make them hurt as much as they made me hurt and I want them to feel the pain I still feel in my mind, my body and my daily life.

Why should they get a reprieve from it?  I hope they suffer for what they did to me.  I have no love for them and yet, I'm told time and time again that I need to forgive them.  Right - not easy!  I'm not sure if I want to forgive them because it feels like I'm letting them off the hook.  No way, no how do I want to do that.

At times I'm lost with this anger.  It took me years to get in touch with it and now I wish it wasn't there.  I'd like to think I could just hide it and say "serenity now" or some other foolish thing, but you know what - I could go and hold my head under water and expect to breathe as well.

I'm not one to do quick things of sugar coating something to make it appear as if it is over.  I either go full force and head into it completely, or I live with it until I'm ready to do this.  Yes, I'm hard headed but that trait got me walking again and functioning after dealing with Conversion Disorder.

There is so much anger in the world today and I can feel it.  It makes me angry and I can barely take that.  I wish I had a magic pill that truly worked.  I wish that I could just say it is so and it would help.  Unfortunately, I still haven't graduated from anger 101 in the school of life.

Each day though, I keep trying and each day, I hope it gets a little better.  Its what I have to hold on to in this moment.  It is hope!

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2016 by Don Shetterly

• Permission required before any part of this blog post is reprinted, reworded or used in any form. 
• You are welcomed to share the LINK to this blog post.  

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Truly Connecting With People

There is a way to interact with other people.  All too often, we just go through our day sharing our likes and happy slogans online and in everyday life.  Unfortunately in those moments, we are not truly connecting with people.  We are just talking at or to people.

A long time ago, I learned that in order to truly connect with people who needed help and were hurting, preaching to them or telling them what they should do added very little to their life.

In fact, it often turned them away and hurt them to the core.  I see this happening so much in the world.  We are all too quick to tell others what they should do instead of really offering them a hand to hold and a ear to listen.

Do you really want to know how to truly connect with other people?  Begin by sharing yourself and your journey.  Share your pains and struggles.  Share your ah ha moments that changed your life in ways you could never imagine.  Share the rocks you stumbled over in your path and how you managed to crawl up out of the hole after being weary and bruised to the bone.

Nervous System Resiliency

One of the things that I am learning firsthand is how resilient our nervous system in the course of our day. Many of the things that I write about here are ones that I have been introduced to and then I learn about them by living through experiences that become my teacher.

It is not just concepts that are told to me and I continue the story. They are very real lessons that I experience firsthand within my body. When you can experience something within the body and feel the connection within, then there is no doubt that it is a real, truth altering experience.

For a long time I felt overwhelmed in life where I could not seem to get my balance as the winds of various events would come along and knock me off balance. It never seemed like I would get past many things in my life because I always felt overwhelmed. Then one experience in particular that I had on the table with Dr. Paul Canali brought this home in a very real and vivid way.

In this particular session, I came up against some of the root energy where very real and intense anger perpetuates and grows within me. As I pushed through this, my body felt physically awful for several hours but then as the energy of the release began to balance itself, I noticed a major change within my body. For the first time, I noticed a peacefulness and calmness that I had never felt before. It is more than difficult to describe here but it was real and I knew it wasn't just a temporary peace or calmness. It was a life changing moment.

As events of the following week transpired, I noticed that most of these were just rolling off my back. Yes, some of them were pretty intense and I was not ignoring the feeling of them but they were just coming in and almost like bouncing through me. It is then that I came to understand just how resilient our nervous system is meant to be and if treated properly, it can perform in ways that we may not be able to imagine.

For months, I did not think about this entire scenario until I recently went through a very stressful week. In that week, I noticed something about myself and how I was dealing with the stress. While the stress was intense and difficult to be part of, I noticed that much of it was just bouncing right through me. I'm not going to tell you that it was an easy week but without this happening within myself, it would have been much more difficult.

Please don't misunderstand me here because I'm not talking about "thinking happy thoughts" here either as many tend to do. This is about going deep within and connecting to the grounded part of your cells, your body and your mind. It is about having the nervous system at a healthy point that it can absorb these things and let them go. It isn't about avoiding any of the feelings or affects of the stress but feeling all of it and just swimming through it as if you were swimming in a pool.

Of course, most humans go through life in a hurried fashion barely ever taking time to take care of the body, oblivious to the fact that this is taking place. We like to self medicate ourselves with things that keep us from living in reality and keep us from getting to truly know ourselves in an intimate way.

All too often, I've heard many people tell me that they don't have time to get a massage or relax or to take a vacation. In this day of electronics, people cannot even get away from their jobs for a minute. We keep ourselves and our nervous systems in a heightened state of arousal and stress but yet we expect our bodies to hit peak performance.

We go through life dabbling in this or that new age therapy or we turn to religion, doctors and our families to help us exist in our day. However, none of these things will help you deal with the stress in your life unless you go in and stand up to the fear and the ego within your body and your mind. You can fool yourself all day long into thinking that various things are helping you and they may be temporarily, but if you really want to leap upon the mountains, you need to journey within yourself.

The nervous system is meant to act like a rubber band where if you pull it and stretch it, when let go, it should go back to its original shape. However if you stretch it beyond those limits time and time again, you may alter the shape of it. If you stretch it beyond what it is capable of, then there will be a break. The body acts in much the same way.

If we as a society really wanted to improve the overall health of our world, we would be focusing upon learning how the nervous system works and how we impact it every day of our life. We would focus upon learning how to reclaim it and harness the power that we hold within our bodies and our minds. The nervous system should be our friend but much of the time in our world, we barely even notice its existence.




Blog Post & Images (c) 2/20/11 Don Shetterly - use by permission only
http://www.donshetterly.com




Photo by NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org

Consciousness Or Numbing?

I continue to be amazed at just how powerful and protective the mind is. It is full of deep layers of consciousness that if we open up one layer, we begin to see the the unveiling of another layer. Not until we are ready nor open to seeing the deeper layers, will they become viewable to us.

Over the years, I've had many people suggest many things to me from in their words "just moving forward" to "praying about the situation" and "to not focus on all those things". I've had people suggest that they have moved on while I see evidence of some very numbing and unconscious behaviors that they exhibit.

We all have our way of dealing with things in our life and even though we may appear positive on the outside, thinking happy thoughts, it does not mean we are any more conscious or we have truly taken the power back from these things. We may have tricked ourselves into believing this because it has always been our method of survival, but let us not fool ourselves for the future. We as humans are biologically designed to become more conscious of ourselves and more aware of all that we are. To do anything less than this is to not be human.