Healing The Physical Trauma of Child Abuse

Written by Don Shetterly

This Unified Therapy session wasn't easy.  It was tough beyond any words that I can write.  In fact, just getting myself to see Dr. Canali was more than difficult.  I procrastinated.  I tried to wish it away.  I tried to numb it away.

No matter what, as hard as I tried to wish it away, my avoidance was not helping the issue at all.  I was begging for mercy.  I wanted relief.  I could not find it on my own no matter what I was doing.  As I wrote a few days earlier in a blog post, it was the Rash That Won't Stop that got me to the point where I finally went to see Dr. Canali.

My life had become one of so much difficulty with little sleep.  The burning and itching I described in that blog post were no lies.  It was all too real.  My anger was hard to contain with everyone and everything.  I did not know at that moment before the session if I could make it through this.  I was not sure if I could make it through this.  The session with Dr. Canali had become my last hope.

What I had written, I shared...

I shared with him what I had written in that blog post. I couldn't even manage to get the words out.  My voice would not articulate them.  As he sat down beside the massage table and read them out loud to me, my eyes welled up with tears.  To most people, they are words on a page.  To me, they were heartaches and pain from the abuse I suffered.

As we began to go into what was coming up in my body, it was evident to Dr. Canali and myself just how locked up my pelvis and abdomen were.  In fact, most of my pants were not fitting at that time.  They felt like 5 sizes too small.  The itching in this area was intense.  Any touch anywhere close and the pain would shoot through my body like there was no end.

Moving through things, everything from the itching to the heat in my body and the pain would kick up.  We would take it as far as we could, and then Dr. Canali would allow me to drop back down.  It felt like a physical workout.  It felt like there were moments that were almost too much.  However, I knew that this was part of the healing process.

An empowerment boost of healing...

The more I started to see that we could go into all of these things and then drop back into a more peaceful state, the more empowered my body became. It was as if pushing into these difficult moments and then dropping back was an empowerment boost.  A boost that kept me taking on more of the trauma my body had been holding for many years.

Some of these trauma memories of abuse that I was dealing with, I have seen in other forms and ways at various times.  However, this one was the more physical side of being raped and held down with no way to stop it.  It started by the time I was around six years old and continued until I was much older.

As we moved through the session, we discussed those things, and I was allowed to share them.  It wasn't easy to say the words.  It wasn't easy to recognize just how much the evil and darkness of these abusers and tried to squash any hope for light and existence I had.

The Body Shows The Trauma...

The physical trauma resides in the body.  The body remembers even if we attempt to keep it from reliving memories from years past.  The brain will try to block it, but when the body shows the evidence, it is then that the brain is in survival and numbing.

As we went through the session, I could feel the physical tension leaving my body.  It was more than if I had gotten a relaxing massage.  It was where my body goes into that deep peace and rest that it desperately needs.  The itching came down.  The pain came down.  The elevated body temperature I was feeling dropped down.

I noticed as we left the office and went out into the summer heat of a South Florida afternoon, that I was tolerating the heat much better.  Before this moment, I could barely stand in the summer heat for a few minutes.

I noticed that the world around me seemed more at peace.  I sensed the quiet stillness accessible to me even though the hustle and bustle of the city continued.  I felt lighter and more joyful.  I felt more hopeful and alive than I had a little while earlier that day.

As we left to go back to the hotel, I started to notice that the pants which were tight on me before the session, were now needing a belt.  There was so much physical tension in my abdomen and waist that had released that I could barely keep my pants up.  It shocked me because it showed me just how much trauma I was holding in my physical body.

I went from not wanting anyone close to me touching me to allowing myself to be touched.  I went from wanting no intimacy to welcoming it happily.

In that session with Dr. Canali, so much physically changed in my body.  It was like I was coming back into my body and learning to live life again as was meant for me to experience.

Healing Is More Than A Mental Exercise...

Once again, the work and concepts that Dr. Canali has discovered are helping me understand what trauma does to the body and how we store all of this for years and years.  It is not just a mental exercise.  It is an exercise where you connect the mind with what comes up in the body and then you are gently guided in different ways how to let go of it all.  It is a process that helps you find deep healing and peace, that is more than a quick point of change.  This healing is lasting.

As I write this, several days after the session, I can still feel my body letting go and processing all that went on in that session.  I can feel how little moments in life kick up the body temperature or the itching while being able to talk myself back down and put reality in perspective with what I am feeling.

Yes, I've had moments of anger and frustration, but I can deal with them more appropriately than I was.  I'm able to go in and stop and rest and allow my body to just be in the moment.  I've been able to be in a hot tub and sauna, be outside in the heat of an afternoon and not feel like I was going to lose my mind or pass out and drop on the ground.

I'm working to take care of myself, changing how I see things in my life and observing how I react.  I want the reactions to be from a more mind and body centered approach than feeling like an unwilling participant.  I'm focusing on the bigger picture of my life much more than I have been and seeing how all of this plays into where my life goes.

I'm monitoring how much I let in from the world that is full of screaming, anger, rage, and disrespect because the actions I see every day do nothing to help me in my own life.  I'm allowing myself to disconnect from them and replace them with things that are genuinely helpful.  I know that if I get caught up in the darkness of the day, it will do nothing positive for me.

Most of all, I feel better.  I feel more empowered.  I feel more centered.  It is like there is now hope where I thought I had lost all hope.

I'm thankful for Unified Therapy and Dr. Paul Canali and what he knows and how he helps me.  He is one of a kind.  If there are others beyond him (and a few other practitioners) that can do what he does for me, I have not found them.  He is a pioneer in the field of healing trauma.

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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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Diaries and Memories Both Good And Bad

(Written by Jeff Lemlich)

I did a very smart thing, back when I was 11 years old.   I also did something kind of stupid.   I started keeping a diary.

That was smart, because thousands of memories from my past are now at my fingertips.

That was stupid, for the same reason.

Just the other day I couldn’t remember the name of one of my teachers, and reached for my 1975 journal, hoping her name was on one of the pages.   Thankfully, it was, putting an end to something that was starting to drive me bonkers.  That’s when having my life story written in ancient Flair pens really made me happy… but at the same time, I glanced at some of the other things I had written in that journal.

Ugh – was that really me?   How could I have had so many prejudices?   Did I really think I was smarter than everyone else?  How could I have had so little empathy?

I struggle to forgive the child that I used to be, and those journal entries make me cringe even more.   Yet I realize where those prejudices and the lack of empathy stemmed from.    Years of being put down and bullied made me think my being “different” made me a freak, so it was natural that I’d try to see others as the freaks.  Sometimes I put my pain into words, and other times I just buried it deep, deep, deep down inside.  It’s the sort of thing that I’d love to forget, but again, there it is on paper… reminding me of the crap that I went through, and the crap that it put into my head.

That isn’t the only drawback to journaling.   If I’m angry at someone or something, I should put it in my journal, right?  Well, what will happen 10, 15, 20 years later, if someone I know comes across it and reads it?   Wouldn’t that just reopen old wounds that have healed eons ago?    Is it better to cross out the bad parts and just try to remember the good, or would doing so further skew the truth and present a warped and maybe even dangerous view of how things were?

Despite all this, I am grateful to have noted so many places, people, and events.   I have a linear memory, and can tell you the date when almost anything in my life happened.   The more I read my journals, the more I remember… but are things really supposed to be that way?   Aren’t we supposed to live and learn, and forgive and forget?

 
I don’t have the answer.  I just know that my old journals – despite the bad memories – are precious to me.   I hate forgetting things, even the things that would best be obliterated from my mind.    It beats racking my brain trying to remember things, such as the name of that long-forgotten teacher from my past.  

Memories are very important to me, and I love helping others remember names, dates, and songs (especially songs).   I can write a lot more about that if you liked this guest blog post.    Leave a comment if you’d like to read more, and if the response is good, I just might make it happen.

- Jeff (SavageLost.com)

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Jeff Lemlich

Author
Guest Blogger
Avid Vinyl Record Collector
Male Survivor of Child Abuse

Visit Jeff's website at

SavageLost.com

  

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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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The End Of A Historic Ride

I don't know what it is, but I've always been fascinated by trains.  Maybe it is because I have grown up in houses that were near railroad tracks.  I remember the shaking of the house and the sounds jarring us out of a nice peaceful moment.

I explored plenty of worlds walking down railroad track, watching the changing vegetation as I went.  I felt like someone out making my way through a journey on my own.  It felt like I was in my own little word that I created as I walked down the tracks.

As a child, we lived down this long driveway from railroad tracks and I still remember that we would put rocks on the tracks.  I thought it was cool to see how the train would knock them off or split them.  My dad of course would get angry and beat us for doing that claiming we would make the train derail.  I'm not sure it would have because these were small rocks.

There was one house we lived in that had a hill just beyond the train tracks.  Whenever we heard the train coming, we would hurry and run across to the other side sitting up on the hill and watching as it went by.  Knowing that we were close to the train as it went by and feeling the power of it was a big thrill to me.  Yes, we were careful.  We understood the risks, but we made sure we were safe.

I miss the sound of the train...

These are good memories of my childhood.  I often miss the sound of the train in the distance.  It became such a familiar part of my life and one that isn't marred so much by other events we went through.

I have always admired the power of a train as it chugged along carrying so many things from different parts of the country.  When I worked in a grain elevator, I remember working around the train cars and walking behind the inspector as they checked each car from above.

So when I heard that the Orange Blossom Cannonball was shutting down, I was sad.  I didn't get to ride on it often and I didn't have the history that others most likely did, but I felt sad.  It seems like a silly reason to close it down because the railroad line would not renew the lease since they needed to park freight cars in its place.  Come on - really!?

The Orange Blossom Cannonball is a fun ride and I think of the cars that were built from the early 1900's, just how many stories they could tell.  The people around the train and running it seemed friendly and nice.  It connected a beautiful downtown area of Mount Dora to another small town called Tavares, Florida.

It makes its last ride...

Today as I write this, it makes its last ride.  Today is the last day it will run.  This train has been around for over a hundred years and starred in movies.  It has built memories for many that will hopefully outlive the train.

However, it is a time of sadness for all seeing that it is coming to an end.  It is difficult knowing that many who kept this train running will no longer have this job.  I wish there was a way to keep it going.  I hate that a part of history is now coming to an end.

I tried to capture a video of its last days and hope you'll get a chance to watch it.  Feel free to share this video along.  I really worked to just capture a sense of what it was like to ride on it and be around it.  To see the video, click below.  Last Time Riding The Orange Blossom Cannonball.

So long, Orange Blossom Cannonball....  So long....

Hopefully the 15 employees that lost their jobs find something as rewarding.  They sure made this train was special and everyone I saw working there always had a smile to offer.

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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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The Trauma of Accepting Our Trauma

It can literally take five minutes of trauma to permanently affect a child’s life. It does not necessarily matter what the trauma is or if it happened only once or multiple times, the underlying damage can physically alter the development of certain areas of the brain thereby altering the development of personality. This is particularly true in cases of childhood sexual abuse.

During the trauma we simply do not have the capabilities to cope with the situation, so the natural instinct of the brain kicks in and the emotional center is quickly replaced by the instinctual (reptilian) portion of the brain. The mind does what it needs to survive the trauma at the time, which is basically to shut down and kick into survival mode, since our brains are entirely unable to process what has happened.

Fast forward an undetermined period of time and our brains are as developed as they are going to be and are now better equipped to cope with our childhood traumas and despite our desperate attempts to keep these memories repressed, they slowly start to exit their domain of safety and creep their way towards the front of our brains.

Those seemingly unexplainable actions and behaviors, the bad habits and negative coping skills and the diagnoses of whatever mental illness, all really do have an underlying reason. The emotional outbursts were not displays for show and the random and often harmful acts were not cries for attention. The lack of ability to fully bond and trust was in no way meant to be malicious. The darkness that you have carried in your heart and soul has cast a shadow that has dimmed your entire perspective of life.

Once the memory is at the forefront, we can either spend a tremendous amount of emotional energy trying to repress it again, or we can try to ignore it, but somehow it always seems to rear its ugly head. The process of accepting these memories as truths is not only the first and perhaps most difficult step in the healing process but is also multi-faceted.

To believe these atrocities happened to us brings about intense feelings of shame, confusion and anger. We question why this happened to us, or what we did to deserve it. We can’t accept that it isn’t our fault and self-blame torments us for years. Even our adult brain has trouble comprehending that these memories are actually real. We cannot understand how someone we knew or trusted or even loved could violate us in such a traumatic manner that it forever changed our views of the world, and of ourselves. It marred our ability to trust, set boundaries and have healthy relationships. The feelings of shame have weighed us down and burdened us throughout our lives and the emotional weight of the trauma that has held us captive for years finally breaks our back.

What alternative do we have aside from accepting these new truths that are not only completely overwhelming but seemingly impossible? We are almost forced by our minds to deal with our trauma whether we believe we are ready or not. We are guided directly through the middle of it as there seems to be no true detour.

Acceptance involves challenging the only values and beliefs we know, and puts into question our already fragile sense of self. It requires setting new emotional boundaries and learning to place the blame where it rightly belongs. It often means we will have to emotionally and sometimes physically remove ourselves from the lives of certain family or friends. It means taking a step back from life in order to get a different viewpoint.

Acceptance forces us to look deep inside at the shame we have been unnecessarily carrying around for a lifetime and realize it is actually not our burden to carry. It means opening up wounds that we have already formed scars over in order to heal properly. Accepting our abuse, however hard and trying it may be is the beginning to the end goal of healing.

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2017 by Don Shetterly and Jody

• 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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Financial Pain In The Neck

One of the things that I’ve struggled with over the years is finances.  Even when I’ve had money in my bank account, I get nervous about tomorrow.  I get nervous if it will be there.  I get the feeling that it will all be gone and there will be no more and I’ll be hungry and homeless. 

While all of those fears may be irrational and they don’t happen, they almost did at one time in my life.  That’s a part of my past, I’ll withhold from more detail because it is a dark part that I wish would have never happened. 

Then there is the part that when I was growing up, food was scarce.  I remember the free school lunches that sometimes were the main meal for my day.  I remember the government handouts of dried powder milk, dried eggs, and peanut butter.  No, they didn’t taste good but hunger outranked taste.

We went to bed hungry many times.  We shivered in the cold rural farm houses we lived.  Our boots that we trudged through the cold frozen snowy ground had holes in them.  Our mittens were thin.  Probably at one time, I could have packed all the clothes I had in one suitcase.  So some of the fears are real, even if they are from the past.

Abundance and financial security...

Abundance and financial security are concepts I still struggle with no matter what I do.  I’ve made progress, but then I got hit front and center with this latest trigger that messed with my head.

As I finally got up the courage to check my bank account and pay bills that I knew were coming due, the anxiety was so high.  In fact, I almost had an anxiety attack just getting myself to do the regular financial routine.  I wasn’t able to do too much because it was just overwhelming, so I did what I could and closed things down.  I didn’t think any more of it – until I went to bed.

My neck began to hurt...

Laying my head on my pillow and drifting off to sleep or trying to sleep, my neck began to hurt.  Now, as I’ve went through tremendous healing, there is one part of me that I still struggle with and that is my neck.  Often I have a lot of neck pain and if it isn’t every day, then it occurs frequently in the week depending on my physical activity.  At times, it is better.  At other times, it is worse.

Dr. Canali has a difficult time working with my neck and trying to get it and my shoulders to release.  Even if he distracts me, the minute he gets close to touching my neck, my entire body freezes on the treatment table.  At times, he has been able to work with it, but most of the time, it is hands off or I freeze approach.

So, as I was laying in bed, my neck began to hurt.  Often I can breathe a little and work on some relaxation and it will go away.  Tonight, nothing worked for me!  A few hours earlier, I struggled through the anxiety of the finances, but had not even considered the connection at this point.

The pain was escalating... 

Finally after I was not able to get the pain and tension to reduce, I ended up getting up out of bed.  The pain was escalating and the headache was increasing.  My neck muscle area felt cold and lifeless.  Yet, I could feel the intensity of the pain in a way I had never felt before.  I gave up and took an Aleve to try to bring the pain down a little.  I’m not a person that likes to take pills for pain.  For me, its about solving the issue – not masking the issue.  In this case, I could not alleviate the pain.

The Aleve did help and some more attempts to relaxing this area and breathing into it started to ease things a bit that allowed me to go back to bed.  I slept for several hours before waking up, but the pain and tension were still prevalent.  I was so hoping that with some sleep, they would improve.

After I got up, I almost took another Aleve, but I didn’t want to do that.  I knew that masking the pain was not going to help.  Most people turn towards the pain relievers, but I’m not one of those that do this.

I plugged in the Resperate...

So I finally got on my own treatment table, plugged the Resperate in and started to do the deep breathing connection with my body.  I went through two full cycles of this.  It was interesting to note that my pulse was actually lower, almost as if the anxiety and stress were weighing hard on my nervous system.  As I continued with the Reperate, I saw my pulse drop down, my breath slow way down and I felt the tension leave my body.

It was in that moment that I saw the little boy cowering in the corner of the room with his head down and his arms covering his head.  As things flew overhead, I was ducking and trying to keep myself from getting hurt.  My parents were at it again, fighting and screaming and throwing things – all over the family finances or what my Dad had spent when we had no money.  It felt like a war zone in those moments.  It seemed like it went on forever.  It seemed like it went on every day.  I cringe at the thought of what that little boy went through.  That little boy was me.

I saw the connection between what happened in my neck with the pain and tension and having to hunker down and duck from the things being thrown across the room.  I’ve never remember this one until now.  I wish I could forget.  I wish it never happened. 

At this moment, I’m really not sure what I do with this.  How do you recover from something that happened so long ago, but yet this most likely has a strong impact on how I view finances.  Finances are a war zone to me, where you just try to avoid them and duck so you don’t get hurt.  This isn’t really a good message to attract abundance or financial stability into my life.  In fact, the obvious statement is that it is the complete opposite.

I’ve struggled for a long time with neck issues.  Maybe I’m beginning to see what is fueling them.  Maybe it is more than just normal tension and stress.  If I had to sit down and create a movie about these experiences, it would not be hard to do.  The images and scenes feel so vivid and real.  They feel like one right after another.

I know they are challenges that I’ll find a way to overcome the financial pain in my neck.  I don’t get swept up into feeling like there is no way out and I don’t just do the doom and gloom.  I write these words so I can learn and process and find my way through it so that maybe they have less impact upon me.

I know of no other way to heal from them at this moment.  It is the beginning of trying to find healing and I’ve got a feeling that as I heal, so many other things in my life will stabilize more.

 #FinancialStruggles

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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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Neuroscience In The News On Aug 15

These are articles that I found of interest relating to news about Neuroscience.  In this issue, I have highlighted an article about how past experiences shape who we are.

Please check out the article links below and feel free to comment with other information related to these subjects.  I enjoy learning as much as I can about the brain and passing this information on to everyone else that shares these passions.

This is for the week beginning August 15, 2016.

Please come back each week and hopefully I will have some more highlights.  Feel free to share with me ones that you have found and I may highlight those as well.

Feel free to check out the highlighted articles from August 8, 2016

Past Experience Shapes Us

Even though we don't want to believe it most of the time, what happened in the past does affect who we are today.  In the latest research article discussed on MindBodyThoughts.com, Behar Gholipour of the Huffington Post wrote, The Things You Don't Remember Shape Who You Are. There are so many things that we often don't remember and it always amazes me how they impact our every moment of every day.  We can run from them, hide from them, and try to ignore them, but they are still running as tapes in our minds, bodies, and tissues.

In our early years, it sets us up for what happens later in life.  We all have experiences that impact us one way or another and some of us have more difficult experiences which really brings this front and center.  To read more of the details of the study, please look at the following article, The Things You Don't Remember Shape You Who You Are as I have discussed on Mind Body Thoughts.com  [click to read more]

Believing In Our Memories

Believing In Our Memories

In the book, You Are The Answer, by Michael Tamura, states on page 168 that "we have such power and ability to make these pictures come alive that we end up believing in them more than we do in ourselves". While this may sound like a simple truth, it is much more real in our every day life than we may want to admit.

We all have memories and we form those memories out of pictures or images of these moments imprinted with emotions when they were created. The memory pictures of our mind are created beginning at an early age and continue to our current moment. Often these previous memory pictures play over and over throughout our day.

Forgetfulness - Symptoms Of Stress, Part 8

This is Part 8 of 9 Part Series - Forgetfulness

Ask anyone these days and most often you will hear that person make some mention of having memory issues. Whether it is short term or long term memory, many people struggle with this. According to this article on health.yahoo.com, Dr. Lombardo, author of "A Happy You: Your Ultimate Prescription for Happiness", is quoted as saying “Research shows that chronic stress can literally shrink the size of the hippocampus, which is responsible for some memories.” Fortunately, according to Dr. Lombardo, the size of the hippocampus will go back to its normal size once the stress level is reduced.

However, many people are living in a constant state of stress and do not even fully realize it. They often think that if you just relax for a few hours, than all is fine. While that may help, it is just part of what needs to happen. The nervous system in our bodies is meant to absorb stress and deal with it but when we constantly overload the system, the stress becomes overwhelming. Daily chronic stress, if not released, builds up and can be as harmful as if you were involved in a traumatic incident. Both have many of the same long lasting effects on a body.

In our day and age of technology and fast paced business offices, we are not able to readily escape stress. It is everywhere around us. We all have many responsibilities to deal with and even during this time of unemployment and financial crisis we are in, many are struggling to just hold things together and keep going. So it is no wonder right now that the level of stress is at an all time high in our society.

Stress is stored in the body and if you are not doing things to release the stress from the body each day, it will build up and begin causing all kinds of health problems. Bodywork, exercise, meditation, Yoga, deep breathing, movement and just taking some time out each day to let go and relax are all helpful ways in dealing with this. The key though is to find something that works for you and make the time in your day to do this. It isn’t just something that is nice to do once or twice a year on vacation. It is critical for your survival and evolution as a human being into becoming all that you can be.


Symptoms Of Stress: (9 Part Series)
Part 1. Tweaked and Tense Muscles
Part 2. Eye Twitching
Part 3. Ragged Cuticles
Part 4. Cavities
Part 5. Rashes & Itching
Part 6. Nausea
Part 7. Sleep
Part 8. Forgetfulness
Part 9. Confusion



*For more articles, check out the Mind Body Thoughts Blog

Itchy Skin and Oatmeal Bath

Lately, I have been going through some rough emotional times and of course, they are showing up physically as a rash and as itching. While it is showing up as a physical manifestation, the underlying cause is abuse memories that are trying to find a way to the surface. With the help of Dr. Paul Canali at Evolutionary Healing Institute, I am going through treatment to help release these things at the core. We've been able to produce all the symptoms on the table in a session and then watch them dissipate right before our eyes.

However, in between the sessions, I'm still dealing with all that is coming up and trying to process it as quickly as I can. In the meantime though, I still get the itching and rashes. In fact, this morning when I woke up, I had a red rash over much of my entire body and itchy little bumps on my skin. In order to get some temporary relief, I researched online about oatmeal baths and then did this for myself.

How Do You Make Colloidal Oatmeal?
Everything I read, stated to use colloidal oatmeal and from my understanding, you can make this from regular oatmeal. I used Quaker Oats (1 minute oats) without any flavorings or additional ingredients. It was just straight oatmeal like you would use to cook with. Since we have a high powered Blend Tec Blender, I dumped the oatmeal in it and ground it to a fine dust. That is supposedly the same thing as Colloidal Oatmeal from what I am reading. If that is not true, please feel free to comment and help me understand this.

How Much Do You Add To The Bath?
After I had the oatmeal ground to a fine dust, I put about 1 to 1.5 cups of it in the bath. I'm not sure if that was too much or not the right amount because I saw so many different recommendations being from 1/3 cup to several cups. I have a big garden style tub and this amount seemed to work. Most of it mixed up fine in the water but there was a small amount that did not.

What Should The Water Temperature Be?
Another thing I was reading was to not make the bath water very hot because this actually opens up the pores on the skin to much and sort of draws the moisture out of your body. It leaves the skin dried out which of course leads to more itching. I can't prove if this is true or not but just in case, I made the bath water warm instead of hot.

What Was The Result Of The Oatmeal Bath?
I soaked in it for probably 30 minutes and it was soothing to me. The itchiness did go away but then water tends to do that for me. I wasn't exactly sure though if the oatmeal would live up to the expectations I read about until after I got out of the tub and dried off. By the way, when you dry off, blot dry - don't rub because you don't want the friction to irritate the skin.

After getting out of the oatmeal bath, I noticed that my skin and body felt very warm. As I sat there for a few minutes, I began to feel very tired and sleepy. This led me to laying down which I fell into a very deep sleep for a couple of hours. It was some of the best sleep I've gotten lately.

While the itching is not completely gone, it helped drastically and give me some temporary relief that I have not had in many days. I noticed though that my skin was not as red as it was earlier in the day and the tiny little bumps had somewhat disappeared. I just got to a point where I could take no more and when the rash covered my entire body, I was desperate to try anything. If you are suffering from this, give it a try. Do a Google search online to how others do this as well but hopefully what I've shared here will help take some of the guess work and questions out of it.

Emotional Vomiting

It started out, as a peaceful morning. The sun was shining and while the outside air felt humid, it was not too warm. The agenda for the day was not too hectic at that moment. As my attention turned toward the computer and my online friends, I saw a posting that I quickly commented on. Thinking I was really just commenting to the friend that posted it, I had the temporary lapse of rational thought that everyone out in cyber space connected to this friend could read the comment as well. But yet, in my mind, it was a conversation between me and my friend, not between me and the rest of the world.

Quickly, a friend of hers that I do not know posted a very strong response accusing me of being short sighted and part of the problems in the world. I was quite shocked and surprised that it generated this type of response because in many ways, I did not disagree with the points this person was slapping me with. We probably shared more in common than not but I never got the chance to explain anything. It was like this person was the judge; jury and executioner of what I said and that really irked me. Since it was on a friend’s page, I did not want to cause a scene and out of respect to them, I deleted the comment. Thinking that would be the end of the story, I quickly found out that this action inflamed the person further which surprised me all the more. The other commenter suggesting that I was a coward because I deleted the comment could have not been further from the truth. I no longer feel I have to prove what is right or wrong in these things. I just let it go. And finally after I had enough of this back and forth bantering, I just said whatever and banned this person from seeing anything connected with me or I from them.

Not that anything the person said was in disagreement with how I feel but the way in which it was done left a pretty bad taste in my mouth. Sometimes people say far more in how they respond than what they actually say in words. So be it. I’m over that but it turned a good morning into the start of a bad day without me even realizing it in the moment. And it was unfortunate in many ways because this person may have been able to share some things that I am not aware of. However, now my ears are turned off to this person because my boundaries were violated and there was absolutely no respect.

This may sound like an experience that just needs to be dropped and for me to move on. At face value, I would agree but as the day grew on, I realized just how this impacted a series of events that culminated into my spending time in front of the porcelain god puking my guts out. This even though, would not seem as if it was connected to anything else until much later.

Later in the day after mowing the yard in the hot heat and struggling with allergies, I could feel the pressure of a sinus headache beginning. We also had a visitor come over to do some taping of Jeff for a movie he is creating. The guy seemed very nice with his grey hair and raspy voice but the moment he arrived through the front door, the stench of cigarette smoke almost took my breath away. The raspy and somewhat loud, nervous voice filled the room. Little did I know that these things were beginning to play ping pong with me and connecting dots I was not aware of at that moment.

As the afternoon wore on, and I heard the guy going through the interview process with Jeff, the voices seemed to carry upstairs and be amplified a hundred times. I grew exhausted as my headache began to intensify with every moment that passed. It seemed like an eternity when in reality it was only a couple of hours. I stayed upstairs away from the noise just hoping that would help alleviate some of the irritation I felt. Then as the guy left, I watched out through the window as he backed into the garbage can spilling the contents and driving off as if nothing had happened. Just another random event in the day that acted as glue for the connection of the dots, yet I was not even aware of what was going on.

I began to watch a movie that had of all things, a wife appearing to be beat and murdered in the first scene. Probably not something I should have watched this day after looking back but at the time, it didn’t seem too far out of line and it was such a quick scene that I just tried to overlook it. However, it didn’t overlook me!

Part way in to the movie, my stomach began hurting as my head began pounding from the headache. Heartburn was picking up and I felt like my stomach had a balloon in it that was being blown up as it became bloated. The temperature in the room seemed to increase by a thousand percent as my face and body felt so warm. The lights in the room and the sounds around me began to be irritating to an exponential degree. After some time of trying to bare this, I gave up and went to my bed to lie down. Only then did things really intensify.

Trying to use ice packs on my head helped momentarily but the pain was so intense that part of me just wanted to lie down and die. A jackhammer on my head could not have been any more intense. It was excruciating. I would move the ice pack to my stomach to help alleviate the discomfort and again, it would help momentarily but then just as the pounding in my head, it would come back in full strength as a wave crashing into the shore.

During this time, I could begin to feel a lot of anger come up within me but not anger that was directed at any one thing. It was the random anger I get that has no hooks necessarily to hang anything on. It is the anger that seems to bubble up as a spring of water from the ground with a never ending source. Yet, in the moment, there does not seem to be any events to go along with this anger.

I tried my hardest to breathe and scream into my pillow but it seemed as if I had no energy to do this and I felt further exhausted. As my body sank back down into the bed and I found a moment of peace and comfort, I drifted off into a relaxed state. All of the sudden from out of nowhere, my right leg jerked as if it was going to fly off of me into outer space. It woke me from the relaxed state and then I felt my body shiver and shake with trembling. As these things happened, my headache came back with a vengeance and the heartburn within me increased while my stomach grew more agitated. The ice packs that I was using were not helping alleviate the growing nightmare of pain within my body. I tried to work on my enteric brain but even that was providing little comfort for me. The pain was overwhelming. The pain was unbearable.

It was in this moment that a series of images came to my mind along with some smells. The image was of my father storming out the door after he and my mother had fought or I should more accurately say after he beat the daylights out of her. In the image, he got in the car just like I remember and took off into the night. It would be many hours before we would hear him come back through the door and even though I was supposed to be asleep, my eyes remained opened. The terror alert level was quite high. He would come back home sometime many hours later into the early morning, smelling of smoke and appearing intoxicated. I would listen to him apologize to my mom and then they would make up as if everything was fine. No one would ever talk about this the next day or dare utter a word about it. It was a secret that was not to be told. These things filled in the image my mind recalled as I laid on my bed with my head pounding and my stomach violently shaking with pain.

As I ran into the bathroom and knelt next to the porcelain god, my stomach vomited its contents with fury and frequency. My body wanted to collapse on to the floor but the events of the moment would not allow it. In a weakened slumber, I made my way back to the bed and collapsed into my pillow. My body had no strength to hurt or move any further but the headache had decreased significantly at that moment. I fell into a restful moment of sleep waking up not feeling as bad as I did only a short time before.

As I recounted all of the things that happened during the day, I could begin to see how the smell of the cigarette smoke, the grey hair of the visitor and his loud voice, the confrontation with the lady online and feeling as if I had to take cover from the loudness of the events going on in the house were all connected. Each activity in itself did not paint a picture but when you put them all together, it was easy to see the entire portrait.

Even though it is hard for me to admit, I saw so many horror filled moments in my house. My younger brother shared with me many years ago, the things he remembered, yet to me it is like he is talking about some other family. I know that loud noises especially voices get to me and I know that there are some smells and scents that just about bring me into a full rage. For the most part, I cannot explain either of these things except as being triggers to events I have witnessed.

While there are many people who go into town to the bars to drink, I did not think my father was one of those. For the church we went to completely condemned drinking any alcoholic beverage. Our church preached time and time again where I can almost quote it from memory that if you take one drink, you will become an alcoholic because one drink leads to another and another and soon you cannot stop. Even going into a restaurant or establishment that served alcohol was prohibited because someone might see you and think you were drinking which then might cause them to drink and become alcoholics. Since you were responsible for your brothers (fellow man), and if you caused them to become an alcoholic, you were responsible for their sins.

That is what was taught and of course it was backed up with scripture in the bible like the verse in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 which reads, “What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For Ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s. It is a lovely verse of scripture but when used to control and manipulate others, than it becomes dangerous as so often the purpose of this verse or others like it by the strict sect of Baptist churches (GARBC – General Association Of Regular Baptist Churches) we attended.

So this secret that my Dad had which I didn’t not even fully realize until now went against every teaching of the church which he used to control and manipulate all of us with. What a conflict of monumental proportion! When you mix that in with all the other events taking place, it creates such confusion that for me has been difficult to sort out. The lines and the boundaries are all blurred and unclear. The horrors lurk in the shadows as the infliction of pain is witnessed. It is the existence of the well that bubbles up from within that has no paintable portrait but a feeling of despair, anger and exhaustion.

These events make me wonder about myself at times. I feel like the oddball in life, the oriental reject as my dad once called me and I feel as if I don’t fit in. Sometimes, I struggle to know what is real and what is not or why the anger within me builds. I could fool myself into thinking that these things don’t exist and I could try to just push forward in life acting as they don’t but I would only be fooling myself. It is in these times, that I know I’ve got to heal through them rather than continue running from them but this is nothing short of being extremely difficult. I would love things to be different. I would wish and hope that no other person would be a witness to the events I have seen. It is a daily horror that haunts me and a complete healing of wholeness that I long for.

I remind myself of just how far I have come but my eyes still cannot close to all they have seen. Once again, I am a witness to how our emotions, the events of our past and our memories impact not only our current day but the core of our body and mind.

My Enteric Brain Journey, Aug 25, 2004

Here is an account of a session with Dr. Canali in 2004. My reason for sharing this from my journal are to help bring about awareness to all that is possible through this simple but deep form of healing. Please keep checking back for future postings from my journal.
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There were a lot of tears last night in my session with Dr. Canali. When I was asked to describe what had gone on in the session for me, I described pain, hurt and more appropriately sadness. I felt like I was choking and I couldn’t get enough air. I recalled the time when I had inflammation in my chest as a kid and somehow that or the pattern of chest problems may tie in with this. It isn’t as important though I am learning to become aware of exactly what memory is behind everything as it is to just experience the emotion that comes up. Memories can sometimes cloud the actual experience of what is going on and distort the actual memory. I have been getting several tremors in my right thigh just above my knee and my left thigh. This is normal for the left thigh but unusual for the right. You can actually see the muscles shake in my leg like they are being stimulated. I feel like I have more armies to fight with me than fight against me right now.