Trauma and Reactive Responses

I had posted an earlier blog entry on this topic and a reader asked me to clarify this.  So, I thought I would explain more what I think this quote means from the book by Daniel Siegel, Parenting From The Inside Out.

I'm stating this from my own knowledge and what I see in it, not as a professional may view it.  I just wanted to be clear on that point.

See Blog post on Reactive Response 10/26/09

When we go through experiences in life, whether it is trauma and child abuse, or just difficult situations, our life becomes filtered and framed from those experiences.  They become a big part of who we are.  They shape how we view life and the world around us.  They become how we see everything.

Through healing, your focus is on reclaiming those moments and bringing back who you truly are deep inside.  Often, this is buried as a result of the trauma or experience without the individual even recognizing it is buried.  Each traumatic experience cements over our true self, and until we start to chip away at what is buried beneath the layers, what we have become on the outside is who we are in that moment.

Stuck in reactive responses...

As a result, we're stuck in these reactive responses.  I see reactive responses as how we deal with situations based upon the self that has been altered because of the traumatic experience.  It is automatic and happens in the subconscious mind, most likely as a way to survive in that moment of horror.

When a situation gets too difficult to deal with, the brain goes into protect and survive mode so that we can keep functioning.  Its goal in my view is to keep us alive and functioning at all costs.  So, if it has to bury something deep within our mind, it will do it.

Our choices after those horrendous moments, though, are colored and filtered and judged based upon what we know or we think we know up to this point in life.  It is reactive in that rather than dealing with the current situation as many might do, we're dealing with it as a result of our past experience.

We rob ourselves of so much...

If we continue down the path of reactive response, we rob ourselves of so much.  However, I believe that no matter what we've been through in life, all humans tend to be reactive based upon their life to that point.  We truly see things in the way we were taught or shown, or what we observed.  It provides the foundation and basis for our current and future moments.

For me, if I hear the loud bass thump sound coming from a car or a source around me, it immediately makes me want to silence that sound or person in any way I can.  It is a reactive response because it draws upon a very horrible moment in my childhood where I couldn't stop the screams of my kittens being killed.  It is an automatic response that has shaped me into who I am in this moment.

I'm not saying I can't change this reactive response in myself.  I have really worked on it and am doing much better, but nevertheless it is still how I respond.

Now, I can focus on saying that I will train my mind to react differently.  Unfortunately when these moments such as the example I described show up, the response has already happened before I can consciously think about doing anything different.

I go deep into healing work...

Instead, I go deep into the body part of healing work, and work to allow that horror of that trauma to come forward and out.  It happens little by little, piece by piece.  I do not believe it is something that you can truly heal in the blink of an eye.  When it is that difficult of a past experience, it takes time for the mind and neural pathways to release and rewrite.

With reactive responses, our choices now become measured on past experiences, whether we want to always acknowledge this or not.  If each one of us looked deep within, I think we would all see that - but with horrible experiences and trauma, none of these things are easy to observe.  The fear, anxiety and despair come up rapidly when we try to expose them.

Learning to deal with reactive responses is not about desensitizing you to what happened.  I think that only buries things further.  It may possibly be helpful in the immediate short term, but if you don't work to dive deep into the cellular memories of this through bodywork such as Unified Therapy, you're only masking the situation.

We all react to current events based upon our past.  It is in awareness, growth and consciousness that we come to more fully know who we are from the deepest levels within our mind and our BODY.  What the mind stores, so does the body.  What the body stores, so does the mind.

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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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Being Authentic When I Don't Know Who I Am

I remember back to the early days of beginning healing as a male child abuse survivor.  For me, my entire life was turned upside down as the result of being paralyzed from a Conversion Disorder.  Now, Conversion Disorder has been renamed to Functional Neurological Disorder.

Back to the topic though...

At the time, I thought I had life figured out.  I thought I knew what my career path was.  Each year, I listed my top goals for the next year, two years, five years, 20 years, and so on and so forth.  I had my job that took me from early morning to late at night almost 7 days a week.

All of this was who I thought I was.  It was my identity and I thought I was being authentic.  Yet, when you're losing control of every physical part of your body and you start seeing that final white light as you're body is leaving this world, it tends to slap you pretty hard, waking you up to see more than you see in that moment.

I had buried so much...

This moment brought me front and center to all that I didn't know about myself but I thought I knew.  I had so buried all of the stuff that happened to me because it was horrible.  It was too horrible to see or even think about or even allow myself the remotest of connections.

As I began to heal, I began to see more of the true side of myself, the authentic side.  It was parts that I didn't even realize existed, but they were there.  It was parts that quite surprised me.

Even as I began to heal and start to discover what being authentic meant for my life, I realized that I had just reached the tip of the iceberg.  There was so much more for me to discover.  There was so much more that I had no way to see.  It all seemed like a fog and a mystery, but beyond that point, it was who I was.

I've gone through some tremendous healing work connecting not just my mind in healing, but the physical body as well.  What I have found is that as much as I thought I healed and discovered, there was much more than I could even see.

What we cannot see in this moment...

Being authentic is in my mind about learning to let go and become aware of that which we cannot see in this moment.  It is allowing myself to go further, grow in awareness and consciousness so that I can know myself from deep within.  It is about learning to connect to the deepest parts of my body, including the pain so that I can regain all those parts and discover more of myself.

As I continue to progress in my healing, I'm learning that the more I discover, the more I realize that further possibility exists.  What I know today about being authentic is no where near what I will probably know tomorrow or the next day.

There is so much out there that I have found.  There is much more to myself that I never realized.  Along with all the pains and experiences in life, I'm learning how to become more authentic.  For as I am becoming authentic, it is then that I truly discover what authenticity means.

We have to reach further for who we are, past all the horrible stuff that happened.  We don't need to ignore, neglect, or numb to all these things, but we need to squeeze them so hard that they have no life left in them.  It is then that we reclaim the power from them enabling us to being more authentic in our own life.

I realize that this may sound like new age philosophy or mumble jumble, but I can tell you from healing in my own life, this is at the heart of what propelled me forward.  It took me out of the depths of despair and into moments that I never could imagine existed.

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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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Our Body's Health Is Up To Us

I know as soon as I write this someone is going to say, but "you don't have this experience" or "you don't understand" or "insert random statement here".

Yes, I probably don't know your situation and no, I've not had many of the other situations to deal with.  No, I probably don't fully understand.  All I can do is speak from my own experience.

Now, I'm not any magic genie mystical person that has all the answers.  Heck, I'm on the search for answers myself most of the time.  I have seen many things happen both to myself and others that regular health care would deem impossible.  I've heard the many lines that you have to live with a condition I had, but I proved them wrong.

Before you think I have some mystical powers, I don't!  I do have a willingness to shed paradigms of what I've been taught and not subscribe to the fear of whatever health situation it is.  Okay, sometimes the fear overtakes me too, but I'm able to back out of it.  I also just don't believe that we cannot impact our health in ways no one understand.

I've seen it with others.  I remember one friend of mine whose husband had this rare condition and the doctors gave him six months live.  He quit his job.  They got all of their finances together.  After several months, lo and behold the doctors were amazed because the rare condition that normally resulted in death was GONE!  There was no trace of it in this person's body.

I've heard stories from a doctor friend of mine that someone who was blind ended up being able to see for the first time out of both eyes after some treatments.  The doctors were all confused and struggling to treat this person.  It shocked this doctor friend of mine and it is almost too difficult to believe.

Check the story out of Dr. Joe Dispenza after an accident where the doctors thought he was nuts for not going through with a necessary spinal surgery.  He not only proved the surgery was unnecessary, but he found a way to heal himself.  It is a moving story of one I don't fully understand yet.  

As for myself, I went through a Conversion Disorder and in those days, they didn't know as much as they do now.  Yet, we still don't know as much on this condition as we need to know.  All the doctors and therapist concluded that most likely I would never function again (walk, talk, or work) like I did before it hit.  I proved them wrong!  Today, you would not be able to tell I was paralyzed and struggling to talk or move and next to death.

Yes, some might say these are miracles, but there are many more stories than these.  They exist.  They can be repeated.  Just check out Evolutionary Healing Institute in Miami, Florida with Dr. Paul Canali.  His concepts and processes aren't pie-in-the-sky.  They are very real and they are repeatable.  They are backed up by science.

The thing is, we don't feel like we impact our health as much as we really do.  We give lip service to health issues and keeping healthy, but the thing is - we really don't live a healthy life as much as we think we do.  Stress, past experiences and trauma impact the body, but most think that through thoughts alone, that's all that is needed to take care of it.  They forget the body half of the equation.

We impact our health in so many unconscious ways every day but we don't stop to see that.  We may see some of it on the surface, but the deeper stuff is usually covered by layers of fear and day after day experiences that only serve to cement it in place.

We tend to be a wounded people and instead of using that wounded side of us to explore and push the limits of our own growth, we get taken under by it.  Every year we ignore it, we add a little more to the pile of rubbish we place over the top of it.  Soon, we have ourselves convinced that if we just think good thoughts and avoid the terrible stuff in life, we'll make it.  Unfortunately, the longer you do that, the more it catches up with you.

Each one of us has our own path to walk with our own difficulties, trials, and stresses.  I can't tell you how to walk that path anymore than anyone else can.  It is up to each one of us though to challenge what we think we know and do with what truly can change our life from the inside out.

It isn't just about putting on a happy face.  It is allowing the happy face from deep within our physical body to shine to all the other inhabitants of the planet.

Don't take my word for what I'm saying.  Prove it to be true or false for yourself.  Challenge yourself to see how you can impact not only your mind, but your body.  What do you have to lose?

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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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Body Weight Is An Indicator of Mind Body Health

A long long time ago in the early days of humans, we encountered the winter time where temperatures were much colder than the summer.  In the beginning days, most humans didn't have thick heavy clothes to wear.  When the weather was bad, there would be days that no human could go outside and gather food without adequate clothing.  Food would become scarce.

The human body learned to adapt and started to store up food reserves in the late summer and early fall months.  Most animals do this and we humans living in a human body are no different.  As we stored up food, it would show in extra weight especially around the area of our vital organs.

Extra fat and body weight and reserves around our vital organ area or midsection, allowed not only reserves that we could feed off of and keep ourselves going, but it also allowed an added layer of protection from heat loss in the body.  It kept us insulated against the colder days and nights.

In many ways, extra weight is not only a function of what we eat and how we eat, but it is also a function of how we feel inside.  If we're feeling scared and lonely, we need our protection and our safety blanket.  If we're not sure it is safe to step outside of our immediate world, we need the protection around us.  This protection comes in the form of additional body weight, especially near the organs.

Just as much as we need protection and we get it through extra body fat and weight, sometimes we also view our body and our life in such a way that we despise ourselves.  Our low self image and low self esteem can be silent and subconsciously turning away the food we need to maintain our body weight and strength.

Most of the time this happens without us being conscious of it because if we were conscious of what was going on, we would be able to adjust our life appropriately.  We as modern day humans carry far too much daily stress with us and we drag around the baggage of our past with us each day.  Some humans are working to rid these things, but too many are controlled by their lives rather than in control of their life.

Getting rid of the daily build up of stress is much more than grabbing a drink or taking a vacation where you are connected to your smart phone, text messages, and email.  It is a lifestyle choice that you make to disconnect and turn off the things that keep your body revved up at a higher state of functioning.  It is a lifestyle choice where you choose to let your body be silent and still and find relaxation, rather than trying to see how much you can fit in your day.


Getting rid of past experiences and trauma in your life is not about thinking some happy thought and believing it no longer affects you.  It is about recognizing it and going into it so that you can clean out the closets of your life and release it.  It is more than a mental exercise.

It is about going deep into the body and through an increasing awareness, finding a consciousness that no longer needs these all that you hold on to in your life.  It is a process, not a moment where you exclaim everything is perfect and 100% healed.

Body weight is a good indicator of your overall mind-body health.  We all struggle with it to some degree and we live in a society that is so obsessed with body image, that we lose site of what life is truly about.  It is a balance between all things that we should strive for, not how we can keep up with the latest trend, fashion, or makeshift belief system about what our world should be.

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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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Subconsious Mind Impacted by Past Experiences

We never know enough about who we are or what all we can be.  We all have had experiences throughout our life that has challenged us to the core.  Some of us have encountered areas where we have struggled to stand up against the challenges of life.

All of these experiences are recorded in different ways in our subconscious mind.  It is like information being put into the computer and even though we may not be aware of it, the subconscious mind is recalling the facts.

We go through our days oblivious to the impact of these past experiences on our subconscious.  Indirectly they impact our physical body and mind to the point where we experience illness, disease, pain, and mental struggles.  While we stay oblivious to the impact, they work hard behind the scenes controlling and manipulating our lives to help us make sense of our days.

We learn how to avoid and disconnect...

As time passes, we learn how to avoid and disconnect from the revelations of our subconscious mind.  We disregard the messages given to us and we ignore the physical symptoms that arise until it is too late.  By the time we begin to notice them, they have already been conspiring against us and striving to get our attention.

In all reality, it is not that subconscious mind is our enemy, but when we fail to listen to it or connect with it, we make it the enemy.  We stand opposed to the very nature of what it is hoping to get us to hear and understand.

We become masters at numbing...

We become masters at avoidance and numbing in our life.  We get so good at it that we do not have a clue we are doing it.  We just do it as if we are on automatic pilot.  If someone points it out, we would think they are speaking a foreign language we don't understand.

How could we understand?  It is the subconscious mind that does not show up unless we allow it to show up.  Without connecting to it, the subconscious mind stays hidden.  It is not accessible through the logical mind.

In order to recognize and connect with the subconscious mind, we must first turn off the logical mind and go internally into our senses.  It is through the senses that we become connected to something far greater than our logical mind understands.

Further Reading:

1. When A Subconscious Mind Is Exposed (Sep 13, 2016)
2. Subconscious Mind Impacted By Past Experiences (Sep 14, 2016)
3. Subconscious Disconnected By Numbing (Sep 15, 2016)
4. Connect To The Subconscious Mind (Sep 16, 2016)

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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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Flu - Cold Season And Mind Body Healing

I read a recent article in our local newspaper that caught my attention.  It stated that the flu and cold season was starting early according to local health clinics.  While I'm sure that is the case, I find it sad that we function as if flu and colds are a normal part of the human existence.

It is easy to get in the mindset that getting sick or getting colds or other health conditions are just part of every day life for humans.  However, this need not be the case.  Now, before you think I'm all whacky and some part of the new age hype, I am speaking from experience here.

A long time ago it seems now, I didn't get sick often, but I would get colds.  I had headaches, including migraines.  I had stomach ulcers, allergies, neck stiffness, back aches, depression, anxiety, conversion disorder, and paralysis, among other things that I can barely remember now.  In fact, I was on medication at one time or another for each of these things and never thought I would be able to function without medications.  I never thought I could be healthy enough to function without all of these conditions.

Then, it happened!   I started to get a tremendous amount of work done on me to help heal my life.  After a life changing event where I lost my mom in a car accident, my entire world turned upside down.  Yes, I had a lot of trauma and if you read my book, Hope And Possibility Through Trauma, you will see some of the situations I had to deal with in my life.  While it would be easy for anyone to recognize that the trauma I had been through was somehow exceptional and the sole reason my body experienced these health conditions, that would not be entirely true.

Major Moment Of Embarrassment And Shame

The other day I went to a healer in South Florida by the name of Kathi Angeli.  I have been to her several times before and each time, it really helps me move forward in life, while letting go of long held energy blockages and finding forgiveness for experiences of my past that I encountered.  This session was no different and at first, I thought it was not going anywhere.  Lo and behold to my surprise, things got intense real quick and I was shocked at the event that came up.

Way back many years ago around the time I was 14 years old, there was an incident that happened with me and my younger brother.  I don't think I had hid this experience from my consciousness, but I never fully realized just what impact it had on my life.  In reality, I just chalked it up to another one of those experiences from my traumatic past that I had to heal and work through.  In fact, I thought I had worked through it, but then healing trauma is a process, not necessarily an end point like so many often believe.

In this experience, my mother (God rest her soul) who hardly ever whipped us, got upset with something my younger brother and I were doing.  I cannot even remember what it was to this day that sparked the whipping. I really doubt it was much of any significance.  In our house, the slightest breath could get you whipped.  I recognize she was having issues with my father and more than likely took that out on us, rather than dealing with it in her own life.

Here is one of my favorite quotes from this book I am reading by Dr. Joe Dispenza.  Often we want to escape our past experiences, and so we try to run from them, avoid them and act as if they don't exist.  

However, as is shared in this book, they are an addiction.  Until we deal with the chemicals that make up that addiction, we'll never get past it.  

The body is so habituated to memorizing the chemical records of our past experiences that it grows attached to these emotions. In a very real sense, we become addicted to those familiar feelings.  - Breaking The Habit Of Being Yourself