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.

---

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.  

---

Fearing The Fear

Written By Don Shetterly

If you've read much on my blog, you'll see that this subject has been one of my most challenging experiences in my life.  Fearing the fear consumed my life at one time, but over the years and through my healing, I've learned more how to deal with fear.


I am not going to sit here and write that fear is an easy thing for me to overcome.  I'm not going to give you some platitude or meme that says you can wave a magic wand and be in control of fear.  Those things are not helpful to healing and our growth.  They are stumbling blocks if we subscribe to them.

When I was in a healing session the other day, I started to notice the little things where fear would come on strong in me.  In these Unified Therapy healing sessions, we are encouraged to bring the fear up, not shove it down or hide from it or numb it.  It is the time to bring it up.

The "oh no" mode...

For me that day, the office air conditioning kicking on sent the fear going sky high.  It wasn't easy, and at first, I could notice my breath going into fear mode.  I could feel my body begin to tense up.  I could see that my mind was starting to go into the "oh no" mode.  It felt like everything was going to come crashing down on me and that my life at that moment would come to an end.

Fearing the fear was where I was in that particular moment.  There are reasons that all of this was coming up, but that detail is for another blog post.  Just recognizing how strong the fear was getting and how much was coming at me, my body went into the defensive mode of survival.

In a Unified Therapy healing session, you don't stay in this moment.  You are taken through it by Dr. Canali gently guiding you to feel in your body, sense what is going on, and remind yourself that it is fear, not the end of the world.

As you go in and begin to connect with the fear in your body, there are often emotions or physical sensations that appear as they did for me that day.  The anger and pain surfaced.  The emotions of sadness and grief showed up.  The point of not being able to stop what had happened to me as a kid was the dynamite ready to ignite.

In this session, I also did one more thing, and that was telling myself that what happened to me many years ago is not happening now.  Dr. Canali, of course, was coaching me through this, but just that realization in that particular moment was a big one for me.  It helped me to connect reality with fear.  It helped me to see that I feared the fear, but that the current reality was different.

Yes, there is a mental exercise in stopping how you deal with fear, but this approach that is so healing and empowering is body centered.  If I didn't deal with what was going on in my body, it would be nothing more than platitudes about how to treat fear.

Most of the time in healing, we deal with fear from an intellectual mind-centered level.  However, fear resides in the body, and if you fail to go in and touch the depths of it within the cells, you're only working with half the healing potential.

The further you can go in and feel it within the body, the more you will supercharge your healing.  Healing from the core of your cells in the body is lasting and life changing.

---

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.  

---

The Rash That Won't Stop

 Written by Don Shetterly

At the slightest hint of anything, the rash picks up.  It changed from being constant to giving me moments of reprieve.  However, in exchange for this, it kicks up harder and with more fierceness than ever before.  The itching may subside after some moments, and if I’m lucky, the burning sensation doesn’t start in because it can last for a long time.  Most of the time lately, I’m not so lucky on that.

It doesn’t take much.  It can be fabric touching it.  It can be something touching me emotionally (good or bad).  It can be a conversation with someone.  It can be stepping outside in the warm summer weather or trying to wade in the pool.  It can be a phone call that I’m on or even listening in on these days.

When it picks up with intensity, I care barely sit still.  I struggle to keep my fingers from clawing at the rash.  Sometimes it won’t let me stop and sit down.  It keeps me pacing the floors screaming out in agony as if it won’t ever let me go.  Sometimes I find myself hitting and pounding my body just to numb it, as if I was doing what I once used to do as a kid.

My breathing gets shallow during these times.  Sleep is like something a million miles away.  My brain begins to run incessantly as if it must solve every issue known to man.  I find no relief – only distraction.  Most don’t understand.  In fact, it is almost too difficult to explain.  I feel ostracized by virtually everyone, but I want NO ONE to touch me or come close to me.

The images flood my mind of being held down while boiling water is poured upon me.  I know what they want me to allow them to do, but on that day, I’m fighting them.  I know I shouldn’t fight them for it will only get worse.  I just don’t want them to today.  I’m tired of enduring this.  I’m tired of them doing it to me.

Regardless, bad boys that don’t do as they are told suffer the consequences, and so the boiling water is poured on me as a punishment.  It seems boiling.  It could be hot water.  I can’t recall.  My body screams in pain.  My body shivers as the cold air of the winter in a drafty old house touches me.  I shiver and shake.  I tremble.  Just like in the days of the seizures.  I couldn’t control those either.  I would shake and tremble and flail around until exhaustion hit.  It went until I numbed and disconnected enough that I no longer was aware of what was happening.

But good little boys don’t have these images of their fathers and brothers.  Good little boys should never think about these things happening.  After all, God will torment and punish me forever for thinking this way and not obeying their every command.

My body wants some rest and relief.  It wants to numb at the same time because it is just too much at the time to deal with at this moment.  It is much too much even to want to deal with at this moment.  It seems like it has been an eternity that is has been happening when in reality, the rash only started last Christmas.

I try to tell my mind and my body that it will get better.  It laughs at me like a pack of hysterical hyenas.  It scoffs at me with ludicrous thoughts as if there is any way to get beyond this.  I try to have hope.  I try to have hope.  I know I’ve been in similar darkness before, but it is of little use because I feel too worn out and exhausted to care.

By the time anyone reads this blog post, I will have had some Unified Therapy sessions to hopefully help me get past this.  So, stay tuned for the follow-up blog posts.

---

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.  

---

The Felt Sense

 By Don Shetterly

By far, we under-utilize this part of human biology and healing.  The felt sense is critical and powerful to changing the direction of our lives, increasing awareness, and consciousness and helping us heal the experiences of our day.

I've learned about the felt sense through the work of Dr. Paul Canali, known as Unified Therapy.  Felt sense, in my understanding, is about feeling the emotions and what is going on in life in the body.  It is the connection between those emotions and the body, including the mind.

All too often we only focus on what we feel, or that emotions are present.  We tend to focus on it from a mind approach where we are in our heads, but not in our bodies.

Emotions are outward manifestations of what is going on in life.  They are our reaction to events and experiences, originating from deep within us.

Felt sense takes us into the moment where we feel the experiences and emotions in our body, not just observe them in our reactions.  When we stop and allow ourselves to go in and feel them, it is then that we have the power to change them.

Most of us will feel the emotions, and feel pain in our bodies, but we don't connect the two together.  The felt sense is where we are able to do this.

Being aware of how these things connect to our body and our mind is the key to working with them.  The more we can work with the experiences and emotions we face, from a connected mind and body interface, the more we can make major changes in life.

These changes are not limited to physical only, but our increased consciousness and awareness.

A good quote from Eugene Gendlin's book, Focusing, puts this in perspective.

"The change process we have discovered is natural to the body, and it feels that way in the body.  The crucial move goes beneath the usual painful places to a bodily sensing that is at first unclear.  From this new vantage point, the traditional methods of working on oneself are seen to have been mostly pain-centered.  People get into and repeat over and over their painful emotions, without knowing how to use the body's own life-centered and inherently positive direction and force." (Focusing)

---

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.  

---

Traumatized By Seizures

One of the things I experienced in 1991 was a condition called Conversion Disorder.  Many people see it in different ways, and there are many who do not understand this condition.  In a nutshell, it is like an overloaded circuit in the body that tends to flip the breaker and shut you down.  That is how I've come to understand it in my own healing and life.

Pseudo-seizures in Conversion Disorder are part of what I experienced after I lost control of my body through paralysis.  In those early moments, I could not walk or stand and function on my own.  Eating, talking, moving, and many other actions we take for granted were gone from me in the blink of an eye.

However, the seizures I went through was by far the worst.  I did not understand what was happening to me.  They would go on forever, it seemed.  My parents would watch me in the wheelchair I was sitting in as the seizures kicked in.  They would be frightened, and so would I.  The only thing that stopped the seizures was when my body got completely exhausted.

In these seizures (that's what I call them), my body would tremble and shake.  It felt like my arms and legs would move violently all over the place with absolutely no control.  It didn't feel as though I was present in the moment of what was happening, and it always felt like there was nothing I could do.

I was so frightened during these times.  I wanted so badly for someone to come and put their arm around me and hold me.  I didn't want people to stare at me as if I was some freak because they were afraid themselves.  If anyone talked to me or put a hand on me, I don't remember that.  I don't think that happened.

While I was in a healing session the other day, this is the subject that came up.  It took me by complete surprise because I had not even thought about it.  I sure didn't think I had been traumatized by the seizures.  However, I found out just how much is still locked up in my body from these seizures.

In the work I have gone through called Unified Therapy with Dr. Paul Canali, shaking and trembling are often part of the healing session.  It is normal for our bodies to shake and tremble to dissipate stress or trauma.  However, most of the time the mind and body stop this.  So if we allow ourselves into these healing moments, they can release so much locked energy within our cells, tissues, and our mind body.

It is important to make a note here that just shaking and trembling by themselves are not the healing part.  When you connect it to an emotion coming up in the body or some experience you've been through that automatically appears, then you have the basis for a very powerful healing moment.  If you're not careful though, you can get locked into this trembling and shaking and have it yield nothing more than re-traumatizing yourself or a person you are working with.

As the session went along, all of this came front and center and something that was actually healing and helpful was frightening to me.  Dr. Canali is able to understand this and work with me so that I don't go into the overwhelm moment.   I go up to the edge of it, where I am instead empowered.  While this may all sound like too much and too scary to go through in a session, he is careful not to re-traumatize you.  The more you can go into these moments, the more healing and awareness comes out as a result.  It becomes empowering to aid you in further healing and growth.

It did not dawn on me until this session that I was storing so much trauma in my body and my mind from the seizures.  I just thought that once they were done, it was all over and I had moved on.  As I keep gathering the fragmented pieces together of what I went through, I begin to see a new picture of who I am.

All too often, we think that once things are over we are past them and we've moved on.  In fact, we often tell ourselves and others that we have moved on, or that they should move on.  It isn't until we allow ourselves to connect all of these things together that we truly are in the healing part of the mind body connection.

This is what healing and awareness are all about, but it all depends on how far I'm willing to let myself go into these moments.  If I hold myself back, they will not happen.  If I let go and surrender to them, the other side of peace and joy that I gain is beyond any words I can use to describe it.  If I do not integrate them in and acknowledge their presence in my life, I will continue to wander through life as if it is another foggy day.

---

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.  

---

Introducing Barbara and Insights Into Healing

I'm so happy and proud to announce the addition of another regular columnist to Mind Body Thoughts.  Barbara Lempereur is one of my long time friends who has helped me be more than I am, and helped countless others to help heal their lives.

One thing I so love about Barbara is her compassion, caring, and love for other people.  It is a pure love and compassion, without judgment that makes Barbara a true healer.  It is what has helped me find my way through difficult moments.

While I realize that Barbara has experienced some difficult things in her life, she has found a way to continue on.  Yet, she didn't stop there because she took that pain and found a way to help others walk through those difficult moments they were facing.

She has a very grounded view of healing and what helps get us through the moments that sometime seem impossible.  It isn't pie-in-the-sky thinking, but something that makes sense and is easy to grasp on to.  She uses her own experience to reach a healing hand out to others.

Barbara is also an assistant working with Dr. Paul Canali in Miami, Florida at the Evolutionary Healing Institute.  Through the work of Dr. Canali, she has learned and helped advance Unified Therapy.  It is the work that I've also been involved with and is life changing when it comes to healing trauma.

So, it is my pleasure to introduce Barbara Lempereur as the new regular columnist on Mind Body Thoughts.  Her blog posts will be appearing every other month, and I think the insight into healing that she will bring will benefit everyone that reads it.

So, help me welcome Barbara to the team!

For more information on Barbara and the articles she writes, go to the page on this blog, Insights Into Healing.  Look for her articles around the alternating fourth Monday of each month.

Stress Set Point In The Emergency Danger Zone

This is the continuation in a series on allostatic load.  In part 3, we discussed being disconnected from allostatic load and stress. 

If you haven't seen Part 3, go there first.

In Part 4, we will be discussing the stress set point in the emergency danger zone.

So what can you do if your set point has entered the emergency danger zone?

The first thing is to recognize it.  You can't keep running from the body and the mind.  You can't keep pushing your body past its limits.  You can't keep running from your past even if it is so horrible and painful to see.  Okay, you can keep running, but sooner or later, it will take you down to your knees and trust me, it gets much harder to come back.  I speak from experience on this.

In the early stages of recovering your set point and reducing allostatic load, you may need to take drastic measures for your own survival.  This may include medications and life saving procedures, but you must be careful that these do not become a crutch that is misinterpreted and misrepresented as healing.  It is far too easy to do this in your mind.  If you stay in this mode, it will not go easy for you in the physical side of your mind and body.

Support and stress reduction activities can be helpful, but they will only take you so far if you ignore what else is going on underneath.  Yoga, QiGong, and other movement activities can also help, but again, you need to go to the root cause.  It requires traveling into the pain and difficulty, not just treating the surface.

Even massage and bodywork of different flavors can help you to begin the process of balancing out and resetting the set point of your life.  Keep in mind though, these things can become the healing crutch rather than the healing.  They may often be good for you, but they can become a routine that keeps you at arms length from that which is raising the alarms within your body.

The best thing you can do to help reduce the allostatic load is by going in and learning to connect with your body.  Through the felt-sense, breathwork, and movement connected together with someone who is trained, you can begin to feel your body deep within.  You can begin to go into the outer edges of what is comfortable, thereby training your mind and body to increase your resilience and take back the power of what is draining your life.

This is not just a mind exercise.  It needs to happen at the cellular level to bring about true change in a body.  If you don't engage the body and nervous system at a cellular level, you're just putting a band-aid on a gushing wound, hoping it will stop the bleeding.

Sometimes this process is not easy in the beginning, but it is like an Olympic athlete training for the Olympics.  They don't start out on day one being able to run 25 miles.  They work their way up to it and often through the process, there is muscle discomfort and pain.  If they keep training and allowing for recovering, their muscles and body will be ready to do more and to take on more.

The same goes for healing your life and dropping the allostatic load you are under.  This is not pie-in-the-sky thinking.  It has been proven many times over with those that know how to take someone in and guide them through the process of waking up.  The important point though is that you have to go through the process to wake up and stop disconnecting from your life.  Anything short of that pushes the set point further and further toward the danger zone, past the point of no return.

The process I've gone through with Dr. Paul Canali of Evolutionary Healing Institute in Miami is called Unified Therapy.  In this process, he draws on the core truths of many modalities and then applies them at the right time.  He constantly keeps the person engaged through the process and keeps them feeling in their body.  When you are feeling in the body, you are in control, but when you have disconnected and are not feeling, that is when you're heading for the cliff.

It sounds so simple and yet complex to go through this, but I know for a fact that many people, including myself, have dropped the allostatic load in their lives.  It isn't just a one time moment of healing.  As you go through the process you learn to become more aware --  and the more aware you become, the more life shifts so that you can adapt better to stress, heal your life, and keep yourself from maladaptive problem solving.

Make sure you check out the next part in this 5 part series.  

 Part 5 is "The Best Part Of Dealing With Stress"

---

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.  

---

If You Don't Deal With Stress

This is the continuation of a series on allostatic load.  In part 1, there are notes from a video discussion with Dr. Donald Bosch of the Headington Institute on allostatic load.  He does a very good job of explaining what allostatic load and allostasis are.

I really enjoy how he explains allostatic load.

If you have not seen Part 1, go there first.

I have always said that if you don't deal with stress, stress will deal with you.  We all will probably shake our heads and agree, but that's about as far as we take it.  We don't fully understand and comprehend what that means.  We are disconnected from what it means, in many ways.  However, I keep attempting to write about this so others can begin to understand it more.  I realize it is a complex subject that tends to sail right by, but it is important.

I speak from my own experience and that of what I have learned from Dr. Paul Canali of Evolutionary Healing Institute.  He understands this far better than I do , but I have experienced it firsthand in many ways.

Trauma can be simple everyday stuff...

In the video from part 1, Dr. Bosch talks about the set point and how the further we veer out of allostatic load, the further this set point gets moved.  It does not have to be trauma or child abuse or war or other means to cause this set point to shift.  It can be as simple as office work stress, caring for others, or just dealing with life when you were not taught great skills in adapting to stress that comes along.

We all like to think that we've got life by the horns and we are in control.  We all like to think that if we have a beer or a glass of wine that we've relaxed and the stress has all vanished.  We all like to think that if we manage to squeeze in a day off here and there or maybe a few days for a vacation once every couple of years that we're in charge of the stress in our life.  "We're handling it" is what we tell ourselves.

Daily buildup of stress is as harmful...

However, this could not be further from the truth.  The daily build up of stress is just as harmful as if we encountered some traumatic event in our life.  If we don't discharge that, it finds a home in our mind and body.  It moves the set point just a little further away from homeostasis.  Our body ends up staying in that constant state of alertness ready to handle what is bombarding us in life.  We have ended up pushing our allostatic load to the point where it is getting so far into the danger zone that turning back gets more difficult with each passing moment.

It happens before you know it.  It takes place in the blink of an eye.  It is not like you wake up one day and go, wow - I've pushed my set point way too far.  Okay, it can happen that way but more often than not, it goes unnoticed.  It goes undetected until something in our life happens that tries to wake us up.

In the meantime, we maybe experience things like headaches and muscle pains.  Sometimes we find out in a routine doctor visit that our blood pressure is high or our pulse rate stays at a constant high rate instead of dropping down into rest and repair mode.

We may experience fatigue, sleeplessness and nervous stomachs, acid reflux or other conditions.  Chronic health issues may set in and begin to become more pronounced.  We may encounter all kinds of health conditions as issues progress.

In worst case situations, we may go into Conversion Disorder like I did or experience health situations that are life and death.  It varies by person and it depends upon so many factors.  I'm not trying to say that there are not other underlying factors in the exhibition of illness and pain, but I am saying that allostatic load is the cart pushing the horse over the cliff.

Make sure you check out the next part in this 5 part series.  

 Part 3 is "Disconnected From Allostatic Load & Stress"

---

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.  

---

Today, I Know

(Written by Marie Davino)

I have been in some kind of therapy or other since I was 18, due to a difficult and dysfunctional family life as a child. In addition, I was bullied at school and had an eating disorder that became a lifelong struggle.

It has, at times, been a rough and very rocky road to say the least.  I knew that I had experienced some kind of abuse, but the memories of it were incomplete or vague. That made it difficult  for me to know for sure if I actually was molested… and to let it go.

The questions were always, “what if”, “what really happened”, or “who was this person?”  These questions haunted me, and were always in the back of my mind. I tried to recover the memory in different ways with different therapies over the years to no avail. I finally decided I would have to be ok with not ever knowing…until recently.

I worked with my last therapist for ten years, and he was wonderful. I will always be grateful for the work we did together and for the time and effort he gave to help me heal my past wounds. I reached a point where I was very happy, had left it all behind me, and felt my life was quite fulfilling for many years…and then, the bottom dropped out. I felt myself spiraling into a depression that  I could not express or understand. I tried my best to manage it with all of the tools I had learned over the years. Nothing was working.

That was when I found Jim Fazio and Unified Therapy. I began to work with him, and reached a level of trust so quickly that I was able to explore the reasons for the depression I was experiencing in great depth.  It is difficult to describe how the sessions go, but I can say there is very little talking, no advice or judgment, and all mind-body work in a safe, relaxing environment.

The sessions were intense and powerful... after each session was over, when I allowed myself to let go, I felt an overwhelming peace and joy that I had not experienced for a very long time. It was progressing so quickly that after a few months the memory became clearer… until one session when the answer came… I knew it was real, where the existing memory was leading, and that it happened.

The next morning, this poem was written in my mind in a matter of minutes, and I had to write it down.

Today, I Know

(c) 2017 By Marie Davino

Today I see the world through different eyes
Yesterday it was maybe, probably.
Maybe.
Today I know
Yesterday it was how could someone do that to a child
Today it is how could someone do that to my child
Yesterday I wondered why? (I suffocate!)
Why? (I can't breathe!) why? (I can't speak!)
Why? (Did I make this up?)
Today I know
The Angels gentle message
Floating on an ocean full of tears
drowning out my screams
Buried in sand up to my nose, hide my face from horror.
Can't move, can't breathe, why? (No one hears me.)
Today I know.
Paul sings it was far away… but it was here all along
He sings it will stay forever, but now I know
I will fight till I can let it go
These words of a million wounded souls, spoken a million times
Nothing new here...I am just one more broken heart to heal.
Freezing cold. Burning up.
No more shadows. No more darkness. No more silence. Today I weep.
Today I bathe in the soft lightness of mourning
In the gentle hands that hold me
Because now, I know.
Tomorrow I will see the world through different eyes.

I am sharing my experience on Mind Body Thoughts because through my work with Jim Fazio I found Don, and we have become good friends. What he writes on his blog is courageous, open, and honest, and helps me find the courage I need to continue to heal through some very difficult times. Many thanks to Don, for sharing so much of his life with us so we can see there is always hope…and to Jim, for holding on tight and going through the darkness with me.

- Marie

---

Jim Fazio, LMT, CSI, UTP

Website:   Integrative Bodywork, Inc.

Activating the Brain-Body Connection for Healing.

Promote Health and Wellness, not disease and illness

---

---

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

• 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.  

---

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.

---

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.  

---

Adverse Childhood Experiences ACE study

This study is one that needs to be told to every corner of the world.  It was done by the CDC and Kaiser Permanente.

The study is often called the ACE study which stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences.  It was one of the largest studies into the impact of childhood abuse on health later on in life.

Some facts about how the study was done according to the CDC.gov website.

1. Two waves of data collection between 1995 and 1997 with over 17,000 people.
2. Study comprised of 54% women, 46% male.
3. Ethnicity and race was 74.8 white, followed by 11.2% Hispanic and Latino with other groups making up the difference.
4. Age ranges were more heavily sampled on 60 and over at 46.4%

Major Findings According To The ACE study

Almost two-thirds of the participants had at least one Adverse Childhood Experience.  More than 1 in 5 reported three or more Adverse Childhood Experiences.

The greater the number of experiences you have as a child that are adverse, the greater your risk for having chronic health conditions as you get older.  This study shows that in no uncertain terms.

The following website, AcesTooHigh.com does a good job of explaining this in more detail.

As the number of Adverse Childhood Experiences increases, so does the risk for the following:

• Alcoholism and alcohol abuse
• Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
• Depression
• Fetal death
• Health-related quality of life
• Illicit drug use
• Ischemic heart disease
• Liver disease
• Poor work performance
• Financial stress
• Risk for intimate partner violence
• Multiple sexual partners
• Sexually transmitted diseases
• Smoking
• Suicide attempts
• Unintended pregnancies
• Early initiation of smoking
• Early initiation of sexual activity
• Adolescent pregnancy
• Risk for sexual violence
• Poor academic achievement

 Adverse Childhood Experiences Definitions

1. Abuse
• Emotional abuse
• Physical Abuse
• Sexual Abuse
2. Household Challenges
• Mother treated violently
• Household substance abuse
• Mental illness in household
• Parental separation or divorce
• Criminal household member
3. Neglect
• Emotional neglect
• physical neglect

How To Calculate Your Ace Score

Answer the following questions to calculate your score.
(prior to your 18th birthday)

1. Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often… Swear at you, insult you, put you down, or humiliate you? or Act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt?
   ___No
   ___If Yes, enter 1
   
2. Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often… Push, grab, slap, or throw something at you? or Ever hit you so hard that you had marks or were injured?
   ___No
   ___If Yes, enter 1
3. Did an adult or person at least 5 years older than you ever… Touch or fondle you or have you touch their body in a sexual way? or Attempt or actually have oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse with you?
   ___No
   ___If Yes, enter 1
4. Did you often or very often feel that … No one in your family loved you or thought you were important or special? or Your family didn’t look out for each other, feel close to each other, or support each other?
   ___No
   ___If Yes, enter 1
5. Did you often or very often feel that … You didn’t have enough to eat, had to wear dirty clothes, and had no one to protect you? or Your parents were too drunk or high to take care of you or take you to the doctor if you needed it?
   ___No
   ___If Yes, enter 1
6. Were your parents ever separated or divorced?
   ___No
   ___If Yes, enter 1
7. Was your mother or stepmother:
   Often or very often pushed, grabbed, slapped, or had something thrown at her? or Sometimes, often, or very often kicked, bitten, hit with a fist, or hit with something hard? or Ever repeatedly hit over at least a few minutes or threatened with a gun or knife?
   ___No
   ___If Yes, enter 1
8. Did you live with anyone who was a problem drinker or alcoholic, or who used street drugs?
   ___No
   ___If Yes, enter 1
9. Was a household member depressed or mentally ill, or did a household member attempt suicide?
   ___No
   ___If Yes, enter 1
   
10. Did a household member go to prison?
    ___No
    ___If Yes, enter 1

Understanding The Score

Add up all your "YES" answers and that is your ACE score.

The higher the ACE score, the greater health risk you have.  It becomes an index where your risk for the health factors listed previously become more a reality.

I'm a firm believer in that if you have a health condition, as long as it is not past the point of no return, I think a person can turn it around.  Think of a train going off a cliff that once it gets to the end of the track, there is no stopping it.  However, if we're not at that point, we still have a chance to slow the train down.  I understand that I am often in the minority on this and many may think I just don't understand.  I use my own life's experiences and conditions as proof of this conclusion.

So, I don't accept that any physical health condition cannot be stopped or reversed.  This is my opinion and I cannot base it upon fact.  So, please don't take this as medical advice because it is not intended to be that.  Just don't limit yourself to the current medical wisdom out there.  I believe there is far more within us that can turn things around.

In my own life, health problems that I thought I would have to live with are no longer a major concern for me.  I don't take medication.  Yes, I still have things that crop up on me physically and mentally, but I've learned the tools that pull me back out of hell.   There have been some major physical things that I thought were not something I could change and yet, I've discovered that I can really impact them and sometimes pretty quickly.   

Why Does All This Matter

When you have been through childhood abuse, if you don't deal with it - it will deal with you.  You may think you're getting away with it and it doesn't affect you, but sooner or later it will catch up.  It will bring you front and center with it.  You may still choose to deny it at that point, but if you do, things will only get worse and I think you reach the point of no return.

From what I have experienced in my own life and through the healing work that I've learned, there is a way to reclaim your physical body and mind and heal from these adverse childhood experiences. Unfortunately, we often just give lip service to this concept while ignoring the true impacts and how we can have great influence over what happens as a result.

At one time, I thought that physical ailments on the body and mind were life sentences.  I shouldn't be standing here today writing what I am because everyone at one point thought my future was hopeless.  I've battled the depression, anxiety, suicide,  migraine headaches, ulcers, allergies, skin issues, high pulse rate and many other physical ailments.  At one time, I thought that was just the way things are.

I won't tell you today that my life is perfect and free from all of these physical issues, but I now have more tools in my toolbox to help me deal with things, without turning to medical procedures, surgeries and medications.  At one time, I needed some of those things, but it was because I didn't have the tools I now have.

It takes work and courage...

It takes a lot of work and courage to get to this point.  It is not easy and I will never mislead anyone into thinking it is just a matter of changing one's thoughts or living by some platitude or meme.  In order to begin healing, you have to go into those deep dark horror moments of life and learn how to take the power back from them.

This is not just a mental exercise, although the mind and your thoughts play a major role.  This is an exercise where with time, you learn how to feel and connect to your body through the felt sense as it connects with your mind.  When you understand that in order to heal your mind, you must feel in your body that which is hard to feel and is often blinded by fear.

Feeling in the body....

Feeling in the body is the most advanced way I have found to heal the adverse childhood experiences I have been through.  My ACE score is very high.  I've been through a lot and unless I would not have started to use Unified Therapy and the concepts behind it, I would have never made it this far.  My life was crashing when I first started to understand and explore how to heal my body and mind.

Therapy and counseling helped me tremendously, but in the end, I had neglected the body part of the mind body connection.  It is in the body part of my healing where I started to physically empower my life once again and heal in ways that I did not think were possible.  It was not some pie-in-the-sky concept, but one that has been proven many times over on many people. It does work!  You can heal!

Fear has been my constant enemy...

Fear has been my constant enemy that I have loathed and despised.  It has held me back by fooling me into thinking that I can't heal and that none of my progress is real.  Fear has kept me hunkering down in the corner hiding in the shadows as if that was the sum total of my life.  Fear has kept me withering in life as if I had no power or worth or value.

We all have to find our way through healing and the experiences we have been through.  However, I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that if the body is not engaged in healing, the mind will only take you so far.  Memes, platitudes, and simple healing statements may have their place, but often they get in the way of the real - down-to-earth work that we need to do.

When life takes you far enough down the trail of no return, it either gets your attention or if you continue to ignore it, you will suffer greatly.  We do have the power to change our life from the inside out, but only if we allow ourselves to go through the fear and find it.  Often that requires a person who truly understands the effect of trauma on the body and there are far too few that do.

For a long time, I have known about the ACE study because of Unified Therapy by Dr. Paul Canali.  He uses this with his patients and helps them realize the cause-effect between trauma and their current health conditions.  It is a great tool to begin helping you see the relationship of what trauma does to your current health and well-being.

Further Information

Here is a video done of an interview of some topics, but one of those is the ACE Study.  It is with Jim Fazio and Dr. Paul Canali.  Jim is a practitioner that has learned Unified Therapy and is having wonderful success with it on his own clients. 

Final Thoughts

Where ever you are today in your life, go further - discover more and realize that there is much more potential in healing than may seem possible, feasible or even real.

I really admire Dr. Paul Canali because he has helped me understand that the body connection is where the true healing is at and without it, I would not have made it as far as I did.  He doesn't just understand the concepts of healing trauma as a pioneer in this field.  He knows how to implement them and see results from one patient to another.

Years ago, they told me I would most likely never function 100% again.  I proved the medical world wrong.  At one point they were bringing me back to life and it was up to me from that point on to go beyond what I thought I knew so that I could truly heal.

If you want to know more about my own story, check out my book, "Hope And Possibility Through Trauma"

---

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.  

---

Learning To Surrender In Order To Heal

It is not easy to do.  I know, I know!  Stating that we need to surrender in order to heal is like telling the person getting ready to jump off the cliff that they have wings.  It is hard to believe, understand, and comprehend.  Yet, time and time again, I have come back to this lesson.

Learning to surrender in order to heal is essential for healing.  Okay, maybe it is not the beginning stage or the intermediate stage.  Maybe it is not the point you're at in this moment and that's totally understandable.  After all, it took me a some time to get to this point in my own healing journey.

Surrender does not happen always in one single moment.  It is a process where we come to the point where we surrender a little, and then we rest.  We make it a little further in our healing, and then we stop to gather our sustenance for the journey ahead.  It isn't one moment in time, but a series of small little moments that add up.  Healing doesn't just happen at a specific point, but healing can happen at any point along the way.

As I was going through my most recent Unified Therapy healing session, I kept coming up against the physical pain showing itself in my body.  The pain was horrendous.  It literally hurt in my shoulder, arm, and neck.  If I tried to stay present with the pain, I would go into numbness.  It would be as if my arm, shoulder, and neck did not exist.

Attempting to stay present with what I was feeling in the body, I soon found that my left side felt lower on the table while my right side felt like it was raised.  My body didn't want to go in and feel these things, because it was tapping into so many of those emotions and experiences that I struggle to articulate into a coherent image.

The more I fought the process, the more the pain intensified and the more I wanted to numb my body.  This is the same thing we do in life.  Instead of going into the pain and the experiences we've been through, we tend to numb and disconnect.  We tend to medicate and avoid.  It is the human experience to do this.

A small powerful trick is to learn how to not numb or disconnect and avoid what is showing up.  The trick is to go in and surrender into this moment.  That is where the story unfolds and the trapped energy is released.  It is like lancing a boil and letting out all the bad stuff.  The surrender is the moment where we give up our attachment to the process, the experience, and yes - the pain.

Recently I fought through another round of rashes that covered my genitals in a very bad way.  This time, I was able to help move myself past this because I surrendered into it.  Is that easy to do?  HELL NO!  It can be very difficult but I've learned skills to help take myself into these moments.  The more I surrendered into it and just allowed myself to be there, the story unfolded and as I wrote it down in my journal, I felt a shift taking place.

We have so much power in us, but when we hold on to the horrible experiences and the stress in our life, we allow these moments to suck us dry.  They become our energy vampires, rather than motivation and empowerment to heal our lives.  Yes, there is a time to hold on, but there is also a time to let go.

 

Surrender is a big key of healing that I have found because as I learn to surrender into the moment I am in, I give myself a new possibility of the moments I have not yet lived.  As I surrender, I give myself the opportunity to go deeper into my own healing.  It sets me up for the next time where I will need more of that strength, courage, and determination to face the deeper levels in life.

Yes, we can settle for where we are at in our life and the healing and growth we have come through.  However, I'm not one that is okay with where I am at in this moment.  I want to travel further.  I want to get my life back deeper and more fully than I have ever known.  To do this, surrender becomes one of the best tools I have and in so doing this, I reclaim more of my power and all that I am.

---

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.  

---

Insights Into Memory

I'm often intrigued and perplexed and in awe of this most misunderstood part of our brain and body.  We all have a memory, but in many different bodies, it works better for some and not so good for others.  Often our memory starts out better when we are young and diminishes with time.  I stand in awe of what it does and where it fails.

In my own life, my memory has been my greatest advocate and my strongest adversary.  It has been there for me, but it at times is a haunting force that I would best flee.  There are times that it has brought the most beautiful moments up in my life while forcing me to face those times which were pure horror and torture.

Traumatic Memories

In Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk's book, The Body Keeps The Score, I still remember him stating that the mind remembers too much and too little at the same time.  This is especially true in the face of a traumatic past.  [insert book picture]

I've seen people forget the horrible abuse and torture they inflicted upon others, acting as if it never happened.  At the same time, the traumatized victim that was the recipient, is haunted every day of their life, desperately trying to get their memory to forget.  How can a memory work one way for someone in these shoes and yet, totally different for someone else?

Memory And Conversion Disorder

When I was paralyzed by a Conversion Disorder, I reached the point where I could barely remember my name.  Most things in my life were a blur, including the trauma that I had been through.  It was easier for my mind and memory to forget all that had happened in hopes of keeping me alive, then to confront the ugly truth that lied beyond the fog.

I know as I get older, my memory is sometimes fuzzy at best and other times, it is like an encyclopedia.  There are the little things that I forget.  There are the more recent things that sometimes are hard to grasp.  Often, it feels like I need a complete defrag as one would do with a computer.  If only I could find that button to push.

Alive Inside

I remember seeing another documentary called "Alive Inside".  In this program, they show that people with various conditions including memory issues would come alive when music from their past was played.  I experimented with a trauma survivor and behold, it does work.  An almost comatose person started coming alive the minute I played one of their favorite songs.

NOVA - PBS

On Nova (PBS), I saw a documentary called Memory Hackers.  I was gulping up the information that they displayed because I believe the more we come to understand our mind and memory, the more we can evolve and grow and heal our mind body connections. 

Memory Hackers

Top 5 Things From Memory Hackers

The top five things I got from the Memory Hackers program was as follows.

1. Memory is not what we thought it was.  It isn't something we store one time and it remains that way until we die.  It can be changed every time it is recalled.
2. Telling the memory repeatedly can often allow us to alter and mold it into something it is not.  It gives an opportunity of rewriting parts of the memory as we tell it and store it away.
3. We all have parts of our memories it seems that we would like to forget or stop from controlling our every day life through phobias.  While there are ethical implications, there are real ways being tested in a laboratory to do this.
4. If someone has a great memory, it does not necessarily mean they are the smartest person around as evidenced by the HSAM section.
5. Various parts of a memory are stored in different sections of our brain which include all our senses, experiences, and emotions that were going on at the time.  

Hippocampus And Memory

The hippocampus is vital in bringing all these parts back together.   It is almost like the conductor and while it attempts to bring things at the right moment, memory is not always linear. 

There are far too many times that I have had emotions come up without the full memory, or a sensation that has happened and yet there is no emotion.  There are times a story arises, but there are no senses, emotions, or other experiences that I can put together to make sense of it.

I still remember the nightmares that lasted many years of being afraid of the color purple.  It seems strange and odd to most that the color purple would bring out terrifying horrors of anxiety, anger, and depression.  It was not until Thanksgiving of 1997 that the color purple finally came into full view and I saw the memory for what it was.

Oprah Male Survivor Show

When I went to the Oprah taping of the 200 Male Survivor show, it was an emotional experience.  Hearing others tell their stories immediately connected to those experiences in my own life.  I was a wrung out mess of tears by the time I left and in many ways, I felt so out of it.

Normally, you will not hear me telling my story over and over.  I have longed in many ways to forget these things even though I know that sharing my story may help others.  I've always been cautious in telling the memories repeatedly, because I felt that things could be altered as my mind tried to make sense of what was going on.  With this Nova program on Memory Hackers, I can see that my gut instinct was right.

Unified Therapy - Dr. Paul Canali

In Unified Therapy, we often bring a person to the edge of those moments where the memory is alive.  We do it through the felt sense or what some call interoception.  This is the act of feeling something deep within our body without becoming lost in it.  It helps empower us while bringing about awareness and through that awareness, we can begin to change it and alter it.  Often when we have been through traumatic moments in our life, our memory suffers because our brain shuts down feeling, so that we can survive.  Through turning the felt sense back on, we begin to discover and connect our mind and body together.

Conclusion

I so wish I could wave a magic wand and erase all the bad memories.  Even though I know it is possible in the research lab, I question if the body truly forgets too, or if there is some residual part of the body that will continue to poison the mind.  Only, in this case, the poison of the bad memory has nowhere to go.  It just fills the empty void.  It is my biggest concern because I've seen how my own body responded to memories that I could not recall easily.

I don't have all the answers and I know most don't.  It is wonderful to see different parts of our scientific, medical, and alternative healing worlds coming together to better understand our memory.  It is the continued focus on how our memory functions that will bring greater truths of healing and empowerment for individuals.

In this day and age of MRI scans, we can no longer sit by and embrace the paradigms of old with respect to memory.  We are living in a new day and age, and the advancement for our civilization and human body is in the mind.  I've seen this in my own life and I am excited by the possibilities of discovery for what lies ahead.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Blog Post And Images (c) 2/17/16 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.  

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Flashbacks Of Trauma

If you've been through traumatic experiences in your life, then what I'm writing here probably will not be anything new.  Flashbacks are not fun.  Flashbacks suck.  Flashbacks pop up in life when you least expect them and they try hard to kick your butt.

I have personally done a lot of work to get past this stuff, but every now and then when certain triggers of life hit, they come on like the rushing water of a flooding river that just burst through a dam.

For a long time, purple was the color that left me hiding and whimpering in the corner.  It took years to fully understand what the purple represented and when I did, I almost put my fist through my front door.  Yes, the memory was horrible.

There were times that I got flashbacks of pains in my body such as a swollen face in the middle of the night.  It would actually feel like someone had just hit me.  It would swell up so much that I would have to take medications and put ice on it to get the swelling to go down.  This would happen in the middle of the night when I was asleep.

My Story With Antidepressants

Many years ago when I had the Conversion Disorder, I thought I could recover on my own.  I had seen family members that went on medications for depression and they urged me to not go on these.  They always claimed that the doctors would put you on these medications and then brainwash you.  Of course, most of my family thinks I am brainwashed.

Since I was always a person that hated taking medication of any kind and I would try to find ways to live in life without doing so, I gladly refused all medications the doctors wanted to use to help me.  My doctor in desperation finally said, let's make a deal.  We will work through your recovery without medication and do it your way.  However, at any point where we see it isn't working, then you need to do it my way.

I went through most of my initial experience without medication.  I was proud of myself.  It wasn't until I got out of the hospital and was sitting at my home when I had my first anxiety attack.  It didn't take me long to phone my doctor on that Saturday morning begging for anything to help me.  I was freaking out and that's an understatement.  My doctor put me on anti-anxiety medication and an antidepressant which I can't remember the name of it.