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.

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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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The Abuse Seemed Normal To Me

Isn't it obvious?  Can't you see it?  I mean, everyone else can!  What am I talking about?  It is about how we often don't see the abuse that is happening before our very eyes.  We don't fully see all that we've gone through.

Usually this is for a good reason because if the mind had to confront everything that was happening while it was happening, it would short circuit and not be able to handle it all.  For an adult, it is hard enough, but for a young child, the mind really gets challenged when it is being abused.

A child is born into this world looking up to their parents and family for sustenance, love, support, encouragement and safety.  When a child is abused, these things are tossed aside in the trash and the child is left to comprehend a world that goes against biology.

When a child goes through abuse, whether it is sexual abuse or physical and emotional abuse, often the kid has no idea that anything else exists outside of this behavior.  It becomes the norm in life.  It becomes the world that the child knows and so it almost looks normal.

There may be a part of the child which knows the abuse isn't normal, but the abuse is the only world they know.  With the family secrets and the shame and the pain, there is no way the child can discover a different world beyond what they see every day.  The biological body and mind knows no different and through these things, it is kept in the dark.

For a long time, I didn't realize that some of what I had been through was abuse.  I just thought everyone was forced to take baths with their older brothers and father, which resulted in constant sexual molestation.  I just thought that it was normal for all fathers to watch their children dress and undress even in their teenage years.  I just thought it was normal that if you didn't allow them to sexually abuse you, that God wouldn't love you and you would miss out on the affection shown to you by them.

There have been so many things that I thought were normal and now as I've been in a loving relationship with my husband, I've found out they were not normal.  When I have started to talk to others that have been through things and shared the details of behavior I went through, it is then that I realized, it was not normal behavior.  It was abuse.

Having a father demean you constantly and scream at you is not anything a child should ever have to endure.  Having to live in a world of chaos each and every day, tiptoeing around my father to see what might set him off in a fit of rage was a challenge.  The little things that could spark a violent tirade of abuse on myself or my mom and brothers was a random event that happened when you least expected it.  Usually there was no warning to what would make the bomb explode.

Being constantly told how worthless you were or stupid or how little common sense you had would rip any sense of self worth you had into shreds.  Those moments seemed normal to me and so I continued to live in a self-imposed world of perfection so I could try and find some value.  Plus, I didn't want to upset God because bad stuff would happen to me then.

Every bit of my life was controlled and manipulated and the minute you thought you had it figured out, the rules changes.  The behaviors changed.  The corresponding actions and results changed.  There was no guessing what would happen or when it would happen.  This was the world I grew up in.  It was all I thought existed.

One of the things that I see others struggle with just like myself in healing is that you have to come to terms with what was normal or not in your childhood.  To come to terms though, means you have to touch the pain and horror of those moments where it was not normal.  It is never easy to touch the pain and sorrow you have experience in life.  It takes courage and often a helping hand to walk with you through those fires.

For me, I had to walk away from my family in order to find myself and my life.  I had to say enough was enough and I will be the first to tell you that this was as difficult as it gets.  There is nothing that can replace the biological connection of a mother, father or family unit.  Yes, you learn to live and go on, but that biological cellular connection is always there.

We all learn from the behavior we witness and endure.  We all function in life based upon what was done to us and what we witnessed.  Healing is about learning which parts of our life no longer serve us now, even if they helped us survive those horrible moments.  Healing is about understanding that things were not normal, even if it is the only world we knew.

It is about learning to piece our lives together and helping teach ourselves all that we need in life.  Yes, we got short changed as kids, but now through healing, we can begin to create the life we want with the people in it that we want.

It is like the storybook of our lives where you can choose to put in each day's chapter that which you want and need and desire.  If it doesn't work out the way you want it to, you're always free to create something different tomorrow.

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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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I'm Right and You're Wrong

In my view, I think we all do this.  To some degree, we all think I'm right and you're wrong.  I doubt there is a person on this planet that doesn't practice this every day or at least every week.  If there is, I would like to meet them.  I believe some are better at accepting others than some people, but let's not let anyone off the hook at this moment.

You see, its easy for us to think that this is something everyone else does.  The philosophy of I'm Right and You're Wrong is so prevalent in our society that no one even is aware they do this anymore.  Look no further than politics or religion or even most relationships.

I'm not going to sit here and tell you I don't do this, because I do.  It is something I really have to watch myself on because I can quickly look at others and think they are wrong.  I sometimes get a little too high and mighty for myself.  For me, I can chalk it up to the way I was raised.  If you didn't go to our church or think like my father, you were wrong.  It has taken me years of deprogramming to let go of that narrow minded thinking I was raised in.

What I've found in my own life is that if I view others as being wrong and I'm right, then I will enjoy a miserable experience each and every day.  There is no joy in that.  There is no love in that.  There is no feeling of being at one with another, because with that thinking you separate yourself from all others.

Say it with compassion and love...

Sure, maybe there is something you know that others have not realized yet, but if you use it to look down at them or beat them with a bully stick, than do you really have something good? What if instead of using your "enlightened thought" to slap the other person, you use it to help them understand what it is that you know.  Say it with compassion and say it with love!  You'll get much further.

There are some things that just don't matter in the grand scheme of life.   Sometimes, things are insignificant in the grand scheme of life and they just don't matter.  They might matter to you, but if you compare them to the thousand years of civilization in a great big universe, do they really measure up?  It is often better to pick and choose what is important, rather than trying to apply that to every moment of every day.

Even though we grow up with certain habits and procedures, it does not mean we have the only way to do stuff in life.  Often while we hold these teachings to be the right way, they are nothing more than what we were taught.  It is up to us as adults to begin learning what really matters, what really works in our life, and what we are going to care about in any given day.

I choose not care about some things...

On a TV show, I saw one character ask another their thoughts about some random subject.  His response was "I don't have an opinion."   Of course, the befuddled the person asking because they said, "you've got to have an opinion - its too important."  His response was, "I've only got so much ram and I can only care about so many things.  Some things I choose not to care about."  It was a good example.

Unfortunately we spend too much time in front of the screen watching our favorite news programs and allowing them to incite us to cement our beliefs for that moment.  We don't allow ourselves to think independently as we gulp down minute by minute news stories.  We see things in one way only and we watch the things that back up our views.  Often, we are not as enlightened and smart as we think we are.

 

You can either beat someone into submission to believe that you are right and they are wrong, or you can help lead them to discovery.  If you lead them to discovery, there is a good chance that both of you will learn something on the journey.

When we say I'm right and you're wrong, it is about attempting to control others so they see things our way.  The more others see things our way, the more safe and secure we feel.  It is not an enlightened moment of human interaction, but one of narrow mindedness and fear and control.

Challenge yourself - just don't take my word for it.  Challenge yourself to not see others as wrong.  We're just screaming at one another these days and the more we think we are right and everyone else is wrong, the more we're condemning this world to a lot of unnecessary pain and suffering and evil.

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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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