Joy From Sorrow

Losing someone you love or were fond of is never easy. It is much harder if you never got the chance to say goodbye. Whether it is through an unexpected event in life or just not finding out until later, one can never be prepared.

All too often it touches on the nerves that are connected to other losses. The pains we felt of saying goodbye to someone or something we loved are unearthed. It is like a connection or a bridge to previous encounters of letting someone pass away from life.

Death is never easy no matter how you look at it or frame it. Loving someone or something gives us so much joy in our life. Saying goodbye in death, feels like that joy which has become a part of us was ripped out from our bodies. It often feels like the end of the world after someone has died and that nothing will ever take the pain away.

I've lost far too many people and pets in my life. For a long time, I never allowed myself to grieve for them. Grieving was not easy for me because it involved allowing myself to feel many emotions. Early on in life, I was just shown that I was to move on and not allow myself to feel the emotions. However, I have learned that grieving and allowing these emotions is a necessary part of life. it is what helps us find the joy we shared with what we lost.

At times the process of grief seemed long and as if it would never end. There were times that I did not feel as if I could make it. At times, tears flowed as easily as I took a breath. However, with time, life began to balance out and the pain I experienced in loss, once again became joy for my life.

When the joy emerged from the sorrow, I was able to remember so much of what I shared with the person or the pet. It was almost like I had to travel through the tears to see the beauty.

Each person or pet that we love gives us so much. Through our connection with them, we give much back as well. The beautiful moments of what we shared will stay with us for a lifetime. We will realize one day through the tears, all that we received from those we were closely connected to. Through loving gratitude, we will celebrate so much and the pain will diminish.

We will observe that our life is much stronger, better and more full for having these special connections. There may even be things that will take us time to recognize. Deep down, these connections will share a very important part of our life.

Even though we are not able to talk to these people and pets who have passed on, in the same sense we once could, I believe we can talk to them at any time. I believe they are around us and they hear us. They, of course, remain in our hearts and our minds as we think about them through the eyes of love.


Above image taken from memorial website "When Tomorrow Starts Without Me"


*Read other articles on Mind Body Thoughts Blog

Check Your Anger At The Door

The other day, I had a job where I was working with a customer and delivering new laptops to the various people in the organization. While most people were more than happy to get their new laptops, there is always the problem child. No matter what you give some people, they will resist through fear of getting something new. When they resist, it is not uncommon for them to push back and become difficult to work with.

While I am quite aware that this will happen, one individual pushed my buttons the other day in a very big way. Imagine having a roomful of 50 or more people coming in to get their laptops and a limited number of techs on hand to make sure all questions were answered. There was a short amount of time that these people were going to be there. One of the first individuals that I got to work with was a man that either was having a bad day or is normally a very angry person.

Asking an innocent question if he needed help, unleashed a furry of words and actions that left me dumbfounded and surprised. No matter what I tried to do or how I tried to help him, he just lit into me as if I was the lightening rod for all his anger. He did this as he assured me that he normally doesn't get this upset and frustrated. As my eyes rolled at that statement, he continued to berate and scream at me. At one point he picked the laptop up and I thought I was going to have to duck because that thing was going to be sailing at me.

Normally, I am pretty good about diffusing situations like this. If I would have had more time to spend just with him, I would have let him unload on me but time was limited and I could not do that. Regardless of what I did or how I tried to show him I cared, he just continued with his tirade. Finally, I went and got someone higher up in the organization and asked them to deal with him because I needed to move on to other people. Unfortunately, they were not able to deal with him either as he just continued his tirade on everyone that was in the room.

After we got a break, I made my exit outside and just breathed and found my center point again because that was a very intense moment. It was extremely stressful and affected the rest of my day. The day actually went longer than expected so by the time I got home I was very exhausted. This was after 13.5 hours from the previous day.

It made me sad for the gentleman though, that he felt he needed to do this to someone else. Maybe he wasn't even in touch with himself in what he was doing and maybe there were other things going on in his life. It wasn't fair to me or others in the room. We were there trying to help and assist, not to be emotionally beat up.

What makes a person lose it in this way? What gives another person the right to emotionally beat up on others? I witnessed events like this all my life and there have been times that I've lost it through holiday seasons or other triggering events. It saddens me when I think of those times. I've been working very hard to release things in my life and rid the source of the anger so that I don't continue any of these things on.

My heart went out to this gentleman. He was actually a sales person in this company and I could not help but wonder how he comes across to people. There is so much anger in our world and like this gentleman, it often spills over into all areas of our world. All you have to do is turn the radio or TV on and see this person or that person screaming out in an angry tone to force others to believe what they think is right. In fact, if you get into the political realm of our country, you see the anger portrayed as "passion" and if you watch other countries, you see the anger spill over into violence and uprising.

I'm not disputing the validity of these events but I am trying to get everyone to see that so much of our communication in this world is from a point of anger. It is not healthy for ourselves or for others and yet it is practiced as the norm in humanity every day. Passion and discussion of ideas is one thing but when anger is introduced into the scenario, we begin to erode the respect away that we have for others and for ourselves.

Anger is a valid emotion but there is a time and place for it. In the scenario above, too many computer techs experience the anger that is not checked at the door. After several years of dealing with it, the computer techs get to the point of saying, whatever and losing some of that passion they have for the job. As many techs may joke, they are a psychologist, punching bag and superman all rolled up into one package. I remember one president expecting me to get an AT&T satellite working so he could have a video conference call. I remember the time this same President of the company called me an idiot in front of a roomful of company employees because the power point projector would not work. There is a time and place but we all need to be mindful of that time and place as well as the person on the receiving end. If we value the other person so little, we value ourselves to the same degree.

Each of us needs to find our own outlet for anger and frustration that we experience in life. It is never okay to take it out on any other human or animal or even ourselves. The healthy thing is to get to the source of it and find ways to release it and let it go.

So the next time you find yourself ready to lash out at someone through your own misdirected anger, realize that they are not the ones that deserve. Yes, if they are the source of it, assertively find a way to confront them, but check your anger at the door. You can assertively confront someone without losing your temper and going ballistic.

We are all on this planet to build a civilization that uplifts and encourages each other. Let us not tear it down by living our life out of anger but one of seeing the good in each other and ourselves. There is a time for anger but not at the expense of someone else.



Blog Post & Images (c) 2/16/11 Don Shetterly - use by permission only
http://www.donshetterly.com

Suicide Of A Child Abuse Survivor

I saw this posted on gizmodo.com and while I don't really know much about Bill Zeller, this is a tragic story. Of course, I have no way to confirm all the facts other than what I can read online by those who seemed to know him.

Many of the things he wrote about make perfect sense to me because I experienced some of the same attitudes that he did and still do to this day. Parts of his story really connect to parts of my story. While I find it sad that he chose to take his own life and not deal with the darkness he suffered through, I can fully understand. I've walked in those same shoes as many others have.

People try to get me to understand all the time how great Church and Fundamentalist Christians are. I do know some that are wonderful people and live their life in a way that displays what they know and believe. However, there are many horrible people taking refuge in churches while those around them could not even identify these same people. We tend to keep our eyes closed to that which we do not want to see. For those friends of mine who practice what they preach, my hat is off to you. For those that are the scourge of our society who hide in the refuge of the church, may you be exposed for who you are and may those around you wake up!

This is a difficult piece to read but I truly feel that until everyone in this world understands what survivors of child abuse go through, these words need to be told. If you have experienced the darkness that Bill Zeller, myself and many others have, please know you are not alone. You no longer need to suffer in silence. Many of us are out there and there is help, there is hope and there is healing - even if it seems like life is at the end. Please reach out to someone that you trust and ask for help. Here is what Bill Zeller left behind.

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Reprinted from http://documents.from.bz/note.txt

Note Written and Left Behind By Bill Zeller

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I have the urge to declare my sanity and justify my actions, but I assume I'll never be able to convince anyone that this was the right decision. Maybe it's true that anyone who does this is insane by definition, but I can at least explain my reasoning. I considered not writing any of this because of how personal it is, but I like tying up loose ends and don't want people to wonder why I did this. Since I've never spoken to anyone about what happened to me, people would likely
draw the wrong conclusions.

My first memories as a child are of being raped, repeatedly. This has affected every aspect of my life. This darkness, which is the only way I can describe it, has followed me like a fog, but at times intensified and overwhelmed me, usually triggered by a distinct situation. In kindergarten I couldn't use the bathroom and would stand petrified whenever I needed to, which started a trend of awkward and unexplained social behavior. The damage that was done to my body still prevents me from using the bathroom normally, but now it's less of a physical impediment than a daily reminder of what was done to me.

This darkness followed me as I grew up. I remember spending hours playing with legos, having my world consist of me and a box of cold, plastic blocks. Just waiting for everything to end. It's the same thing I do now, but instead of legos it's surfing the web or reading or listening to a baseball game. Most of my life has been spent feeling dead inside, waiting for my body to catch up.

At times growing up I would feel inconsolable rage, but I never connected this to what happened until puberty. I was able to keep the darkness at bay for a few hours at a time by doing things that required intense concentration, but it would always come back. Programming appealed to me for this reason. I was never particularly fond of computers or mathematically inclined, but the temporary peace it would provide was like a drug. But the darkness always returned and built up something like a tolerance, because programming has become less and less of a refuge.

The darkness is with me nearly every time I wake up. I feel like a grime is covering me. I feel like I'm trapped in a contaminated body that no amount of washing will clean. Whenever I think about what happened I feel manic and itchy and can't concentrate on anything else. It manifests itself in hours of eating or staying up for days at a time or sleeping for sixteen hours straight or week long programming binges or constantly going to the gym. I'm exhausted from feeling like this every hour of every day.

Three to four nights a week I have nightmares about what happened. It makes me avoid sleep and constantly tired, because sleeping with what feels like hours of nightmares is not restful. I wake up sweaty and furious. I'm reminded every morning of what was done to me and the
control it has over my life.

I've never been able to stop thinking about what happened to me and this hampered my social interactions. I would be angry and lost in thought and then be interrupted by someone saying "Hi" or making small talk, unable to understand why I seemed cold and distant.

I walked around, viewing the outside world from a distant portal behind my eyes, unable to perform normal human niceties. I wondered what it would be like to take to other people without what happened constantly on my mind, and I wondered if other people had similar experiences that they were better able to mask.

Alcohol was also something that let me escape the darkness. It would always find me later, though, and it was always angry that I managed to escape and it made me pay. Many of the irresponsible things I did were the result of the darkness. Obviously I'm responsible for every decision and action, including this one, but there are reasons why things happen the way they do.

Alcohol and other drugs provided a way to ignore the realities of my situation. It was easy to spend the night drinking and forget that I had no future to look forward to. I never liked what alcohol did to me, but it was better than facing my existence honestly. I haven't touched alcohol or any other drug in over seven months (and no drugs or alcohol will be involved when I do this) and this has forced me to evaluate my life in an honest and clear way. There's no future here. The darkness will always be with me.

I used to think if I solved some problem or achieved some goal, maybe he would leave. It was comforting to identify tangible issues as the source of my problems instead of something that I'll never be able to change. I thought that if I got into to a good college, or a good grad school, or lost weight, or went to the gym nearly every day for a year, or created programs that millions of people used, or spent a summer or California or New York or published papers that I was proud of, then maybe I would feel some peace and not be constantly haunted and unhappy. But nothing I did made a dent in how depressed I was on a daily basis and nothing was in any way fulfilling. I'm not sure why I ever thought that would change anything.

I didn't realize how deep a hold he had on me and my life until my first relationship. I stupidly assumed that no matter how the darkness affected me personally, my romantic relationships would somehow be separated and protected. Growing up I viewed my future relationships as a possible escape from this thing that haunts me every day, but I began to realize how entangled it was with every aspect of my life and how it is never going to release me. Instead of being an escape, relationships and romantic contact with other people only intensified everything about him that I couldn't stand. I will never be able to have a relationship in which he is not the focus, affecting every aspect of my romantic interactions.

Relationships always started out fine and I'd be able to ignore him for a few weeks. But as we got closer emotionally the darkness would return and every night it'd be me, her and the darkness in a black and gruesome threesome. He would surround me and penetrate me and the more we did the more intense it became. It made me hate being touched, because as long as we were separated I could view her like an outsider viewing something good and kind and untainted. Once we touched, the darkness would envelope her too and take her over and the evil inside me would surround her. I always felt like I was infecting anyone I was with.

Relationships didn't work. No one I dated was the right match, and I thought that maybe if I found the right person it would overwhelm him. Part of me knew that finding the right person wouldn't help, so I became interested in girls who obviously had no interest in me. For a while I thought I was gay. I convinced myself that it wasn't the darkness at all, but rather my orientation, because this would give me control over why things didn't feel "right".

The fact that the darkness affected sexual matters most intensely made this idea make some sense and I convinced myself of this for a number of years, starting in college after my first relationship ended. I told people I was gay (at Trinity, not at Princeton), even though I wasn't attracted to men and kept finding myself interested in girls. Because if being gay wasn't the answer, then what was? People thought I was avoiding my orientation, but I was actually avoiding the truth, which is that while I'm straight, I will never be content with anyone. I know now that the darkness will never leave.

Last spring I met someone who was unlike anyone else I'd ever met. Someone who showed me just how well two people could get along and how much I could care about another human being. Someone I know I could be with and love for the rest of my life, if I weren't so fucked up. Amazingly, she liked me. She liked the shell of the man the darkness had left behind. But it didn't matter because I couldn't be alone with her. It was never just the two of us, it was always the three of us: her, me and the darkness. The closer we got, the more intensely I'd feel the darkness, like some evil mirror of my emotions. All the closeness we had and I loved was complemented by agony that I couldn't stand, from him. I realized that I would never be able to give her, or anyone, all of me or only me. She could never have me without the darkness and evil inside me. I could never have just her, without the darkness being a part of all of our interactions.

I will never be able to be at peace or content or in a healthy relationship. I realized the futility of the romantic part of my life. If I had never met her, I would have realized this as soon as I met someone else who I meshed similarly well with. It's likely that things wouldn't have worked out with her and we would have broken up (with our relationship ending, like the majority of relationships do) even if I didn't have this problem, since we only dated for a short time. But I will face exactly the same problems with the darkness with anyone else. Despite my hopes, love and compatibility is not enough. Nothing is enough. There's no way I can fix this or even push the darkness down far enough to make a relationship or any type of intimacy feasible.

So I watched as things fell apart between us. I had put an explicit time limit on our relationship, since I knew it couldn't last because of the darkness and didn't want to hold her back, and this caused a variety of problems. She was put in an unnatural situation that she never should have been a part of. It must have been very hard for her, not knowing what was actually going on with me, but this is not something I've ever been able to talk about with anyone. Losing her was very hard for me as well. Not because of her (I got over our relationship relatively quickly), but because of the realization that I would never have another relationship and because it signified the last true, exclusive personal connection I could ever have.

This wasn't apparent to other people, because I could never talk about the real reasons for my sadness. I was very sad in the summer and fall, but it was not because of her, it was because I will never escape the darkness with anyone. She was so loving and kind to me and gave me everything I could have asked for under the circumstances. I'll never forget how much happiness she brought me in those briefs moments when I could ignore the darkness. I had originally planned to kill myself last winter but never got around to it. (Parts of this letter were written over a year ago, other parts days before doing this.) It was wrong of me to involve myself in her life if this were a possibility and I should have just left her alone, even though we only dated for a few months and things ended a long time ago. She's just one more person in a long list of people I've hurt.

I could spend pages talking about the other relationships I've had that were ruined because of my problems and my confusion related to the darkness. I've hurt so many great people because of who I am and my inability to experience what needs to be experienced. All I can say is that I tried to be honest with people about what I thought was true.

I've spent my life hurting people. Today will be the last time.

I've told different people a lot of things, but I've never told anyone about what happened to me, ever, for obvious reasons. It took me a while to realize that no matter how close you are to someone or how much they claim to love you, people simply cannot keep secrets. I learned this a few years ago when I thought I was gay and told people. The more harmful the secret, the juicier the gossip and the more likely you are to be betrayed. People don't care about their word or what they've promised, they just do whatever the fuck they want and justify it later. It feels incredibly lonely to realize you can never share something with someone and have it be between just the two of you. I don't blame anyone in particular, I guess it's just how people are. Even if I felt like this is something I could have shared, I have no interest in being part of a friendship or relationship where the other person views me as the damaged and contaminated person that I am. So even if I were able to trust someone, I probably would not have told them about what happened to me. At this point I simply don't care who knows.

I feel an evil inside me. An evil that makes me want to end life. I need to stop this. I need to make sure I don't kill someone, which is not something that can be easily undone. I don't know if this is related to what happened to me or something different. I recognize the irony of killing myself to prevent myself from killing someone else, but this decision should indicate what I'm capable of.

So I've realized I will never escape the darkness or misery associated with it and I have a responsibility to stop myself from physically harming others.

I'm just a broken, miserable shell of a human being. Being molested has defined me as a person and shaped me as a human being and it has made me the monster I am and there's nothing I can do to escape it. I don't know any other existence. I don't know what life feels like where I'm apart from any of this. I actively despise the person I am. I just feel fundamentally broken, almost non-human. I feel like an animal that woke up one day in a human body, trying to make sense of a foreign world, living among creatures it doesn't understand and can't connect with.

I have accepted that the darkness will never allow me to be in a relationship. I will never go to sleep with someone in my arms, feeling the comfort of their hands around me. I will never know what uncontaminated intimacy is like. I will never have an exclusive bond with someone, someone who can be the recipient of all the love I have to give. I will never have children, and I wanted to be a father so badly. I think I would have made a good dad. And even if I had fought through the darkness and married and had children all while being unable to feel intimacy, I could have never done that if suicide were a possibility. I did try to minimize pain, although I know that this decision will hurt many of you. If this hurts you, I hope that you can at least forget about me quickly.

There's no point in identifying who molested me, so I'm just going to leave it at that. I doubt the word of a dead guy with no evidence about something that happened over twenty years ago would have much sway.

You may wonder why I didn't just talk to a professional about this. I've seen a number of doctors since I was a teenager to talk about other issues and I'm positive that another doctor would not have helped. I was never given one piece of actionable advice, ever. More than a few spent a large part of the session reading their notes to remember who I was. And I have no interest in talking about being raped as a child, both because I know it wouldn't help and because I have no confidence it would remain secret. I know the legal and practical limits of doctor/patient confidentiality, growing up in a house where we'd hear stories about the various mental illnesses of famous people, stories that were passed down through generations. All it takes is one doctor who thinks my story is interesting enough to share or a doctor who thinks it's her right or responsibility to contact the authorities and have me identify the molester (justifying her decision by telling herself that someone else might be in danger). All it takes is a single doctor who violates my trust, just like the "friends" who I told I was gay did, and everything would be made public and I'd be forced to live in a world where people would know how fucked up I am. And yes, I realize this indicates that I have severe trust issues, but they're based on a large number of experiences with people who have shown a profound disrespect for their word and the privacy of others.

People say suicide is selfish. I think it's selfish to ask people to continue living painful and miserable lives, just so you possibly won't feel sad for a week or two. Suicide may be a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but it's also a permanent solution to a ~23 year-old problem that grows more intense and overwhelming every day.

Some people are just dealt bad hands in this life. I know many people have it worse than I do, and maybe I'm just not a strong person, but I really did try to deal with this. I've tried to deal with this every day for the last 23 years and I just can't fucking take it anymore.

I often wonder what life must be like for other people. People who can feel the love from others and give it back unadulterated, people who can experience sex as an intimate and joyous experience, people who can experience the colors and happenings of this world without constant
misery. I wonder who I'd be if things had been different or if I were a stronger person. It sounds pretty great.

I'm prepared for death. I'm prepared for the pain and I am ready to no longer exist. Thanks to the strictness of New Jersey gun laws this will probably be much more painful than it needs to be, but what can you do. My only fear at this point is messing something up and surviving.

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I'd also like to address my family, if you can call them that. I despise everything they stand for and I truly hate them, in a non-emotional, dispassionate and what I believe is a healthy way. The world will be a better place when they're dead--one with less hatred and intolerance.

If you're unfamiliar with the situation, my parents are fundamentalist Christians who kicked me out of their house and cut me off financially when I was 19 because I refused to attend seven hours of church a week.

They live in a black and white reality they've constructed for themselves. They partition the world into good and evil and survive by hating everything they fear or misunderstand and calling it love. They don't understand that good and decent people exist all around us, "saved" or not, and that evil and cruel people occupy a large percentage of their church. They take advantage of people looking for hope by teaching them to practice the same hatred they practice.

A random example:

"I am personally convinced that if a Muslim truly believes and obeys the Koran, he will be a terrorist." - George Zeller, August 24, 2010.

If you choose to follow a religion where, for example, devout Catholics who are trying to be good people are all going to Hell but child molesters go to Heaven (as long as they were "saved" at some point), that's your choice, but it's fucked up. Maybe a God who operates by those rules does exist. If so, fuck Him.

Their church was always more important than the members of their family and they happily sacrificed whatever necessary in order to satisfy their contrived beliefs about who they should be.

I grew up in a house where love was proxied through a God I could never believe in. A house where the love of music with any sort of a beat was literally beaten out of me. A house full of hatred and intolerance, run by two people who were experts at appearing kind and warm when others were around. Parents who tell an eight year old that his grandmother is going to Hell because she's Catholic. Parents who claim not to be racist but then talk about the horrors of miscegenation. I could list hundreds of other examples, but it's tiring.

Since being kicked out, I've interacted with them in relatively normal ways. I talk to them on the phone like nothing happened. I'm not sure why. Maybe because I like pretending I have a family. Maybe I like having people I can talk to about what's been going on in my life. Whatever the reason, it's not real and it feels like a sham. I should have never allowed this reconnection to happen.

I wrote the above a while ago, and I do feel like that much of the time. At other times, though, I feel less hateful. I know my parents honestly believe the crap they believe in. I know that my mom, at least, loved me very much and tried her best. One reason I put this off for so long is because I know how much pain it will cause her. She has been sad since she found out I wasn't "saved", since she believes I'm going to Hell, which is not a sadness for which I am responsible. That was never going to change, and presumably she believes the state of my physical body is much less important than the state of my soul. Still, I cannot intellectually justify this decision, knowing how much it will hurt her. Maybe my ability to take my own life, knowing how much pain it will cause, shows that I am a monster who doesn't deserve to live. All I know is that I can't deal with this pain any longer and I'm am truly sorry I couldn't wait until my family and everyone I knew died so this could be done without hurting anyone. For years I've wished that I'd be hit by a bus or die while saving a baby from drowning so my death might be more acceptable, but I was never so lucky.

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To those of you who have shown me love, thank you for putting up with all my shittiness and moodiness and arbitrariness. I was never the person I wanted to be. Maybe without the darkness I would have been a better person, maybe not. I did try to be a good person, but I realize I never got very far.

I'm sorry for the pain this causes. I really do wish I had another option. I hope this letter explains why I needed to do this. If you can't understand this decision, I hope you can at least forgive me.

Bill Zeller

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Please save this letter and repost it if gets deleted. I don't want people to wonder why I did this. I disseminated it more widely than I might have otherwise because I'm worried that my family might try to restrict access to it. I don't mind if this letter is made public. In fact, I'd prefer it be made public to people being unable to read it and drawing their own conclusions.

Feel free to republish this letter, but only if it is reproduced in its entirety.

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End Of Bill Zeller's Letter

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For Further Information:
Gizmodo.com - The Agonizing Last Words Of Programmer Bill Zeller
Metatalk.Metafilter.com - RIP Bill Zeller
Bill Zeller - Suicide Note
Bill Zeller - Website


Male Survivor Resources
Hope And Possibility Through Trauma
Oprah - Male Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, Part 1
Oprah - Male Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, Part 2
Oprah, Tyler Perry and 200 Male Survivors Stand Together
Daily Affirmations For Male Survivors
Resources For Survivors
Male Survivor.Org


Whatever you do, if you are a survivor, please get help! Yes, it is not easy to take that step but it is worth it. There is hope!

Losing Your Body By Numbing Out

For anyone who has been through trauma, you fully understand how your body is not your friend after these experiences.  Losing your body is so common among sexual abuse survivors because when you go through these experiences, it is a means of survival.

Consider for a moment that if you are experiencing sexual abuse where someone overpowers you and not only is the pain great, but the humiliation and shame are beyond comprehension, the only way to survive is by shutting down.  It is a means to survive.  It is a means to get through the experience because of the overwhelming nature of what is going on.

For a long time, I did not even realize how much I had shut my body down.  It took me going through a Conversion Disorder and being paralyzed to begin understanding this.  Even in the depths of the Conversion Disorder, I could not feel a needle being applied to the bottom of my feet.  I could not feel the pain in my back and neck.  I could not feel much.

Plants Have Emotions

While I see many people concerned about animals (and rightly so) for having emotions, they often forget our other living organisms in this world.  I'm talking about plants.  Plants have emotions which is something I have always felt, but could not prove it until I read the book, The Field.

On page 144 in this book, the story unfolds that a New York polygraph expert by the name of Cleve Backster was doing studies on plants just for fun.  He wanted to see if they registered emotion via an electrical impulse on his lie detector equipment.  When he burned the leaf of a plant, he found that it registered an increased stress response just as if a human had been burned. 

What was more astonishing was that Backster burned the leaf of a plant close by and although it was not hooked up to his equipment, the original plant registered a stress response.  It was as if the original plant felt what had happened to the other plant.  Somehow the two plants communicated and they felt what was happening to each other.  There was some form of interconnectedness between these two plants.

Don't Wait Until Tomorrow

If someone is on your mind, in your thoughts or touching your heart, don't delay.  Don't wait until tomorrow to reach back to them or call them or go see them.  Don't wait until tomorrow because you're too busy today or you have countless mundane tasks to be completed.  Do it now.  Reach out to them now before its too late.

In the past few months, I've lost two friends that I kept saying, "I need to go see them".  It was always something standing in my way.  I'm too busy.  I've got too much going on.  Oh, we'll stop and see them another time.  There was always something and well, the day came and gone when it was too late.  There no extra moment or tomorrow that could be harvested or used up.

Its easy to let life take control and in this day and age, it isn't always easy for us to make the time we need to for others that we hold dear in our life.  Its just part of our modern day culture and its the part that truly sucks!

Can You Unplug?

Its amazing how much we all are "on" these days in our lives.  It is very difficult to fully unplug.  I mean, look at how many smart phones, tablets, PC's and other devices we are using these days.  So my question is "can you unplug?"

I thought I could, but then I realize that my work email never fully stops.  With people in different time zones and on different projects, it truly never ends.  Yes, it may slow down, but the darn pesky thing just keeps showing up at all hours of the day and night.

I thought I could unplug, but then I get hooked on a message thread with Facebook, or instead of someone giving me a call, they instant message me on Facebook.  Most of the time it isn't that critical, but sometimes it is.  So again, I'm not sure I can fully walk away from it.

Hello, Anyone Home?

In this day and age of social media, we are losing our communication ability.   We barely communicate, except to post a nice little happy thing or a protest or something that 50 million have already shared.  I keep wondering, is anyone home?  Hello, anyone home?

I know, I know - we are all busy these days.  We've got a million things to do and so a quick tweet or Facebook post is all we've got.  What bugs me the most though is the impersonal nature of online social media.  It isn't like we are really sharing anything most of the time.  We are just sending mind numbing stuff to our friends list over and over.  It used to just happen in forwarded emails.

Yes, some of this is good, but after awhile, it becomes so over-saturated, that it loses all flavor.  It becomes just another post in the noise of life, really not adding as much as most people think.  When I get 60 to 80 phone calls a day and more email than I can read, I really see firsthand just how much noise there is on the internet.

The Process Of Grief

Recently a dear friend of mine died quickly and unexpectedly.  It wasn't easy saying good bye to my friend and I'm not even sure I'm at a point where I can say goodbye.  I know it takes time to go through the process of grief, but it doesn't make it any easier knowing this.

Some of these moments of grief reminded me of a time when I lost my own mom.  Although it has been many years now, it still feels like yesterday.  I can picture vividly everything that went on that day leading up to the phone call I received.  It is all as if it happened moments ago.

Just like what happened many years ago, I found myself in utter disbelief and shock.  I was numb to what was going on.  My mind didn't know how to process the grief.  My mind didn't even know how to acknowledge it or think about it.  I remember feeling stunned and shocked and speechless.

Greed Is Good

Day after day, I see news stories that show how American greed is running a race to see what corporations can out-greed one another.  Sure, I know the shareholders think this is good as does the CEO's that are lining their pockets.  Just like Gordon Gekko in Wall Street who declared greed is good, we're in an age that would make Gordon Gekko look like he knew very little on the subject.

Just today I saw that Darden which owns several companies including Olive Garden basically ousted the current board of directors in the company.  The current board of directors wasn't making enough money for the shareholders and so they said, enough is enough.  Beyond the "only two bread-sticks" per customer rule, I wonder if they will start charging for everything and anything.  I mean, I know its their business and all, but you can just see how greed is good in the minds of these business people.

When Life Was Taken Away

Since writing the blog post about Focus On What You Want, I've been thinking about how I view the lack in my life.  In fact, I talked about in this blog post that when everything was taken away from me, it changed me from there on in life.  Nothing was the same and it laid the foundation for what I was would know throughout my life.  It was not something I consciously hoped and wished for, but I was dumped into.

It all started when I was a young baby and my father was in the hospital for hepatitis.  Why he was struggling with this, I don't know, but it was so contagious that my mother had to make a choice between seeing me or seeing him.  As the story goes that I was told, she chose him.  I was left to be taken care of by the nurses in the hospital.  While I was not quite old enough to remember this in plain detail, I'm sure it was one of the earliest moments when life was taken away from me.  Imagine being a small child that is left in the arms of strangers to nurture and love you, but who were busy taking care of others.  Imagine how a small child would view that, knowing their basic necessities were only attended to when someone had a chance, not because they were loved and desired.

Of course, the next time when life was taken away was when at the age of 5, I wake up to a nightmare of laying in a pool of blood as my father tried to quickly clean me up, acting as if nothing happened when  my mom came home.  From there, I feared everything about life including pain and love.  For everything had been taken away from me in life and nothing was safe and secure.  Other moments would fill in the cracks and crevices should I forget such as going through my days with little food and having my stomach starve for the slightest thing to eat. The moments of shivering in the cold of the house from the drafts of the winter winds and inadequate heating or the time my older brother felt a whack in the head with the end of the round point shovel was warranted.  School was no more of a refuge as I was constantly picked on and made to feel like I was not one of my other classmates since math was beyond comprehension for me.

Helping Prevent Suicide Webinar

One of the things I struggle with in life is suicide and I know I'm not alone.  In fact, I am writing a book about my struggles with suicide.  It is a situation that plagues our society and world, but the shame that goes along with it keeps many suffering in silence.

For those that are left behind, they deal with the anguish of losing a loved one or a friend to suicide.  I never realized this part until I was able to speak to my friend on the subject.  Suicide is difficult for anyone connected to it and it does destroy lives.

What is worse in our society and world is that we shame those who suffer and we don't fix the underlying problems.  We spend too little on mental health issues and support, while doing things that are beyond harmful and do anything but help those who suffer.

On February 4, 2017 at 1 pm EST, I am hosting a webinar with my good friend who lost her son to suicide.  It is a heartbreaking story, but I hope that through this webinar, we offer hope and some new ways of looking at healing and support.  While it is a heavy subject, my intent is to help prevent suicide in others.

The online webinar is free and open to whoever signs up.  Space is limited and if I see that it is filling up, we will try to schedule additional webinars.  There will be a time for some questions at the end of it.  The webinar should be about an hour long.

Free Webinar

Feb 4, 2017 at 1pm EST

If suicide is something that you deal with or you know someone that does, please join us.  If you have had to deal with the loss of someone close to you because of suicide, please join us.  I think you will find this webinar helpful and supportive and healing.

To sign up for this webinar, go to the link, A Mother's Promise To Help After Son's Suicide.  It is a free webinar, but space is limited in the online event.


I look forward to seeing you on the webinar.  Leave a comment below with questions or you can also catch me on Twitter.

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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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When Healers Miss The Big Picture

Every new age spiritual enlightened person out there most likely would easily agree that healing does not come from humans.  It comes from a power greater than ourselves.  Each one might have a different name or terminology for what brings forth healing, but I'm almost certain that everyone agree it does not come from any particular individual.

Of course, when you look at many modalities, healing practices and organizations, anything but what I just wrote becomes the truth.  Usually no one will admit it or even acknowledge that it happens within them or their group.  There is a blind eye that is turned towards the truth.  Although it remains an unspoken thing within individuals and groups, it is present.

All too often in the bodywork field we build up organizations and put certification procedures in place.  While that may sound like a worthwhile cause and justifiable at the time of its creation, it often comes from a place that is not as pure and conscious as the individual would hope that it does. It may start out with good intentions, but at some point it degrades into the human ego making decisions and forming committees to take care of man-made issues that arise.

At some point an organization or individual may realize that in order to validate the healing work that they do, procedures need to be put in place.  In many ways this is admirable, but more often than not this process goes awry.  Soon humans are evaluating other humans and passing judgements based upon factors outside of their consciousness.  As time goes, more procedures are put in place to help balance the process out, but of course they are made up by individuals who are judging what needs to happen.  At the end of the day, more committees and procedures reflect very little, how the initial process that begun with the healing modality.

A Shoulder To Cry On

Sometimes in life we all need a shoulder to cry on or an ear that will listen. All too often, we get just the opposite by people who mean well and believe they are doing the right thing. Never underestimate the power of just listening to someone or giving them a shoulder to cry on. Never underestimate how holding someone's hand in a moment of crisis can be such a life changing moment.

A little over a year ago, I was going through some very difficult moments. A rash had engulfed my body and itching was my closest companion. No matter what I did, the itching would not stop and I spent many days and nights awake anguishing in terror. There seemed like no end and it was a horrible painful time of frightening experiences that I went through.

I remember finally going to Dr. Paul Canali at Evolutionary Healing for a session. By the time I got there, I was so afraid that I could barely function in life let alone get myself into his office. My body was so wrought with fear that it took all the energy I could find to just get my body to function and physically move. In that moment, I was not sure if there was a way through this. I did not have hope that it would improve because I had already endured so much and for so long.

I'll never forget the words that Dr. Canali spoke to me and what he did when I first got on the table. He grabbed hold of my hand in a very firm, supportive and loving way while he looked at me and said, "I'm here for you!" It wasn't just the words either that were said, but I could tell the conviction in each syllable that he truly meant what he was saying. I also could hear through the words that he could back up what he was saying because he had already touched his own pain and sorrow. It was a life changing moment. I'll never forget that moment.

Today, I read a blog by Nicole Bowman that really reminded me of this point and so much more. All too often, we think we have to solve the problem or we are too mired in our own pain, that we cannot just be there for the person. We can't simply offer a shoulder to cry on or a listening ear? It is okay to go in and be in the depths of pain with people as long as we have done the work on ourselves so we can truly be there.

It took me a long time to understand that you can go into the pain with the person that needs it without losing yourself. It has nothing to do with shielding yourself from the person's energy or anything else. It is a matter of just holding the space open and walking along side by side through their journey helping them to take each step. It has nothing to do with us although it may trigger and connect with areas of our own life that we have not fully healed. We should welcome those moments because they give us further opportunity to evolve and heal ourselves.

I hope you will read Nicole's blog entry that I've linked to below, because she so eloquently states this concept. It is a beautiful concept and one that when practiced can truly be life changing for another person. The true essence of our humanity is how far we allow ourselves to heal and how we use that awareness and consciousness to help others do the same thing. There is no greater gift we can give others than to offer ourselves up with all our pains, inadequacies and healing so that together we evolve into more than we are currently aware of in this moment.

1) Nicole Bowman, Blog Post March 2 - Thoughts On The New Age
2) Dr. Paul Canali, Evolutionary Healing of Miami
3) Blog Post on August 19, 2010 - Stop The Itching



Blog Post & Images (c) 3/4/11 Don Shetterly - use by permission only
http://www.donshetterly.com

We Can Do Better With Social Media

It blows my mind just how mind-numbed we are in a day.  I see it online in such a big way that my brain cannot even begin to comprehend it.  I wish it was different.  I'm trying to be different with my news feed, but some days I wonder if I am losing the battle.

People love to click on tweets and Facebook posts, but the majority of the time, they have never read what they are clicking on.  People like and favorite all day long, but if you're not reading the content, how can you even know that it is something good?

Don't get me wrong, I love people sharing and liking and clicking on my content.  I really do!

The ones that go on and favorite or like or share something who have not even read it are more a part of the problem than they realize.  I'm sorry if that sounds harsh and brash, but I hope we can do better with social media then we do.  I'd love to see us use it to help enhance our civilization, not just pass on stuff that has absolutely no value to it.

Those that leave a comment based upon the a few words telling you what you should know as if you didn't know already, have not even read the article.  Its easy to spot.  Yet, they are telling someone that you should do this or live your life this way or some other meaningless statement.  This is an insult to someone that writes and tries to help elevate the discussion.

Don't get me wrong, I love people interacting with me on social media. 

We can't go through life just clicking and liking things without knowing what it is that we share.  We've got to do better.  We've got to be more if we want the world to survive.  Just being a mind-numbed robot does nothing positive for this world.

We've got to be better than...

We've got to be better than those who just write horrible messages especially in a time of tragedy.  We've got to be better than those that seek to make everything into a political statement and narrow everything down to an issue with only two sides.  

We can do better...

We can do better with social media if we want.  We can be part of the problem and check our brains at the door.  I want people to challenge one another to be more than they were the day before and we don't do this by mindlessly trolling along twitter or Facebook with our inauthentic comments.

(click image to read)

There is much in a day that is useless and I would be ashamed if I had written it or shared it.  Maybe my standards are too high, but why do I want to waste my precious hours on things that take me nowhere?  It doesn't make sense.

Let's find ways to do better with social media.  Let's elevate the discussion to be more than we are today and help others do the same.  I know we can do this.  I know we can be more than we are.  It just takes each one of us making the choice.

Question Of The Day

• How are you helping make social media better?

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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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Opposing Forces

Every day, I see headlines and hear things that make me cringe.  Yes, I realize the media is about sensationalism because if they were not, no one would watch their reporting or read their news.  They are just the medium to highlight the opposing forces in this world.  It isn't just confined to the media either, but people who I interact with in my day.

I'd like to say that this is the worst it has ever been, but that might be nothing more than a sensational statement.  People who have lived much longer than me have most likely seen things much worse.  Yet, in my life span, this does feel like we are nothing more some days than opposing forces.

It almost feels like no matter what one person says, another will completely and vehemently disagree with them, calling them names and questioning their very nature of existence.  It doesn't matter what the issue is or what side of the issue anyone is on.  It just continues day after day after day.

For the most part, I don't watch much news reporting because of this.  I do read headlines and to be honest, that's often more than enough to see.  Not only is the reporting done so poorly these days, but bias runs as deep as it can.  Facts are interspersed in the bias to make it appear that it has substance.

Is Social Media Communication Human?

Do we really read anything anymore?  I mean, do we really read what is before our eyes.  After the advent of text messages, twitter, and the "likes" on Facebook, do we really communicate or read or even care about communication?

Communication is an art form.  It is part of the human experience.  It is about sharing a bond between one human and another.  Yes, even animals of all sorts do this.  Even plants know how to communicate.

Communication occurs on so many different levels from the words we use to the sounds and inflections of our voices.  The body language which emphasizes or supports our words and sometimes even shows the inaccuracy of our words.  The energy we bring to a conversation and the knowing that is involved help us to communicate in ways we don't even consider.

Most Diseases Are Reversible With Food

Did you know that most diseases are reversible with food? According to Jeff Primack, from QiRevolution.com, he has developed Food Based Healing Smoothies that have helped many people.

Just attempting to eat healthy is not enough because so often we either process, freeze or mutilate our food to the point of losing so many of the important nutrients, enzymes, vitamins and minerals. Just because we eat frozen vegetables or processed foods with healthy things in it, does not mean we are eating healthy.

Fruits and Vegetables contain naturally occurring photochemicals which Jeff calls, the spark plugs of the immune system. Humans do not generally get enough of them. Phytochemicals hide in the cellulose fibers of seeds, stems, skins and rinds of the fruits and vegetables we eat.

When is the last time you ate the entire apple including the seeds, stems, and apple peelings? Do you realize that the best part of the apple is in the seeds, stems and skin? Or you ate an avocado with including the seed and shell? What about the cucumbers that you buy in the store where you normally peel off the skin and eat the inside? (granted a waxed cucumber is probably not the best thing and our food industry is determined to wax every cucumber sold or charge outrageous prices for ones they don't). Just think of the fruits and vegetables you eat and how much of the "good stuff" of these do you throw away?

What Jeff Primack teaches, is how to make a smoothie using a high powered blender (found on Amazon - Blendtec TB-621) and dumping in all the fabulous phytochemical rich foods. We've been doing this for almost two years and not only does it really (and I mean really) help digestion, but we don't get the colds and flu like everyone else is getting. In fact, I overheard a conversation the other week about how these two people had been through two or three rounds of a cold and flu and it was almost foreign to me what they were talking about. If I feel anything like a cold or flu coming on, the smoothie usually knocks it out so quick that whatever was hitting me comes and goes within a day at the most.

At first, I wasn't sure if I could drink the smoothies. They taste good but sometimes you get ingredients that have off flavors and then it makes it hard to drink the smoothie. Once I got accustomed to it, I really don't mind it at all. It is part of our routine in the morning and we have gotten the prep work down to a science now so that it is not hard to prepare the stuff to put it in the blender. Our biggest problem is living in an area where produce in the stores is sometimes difficult to find. Sad that this happens, but it is true so it makes it a challenge at times.

There are so many nutritional things out there from Green Drink Mixes to Juice Plus to NingXia Red to Healthy Chocolate and so many other things. I know all these places have their research and their success stories and so on and so forth. I'm happy for them. However, when you have to start spending considerable money each month on a processed product that you can only buy from certain places or through some Multilevel Marketing (MLM) system, the questions in my mind run over each other trying to get answered! Sorry, but I'm just not into buying a product that someone claims and regurgitates the claims that it is the best thing since oxygen was discovered!

With the smoothies, I am using natural food that I can buy at my local market or I can grow on my own. I put it in a blender for a couple of minutes and drink it. That is all the processing there is. There is no heating and cooling and pressing into a pill or powder. There is no freezing or bottling and letting it sit in a warehouse or on a truck. There is no wondering what is truly in the product because I can see with my eyes and with my hands, just what is going into what I am consuming.

Even if phytochemcials are not something I specifically know about, it is not hard for me to understand how eating whole, natural and fresh fruits and vegetables is very healthy for a person. We've all been taught that we need to eat our veggies, so it is not difficult to understand how beneficial this is. If you're skeptical, than why not put it to the test? What do you have to lose? After all, I don't make any more money telling you about this if you do it or you don't do it. I'm just passing along something that I do and have had very positive benefits from.

Here are some examples of specific foods for specific diseases.

Kiwi - Helps to reverse Asthma
Avocado: Helps reverse heart disease, plaque in arteries and losing weight
Asparagus: Naturally Reverse Cancer & Detoxification
Bitter Melon: Naturally Reverse Diabetes and Improve Blood Sugar
Reishi: For Reversing Heart Disease, Chest Pains, Asthma & Depression
Maca: For Energy, Better Sex, Menopause, Fertility

Take a moment to look at Jeff's website along with the videos that he has put up on YouTube. It will explain much more and will give you further insight into the healing smoothies. If you want to get the smoothie formula book that I use, see the image link below to purchase this on Amazon.


Further Reading
1) Food Based Healing And Smoothies
2) Smoothies, A Year Later
3) Qi Revolution - Jeff Primack
4) Food Based Healing Introduction

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

How To Release Emotions

Life Learning Lessons: How To Release Emotions

For the past several months, I’ve been dealing with a rash that for the most part has gone away. However, there is still one section of my upper left arm that is hanging on. It changes of course from moment to moment, day to day. Some days, it is almost nonexistent and some days, it bothers me with an intensity that would make a grown person cry.

So the other day I was in a situation where I was working on a client site in close proximity with someone. This person was a touchy, feely person without strong boundaries. While their behavior was not with malicious intent, the touching and slapping they were doing around me was irritating to say the least. My body is very hypersensitive and the area they were touching was the area on my arm that still has a rash. It sort of felt like every time they touched this area, they were pressing the button on the atomic bomb and it was like, my arm kept saying – how lucky do you feel as they touched this part of my arm. The fear that comes up is that I’ll go off, lose control and go back into whatever is behind this rash on this particular spot on my arm. Right now, I cannot consciously describe what that is but I know without a doubt, it is there.

After a couple of times asking the person to not touch me especially not in this area, they continued. Of course I know they weren’t doing it intentionally as it was a subconscious thing within them. Something in them triggers this type of behavior in an autopilot mode where I’m sure they don’t even realize what they are doing. There is a very good chance; the action is mimicking something from long ago in their life that has now become a pattern. I understand that and can recognize it but it still makes it a very tough ordeal to experience.

However, here is where the series of events go into overdrive. After the second time of him hitting me in the arm, I picked up a chair in a joking manner and said, now go ahead and touch me there. I was trying to drive the point home enough so that he would stop. Fortunately he did but by that time, the itching had picked up dramatically and my arm was extremely painful. It was the kind of phantom pain that went deep to my bone and muscle and had nothing to do with the physical touch of being slapped. This was much deeper than that.

So I drove home and probably a good two hours after this happened or more, I all of the sudden found myself in a furry of rage at nothing or at no one. Yet, I was so full of rage. I was cursing, screaming at every little thing that seemed to go wrong on my computer or whatever was around me. At first, I didn’t even realize I was that full of rage until I stopped and took a look at myself. I kind of felt like a dog chasing his tail, who that actually caught his tail and then stopped and looked at what had happened. Yet, even in this moment, I could feel the deep rage bubbling up inside of me but with no explanation or connection to why it was there. From that point, the anger just increased exponentially to the point where it was unbearable. I wanted it to end. This led to me thinking thoughts of how can I end my life from this which of course then led to feeling like I wanted to cry but wasn’t able to cry. This all happened in a matter of moments and switched back and forth as easily as one could step forward or backwards.

It left me feeling like I was such a screw up and like I was just so darn messed up that I would never get through all of this that I am healing from. It felt like there was no tomorrow and no reason to go on. I struggled to keep myself from just wanting to give up. Again, this is in a matter of minutes or less and it switches from one emotion to the next so quickly.

I struggled through the next day of this wondering why all of this had happened and felt very sad for myself that anyone should have to endure this. After talking to Dr. Canali today about it and sharing with him what happened, so much more made sense.

You see, at one time in my life, I had no outlet for many emotions. It was not something that was allowed, condoned or even possible in my family. I was always a hypersensitive kid and that didn’t mix well with my family. We did not show anger in front of my father at all nor was I allowed to show tears without being told to grow up, whipped for it or being called a cry baby and humiliated. My mom was the one that seemed to be allowed to cry but then that was ok in my family because as I was taught, she was a woman or it was her time of the month so it was expected. That was the teaching I received from my Neanderthal father. Plus, the only anger I ever saw being dealt with in my family was my dad going off into a rage. There was no example I had to follow of watching someone release anger in a mature and safe manner.

Now fast forward to later in life when I have absolutely no clue as to how to deal with emotions in a healthy way and treat them as if they are a normal part of life. They were something to be feared, to be loathed and avoided at all costs. Yet, the stuffing of emotions deep within me got me many medical conditions from ulcers and illnesses, to migraines and daily headaches. So now, at my adult age, I am trying to parent myself and teach myself how to release emotions in a normal, healthy and balanced way.

Hearing from Dr. Canali that all of this that was going on, was my body and mind’s attempt to learn how to release emotions and deal with the emotions in a positive way, was like manna from heaven. Here, I had been beating myself up for it and getting lost in the fear of losing control rather than embracing the newness of my awareness for all that I was becoming conscious of. I thought it was a dreadful thing when in reality; this process is a good thing. If I can keep myself from diving deep into the fear of the moment and allow it to unfold and allow myself to learn from it, I know I will be able to transform some more of these deep hurts and lessons missed in my life. The more I get swallowed up by the fear of what is happening in moments like this, the more I am fueling the series of events to loop around in a circle with no exit.

It is a process to learn to heal these things and to fully reclaim one’s life. It is not a quick fix of I’m through this part so that’s it. We as humans are constantly evolving or hopefully we are and through that constant evolution, we are becoming more and more who we really are. To deny this or stop this process is denying the inner truth about our self. It isn’t easy going through this but as I have learned through the many other experiences that have come my way, there is the reward of a life filled with so much more than I could have imagined.

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

The Emotion Of Triggers

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Emotional triggers, for many people, are part of everyday life it seems. These triggers seem to always hang around and make their presence known whenever they feel like it. Sometimes emotional triggers appear not only when we least expect them, but at some of the worst moments. I know this too well because it seems like I own a goldmine of emotional triggers. While I don’t actively try to harvest these things, they just seem to find their way to the surface.

Emotion tends to guide many things we do, even if we are not fully aware that it does. Most of these emotions are not necessarily conscious, but they show up in a conscious manner. Often the person displaying these emotions is not necessarily aware of it or how they are truly coming across to the observer on the outside.

So what is a trigger? That might be a good question to answer because they are many, and I would say each person has something that triggers them. A trigger is some event in your present moment that connects you in a very deep, automatic and quick way to something that you have experienced in your past. It could be a sight, smell, sound, touch, taste or it could be a word, phrase, piece of music, color or just about anything that you observe and interact with in a day. Watching a TV program may invoke connections to memory places in your brain, as can hearing some song or even feeling the touch of someone around you. What you pick up does not necessarily have to be something horrible, and it may not necessarily be something that is directly related to the past event.

When something in your present moment invokes an automatic reaction deep within you, it is connecting in the brain and in the body with some moment of emotional charge from your past. It is an extremely quick, unconscious connection that can play out within a matter of seconds. What sets it off has no limits, no boundaries and often no warning. If you are able to identify what sets the triggers off, then you will be ahead of the curve, but often they are silent lurkers waiting to pounce as a lion would wait to pounce upon its prey.

This connection to the past is an emotional trigger. There was some past experience that had such an emotional charge to it, that the current moment is connecting that brain synapse. Often the triggers hit us in such a way that it knocks us for a loop in life but sometimes the triggers could be connected to something very beautiful in our life. For instance, if you smell a Christmas tree and it triggers your mind back to some fun early childhood memory of Christmas, it would be a very beautiful thing in this instance.

However if you take the same scenario and have another person influenced by the smell of a Christmas tree, it could take them back to a moment of horror, pain and sadness because of some event they experienced. So while we often see triggers in a negative manner, they can be positive as well, bringing out our life’s experiences and memories that we treasure and cherish. A person is able to have both positive and negative triggers.

Take, for example, emotional blasts to the past that I cherish. I have some very beautiful hymns and choruses from church that I just love to play on the piano. It takes me back to the days where I was learning how to play the piano and would spend hours creating the beautiful music. At the same time, there were many agonizing moments taking place in our house, and it was usually filled with a lot of stress, anger, yelling and strong displays of emotion. So often those songs, while they were played with beauty, were also a part of something I was trying to escape from. Now I find that in an instant, I am taken back to both sides of those experiences from my childhood. They are one and the same. The trigger could be positive and it is in many ways, but it is also negative and invokes a sense of sadness, horror and pain which still resides in my body to this day.

Another trigger I have struggled with is one that took many years for me to begin to understand. As I was sitting at a traffic light, there was this car that pulled up beside me with a stereo blasting, and the bass sound was pounding the pavement extremely hard. No matter what I did, I could not get myself to let go of the bass sound coming from that car. I began to notice that I was becoming extremely angry. Fortunately I had my windows up and AC running, because I was screaming every obscenity at the person that I could get out of my mouth. I hated them at that moment and wanted them to die. If I would have had a gun, there’s a chance that I would have used it and that is one reason I will not own a gun. I started honking my horn and waiting for the light to change in what seemed like an eternity in slow speed. I’m sure people were wondering what my problem was, and I had only a couple of things on my mind. Either I wanted to flee the sound and the situation as quickly as I could, or I wanted to do anything to get this to stop. My heart was racing, my head was pounding, my muscles in my arms and legs had grown tense and all the time, the AC was not working fast enough to even being cooling me down. Finally the light turned green and I was able to escape from the loud bass sound coming from this car, but I was left wondering why I got so angry and almost out of control for something like this. After all, it didn’t seem to bother others around me.

As time went, I began to be impacted less and less by the bass sound around me but it still made life pretty difficult. Then one day long after this, my cat began just meowing very loudly each day shortly after we moved to a new home. It was like she wanted attention but expected me to come to where she was, and she wouldn’t be quiet until I did so. The sound was excruciating and no matter what, I could not get my cat to stop making the loud meow. Finally one day I broke down in tears as I connected the trigger of the bass sound to my cat making the loud meow.

You see, when I was a child, I always loved having cats. We moved a lot so it was difficult but somehow I always managed to get a cat. My parents seemed to love animals but for some reason the cats were always afraid of my father and I never knew why. One night as a child doing dishes, I was standing on a kitchen chair because I wasn’t big enough to quite reach the sink, and had myself propped up while washing the dishes. I had to be very careful to get each and every dish very clean because if I did not, I would be in big trouble. So it was with fear and trepidation that I would wash the dishes to help my mom. On this night, there were very loud sounds coming from outside. I knew my father and mother had gone outside to the basement cellar for something, but wasn’t sure exactly what it was. We had one of those basement cellars that had the door right outside the kitchen window and back porch, which opened up out of the ground. That’s where my kittens stayed during the night, and since there were ways into the basement that the kittens knew about, it was a great place for them. There was the little gray charcoal colored kitten, Charcoal; the black kitten I named Blacky; and the grey colored one that I called Smokey, that I would sing the song “On Top of Old Smokey” to. They meant so much to me and were my companions in a world filled with turmoil.

On that night though, I heard a very loud noise of screams coming from many different things. It was horrible and I remember being horrified at what was going on outside, knowing that it was something to do with my cats. Of course I had been warned not to venture outside no matter what, and I knew that at the risk of losing my own life, I would not do this. But I listened to the screams of my kittens begging for life and begging to just let them go, as I heard the old heavy wooden cellar door slam and then slam again and again. After the final slam of the door, there was silence. No kittens could be heard. Not a single kitten left to make a sound. After what seemed like an eternity to me, my parents came back in through the back porch of the house, and you could tell my mom had been in tears and was struggling to look me in the eye. I knew she didn’t want to do what she was forced to partake in with my father. I’m sure it was horrible for her as well. My father seemed to have that cold stare in his eyes that I had seen before, and announced to me that the kittens had been playing around the door and got caught as the door was trying to close. My little brain wanted to accept the reasoning he gave me, but deep down it just didn’t add up. My eyes wanted to cry but I was warned to not be a baby about it, and it was just an unavoidable accident that had happened. After all, as I was told, crying about it would do no good and I just needed to act mature. So without tears, I finished washing the dishes that night, staring out into the night sky knowing that I would never see Charcoal, Blacky or Smokey again.

So as I sat there in traffic that day with the bass sound coming from the other car, I didn’t initially realize how the awful noise was connecting me back to a day as a child when I so wanted to stop my father from killing the kittens. Yet I was powerless to do anything or to stop it. Then when my cat began her loud meows, the sounds connected me back to that frightful night. To this day, it is very difficult to even think about this, let alone write about it, and yet it was not the first nor would it be the last time this experience would be all in a day’s activities for me.

You see, these emotional triggers stay with us until we find a way to discharge the emotional energy that is locked up within them. For if energy is trapped in a moment, it will continue searching for ways to exit and complete the direction it was going. Whether this is through something that one does physically to themselves or others, or through some type of health and disease condition or whatever way it is, the trapped energy spends its days looking for a way out. There is some point within the body where it resides, that once tapped into, yields the event as if it were playing out in the present moment. Many of us go through our lives with these things residing within us, but we never find the way to completely release them from our innermost selves. Sure we find ways to rationalize them, and make sense of them, all the time harboring the potential energy that they encase.

You may be able to go for years without ever dealing with many of these things, and in fact it is quite possible for one to go to their grave avoiding them. However at some point, the trapped energy of these moments will play out in some manner. Avoiding them keeps us operating at less than we were meant to be, and keeps us from becoming more human with potential beyond our wildest imaginations.

If you’re fortunate like I was to begin putting the pieces together, that is a good first step in recovering the energy and the trauma that the triggers hold. However, it may take years for all of this to happen, or it could happen quickly. I have many more examples of my own experiences in this as I am sure each person does. But finding the point in the body where these experiences and triggers surface is the key to having the opportunity to let them go. Once this connection to the body is made, the potential is so great. After all, the trapped energy is potential energy, and by taking the power back from it, you gain so much in your life in so many ways: from pure awareness, joy and an easier life, to less health issues and a more wholesome body to live in. No, it isn’t easy going through the triggers and reclaiming this but it isn’t as hard as one may think it is. The rewards are great, especially if you are able to do this with someone that understands how to guide you through this process and has undergone the process of healing in their own life. For truly someone that has already walked the road, can be one of the best people to help other travelers find their way through the maze of emotional triggers we suffer in life.

May you be awakened to a new thought as you have read this, realizing that there is much more than you may currently have in your life. Know that the aches and pains, health conditions, and all those discomforts you feel in your life are there for a reason. They are not to be gotten rid, of but experienced to the point of reclaiming your power over them. For when you reclaim the power of these discomforts and pains in your life, you truly are discovering what it is like to live in your body. Living in your body and enjoying it can be one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves. The potential has no boundaries and the rewards are without limits. My hope is that you will not focus upon the pain I endured in the example, but that you will use what you have read as a catalyst for searching in your own life.