Triggers

Announcement!  Announcement!  They are everywhere ladies and gentleman.  Look for them in your closets, your doorways, the trees outside or on the roadways.  Triggers will show up everywhere they can.

I know, we're taught to ignore the triggers and act like grown up adults.  We're the ones in control and we don't let those little pesky triggers rule our day.  That's for those that don't have their lives together, right?

WRONG!

Triggers are everywhere.  They lurk in the shadows and sometimes meet us at the waters edge.  They show up when we least expect it and often while we are running so fast, they outpace us.

Triggers can take you down to your knees or they can just continue to allow you to feed by nibbling on them each day.  Triggers can present themselves as the sustenance to your life while all the time sneaking up on you from behind.

Triggers can make us think we are dying or they can make us think we are experiencing something we are not.  Triggers are very good at being deceptive and altering their appearance so as to not be detected.

Often triggers leave you lying by the roadside as if you were kicked out of a moving car.  They leave you for dead as if someone that has been beat down so badly in life.  They run over you like a speed bump.

The thing though about triggers is that they are just that - a trigger.  They really don't have power or control over you, unless you give it to them.  They really don't have an agenda, other then to show up and ambush you.

Yes, they are everywhere.  Yes, we can be impacted by them daily whether we want to see them or not.  The trick though is to recognize when they show up and let them know who is boss.  After all, they are not the boss of your life.

Triggers can be tough to deal with and believe me, I know that first hand.  Sometimes they sneak up on me so quickly, I barely know they have attacked.

Sometimes it takes me awhile to see what has happened, but if I can hold my awareness and stay conscious, then I have the option of taking back my power from them.  It may be easy to give our power up to them, but we can also take it back.

So, the next time you see a trigger advance, take note of it and identify it.  Let it know that you are calling it out of the shadows and that you are the one in control.   If it has already attacked, just do a post game analysis and be more prepared for it the next time the trigger tries to attack.

To read more, check out the articles on Triggers at Somatosync.com.

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Blog Post And Images (c) 12/28/15 by Don Shetterly

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Triggers Are Everywhere

Triggers can get us at any time, place, moment or in any circumstance or with any person. There is no discrimination by triggers. Often when you least expect them, they rise up and smack you hard in life.

Recently I was in a workshop and got triggered so hard, the shame and pain of the trigger almost pulled me under. Fortunately, I was able to deal with it in a positive way because life was spiraling out of control very quickly. To read more, check out the blog post Healing The Triggers Of Life.

Another example was that I had gone to a Toastmasters meeting to check them out and possibly join. Toastmasters goal is to help you learn how to speak in public more effectively. The first meeting went okay with one individual significantly pushing the boundaries but I shrugged it off.

On my second visit, there was a person giving a speech who thought it was appropriate to give a sermon about God as her speech. The evaluator for her speech of course loved it because as he said, "I am a pastor (minster of a church)!" I felt violated and triggered. Later I found out that topics such as religion and politics are not appropriate for these meetings as they are not meant to make people uncomfortable. The purpose is to help people give speeches, not deal with hot button issues.

For me, going into stores during the holiday season and seeing people buy gifts for Christmas is extremely triggering. It brings me back to some very painful gift exchanges at Christmas in my early years.

Just to be in a store where it is crowded or where they have aisles filled with merchandise to restock the shelves like in Walmart, is triggering. I get claustrophobic easily and if aisles are blocked, I panic that I am trapped and cannot get out.

People (especially strangers) bumping into me are extremely triggering to me. At one time to be touched by anyone was so frightful. I have really come a long ways in this. Still, I am very guarded when I am out in public. It is hard for me to trust anyone.

Recently, I had a friend come down to visit and was triggered unexpectedly and hard when the friend left without saying goodbye. I remember the traumatic moments around my older brother getting up early, slipping out the door and driving away. No goodbye had been said and no one realized he had packed all his belongings into his car, the night before. The only way we knew he was gone was when we heard his car start as he coasted out the driveway.

Who could blame my older brother for his escape? While I had to play counselor and console my parents, I was both angry and jealous of him for leaving. I was just a teenager held captive in life that was brutally traumatic. What amazed me though was how strongly I was triggered back to these events and just how much pain surfaced as a result.

Other times in bodywork and massage, I've been strongly triggered in the role of being a massage therapist. I have had people overtly and covertly try to solicit sex from me as part of the massage. Some of it has been more of a sense and feeling than anything but each time it happens, it triggers me back to some horrible experiences I went through with my father.

I could go on and on about many more triggers. Triggers are the one thing that are abundant in my life. I wish I could wave that magic wand and make them all disappear. Often though they show up unexpectedly while surprising me with a hit and run kick to the gut.

When these triggers hit, I am trying hard to recognize them. It is so easy to continue in life thinking that everyone else is seeing the events unfold as you do. When you are able to check your reactions with people you trust, there is a chance for a different outcome. It is so easy to think that when you're triggered, how you see things is how others see them. Understanding that a difference exists is helpful and healing.

I do not try to stop my emotions or feelings when I am triggered. Instead I work to help myself understand what is going on in this situation and how it is affecting me. I allow myself to learn and work with the trigger by talking and writing about them. In addition, I also allow myself to connect with the feelings and emotions of it with where it is located in my body.

Triggers are not easy for me to deal with but I am learning that I can work with them and begin to heal from them. The more I acknowledge and give them a voice, the more energy and power that I take back from them. At times, I do try to minimize triggers in my life so that I am not completely overwhelmed.

In life, what I considered to once be a life sentence in dealing with triggers is now something I am able to work with. Even though times where I am triggered may get rough, I do realize there are other options in how I react to life. Triggers can get easier to deal with and I know that I can heal from these moments.

Further Reading:
Healing The Triggers Of Life, Blog Post on November 24, 2010


Blog Post & Images (c) 12/13/10 Don Shetterly - use by permission only

The Emotion Of Triggers

Note: Click Here for a Licensed Print Ready Copy

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.

Fear Of Surrender Holding Hands

There I was, sitting in the room and all of the sudden... thump da thump da thump goes the music.  Its the sound that immediately takes me back to a moment in my past that is so hard to manage.  Much like a war vet suffering from PTSD, a startling noise resembling a bomb can set them off and so it is with me.  The loud base sound of music is my startling noise.  It is a trigger. 

I've come a long ways in healing on this issue.  In fact, I can now tolerate for many minutes, a car sitting next to me with their base sound so loud it vibrates everything within 100 feet.  I've come a long ways in my healing, where I can now allow my hand to be held or hold hands with my partner.

For a long time, holding hands was something I would not do.  It was frightening and scary.  It was as if it was my startling noise where I was being pinned down on the bed and raped as a thirteen year old boy.  No matter how much I wanted that feeling of holding hands and that shared moment with my partner, I just couldn't get over the fear.  I was so triggered by it.

Triggers In Walmart

Triggers In Walmart

The other day in the store, I had one of those experiences with another shopper that you would just like to forget.  It was in Walmart of all places.  Sometimes that can be a challenge to shop there because it is a wide mix of people who are in a hurry and far too often have very little respect for anyone else.  However, the experience happened right before my eyes and my mind and body didn't recognize it for the trigger it was.

When I got home, I was still fuming and fussing about what had transpired in the store.  I shared it with a couple of friends and in all reality, what I wrote to them was not very respectful to the shoppers in the store.  One friend of mine called me out on it and she was right.  Even though I felt violated, I had no right to talk about the people in the way that I did.

The thing was, I did not even realize just how much I was triggered by this event and how far I escaped out of reality in my mind and body.  It was not until this friend of mine called me out on it, that I began to realize just how big the trigger was for me.  It was like I had gone to some place in outer space and was not even present with what was going on.

Happy Endings NOT

Like many other massage therapists, there comes a moment when a client or potential client feels that a massage is nothing more than something sexual. Some may just assume since you are a massage therapist that it is a front for some type of sexual business. Some may refer to it as a massage with a happy ending. There are many different ways and forms that this takes from the very subtle to the outright direct requests.

I do know some massage therapists will cave in to the pressure of extra money while disregarding their ethics, morals and the real purpose they most likely wanted to learn massage. In fact, I remember one former massage therapist telling me of one of his adventures that he bragged about until I said, look - I don't want to hear it! Fortunately he is no longer a massage therapist.

It wasn't easy for me to bring this up on this blog because I'd like to pretend in many ways that it does not exist or it only exists in a few cases. Yet, I know and I get confronted with it even if it is in a somewhat joking manner. I did not go into massage to do things sexually for others. I am so repulsed by that thought that I can barely find a coherent sentence to say what I want to say.

My father used to get me to always massage his neck or back when I was a kid. While I now am understanding that I had a special touch and sense in my hands, it was how my abilities got mangled up into something I had no desire to do that caused great distress for me. While the initial request to massage his neck or back which hurt, was most likely legitimate, there were times that it led to things, no child should ever have to do with a parent. And for many years, the healing ability that I was given was mixed up with the not so good things I endured. It took a long time to get myself to the point of being able to go to massage school and learn this skill without the sexual stuff trying to take place.

One of the types of body work I prefer is the modalities that allow the person to keep their clothes on. I'm so much more comfortable working with someone in this way than having a draped but unclothed person lying on a massage table. Maybe the triggers of my past are still very prevalent. I have found that I can be just as effective through the clothes of someone as I can without the clothes. There is no difference for me in that. And it allows me to escape past some of the sexual innuendos and games that too many want to play when getting a massage.

More importantly though than my own triggers that I face is that so many in our country do not understand what massage is really about nor what it means to live in our bodies. To be touched in a safe, supportive and non-judgmental way is one of the most healthiest things we can give our bodies. Yet, many of us have been taught that to be touched is something that is equal to sex and sex is touch. While that may be true, touch in its purest form is what should be the norm in our society. There are so many examples of this around us if we only open our eyes and look at them.

I'm here to say, that if you allow yourself to be touched in a safe, supportive and non-judgmental manner, your life will positively change in many ways. The knowledge that we can gain from ourselves through touch and the metamorphosis that can take place are far greater gifts than we could ever give ourselves. Touch may be a part of sex but wholesome touch is not sex, it is much greater than that.

My hope is that anyone reading this will be a little more informed as to what massage is and what it is not. Most massage therapists do not like to have clients confuse sex and massage because it diminishes the gifts they have. Those massage therapists that do cross the lines are not only violating the code of ethics they adhere to as part of their license but they are degrading one of the most basic human concepts which is touch. Please don't fool yourself or others into thinking that crossing the line is ok.

If you do not get regular massage or bodywork done, you are missing out on so much. The body is a storehouse of so much information and sometimes that brief moment of touch can yield so much for our lives. It can truly be a beautiful thing if we allow it to be. If you're unsure about what massage should be or have questions, please feel free to ask me. I'll do my best to answer it.

Panic And Rage

That moment that happens in your day.  That second when you go from complete stillness to all our panic and rage.  That moment where you feel that you are losing control and you become so angry with yourself that you can't modulate life better.

If that describes you in any way, just know that you're not alone.  I've worked for years on this issue and while I've made progress, there are still moments that panic and rage happen before I can even think about what is happening.  Some moments in life are worse than others and some are better than others.

There are certain triggers like the thumping of a bass sound from a car stereo that will drive me absolutely crazy.  There are triggers like being in a store with the isles having several people or shopping carts in them leaving me feeling trapped.

Daily Angel Meditations December 17

Another website that I have created and write for daily is filled with positive and uplifting messages of growth and awareness.  It is called Daily Angel Meditation and is created from my morning meditations with the angels.  As I take time out in the beginning of my day, I record whatever comes to me.  I start out with a blank piece of paper and no preconceived ideas of what to write.  I then allow the words to fill the page, connecting with what my angels have to say.


Here are selected blog posts beginning the week of December 2, 2012.  I have tried to summarize them briefly and give the actual link to them.  To visit the website, just go to DailyAngelMeditation.com .

December 2, 2012 (Sunday)

Topic: Triggers And Pain
Triggers and pain can come up quickly from images and current moments in our life.  It doesn't take much to transport us to an earlier connection in our life.  This is an account of how I am currently walking through a moment such as this, and attempting to not get stuck.  I am asking my angels to help support me during this time. 

Migraine Headaches

For most of my life, I suffered through daily headaches, including migraine headaches. As a kid in school, there was hardly ever a day missed where I didn't suffer from a headache in the afternoon. While Tylenol, aspirin and other over the counter things were tried, they gave me very little relief. Usually, it meant just living with them and at some point (normally by the next morning) they would go away.

As I got older, the migraines started in. I had witnessed my parents suffer through migraines and so I just assumed that popular medical science was correct in stating that migraine headaches were hereditary. I figured, I would live with these the rest of my life just as my parents did.

When my mom died, the frequency, intensity, and duration of the migraine headaches increased. It wasn't long before I was missing days of work, taking trips to the emergency room and taking prescription Imitrex to function in life. I still remember sitting on the bathroom floor at massage school puking my guts out and just wishing I would die as the migraine headache continued to intensify. I could not even drive myself home that night let alone it was almost impossible to walk out of the building to get in my friend's car.

As I continued to talk to people who suffered from migraine headaches, one thing became achingly clear to me. These people were struggling to find relief from anything that worked. Prescription medications as well as injections would work initially but then after some time, these things offered little or no relief. I still remember my horror and shock at hearing these things because I could not imagine going through them with out something that took the pain away. So my quest began to find ways to not have to suffer from these headaches and migraines. I was not at a point where I thought they would ever go away but if I was able to slow them down and decrease the intensity of them, I would consider that a great joy in life.

In the following article posted on CNN, Headache Prevention - Headache Awareness, they list many good things to consider in the treatment and prevention of headaches.

Common Triggers

• Stress
• Drinking alcohol/red wine
  
• Sensory overload — exposure to bright lights, loud sounds, strong smells
  
• Not drinking enough water
• Too much sleep or not enough sleep
• Exercising too rigorously
• Hormonal changes
• Not eating frequently enough
• Smoking
• Straining your eyes reading or sitting at a computer
• A difference in your caffeine intake
  
• Food additives or naturally-occurring substances, including nitrates in processed meats, MSG in fast food and Chinese food, tyramine found in certain aged cheeses and soy-based foods, and the artificial sweetener aspartame

Headache Prevention

• Good posture
• Move around during the day
• Use the right pillows at night when you sleep
• Stay consistent in your life with your
  
• Get an appropriate amount of sleep
• Stick to an exercise routine
• Healthy diet
• Drink plenty of water
• Stay away from caffeine, soft drinks, tea
• Manage stress

These common triggers and prevention techniques are all good but unless you find a way to get to the underlying cause of the headaches, they will continue. Stress, in addition to diet and exercise is a very good place to start. Even if you are unsure of how to get relief from your headaches, begin today to do something. For when you begin that process and if you allow yourself to learn and go from one step to the next, you'll most likely be as surprised as I have when you no longer suffer from these.

For me, I gave up on the medications because I could quickly see that they were not going to solve the problem. I began to see a chiropractor, Dr. Canali in South Miami and while I did not initially go because of the migraines, it helped me greatly. I'm not saying that I don't ever get severe headaches but I don't get them on a daily basis nor do they get as intense as they were getting. I've learned as well, how to deal with the stress in my life as well as the underlying causes. Life is so much better since these have gone away. Most importantly, I found out that migraine headaches are not a life sentence and they don't have to haunt you each and every day of your life. In addition, I don't have to rely on medications to take care of them either.

If you are suffering from headaches, don't just accept the fact that some "cause" is the end all to them and there is nothing you can do. Don't accept that for a moment! Know that in many cases, there is so much more you can do than you might be aware of and allow yourself to hunt for the right solution in your own life. Just don't settle for the status quo and for medication as a long term fix. Like I shared in this, I thought it was a life sentance but have since found out that it is not. That just makes me want to get up and dance the happy dance!

Resperate and Deep Autonomic Breathing

This is one of the tools I use to help keep my mind and body connected.  It is called the Resperate.  While it is approved by the FDA for helping to lower blood pressure, that is not the way I use it.

Please refer to the owner manual and precautions that may affect how you use this product.  I am not giving medical treatment advice in this blog post.  It is merely how I use this product for my own personal way.  Please adjust it to meet your life's situation.


The Resperate is a great way to help work not only on the Mind Body Connection, but to help deepen the autonomic nervous system breathing.  Autonomic nervous system breathing has to do with allowing your body to go deep into rest and repair healing.  It is where you truly connect with your mind and body using the breath to help you become more aware of the felt sense.

Using the Resperate and pulse meter together, I can fully evaluate on my own, the health of my nervous system.  I am one of those people that sometimes struggles with a high pulse rate due to daily stress and triggers.  It is one area that I continually work on with the Pulse Meter.

The pulse meter not only shows the pulse rate at that moment, but it gives you a reading for the oxygen level of your blood.  For me personally, I try to get my pulse rate down to a consistent rate in the 60's or 70's when I am laying on the table in a rested state.  I watch the pulse waves that I can see on the pulse meter and I'm looking for a gentle flow of waves that are consistent from one to the next.  The waves should have some substance to them, but be gentle rolling waves is how I picture it.

Here are a few tips that have helped me use the Resperate more effectively.  One of the things that I have found is that it is better if I use it in a quiet room where I won't be disturbed.  Since I have a massage table, I often lie down when I'm working with the Resperate.  One of the best things I've found is that I use a pillow under my head because if I am propped up a little, it is easier for me to let go and get into the deeper breathing.  The pillow helps me feel more in control.

I've found that instead of placing the band on my chest, that I place it on the upper side of my belly and it feels like it works better.  I was struggling to get the thing to work if I put it too high on my chest.  I'm sure with each person, it is different and you'll have to explore what location works best for you. It most likely depends upon your breathing pattern.

Before I turn the machine on, I have it all ready to go and then I just lie on the table for a few moments.  I take a "before" reading with the pulse meter and just allow my breathing to quiet down a little.  If I don't do this, it seems like the machine starts out with too many quick inhalations and exhalations which sort of frustrates me more than it helps me to start relaxing.

In the early days, 5 minutes was a lot for me to do on the Resperate.  It took me time to acclimate to the constant breathing inhalations and exhalations.  As I've gone, I find that the full 15 minutes is really ideal.  It helps me to go deep into the process.  If I use less time than that, it is like I'm startled out of the relaxation process before I get that deep and then I wake up with results that are not as good.

I will usually monitor the breath rate on the Resperate in the middle of the time I am using it to see how well I'm doing and how far my body is dropping down.  I'll check the pulse meter to also measure just how far my body is dropping into the rest and repair mode.


Another thing I do is that I hold my hands on my stomach, free and clear of the sensor band.  When I do this, I am holding the thought in my mind that I want to feel and sense every part of the movement in my body as I breathe.  I want to feel the rise and fall of my abdomen and lungs.  This can be very therapeutic and healing once you start to connect it with your mind and body.

Some days I can do better with using the Resperate than other days.  Sometimes I use it every other day and other times I go several days without using it.  It all depends and you just have to listen to your body on what works for you.  You will have to find the frequency of how often you use it.

My overall goal is to work on deep autonomic nervous system breathing so I can connect my mind and body with the felt sense.  I know that the more I do this, the more I can go into rest and repair and physically alter the stress, anxiety and triggers on my life.  The pulse meter is essential in my view to help monitor this because if things are working, the pulse rate should drop down.

At times, I have had headaches and other tension in my body, but after 15 minutes working with the Resperate in the manner described above, I notice that things ease up.  Maybe it isn't 100% better by the time I get off the table, but as the hours go on, I physically feel better.

When  you do the deep autonomic breathing where you slowly exhale, you invoke the vagus nerve.  The vagus nerve is one of the largest nerves in the body and it helps relax you, find balance in your mind and body, and gets you into the rest and repair mode especially if you feel and sense through the felt sense mechanism.

There is a great deal of physical and emotional healing that we can do on our own.  Unfortunately we numb and disconnect with a million reasons of why we don't engage the mind body connection or we keep ourselves so busy that we don't take part in our own healing the way we should.  This is one tool that I've been playing with for some time and the more I experiment with it, the more healing and effective it is for me.

The more we keep our body and mind tuned up, the greater our life will be and we will be able to more effectively connect with peace and healing.  The more we do this on a regular basis, the more life becomes one that we have greater control over in our physical and emotional moments.

The items I use can be purchased on Amazon and I have listed them on my page, Health Products I Love.

Please feel free to ask me questions on how I use this.  I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences if you are using the Resperate.

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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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Pulse Meter And Autonomic Nervous System

I'm sure everyone looks at this in a different way than I do.  I'm talking about our pulse rate and how I use the pulse meter to monitor my health.  I'm especially concerned with the health of my autonomic nervous system, not just the pulse rate.

I'm going to attempt to try and explain what I look at and see when I use the pulse meter.  My goal is to improve my overall health, not just take one reading and extrapolate it into conclusions for all parts of my life.  It is extremely important to know your pulse rate among other key factors of your health.

Going to a doctor and having them check at that moment is never enough.  It only shows you what is happening to you in that single moment. 

How do we know what is going on each day if we've oblivious to what is taking place within us.  I have found that as much as I think I know what is happening, a pulse rate or blood pressure check can often show something quite different.  Our bodies and our minds are not always in sync with one another.

Most of what I am writing about is what I have learned.  If you find something that you know is not quite accurate, please - please - leave a comment and help give me some reference material where I can learn more.  I've had to figure this out on my own using my own life's experiences, so I'm sharing what I know. 

Please don't use this as a medical diagnosis because I'm not qualified to do that in anyone.  You would need to consult your medical provider for questions you may have.

Here's the three key things that I look at when I use the pulse meter on myself or on other clients.

1. Pulse Rate - When I look at this, I'm looking for where the reading is at and then comparing it to where it is after some deep relaxation or trauma release work or even breath work.  In many cases, this number will change, but a healthy autonomic nervous system will have the pulse come down with the work I just referenced.  If the pulse stays high (90 to 100 or above) and does not come down, this is something that needs attention.  It is not healthy for a pulse rate to stay high.  At one time, my pulse rate remained in the high 90's, but with deep trauma and autonomic nervous system work, it has now come down to a more health level.
   
   One thing I have seen is that in some people the pulse rate is very low and in my mind, that does not seem any healthier than the individual with a high pulse rate.  It is like the autonomic nervous system is exhausted or that's how I view it and see it.  You almost have to push the person up into a higher energy state, to get past the autonomic drag as I would view it. 
   
   Knowing where your pulse rate is at any given point is key to understanding what is going on deep within you.  Even in situations where I have had nightmares and I put the pulse meter on my finger, I've found out that my pulse isn't showing what I feel biologically is happening inside of me.  Often the two things are disconnected.  Don't assume that what you think you feel is actually what is going on within you.
   
    
2. SPo2 - The oxygen level of your blood is key to so much.  Oxygen is required to help carry nutrients to the cells so that waste can be carried from them.  If your oxygen level is low, than your blood will not be doing all that it needs to help your cells function in your body.  If I am correct, it will affect your energy levels and ability to deal with things from day to day.  It will set you up for physical ailments and situations that can pull you down even further. 
   
   Many of us don't breathe properly.  We don't fully utilize our breath in a day.  Due to overwhelming stress and a failure to go in and release old traumas, we tend to hold our breath because we are in survival mode.  More often than not, we don't even realize just how much we hold our breath or keep our breathing shallow.  The more we do this, the less overall oxygen we have in our blood. 
   
   The oxygen level is a key indicator of where someone is with respect to the autonomic nervous system and how much residual trauma is still impacting them in a biological way.  If you don't know what you're levels are, you are missing a key component of your healing and your life.
   
   
3. Pulse Wave Form - While not every pulse meter has this feature I don't believe, it is another key component of the health of the autonomic nervous system.  If you start to watch the wave form continuously on yourself and other people, you'll start to see patterns emerge.  I always picture the healthy pulse wave form being gentle rolling ocean waves.  I don't want them too high and peaked because it would be like a ship on some very stormy waters.  I want the wave forms to be robust enough to help me sail through my day. 
   
   The gentle rolling waves reminds me of peaceful waters on the ocean where things are more smooth sailing. The pulse waves are steady, but about the same height.  They are rolling and evenly spaced.  Each one just rolls on to the next one without any thought given as to how it happens.  So when I see this, I know that the body is in a more relaxed and calm state, not suffering from intense trauma triggers in that moment. 
   
   Most likely if you put a pulse meter on your finger, you would see that the waves are all over the place with some high and some at different levels.  However, if you take a few moments and focus on your breath or just relax and turn off the thoughts, you would see something different if you checked it again.  The wave form should typically should be more relaxed in a healthy state.  However, if your body is reeling from the after affects of painful experiences and stress in life, it may not automatically even out, until you've released that which is built up within you.  

Even readings that seem normal at this moment can change.  We all go through experiences that brings up triggers and past memories or experiences.  When these show up, our mind body adjusts to them in trying to regain balance.  It may be nice to read our different levels and think that we are fine, but this would be an illusion because life is a process of moving forward, not a one time event.

Often we need to engage in deep trauma healing work that releases from the core of the body so that these things don't impact us biologically, mentally, and emotionally.  If we don't do this,  you can quickly see with a pulse meter, the impact and effect they have upon your body.  Our nervous systems have elasticity to them, but if you stretch that rubber band too far, something is going to break.

You can also have a great impact upon your pulse rate and blood pressure just through your thoughts.  Unfortunately, this is often temporary if you are still feeding the beast with the unresolved trauma, stress buildup and past experiences still acting as host to your mind and body.

The pulse meter is a tool to help you understand your body more.  We as humans are much more disconnected from what is happening within us than we realize.  The more you explore these concepts, the more this will be an eye opening awareness.  It is a simple tool that if you learn how to use it and read it, you can be in much greater control of your life and health.

Pulse meters are much cheaper today than they once were.  One of the ones I use is pictured above.  If you click on the following link for the PULSE METER, you will see what it is.  They are simple to use, but I think they are something that should be a standard item of personal care each day.

While I know others look at pulse rate in a more medical setting, I look at it through the eyes of the health of the autonomic nervous system.  When this system is in good health because built up stress, past trauma and experiences are not weighing it down, then your overall mind and body and spirit are in good health.  You find balance at that moment which brings you deep peace, joy, and awareness.

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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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What Your Child Remembers

Note: This is an article that I stumbled across while doing some research and the author, Robin Grille, has given me permission to reprint this in the blog. It is excellent information and make sure you check his books and his website out.

WHAT YOUR CHILD REMEMBERS
New discoveries about early memory - and how it affects us

Most of us have been told at one time or another that children aren’t supposed to remember anything that happens to them before – roughly – the age of two. Emotionally painful experiences during infancy will therefore have no lasting impact. These words might have been reassuring, if they didn’t also imply that our infants don’t remember the love we have given them, and so our love at this time has no lasting impact either. As science continues to throw open the mysteries of the brain, and the nature of memory, this kind of advice will gradually vanish. Every emotionally meaningful experience - whether joyous or painful - is stored in memory and has a lasting impact on a baby’s developing nervous system. The way our world feels to us as babies influences our unfolding personality, emotionality and relating styles profoundly, for the long term. There are different kinds of ‘memory’, beyond the stories we can recount. And we ‘remember’ a lot more than we realise.

Within the limbic system of the brain - an area concerned with processing emotions - are the amygdala and hippocampus. The amygdala processes highly-charged emotional memories, such as terror and horror. The hippocampus processes narrative, chronological memory. The amygdala is mature at birth, so babies are able to feel a range of intense emotion, even though they cannot understand the content of the emotion and its relation to what is going on around them. The hippocampus on the other hand, does not mature until sometime between the second and fourth years. Until then, babies are relatively unable to organise memory meaningfully in terms of sequences of events. Only rarely does anybody consciously recall the events of infancy. However, the storage of the emotional content of memory is facilitated by the amygdala. We therefore remember every emotion and physical sensation from our earliest days, and even if we have no clarity about the events that took place, these memories imbue the way we relate to each other as adults.

Just as memory can be divided up into the dual categories of ‘Short Term’ and ‘Long Term’, there are also two qualities of memory: ‘Explicit’ and ‘Implicit’. The capacity for ‘explicit’ memory reaches full maturity at around three years of age. This is the kind of memory that is conscious and enables us to tell a story that makes sense of what happened. ‘Implicit’ memory is available from birth or earlier, it is unconscious, and is encoded in emotional, sensory and visceral recall. In other words, what we don’t remember with our minds, we remember with our bodies, with our hearts and our ‘guts’ – with lasting implications for our thinking, feeling, and behaviour.

The process of ‘forgetting’ is more superficial than we once thought: it only rubs out conscious recall. Even as adults we are mercifully capable of deleting any record of traumatic events. If we are unlucky enough to face a situations of panic or terror which we feel helpless to escape, the brain secretes endogenous opioids in order to numb us to overwhelming emotional or physical pain. These brain chemicals also interfere with the storage of explicit memory, though implicit memory of the trauma remains available. Experiences that are emotionally too overwhelming to deal with are stored somatically, as a body memory. Thereafter they are expressed as an unconscious response to stress. When we over-react to mildly stressful or even innocuous situations without knowing why, this might be the result of implicit, traumatic memories dating back to childhood or infancy.

The memory centres that govern narrative recall, emotional memory and body memory can operate independently of each other. Despite being in a coma, one man went into physiological anxiety states when exposed to a smell that was associated with a personal trauma. It is possible to have strong emotional reactions without conscious recall, even without consciousness! Another man whose damaged brain had lost all capacity for short term memory, still reacted aversively to specific doctors who had conducted unpleasant tests on him, without any recollection of having met them. A brain-damaged woman who had also totally lost her short term memory refused to shake the hand of a doctor who had earlier hidden a sharp pin in his hand. She was bewildered by her own refusal, since as far as she was aware, each time she met him was the first. So, much of what we think, feel and do is induced by implicit memories ‘written’ into muscle, sinew, fascia and viscera. Not one of our experiences is lost to us. Each experience, particularly those that are charged with emotion, adds to the complex mosaic of our personality.

Our brain has an amazing capacity to make associations. Something or someone that ‘reminds’ our brains of a traumatic situation - a smell, a song, a person that looks like someone from our past – triggers our automatic, self-protective ‘fight, flight or freeze’ responses. This reflexive reaction occurs too quickly; before the information reaches the cortex where it can be evaluated rationally. That is why we sometimes over-react to things, people or situations reminiscent of a traumatic event, without any conscious recollection of the event in question.

There are occasions when implicit memory can be made explicit. Since implicit memory is ‘stored’ in the body, repeating certain movements, gestures, breathing patterns, or assuming certain postures associated with highly-charged emotional memories can bounce these memories into explicit, conscious awareness. It is as if the body releases its secrets to the mind. Many individuals have been able to retrieve traumatic memories, both from adult and infant experiences, when induced by strong emotions associated with the original experience. In certain states of consciousness, in psychotherapy or meditation, people have spontaneously recalled things that happened to them as babies. Many have remembered how it felt to be a baby, howling for a mother who would not come. In reconstructing a particular body posture, or talking about a similar emotionally charged event, the contextual memories of unbearable longing, rage or terror come back into focus. It is equally possible for sweet, joyous memories of a parents’ loving face to resurface. This phenomenon is called ‘state-dependent memory retrieval’, and while it is not essential, it can bring healing under certain conditions.

But even if not consciously remembered, early memories show themselves indirectly through behaviour. It is intrinsically human to re-enact defensive reactions to forgotten traumas, though our reactions are no longer relevant. Often early memories become evident through persistent feelings that don’t seem to relate to a present situation, or through bodily sensations that don’t seem to make any sense. More commonly, these early memories of emotional pain or hurt are indirectly evident through persistent difficulties in relationships, particularly in intimate relations.

Implicit memory - or body memory - explains why, for instance, a woman who was molested as a child remains fearful of intimacy - at least with men that ‘remind’ her of the perpetrator – even without a trace of conscious memory of the traumatic episodes. A man fears being alone because it triggers an emotional memory of terror as he cried in the crib, and no-one came to comfort him. He has no recollection of the event, and all around him find him likeable and congenial. He has no understanding about his compulsive avoidance of solitude. Though successful and functional, many people can be avoidant, clingy, or perhaps insensitive in relationships. These are just some of the problems of relationship that have their roots in hurts we felt at the advent of life. To some extent, most of us suffer from some behavioural manifestations of painful implicit memories.

Unbeknownst to our ‘rational’ minds, we sometimes respond mistakenly to current challenges as if they were the hurts we suffered originally. This dynamic holds true in our relationships with our children. There are many reasons why, for instance, we might find our children’s expressions of need aversive and overwhelming. Here is a common scenario: when a baby screams, our bodies react the same way as when our parents screamed at us as children, we are neurologically conditioned to escape or push away, rather than to respond with spontaneous compassion. Alternatively, our baby’s cry might trigger in our bodies an implicit memory of a time when our own cries, as infants, were not met with a loving response. Either way, our baby’s cries evoke our own painful memory, and so we seek refuge. We are all biologically capable of a wellspring of spontaneously loving responses toward our children, and toward each other. Sometimes this love is blocked by automatic defensive reactions to unresolved, implicitly remembered hurts. We are not insensitive nor neglectful; we are wounded.

When a child is reprimanded, an image of the scolder’s looks of disapproval gets stored in the lateral tegmental limbic area of the brain. The growing child and adult judge their own behaviour through the lens of these stored inner representations, which are imprinted as images charged with feelings of shame. These inner visual and auditory records of the shamer usually – but not always - operate beneath conscious awareness. The experience of parents setting healthy boundaries literally grows the child’s orbitofrontal brain, whose purpose it is to contain and regulate raw emotion. But when the parent imposes limits, for some time following the symbiotic time of infancy, the toddler feels a degree of hurt and betrayal. This developmentally necessary change in the parent-child relationship is emotionally stressful. It is important that the parent soothe the toddler after imposing restrictions on him, to help him cope with his ‘shame-stress’. Reassurance of the parent’s love repairs the child’s wounded ‘self’ and restores his self-confidence. If parents diligently assist with their child’s shame–repair, he soon learns to take over, and based on his parents’ role modelling, repair his own shame when needed. Inner representations - stored as emotional and narrative memory in the brain - of a soothing and reassuring parent are used later in life as a template for shame-repair. This internal portrait of a reassuring adult is essential so that as an adult the individual won’t be disabled or overly inhibited by experiences of shame. Though this process is usually unconscious, it secures our ability to self-soothe, and to recover from shame when needed.

Psychological and social problems arise when a child grows up with too many images of a disapproving face stored in the brain centres that store implicit memory, without the subsequent images of a soothing and reassuring adult. A child that lacks these positive images, stored in his emotional memory centres, is at risk of slipping into depression, becoming overly inhibited, or defensively hostile.

From the earliest moments of life, parental nurturance shapes the child’s emotional make-up, literally altering the course of brain-growth. One of the key elements of secure parent-child attachment is affectionate eye-contact. A parent’s sustained, loving gaze and smile suffuses infants with indescribable joy. What ensues is a cascade of dopamine, endogenous opioids, enkephalins and endorphins in the baby’s brain - all feel-good chemicals associated with loving relations. This joy-precipitated surge of brain chemicals promotes the maturation of precise regions of the cortex, which are concerned with healthy regulation of emotion later in life. Every baby requires this kind of nourishing experience regularly and frequently, for healthy brain development.

By the end of the first year, the infant has stored an internal representation of her mother’s loving face in the area connecting the anterior temporal and the orbitofrontal cortices. These images, though rarely consciously remembered, form the basis for an internal working model of relationships. It is as if the child has filed a video-clip of her mother in her brain’s ‘hard-disk’. Henceforth, these inner representations will animate her core emotional responses, forming the basis of her fundamental relationship style. When she feels her emotional needs are consistently attended to, this engenders in the child an enduring expectation of a supportive world. This attitude is pervasive and unconscious, and it inclines the child toward friendly and considerate behaviour.

Just as we might not remember learning to walk, yet our legs and feet seem to play their parts perfectly, some of our most pivotal lessons in human relations were learnt at a time that our bodies, but not our minds, can remember. The greatest gift in these discoveries is the knowledge that every loving moment we share with our children, from the very beginning, will stay with them for life.



Robin Grille is a Sydney-based psychologist, and author of: Parenting for a Peaceful World (Longueville Media, 2005) and: Heart to Heart Parenting
(US edition, LifeTime Media, due in April 2010).
For more information see: www.our-emotional-health.com


References

Damasio, Antonio (2000) ‘The Feeling of What Happens – Body, Emotion, and the Making of Consciousness’. Vintage.

De Bellis M, et al (1999) ‘Developmental Traumatology Part II’. Biological Psychiatry Vol 45, pp. 1271-1284.

Patten-Hitt, Emma (2000) ‘Childhood Abuse Changes the Developing Brain’. Cerebrum, Fall 2000, pp. 50-67.

Perry B.D., Pollard R.A., Blakley T.L., Baker W.L. and Vigilante D., (1995) ‘Childhood Trauma, the Neurobiology of Adaptation, and Use-Dependent Development of the Brain: How States Become Traits’. Infant Mental Health Journal Vol 16(4), pp. 271-291.

Perry, B. D. (1997) ‘Incubated in Terror: Neurodevelopmental Factors in the Cycle of Violence’. In: Osofsky JD ‘Children in a Violent Society’. The Guilford Press.

Perry, B. D. (1999) ‘Memories of Fear: How the Brain Stores and Retrieves Physiologic States’. In: Goodwin J. and Attias R., ‘Splintered Reflections: Images of the Body in Trauma’. Basic Books.

Rothschild, Babette (2000) ‘The Body Remembers – The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment’. WW Norton & Co.

Schore, Allan (1994) ‘Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development’. Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc. NJ.

Teicher, Martin H (2002) ‘The Neurobiology of Child Abuse’. Scientific American, March 2002, pp. 68-75.

Van der Kolk, Bessel (1994) ‘The Body Keeps the Score: Memory and the Evolving Psychobiology of Posttraumatic Stress’. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, Vol 1, pp. 253-265.

Sometimes We Fall Flat On Our Face

It happens to me!  I wish it didn't and I wish I was far enough beyond it sometimes.  However, sometimes I just fall flat on my face.

Yes, I know - that it is what we do with that after we fall flat on our face that matters.  Picking ourselves up and inserting any appropriate cliche' is how we focus.  Yet, when we fall flat, sometimes the bruises hurt.

I won't go into specifics here, but if you want to know more, read the blog post, Triggered By My Cats, from yesterday and it will give you a better idea.  It is one of my all time difficult triggers that actually was the moment where Conversion Disorder fully showed up in me.  It took me years to discover and understand that!

I'm doing better than I was yesterday.  Yesterday, it was overwhelming to me.  Yesterday it engulfed every bit of my being, my brain, my body, and my emotions.  The trigger left me standing there numbed and disconnected, angry and enraged. It blinded me with confusion.  It pushed me to hide far away from anyone and everyone.

How quickly it happened...

I felt flat on my face.  Just as I was making it and gaining ground, it hit me.  It frightens me to think of how fast it struck and how quickly it happened.  It frightens me to know that it lurks around the corner, just waiting to pounce.

I feel helpless when it appears. I feel as if I don't even have a split second to try and contain it or think about it differently.  It is a major trigger.  It slapped me hard.  And yet - I've done so much work on this, but it sneaked up from behind and attacked me.

We pick up the pieces...

Yes, I've healed.  I've come a long ways.  I post this, not out of a desire for sympathy, but to help others see that sometimes we just fall flat on our face.  And that's OK!  Yes, its okay to fall flat on our face.  We just have to pick up the pieces tomorrow and do what we need to do to keep going.

I'm not going to sugarcoat it and put some happy thought or meme in place to say if I think this way or that way, its magically better.  I recognize and realize, that this too is part of my healing, as difficult as it gets at time.  Healing is an ongoing process.

I'm writing this just to let others know that you're not alone when you fall flat on your face.  Yes, it may feel that way.  Yes, you may temporarily forget everything you've learned and lose site of how much you have healed.  That's all normal that this moment.

However, just look for the rope at the top of the cliff and try to reach out for it, grabbing it one hand hold at a time.  Use it to pull yourself back up.  Most likely there will be someone up there steadying the rope and offering help as you struggle to climb back up the cliff.

Don't lose hope if you've fallen flat on your face because sometimes it is what happens.  It's the point where we hopefully get to heal another piece of our life.  Just don't lose hope!

#Pets

 

 

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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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Suppress Feelings And Emotions

We all learn to do it! In fact, we’re taught from a baby on, how to suppress our feelings. Whether it is in the parent that tells the baby, oh please don’t cry or worse yet, the child abuser who beats the baby for crying! Of course, there are also the people who give the infants opium or alcohol to get the baby to be quiet.

As we get older, little boys are told phrases such as “big boys don’t cry” and “grow up”. Mommy generally gives the little child attention and affection if they get an ouchy while the father presents the more manly approach to the little boy and acts as if it is no big deal.

Take it one step further and in some cases when a child is spanked, but then told not to cry or they will be given something to cry about. There are numerous ways in which we teach our young how to suppress feelings and emotions.

As get older, we learn that we just have to suck it up in life and move on. There’s no time to feel any emotions. Sometimes in our jobs, we watch as our coworker friends are fired or laid off, only to be told to go on with business as usual. Some vocations require us to turn off the emotions because objectivity is needed.

Throughout our life, we usually run into medical conditions, pains that make it difficult for us to know how to feel. Since we are accustomed to not feeling emotions of pain, we look substances to numb ourselves

Biologically, we are wired to have feelings and emotions as part of our daily life. We are taught to ignore or suppress them but with time, they do catch up with us. You may feel like you can escape them and out run them, but at some point, they will quit knocking on the door and bust it down!

Further Reading:
1) Why Is My Pulse High? (Blog Post 4/1/10)
2) The Emotion Of Triggers (Blog Post 4/25/09


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Blog Post & Images (c) 5/13/11 Don Shetterly - use by permission only
http://www.donshetterly.com

If any part of this post is used or shared, a link back to this site is required.
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I keep going

I don't know how I do it.  Some days it is tougher than others.  At some points in life, I've said - what the heck - why do this any longer?  Yet, I keep going.

Its probably a good thing that I keep going, but you know sometimes its so hard to keep going.  We all know that to some extent I think.  We all have had to deal with plenty in our life and maybe some of us had an extra helping of it.

Its when the physical pain and discomfort get so great that it is all I can do to hold on.  There are things that I won't share with others because they are far too personal, but when they cause physical issues, it gets much tougher in life.

I keep going somehow.  I don't know how.  It feels like it is often a lonely path and yet, somehow and in some small way, I manage to keep going.  I often wonder if I'm using up my free passes of to keep going, but so far, I still have some left.

Even when I feel ignored...

Even when people I know seem to shun me or avoid me or ignore me, I keep going.  Don't ask me how I do because I feel like an outcast when that happens.  I feel like it is more than I can bear.  I feel like in those moments, that I'm all alone.  Most likely I'm not alone, but it feels that way.

I keep going, even through the heartache and rejection and fear and triggers from the past.  No, none of them are easy.  Sometimes they lessen in intensity and at other times they come at me full force as if there is no tomorrow.

Even when everything sucks...

I keep going even when everything seems to crumble away.  I keep going even when everything seems to suck.  If I knew the magic formula, I'd share it and become a millionaire, but I have no idea what keeps me going.

If your life seems pointless and it feels like you're all alone, just keep going.  No, I'm not going to promise pretty rainbows tomorrow, but what's the alternative - to stop and miss out on something greater than we can see right now?

If your life feels like it is too much too bear, take a moment and just sit down on the rock.  Its okay.  You can get up when you feel like it regardless of what the world around you dictates that you should do.

All I know is, I don't have all the answers for my own life and most likely not for everyone else.  I just keep going and I do that by keeping going.  Yes, it wears me down at times, but I know no other thing than to keep going.  In some ways, its the only punishment that I have to give to those that made my life a living hell.

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2016 by Don Shetterly

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Dismissed By A Child Molester

Written By Don Shetterly

Years ago when I was going through some of the roughest healings, I decided to call my dad late one night.  I planned on confronting him about what he did to me.  It took a great deal of courage for me to get to this point.  Having friends close by helped so much.

It isn't easy for me to talk about this to this very day.  I get scared that if I speak out, bad things are going to happen to me.  After all, I was threatened that if I didn't shut up, that they would come after me.  My older brother left that clear message for me at my job.  So this is not a made up fear.  It is real.

At the time anger fueled my reasoning for calling my father.  I was dealing with very rough moments in life as a result of what I had experienced.  It took the anger to confront him because I was so frightened then.

Actually, I'm frightened now with speaking out publicly more, but I know I must.  There are far too many that endure molestation and child abuse.  I am honestly at a point where if they want to come after me, I'll expose every last bit of what they did to me in a public way that will make them regret their threats and actions against me.  I'm tired of hiding it because of what they might do to me.

When I called him up that night, my mom picked up the phone.  Yes, it was late in the middle of the night, but I wanted him on the phone, not her.  So I hung up and called back.  I have my issues with what my mom knew or didn't know, but I wanted him to be the one hearing what I said.

When I got him on the phone, I laid into him.  I didn't let up, and I didn't let him talk.  There was no way I was holding back, and so my anger and pain came out in full force.  I only got about a minute, or so I think of saying what I wanted to say before he hung up on me.

Just before he hung up on me, he said, "GROW UP Donald!"  That was the name he used when he was angry at me.  My final words to him were "GO TO HELL!"

I have never spoken to him since, and I have no intention of doing so.  He made his bed, and now he gets to lie in it.  I have no desire to communicate with him because there is no apology from him.  He doesn't think he did anything wrong.  Molestation was normal to him it seems.  I know it is up to me to continue moving forward and letting go of what he did.

In the news are stories of someone being molested by a prominent figure and they are getting the same treatment.  They are being dismissed by a child molester (or should I say, alleged child molester).  It triggers me back to the memories of what I went through.

Will my Dad and brother ever admit to molesting me?  I doubt it.  They've already convinced family friends that I was brainwashed by Psychiatrists and that I'm crazy.  I was the one that was wrong in their eyes for daring to speak up and expose the secrets.

You see, child molesters stop at nothing to convince the world that they are great humans.  They have no problem with blaming the victim.  They don't care that the child was helpless when they abused and molested them.  It is all about convincing the world that they didn't do anything wrong.

In my case, I'm sure if anyone confronted them, they would also say that "God has forgiven them."  Unfortunately, to me, that does not mean that you act as if nothing ever happened.  That is being a coward in my view.  Either you own up to what you did or don't tell me you've been forgiven.

Just a note here that in my house, forgiveness talk is not as it seems.  It means, forget it and act as if we didn't do anything to you. I heard this line about forgiveness so many times.  It usually was right after they did what they did to me.  I even heard it after my dad would beat my mom.  Thus, forgiveness talk to me is cheap and shallow.

Being dismissed by a child molester is what these people do.  They cannot allow themselves to be exposed to their secrets and lies and abuse.  They blame the victim.

To people that defend what child molesters do, you are not human in my eyes.  You are part of the problem that allows child abuse to continue.  Either you stand up for the rights of all humans, or you need to go find the door to your cave and crawl back inside.

Dismissed by a child molester just seems normal to me.  I almost expect nothing but the blame they put on their victims.  When I see news reports about others, and I hear the perverts attack the victims, my anger boils.  Child molesters don't have any business being on this earth.  When you harm the life of an innocent child, you give up all rights to be human in my view.

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Blog Post And Images (c) 11/30/17 by Don Shetterly

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When Is Crying Okay?

In research studies, it has been shown that women cry more than men in western societies but in societies where women have fewer rights, they cry less than women of western societies.  Cultural influences often play a major role in determining who cries and the frequency of which they cry.  Many people are often ashamed of crying and won’t admit to it, especially men.

In a 2004 research study in the UK by the Social Issues Research Centre sponsored by Kleenex, suggests that attitudes toward men crying may be changing.  90 percent of women and 77 percent of men felt that over the past 20 years, it is more acceptable for men to cry and that it is unhealthy not to cry.

It was considered appropriate for men to cry because of a birth, death or if you were physically hurt (41%).  Some felt it was okay to cry during moving moments (26%).  It is important to note that these are the moments that are the most common triggers for men to cry.

However, while women would full on bawl, men were more prone to choke back the tears.  Just as men were taught when they were boys, that big boys don’t cry.  Strong boys don’t cry!  It is amazing to me, just how conditioned we are beginning very early in our life.  It is important to note that both men and women said they were likely to respond more positively to men who cried softly than they were to a man crying uncontrollably.


Further Reading:
1)  Men And Women Cry Differently
2)  Newborns And Crying Babies
3)  Biology Of Crying
4)  Stress Relief and Crying



Sources Of Information:

1)  Read It And Weep, Crybabies - Wall Street Journal, May 4, 2011
2)  The Science Behind Your Tears - HealthyLifeCt.com


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