Seeing The Good In Mental Health Issues

By Don Shetterly

One of the things that I think depression and trauma do is alter the reality of how we perceive life.  Seeing the bad and the horror becomes commonplace.  Only seeing the struggle is what many do every day.

There are many that will sing the praises of happy thoughts or religious beliefs hoping to delay the what their mind tries to shove in front of them.  It is almost as if they have become so numb and disconnected, but have done so without authenticity.

No, I'm not saying that happy thoughts or religious beliefs don't have their place.  They are one thing that we turn to because the going has gotten so rough.  Sometimes they are the lifeline from one moment to the next.

However, if we're not careful, these thoughts and beliefs will do as much damage as the horror negative attacks we place on our lives.  They don't bring us into the body or the mind.  Instead, they keep us as far away as they can.

When the good stuff actually happens, we're so accustomed to feeling the negative and the horror, that we barely see the positive.  Sometimes we've got our mind set on happy thoughts and religious beliefs, that we still miss the positive impacting us.

It is too easy to slip right by the good happening in our life, and that's sad because after a life of depression, anxiety, horror and trauma, we need to see some silver linings.  If our mind and the body is stuck in neutral or in reverse, how will we ever travel the miles through the good that lies before us?

I believe from my own experiences and what I have seen in others, that we need to learn how to experience the full breadth of our emotional existence.  Whether it is negative thoughts, criticism, anger or happiness, love, and peace, we need the full range.

Without the full range, we're not fully human.  We are disconnecting and numbing parts of our life.  Without sadness, can you understand happy?  If you aren't in touch with anger, can you truly experience peace?  If you don't know what criticism is, does love fully make sense?

I'm not saying we stay in any one of these emotions, but we recognize them for what they are.  We look at them as having a place to help bring us further into awareness and consciousness, not remain disconnected and numb.

Finding our way through depression and mental health issues is challenging at best.  However, let us make sure we don't keep ourselves from seeing the good, not just the bad.  It is there if we allow ourselves to see it.  Closing our eyes will not make it appear.

Try to not forget the good with the bad.  You may need to consciously remind yourself to look for the good, but it is there.  Sometimes, it does take some effort to not let the negative completely take over our lives.

How High And Mighty We Are

Written By Don Shetterly

It's all those other people out there.  It's the - insert label here - people.  You know, those that don't think like we do!  To this, I can only say, how high and mighty we are!  Yes, I say this with disbelief.

Too many of us think that we have all the answers.  I'm using the collective "we" because I don't want to let anyone off the hook on this blog post.  If it makes anyone feel uncomfortable, I'm perfectly fine with that at this moment.

You see, we label others, and we look down our noses at them.  We see them with contempt.  They are not like us.  They don't believe what we do, think like we do, talk like we talk or live in the way we think they should.  They are mistaken and misled people.  They are wrong.  These people know not what they do!

We look at people with disdain and as if they are the reason for our problems.  We strike out at them trying to correct them into human beings that we can associate with in our day.

After all, we feel we must tell them where they went wrong and just how misguided they are.  We must do this if we want the world to continue on because only we know best.

Then we take to social media to point out just how stupid others are.  They know not what they do, and we are here to tweet and like and post just how wrong they are.  Of course, we are the right ones.  We know best.  We must retweet and share for it is the only way others will know how lost they are.

While this is the way things seem to operate these days in our society, we're really all in this boat together.  While we may think we have the answers and are right in what we say, we're really throwing mud in the face of others.  Our eyes are so darkened that we cannot even begin to see this.

We've lost the way of listening to one other and engaging with each other.  No more do we honor and respect one another, and no it isn't because everyone else does not do this.  We've lost it within ourselves.   Respect for ourselves has vanished.

No longer are we connected to our heart and our mind body.  Instead, we obliterate ourselves with our busy, nonstop, stressful lives.  We pour junk into our guts hoping acting as if it doesn't matter while playing a dangerous game of risk with health treatments that fail to treat the root causes.

We have added so much horror on our days by not dealing with life's issues, but by numbing ourselves every second of the day.  Feelings and emotions are running for cover.  Heart and mind connected thoughts are silent.

If we continue this way, we'll be in a much worse mess than we are now.  We cannot sustain this because it is taking its toll on the human body and the mind.  It is not up to someone else to solve this.  This has to begin with each one of us.  Only we can turn it around in our lives.

While we may think we are high and mighty, in many ways, we are not.  The more we believe that everyone else is the problem, the more we have lost our way.

Stop for a moment.  Look at what you are doing to yourself and the world-at-large.  Leave no stone of discovery unturned.  Look deep and hard within your own mind and body and heart to see what needs the sunshine of truth.

Give up trying to pull the speck out of your brother's eye when you have a log in your own eye.  It is the only way to help anyone is by helping ourselves first.  Otherwise, we are just high and mighty as we continue to destroy the world we live in.

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Blog Post And Images (c) 1/01/18 by Don Shetterly

• Permission required in writing before any part of this blog is reprinted, reworded, transmitted or used in any format. 
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Fearing The Fear

Written By Don Shetterly

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


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

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

The "oh no" mode...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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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The Felt Sense

 By Don Shetterly

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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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Chronic Stress Affect on Body and Mental Health

This is a video interview that Jim Fazio did with Dr. Paul Canali of Evolutionary Healing on March 29, 2013.

We all know that stress is not good for our body, but as Dr. Canali discusses, chronic stress does affect the body and our mental health.  New healing paradigms attune our attention inward and deal with not only the mental aspects but physical sensations.

Emotions are not something that are purely in your head.  They are physical body states.  Anything that you can feel, you can re-regulate or change.

Most people are afraid of what they feel in their own body whether it is disease, illness, anxiety, depression or other things.  The immediate response is "please doctor, take it away."  Most are not necessarily interested in how it got there or how they can take it away.  They just want it gone!

Now we are realizing though that to make long term changes, one must be brought into that point to interact with what is going on within the mind and body.  Because we are so afraid of what we are feeling, we tend to numb and disconnect, rather than go in an interact with the physical body.

Listen to the entire video interview to learn more.

Being Happy Isn't All It Is Cracked Up To Be

There it is again.  I see it.  We all see it.  Now what in the heck is this person talking about.

Well, girls and boys - its about being happy.  Actually that isn't it is cracked up to be.  We might think it is, but we need to think again.

This happy business needs to have a reality check.  Hey, its okay if being happy is a good thing.  There is nothing wrong with that.  It is just that by only being happy, we're missing out on what true happiness really is.

Let's start off by telling a story to illustrate my point.

You see, in a village far, far, away, there was this little boy that was fighting monsters and evil people every day.  They would come at him constantly and sometimes more than one monster would attack at a time.  He tried to smile through it.  He tried to hide the pain.  He tried to show everyone how strong he was.  They didn't get to see any of what happened to him, they only saw him happy and smiling and acting like the world was okay.

You see, this little boy seemed so happy to everyone.  He smiled all the time.  No one saw anything but a happy little boy.  The only thing is that it was all an illusion.  It was meant to keep people away.  It was meant to hide the enormous pain he felt.  It was meant to evade others so they didn't know the true shame that he experienced.

The worst part is though, being happy all the time to everyone almost killed the little boy.  If you haven't figured it out by now, I'm the little boy.  In 1991, going through a Conversion Disorder, I almost lost my life for good.  Yet, no one saw the pain I buried deep inside so far removed from the happy smiles I gave to everyone.

It is easy to promote the "be happy all the time" agenda through memes and nice little quotes on social media, but in all reality, it isn't all its cracked up to be.  In fact, you can do more harm than good by convincing people that are hurting to just go crawl in their hole and hide.  Sure, that may not be your intent, but it does become the reality.

We really need to learn to be real.  If you're happy - that's great!  If you think you can be happy 100% of the time, then you're missing what happiness is because without sadness - happiness becomes an illusion. There is no happy without sadness.

No, I'm not saying - walk around depressed and in sorrow or pain.  No, I'm not saying you can't try to be happy even when you don't feel that way.  If that's what you're reading, then you're missing the point or I'm failing to explain my thought.

Being happy recognizes the pain and sadness.  It knows the moments when happiness is lost in the woods.  It gives balance between all emotions because without feeling all emotions, you're only one sided.  We need the good with the bad.  We need to feel and experience the range of all there is, not just one emotion.  Otherwise, it is not healthy lifestyle!

There are many people suffering in pain and when they are forced to believe that their pain and hurts and experiences don't matter, it only drives that crap deeper inside.  When you drive it deep down inside,  you're just setting yourself up for a catastrophic healthy failure.

Don't force someone in pain to live in darkness and despair.  Show them your smile, but show them your authentic side where you have the bruises and scars.  All happy all the time is a recipe for disaster and harm.  Be real - be human - be conscious and aware.  Don't disconnect and live in a fantasy world because reality is just too much to deal with.  It will lead you down a very dark path.

We need authentic people in this world.  We need those that can share from a compassionate heart, not one that acknowledges a one-sided view of emotions.  People are hurting and in fact you might be hurting too if all you think is that being happy is the only thing to be.

Take it from someone who almost breathed their last breath trying to be happy all the time!  It doesn't work!

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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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Neuroscience In The News On April 25

These are articles that I found of interest relating to news about Neuroscience.  In this issue, I have highlighted articles about how the brain processes emotions, the natural forgetting of long-term memories and the neuroscience of how to fix creative block.

Please check out the article links below and feel free to comment with other information related to these subjects.  I enjoy learning as much as I can about the brain and passing this information on to everyone else that shares these passions.

This is for the week beginning April 25, 2016.

Please come back each week and hopefully I will have some more highlights.  Feel free to share with me ones that you have found and I may highlight those as well.

Feel free to check out the highlighted articles from April 18, 2016

How The Brain Processes Emotions

Some mental illnesses may stem, in part, from the brain’s inability to correctly assign emotional associations to events. For example, people who are depressed often do not feel happy even when experiencing something that they normally enjoy.

A new study from MIT reveals how two populations of neurons in the brain contribute to this process. The researchers found that these neurons, located in an almond-sized region known as the amygdala, form parallel channels that carry information about pleasant or unpleasant events.

Learning more about how this information is routed and misrouted could shed light on mental illnesses including depression, addiction, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder, said Kay Tye, the Whitehead Career Development Assistant Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and a member of MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory.

Article Link:

• How the Brain Processes Emotions
• Source:  www.Biosciencetechnology.com
• Anna Beyeler, Praneeth Namburi, MIT

Natural Forgetting Of Long-Term Memories

"Our study looks at the biological processes that happen in the brain when we forget something."

Typically, the process of forgetting is seen as a failure of one or more basic memory functions such as acquisition, encoding, maintenance and retrieval.

However, in this latest study of rats, Dr. Hardt and colleagues suggest that forgetting may involve a well-organized process of active deletion rather than simply failure to remember.

Article Link:

• Brain study yields clues about 'natural forgetting of long-term memories
• Source:  www.MedicalNewsToday.com 
• Dr. Oliver Hardt, University Of Edinburgh

Neuroscience Fix For Creative Block

“When [people] are improvising, there tends to be a pattern of activation where they have decreased activation in a part of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex,” Berlin says. “And that part of the brain has to do with your sense of self, your sort of inner critic, making sure that your behavior conforms to social norms.”

Translation? When you’re at your most creative, “basically you lose your sense of self,” Berlin says. “You kind of release your inhibition. The second you become too self-aware that comes back online and you lose that flow state.”

Article Link:

• Creative Block?  Here's the neuroscience of how to fix that
• Source:  Pri.Org  (Public Radio International)

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.

The Foot Rash Of Stress and Emotions

Its easy to ignore many things in life.  Its easy to just sweep stress under the rug.  We all do it, even if we think we're advanced in this area.  As a result, we end up somatizing the stress into physical symptoms.  I know, its easy to speak the new age mumble jumble at times and think we truly understand somaticizing, but wait until the experience becomes real.  Then it tests you to the limits!

After months of many different stressful events, this once again hit home to me in many ways.   I ended up with the return of the rash.  This time the rash was on my feet.  It started out as a minor irritation and itching on the back of my opposite leg.  Then little by little it crept along to my foot and went to my opposite foot.

For the most part, I had it under control or so I thought.  I was using the oatmeal foot baths to help soothe it and I was trying to not wear shoes or socks if I could help it.  Unfortunately too many stressful back to back moments hit me in the period of a few weeks.  I was no longer in control of my life.  The stress of my life was in control.

Have One Without The Other

I often hear people talk about opposite emotions and opposite reactions in life.  Often, people exclaim how wrong anger is or how they want to take away pain, or how they only have love.  While these are noble and honorable parts of life, I really don't agree that you can have one without the other.

After all, if there is not pain in life, could one experience pleasure?  If there was no anger in life, would we know what peace was?  If there was no hate, would we be able to identify love?  Could we be happy without knowing sadness or depression?

Maybe I'm being too simplistic, but in many ways if you you only have one side of the emotion, would you really recognize it?  I'm not so sure we would.  I believe it takes these other sides of life to bring about our awareness into what is possible.

Bad Emotions

This is a topic that touches me deeply from personal experience.  I read postings constantly from people who have good intentions, but in all reality the things they are writing hurt others more deeply then they realize.  This isn't anyone person, but a collective that I have seen from many different people.  It is almost like in order to be a new age healer or a new age thought person (or even a religious person), you must subscribe to this way of thought.

Too many claim that there are good emotions and that the bad emotions are just not healthy and should be eliminated from your life.  It is harming to those that struggle through some very rough moments in life.  It is damaging to the recovery and healing of those walking through some very treacherous ground and intense fire.

To claim any emotion is bad, is failing other humans.  In many ways, I wonder if the people making these claims are still giving residence to these same emotions, but attempting to hide it from the world.  I cannot speak for them.

Go Forth Into Fear

I was reminded of this topic not long ago.  While I had been thinking that something I was about ready to embark upon made my knees knock, I was forgetting that there was another side to this.  One friend pointed out to me that even when I was afraid, I was willing to go into my fears.

Go forth into fear is something that I often forget I do.  Yet, as my friend pointed out, even if I'm afraid, I still go into the fear.  Its easy to chastise myself for not doing enough or not being enough, but in all reality, I am often more than I think I am.

In all reality, I'm pretty hard on myself at times.  Even though I've done a lot of work on this and come a long ways, I still don't always give myself a break.  I demand perfection of everything I do.  Its exhausting at times and robs me of so much in life.

As I think about going forth into fear, I'm taken back to so many events of my life.  Feeling like there was no ounce of energy left or having complete confusion about what the next step was.  Sometimes going into the fears meant dealing with anger, sadness, pain and many other emotions.

What Is Chronic Pain - Interview With Dr Paul Canali

This video interview is a very good one.  It is done by Jim Fazio and Dr. Paul Canali.  Unified Therapy by Dr. Paul Canali has changed my life.  He has helped me to understand that chronic pain can be treated and healed.

Chronic pain is in the brain, even though it feels like it is in each individual muscle of the body.  I know that may sound weird, but it is true.  I have felt it and experienced the difference in my own body going through the healing work of Unified Therapy.

Did you know that 15% to 20% of all adults in the world suffer from chronic pain.  It is what keeps doctors up at night and drug companies in business.  Yet, we aren't getting better as a world society and that is because don't fully understand chronic pain or the nature of pain.

Many research studies have been done in neuroscience and they are finding that the volume knob for chronic pain is not in the body, but in the brain.  They are also finding on brain scans that if the person experiences pain in the arm, it does not show up in the region of the brain for the arm.  Instead it shows up in the emotion centers of the brain.

Barely Made It To The Dentist

I had the tooth extracted the other day and boy was that not fun.  They had a heck of a time getting it to come out.  I went to another dentist (female) than the previous one a couple of years ago.  At least she is more compassionate.  At one point during the procedure, I was struggling to stay in the moment.  I knew I was getting close to passing out and was trying to focus on my breathing.

Finally I took my hands and made a time out signal and she stopped.  All the time, I was asking my angels to help me.  As soon as she stopped, I was hyperventilating but I was able to slow my own breathing down.  After a few minutes, she began again and within a couple of minutes the tooth came out and it was all over. 

Boy these things trigger me so much on so many levels from early days to the time in the hospital with the paralysis. 

Then I came home and the pain has been tough to deal with.  It wiped me out more than I expected.  I had people calling me and I was short and unhelpful because I wasn't feeling good and it hurt to talk.

The day before yesterday, I went into the deep dark place where I don't want to go and I knew I was there.  The triggers of emotions were overwhelming in this.  I started to contact a friend, but quit (all part of that spiral process for me).  So I once again asked my angels to help pull me back up.

I Am A Highly Sensitive Man

This blog post was inspired by Rick Beldon in an article he wrote for the Good Men Project.  Like this blog post, his article was titled "I Am A Highly Sensitive Man".  While I have written somewhat on this subject, I think it is one that never gets enough attention.  I liked what Rick wrote on his article, and I thought I could pay no greater respect than writing about it myself.  Thank you Rick for opening up your life and sharing this because I can see from the comments, it has helped many people.

For most of my life, I knew I was a very sensitive person.  From the time I was a young boy until now, I always knew that I got emotional at the drop of a pin.  Unfortunately I grew up in a home and a society where this was not welcomed.  As a boy, I was whipped for crying and told to grow up and be a man.  Yet, my little eyes witnessed some horrific acts that were hard for me to not feel sensitive about in my life.

From the little animals I saw killed, crushed, or mutilated to how I saw other people treated, I felt their pain.  At the time I don't' think I realized just how much pain I picked up, but I do know that I would go to bed at night and cry into my pillow.  You dare didn't let anyone see you cry because that was just inviting trouble and probing questions that did not end well.

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

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

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

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.

Thoughts Plus Passion Equals Reality

How many of us want to affect our life and change where we are at, but we often fall short and give up in frustration?  I'm sure many reading this could identify with this question in one way or another.  A book I am reading by Joe Dispenza, Breaking The Habit Of Yourself, has some excellent things to think about when it comes to focusing our thoughts to attract the reality we want.
  
As Joe Dispenza stated in his book, "When you hold clear, focused thoughts about your purpose, accompanied by your passionate emotional engagement, you broadcast a stronger electromagnetic signal that pulls you toward a potential reality that matches what you want.  (Joe Dispenza, Breaing The Habit Of Yourself)

Think about this book quote for a moment.  If you combine your focused thoughts with your purpose and then add the catalyst of passion and emotion, watch out!  For what you want to attract into your life and how you want to create your day will show up more powerfully than you could have ever imagined.

Afraid Of Emotions

Afraid Of Emotions

It is sad to see "emotions" shown in a negative way in the news these days. No, I am not taking a political position either way. I don't consider emotions to be something that should become an issue of any segment of our population against another segment of our population. Being afraid of emotions in whatever form it takes, is a recipe for disaster in respect of one another as humans.

All my life, I was taught to hold my emotions in and not let them show. Being a man, you are taught by example how much society frowns upon emotions that are shown in private or public. I saw this example played over and over again in my family and while growing up through the people in my church and community.

Being afraid of emotions is like playing around with a nuclear bomb just waiting to detonate. Emotions are part of our lives and they are part of what makes us human. Emotions are good for our life! To withhold or deny our emotions is to deny the totality of our human existence. Stuffing these emotions deep down inside only adds to physical ailments that will build up over time.

Dealing With Painful Moments In life

At Linnville Falls, NC
Painful Moments In Life

The other day, I experienced some moments that trigger me back to a time of pain in my life.  I'd rather not go into specific details in public but it has a lot to do with the trauma I suffered through in my past.  None of it is ever easy and while I have made progress, there are times when these things hit me like a freight train at top speed!

The holiday season are always a tough time for me, so any reminders and connections to the past make things much more difficult.  Yet, that's what happened the other day.  I'm still trying to find center in all of this and to be honest, my mind keeps questioning, why - at this time of the year, is this coming up?

Even though I want to act as if these things don't hurt me or control me or impact me, I would be lying if I stuck to that story.  I like to believe that I am free of these chains that bind me, but yet I know deep down inside just how much I feel them.  They are like daggers that are launched in an all out assault on me, and I'm left to defend my thoughts, my body and my emotions.