How I Conquered Pain and Despair

Throughout my healing journey, I've faced moments where I thought it was over.  I've had to deal with not having enough strength, courage, hope or desire to make it another day or even another second. There have been more times than I can remember where I didn't have the strength to go on, let alone grab the hand that was reaching out to me.

When I went through Conversion Disorder, there was one day they were bringing me back to life.  My body and mind had decided to give up and it took modern medicine to bring me back into this world.  I didn't want to live.  I was tired of the fight.  I was tired of trying to stay strong enough for another moment so I could even begin to find my way out of hell.

For a long time, I didn't know the way out.  I didn't think there was a way out.  For a long time, every breath I took seemed hopeless.  It felt as if nothing was ever going to change.

For a long time, I couldn't even begin to see the hands that were reaching out or the hugs of support that were coming my way.  I complained and bemoaned that I was all alone and in fact I was.  I had made myself all alone in a world that was more frightening to me than I understood.

For a time, I lashed out at everyone and anyone and all things that were good for me.  I needed the safety and security of what I deemed normal in life.  Anything that didn't fit into the mode of what I thought life and existence was, ended up being thrown in my daily trash bin of life's useless stuff.

No one thought I would walk again.  I didn't think my memory would ever come back.  No one thought I would function normally another day in my life and return to the job that was fortunately still waiting for me.  I didn't think my anxiety would ever subside enough to walk in the store or drive down the road or walk outside my door.

No one thought I would make it...

No one thought I would make it.  I didn't think the depression and pain would ever lift enough for me to find one good moment in life.  Everyone seemed to have all the feel good things that they knew could help.  I didn't think that there was any hope of happiness in my days for happiness was not a friend to me.

I fought and I struggled.  I shunned many people who I could not deal with and I sunk deeper into my little cave.  I hid from the world.  I hid from my family.  I cried day and night while hugging my cat.  My cat was the only thing I loved.  I didn't even love myself.

I wasn't supposed to come out of Conversion Disorder and function normally in life.  However, I wasn't about to let them win.  I wasn't about to remain an incapacitated shell of a human being.

I could have just gave up...

I could have stayed where I was.  There were no answers, but plenty of questions.  I could have just gave up, but somehow - there was something that kept me going.  My anger propelled me further and my stubbornness became my best friend.  My willingness to never accept the condition I was in was the motivation to taking a step and coming back from dead.

There is time to be angry and hateful and distant.  There is a time for us to almost give up and feel like there is no hope.  There is a time for us to wallow in our misery and despair, thinking that there is no way forward.  There is a time for all of this.  No one can tell you when that time has passed.

However, I know through first hand experience, there is no better way to conquer, then by picking up the pieces and trying to figure out how to put them together.  There is not better way to conquer then to get up from the night of despair and look at another sunrise.

I know deep down that the desire within me to walk again, breathe again and live again was all I had.  It is what helped me to search for answers and discard those stubborn beliefs that had failed me in life.

The desire to heal...

The desire to heal and to thrive and become all that I am today was not by believing there were no options, but by finding out that I had not discovered the options yet.  It was not about what I knew in the moment, but that I allowed myself to search and discover and find out what I did not know.

Days are not always sunny and bright.  There are dark moments of healing and discovery and wallowing and self pity.  The trick isn't how to avoid them, but learning how to walk through them harnessing the skills and knowledge that will help you walk down the healing road.

These are the things that will help you prevail in your days ahead so that the despair will no longer rule your life as it once did.  These are the things that you pick up which help you learn and discover and find out much more of life than you ever knew exists.

The most important thing I found through my entire healing journey is that I could not hold on to that which I thought I knew because if I did, I would not discover that which I did not know.  It was in the discovery that I began to find out what my life was and who I truly was.

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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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Learning To Surrender In Order To Heal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2016 by Don Shetterly

• Permission required before any part of this blog post is reprinted, reworded or used in any form. 
• You are welcomed to share the LINK to this blog post.  

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The Abuse Seemed Normal To Me

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2016 by Don Shetterly

• Permission required before any part of this blog post is reprinted, reworded or used in any form. 
• You are welcomed to share the LINK to this blog post.  

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