si dawson

Trauma is a funny thing.

Not, as my Grandma used to say, “funny ha ha”, rather, “funny peculiar.”

Now obviously there’s a huge range in terms of what might be deemed traumatic.

At one end of the scale, it could be as slight as someone not listening to you. At the other are all the usual horrors: war, crime, catastrophe.

My interest in trauma is very simple: I want to heal it. All of it.

Trauma makes us over-react. It upsets us. It makes us miserable. It hurts those around us. It limits us.

The important thing is: we have the freedom to choose to get rid of it. Always.

You can’t change the past (duh), but you can change how you feel about it and how it affects you.

 

Kinds of trauma

What kinds of trauma are there?

Very briefly, and speaking very generally, there are two kinds:

1. One off events

Something that happens only once at a specific time and place. Eg, a car accident.

2. Ongoing repetitive events

The important thing to note here is: this could be by the same person (eg, a parent’s abuse), or it could be different situations with a common theme and effect, eg, repeatedly finding yourself in the same kinds of destructive relationships or shitty jobs.

 

Emotional effects of trauma

Regardless of which kind of trauma we’ve experienced, there are typically two flavours of outcome:

1. We get a single strong emotion resulting from that trauma (eg, we feel extremely hurt when someone ignores us)

2. We get many different emotional outcomes (eg fear, anger, sadness etc)

 

Now, to be sure, this is a very simplified model. However, simplicity here is useful. Otherwise these situations can quickly become overwhelming and make us feel like they’re impossible to resolve.

So far, this is all pretty straight forward. The real question is: how does this help us?

Here’s where we get to the practical bit.

 

How to break it all down

In some rare cases, you can aim fast and loose at the issue, and pull it all out in one hairy chunk.

Generally though, it’s easier to take it in smaller steps, otherwise the experience can end up a little like this:

(from the Vidiot From UHF, a thoroughly ridiculous and awesome film)

Breaking the trauma down makes the healing less intense, while also giving you the chance to evaluate and check progress at each stage.

This is why it’s suggested that rather than healing on “My Dad beat me as a child”, you heal on “That time when I was 14 when Dad hit me in the face in the kitchen.”

If you take each specific instance like that, it’s very easy to assess how you feel about that single incident, even if you still feel pretty crappy about (in this case) your Dad in general.

A good way to measure progress is to use what’s called SUDS – a Subjective Units of Distress Scale.

This is a fancy way of saying: Rank it from 0-10 on how bad it feels. 0=totally peaceful and loving; 10=worst pain imaginable (based on your opinion, no-one else’s).

Depending on complexity, it can also be useful to heal on a single emotion at a time.

In the above example, getting hit in the face might result in:

• fear
• sadness
• helplessness/powerlessness
• anger
• betrayal

and so on.

If you focus on healing each specific emotion, you’ll see very clearly the progress you’re making.

The other useful thing? Once we’ve cleared a handful of the related situations or emotions, the rest of them will often simply fall away with zero effort.

It’s as if we’ve cut the heart out of a tangled up knot and the rest has dropped to the floor. Which is, of course, exactly what we’ve done.

 

Always aim for the root

Often we’ll recreate traumas in our lives.

This sounds a little insane, but hear me out.

Our brains are magnificent pattern recognising machines. So, once we experience pain in a given situation, part of our brain will be on high alert to try and prevent us experiencing that pain again.

Now, in terms of getting bitten by a tiger, this facility is brilliant.

However these days our stimuli (and outcome) are quite different. It’s not a clear-cut tiger/no-tiger situation. It’s often a subtle human interaction.

Thus, it’s much easier to mis-interpret situations in ways that accidentally recreate that traumatic pain in us.

If there are two ways to interpret a (possibly quite innocent) situation, our brains will latch on to and identify it as the traumatic one, thus experiencing the very thing we’re trying to avoid.

Put another way: We like to be right – even when that hurts us.

Or, yet another way: What we resist persists.

The trouble is, if we heal on this most-recent-occurrence, we’re not really getting to the heart of the matter. So, it’ll be far less effective than going back as early as we can remember.

So. In terms of trying to heal the trauma completely, it’s important to try to get to the root cause. Ie, the first instance of the trauma. Even if it’s an unpleasant emotion caused by a single incident, we will often experience that emotional resonance in a different situation later in time.

Even with repetitive-instance traumas, starting at the first one will usually yield the most benefit.

If you’re not sure which was first, just going as early as you can remember will always be beneficial.

 

Wash, Rinse, Repeat

You don’t have to heal everything all at once. Often, in complex cases, it might take quite a while to get to the bottom of everything.

I’ve certainly had incidents I’ve had to revisit repeatedly to truly understand and clear what initially had seemed quite straight forward.

Persistence is always recommended.

You also don’t have to do it all in one day. Often it’s clarifying to do a little bit today, have a sleep, then come back in a few days time and hit it all again.

 

How we get stuck

Often when trauma has been with us for a while, we can get into a rut.

It may feel like the pain has become part of our identity – witness people who choose social media handles with their primary illness in the name.

It may also feel like it’s impossible to deal with, particularly if we’ve tried and failed to clear it completely in the past.

Once we get used to it, we may actually like (yes, like) having it around. Maybe it makes us proud of what we’ve achieved. We may feel like we don’t wish to let go of it, because “It’s made us who we are”, and so on.

For all these reasons, accept that it’s a marathon not a sprint. It’s ok if it doesn’t all get cleared right-here-and-now. It’s ok if it takes a little time or effort.

A good tip also: if you feel either of the above may be true, heal on those beliefs first. Once they’re gone, and you no longer feel helpless, no longer feel like it’s part of you, then healing the actual trauma will be a ton easier.

 

Summary

When healing any trauma:

a) Be Specific
Not only to the specific incident, but also the specific emotion involved. Small steps are easier.

b) Be Persistent
Don’t be afraid to revisit an issue, particularly if it still feels like it’s “not quite at zero.”

c) Go easy on yourself
It doesn’t matter how awful or trivial it might seem to anyone else. It’s your issue. You’re the only person whose opinion matters.

d) Heal any stuckness first
Don’t make it harder than it needs to be. If you feel stuck, heal on being stuck first

Oh, and most importantly? Don’t forget to love yourself. Even if you feel like a massive fraud saying “I love you”, it all helps. The more you say it, the more you try and act it, the more true it will become.

 

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If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice that while I’ve covered lots of the subtleties of healing trauma, I haven’t actually touched on HOW.

Here’s why: The how really doesn’t matter so much. What’s critical is setting a strong, loving intent to heal it. The tool you use is less important.

Now sure, some tools are more powerful than others, but really – the key is to find something that resonates strongly and is reliably effective for you.

Since most of this blog is about healing, I’ll link to some previous writing on the subject.

Here are some tools that I’ve found particularly efficacious (in no particular order):

EFT:

Any Future You Want, Simpler EFT, Map ‘n’ Tap, Map ‘n’ Tap 2

Releasing:

Release Your Crap, This Crappy Feeling

Love:

Food Is Not Love, But Love Is Food, The “I Love You” Game, I Love Myself For Hating This, Learning To Love Everything

Last month I gave up drinking.

Or rather, I was encouraged to by circumstance.

See, the last day of the month before, a key guy at work had threatened to leave, so I tried to “talk him down off the ledge” by taking him to the pub. At 11 am.

He took a lot of convincing.

Thus I left the boozer around 7, and, this being London, was just in time to go to another pub until midnight.

If you’re a maths whiz you’ll have noted I drank steadily for around 13 hours. On a Tuesday.

Now, I didn’t really get a hangover (I don’t seem to much any more), but I did wake up on Wednesday morning thinking maybe I should look after my body a little better. Since it was the first day of the month, giving up booze for the month seemed an obvious decision. An easy decision.

Or so I thought.

Now, I don’t normally drink that heavily (although I used to when I was younger). It’s also fairly common for me to go months without drinking, and not really miss it at all.

However, by day two of my little experiment, I had already started counting down the hours until the end of the month.

It was going to be rough. A lot rougher than I’d expected.

The obvious question: why?

Now, there were definitely environmental factors – London is a big drinking town (damn near all socialising is done at the pub), work stress, big city life etc.

However, there was more going on than just that.

I’m obstinate enough that I wasn’t about to break down and have a drink (although I came damn close a couple of times) – so there was only one other option: figure out why it was so damn difficult, and resolve it. Which for me pretty much means: heal whatever was coming up.

The thing was – what to heal?

So, I started paying attention.

The trick I’ve found with all these situations is: watch for the triggers. If you’re suddenly gasping for a drink, what were you feeling or thinking about immediately preceding this? What happened in the previous 20 minutes?

I noticed two things:

1. The urges would be utterly overwhelming when I felt that life was getting on top of me
2. It wasn’t just an urge to drink (“to take the edge off”). I was also finding myself wanting to sleep more (aka “screw this, I’m outta here”).

Not a huge surprise what’s going on here: escapism.

[As a side note, I read a book about someone who worked in an LA booze rehab clinic in the 70’s and 80’s. There was a 90%+ recidivism rate. Reason was, alcohol is the fastest (non-medical) way to get sugar into the bloodstream. People would leave the clinic, get depressed by life, eat sugar to cheer up, then get lower, eat more sugar, until eventually they’d go back to alcohol. Once this doctor rebalanced the neurochemistry leading to the sugar dependency? Recidivism dropped to 15%. So, drinking to attempt to alleviate mild depression is also common.]

Obviously, there are tons of ways we can try to avoid or “escape” from our feelings. Booze & sleep are only two of the more socially acceptable choices. Also on that list would be over-work, TV, sex, drugs, and so on.

So, let’s try to get practical.

Here’s what worked for me to eliminate these compulsions.

When these feelings came rushing up, I did the exact opposite from usual.

1. Instead of trying to escape, I welcomed them up. Simply said “yes” to the feelings, or “I love you,” relaxed that part of my body and let the energy go.

Feelings are just energy coming up after all; nothing to be afraid of. They’re simply a physical manifestation of the energy shovelling around our system.

2. If things got particular rough, I’d help it all along with a couple of quick rounds of EFT.

What was particularly fascinating was that at no point did I really know, with any great detail, what these feelings were about.

I mean, sure, “blah blah I hate (this aspect of) my life” (or whatever), but really, the things that came up were surprisingly generally “crappy feelings“.

The cool thing?

Within a couple of minutes of me welcoming the feelings up and letting them go, they’d drop away completely, and I’d go back to being über peaceful, with no booze or sleep compulsions at all.

Now, to be fair, the first time the mad cravings kicked in, I was too wound up to step back and observe. It took me a day or two of being obscenely cranky before I twigged. Once I did though, it all dropped away incredibly quickly.

The second time it happened I was watching for it, and the whole thing from initial overwhelm through hair-on-fire-arm-waving and back to calm acceptance took maybe half an hour.

The interesting bit?

Even though I really had no idea what specifically these compulsions were about (though each did have a slightly different tone/set of precursors), once I dumped them, they didn’t come back.

I did have a tiny handful of smaller occurrences, but other than that, the tail end of the month was completely peaceful.

Around day four of this experiment I’d set an alarm for midnight on the last day of the month. I was, as I said, quite literally counting the hours until I could sink another Guinness.

When the alarm did finally go off? I wasn’t particularly bothered at all. In fact, I didn’t have a drink until the next day – and even then it was really just to test if I’d feel compelled to have many beers, or could just stop at one.

Stopping at one was motivationally trivial.

Now, does this mean I haven’t got drunk or over slept since? Ha ha, no, of course not.

Have I felt compelled to do so? With vastly less regularity or intensity. The old days of “Argh! Shitty day at work, fuck it! Must! Drink! Now!” seem to have more-or-less completely disappeared.

Even when I have felt the I. Must. Drink. Now urge, I have one beer, everything calms again and I get on with my day. This is very different. Heh.

Obviously, it’s a long game we’re playing. If I feel these feelings arising anew, I just need to take the same approach – welcome the crappy feelings up, love them, and let them go – rather than escaping.

I’m still a little surprised though that even without ever really knowing what was going on underneath, just focusing on the feelings, relaxing that part of my body and letting it all go has had such a powerful effect.

As research papers love to say “further research is warranted.”

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ps. Want a good drink for when you’re in the pub and everyone around you is drinking? Lime and soda. Sometimes it’s an actual lime, sometimes a splash of lime juice. If you’re really lucky, they may not even charge you for it. Regardless, it’s delicious. You can drink a ton of them before you feel blergh (unlike coke or juice), and best of all? It feels like you’re drinking. I’m not quite sure how, but it does. Totally the go-to drink for teetotallers.

This is (kinda, mostly) one for the ex-Catholics.

I was introduced to the concept of original sin at the tender age of eight.

Without getting into all the heavy duty argy bargy about it, the basic gist is this:

We all have a wrongness at our very core, ostensibly stemming from Adam’s fall from grace (eating the apple – ie, acquiring knowledge of right from wrong).

Now, as an eight year old, that’s a pretty deep concept, so the way it gets translated is as follows.

Once a week, we all got shepherded off to confession (the priest hears our “sins” and allocates us a certain number of prayers to say as penance/punishment).

While waiting for confession, we all wracked our brains as hard as we could to think of any “sins” we might have committed that week.

We had to have something to say, after all. We couldn’t simply go into the dark and say “Well actually Father, I’m terribly sorry, but I’m just a normal eight year old. I’ve done nothing much since last week.”

Of course, we’re eight (and not bad kids), what the hell could we possibly have done anyway? So, you start thinking of every little thought, deed or inaction that might be cause for blame.

In other words, once our delightful teachers inform us that we’re flawed (and there’s nothing we can do about it), IT BECOMES OUR JOB TO PROVE THIS IS TRUE.

Starting self-flagellation early? Nice one.

Of course, this one “fact” leads to all sorts of nasty beliefs and habits.

• Perfectionism (every tiny fault is a sign that we are indeed flawed)
• Beating ourselves up (about those flaws)
• Self criticism (to a ridiculous degree)
• Expectation of punishment (for this inescapable sin)
• Wanting ourselves to suffer (as penance for our sins)

… and so on.

In short? It’s fucked.

Obviously, this isn’t the only way to pick up the above habits. We all do them, to some degree or other.

Now, in some doctrines the theory is that when Jesus died, he fixed this all up. Voila, sin healed! Go and play, (previously) happy little kids.

But, of course, somehow this all gets lost in translation. All we remember is that we’re evil little buggers, and it’s our job to figure out just how, so the priest can “forgive” us (and I use that term very loosely in this scenario).

So. Ok. This concept leaves us with a lot of crap to clear up.

How do we do that clearing?

Well, here’s what worked for me.

First of all, many of these beliefs (eg perfectionism) can be reinforced later in life.

For me, all the way through school I got stupidly high grades (in the 80’s and 90’s). In my final year of school, the teachers wanted to scare us into working harder for finals. So, they graded us super intensely. I came home for the first time ever with a grade in the 60’s (English. Turns out I’m crap at writing. Who knew? Thanks Teach!)

My parents eviscerated me. 45 minutes of concentrated scolding from both of them and I realised – this was the first time I’d had that much attention since I was a baby. This is one downside of being in a large family, of course. It wasn’t that they didn’t love me, just that they they didn’t have time to express it very often.

At the time, how did I interpret the above bollocking? Well, I had to be perfect (or near perfect) or I would suffer. Badly.

So, my perfectionist belief got strengthened.

Needless to say, all of the above beliefs can be reinforced in this way. Strong traits often don’t come from a single isolated life event.

So, each of these needs to be gently pulled apart. Event by event. Emotion by emotion.

EFT, of course, is very good for this – there’s no particular need for anything more complicated to clear all this junk out.

Most of these habits (perfectionism, beating myself up, criticising myself etc) I’d already worked on at length.

This morning however, I realised that way deep down, I also wanted to suffer.

What the hell?!?

Ok, now logically, obviously, hell no I don’t.

However, the trick is – look at your life. Just describe it. Dispassionately, without blame, judgement or attachment to outcome.

What you see around you, you’re creating.

So, if I could see suffering in my life, well, at some subconscious (obviously not an intentional, conscious) level I wanted to create it.

For example, if I looked really closely I could see a pattern in my drinking, if I was feeling particularly shitty about my life. Once I passed a certain level of drunkenness? I’d want to go hard out. Really hammer it.

I disconnected from the fundamental truth of loving, respecting and caring for myself and tapped into something uglier.

This sense that I was somehow, deep down, flawed, and thus should be punished. If I looked really closely, I could see that I was drinking to avoid this pain.

This, needless to say, gets dark pretty quickly.

Good news is? You can just tap it out. TALK OUT LOUD (This makes a HUGE difference) and it all clears out. Super fast.

As always:

1. Be specific (one event/emotion at a time until it’s clear)
2. Be persistent (keep going until done)
3. Drink lots of water
4. If you feel energy sticking or emotion welling up when tapping a single point, keep tapping that point until it fades.
5. If any random life event pops in your head, talk about that
6. Don’t worry about what to say, just talk around the subject
7. Focus on the specific emotions associated with any given event
8. Start with the negative, eg “I deserve to suffer, I want to suffer”, but always end with the positive, eg “I deserve to be happy”
9. Go easy on yourself

To begin with just start on the basic subject. Eg “I have to be perfect because…”

As long as you’re relaxed, pretty soon something will pop in your head. Even if it’s just “Wahhh, I’m fucking this all up, I’m useless, I can’t even do THIS properly” Ha ha. Awesom! Go with that!

It’s worth taking it a little bit at a time, because, well, people can be complicated. There’s often subtle aspects that might get missed if we rush through.

Ultimately, once you’ve dealt with the side effects listed above, you’ll want to get back to the core of it all – this original sin bullshit. Coz here’s the take home point:

THERE’S NOTHING FUCKING WRONG WITH YOU (except maybe, going to the wrong school as a kid and that whole crying during Rambo II thing).

To get to that, I started with something like “I’m broken deep down. There’s dark sin, right at the core of me. Somehow, I’m wrong, and I deserve to be punished for it…” and so on. Being a little melodramatic is good. You’re trying to tap into something a little below the level of consciousness, so some overacting will often help you connect into that deeper belief.

Generally, deep inside ourselves, we often really are that intensely over-the-top about things “OH, I SUCK. MY LIFE SUCKS. EVERYTHING SUCKS!” Obviously it doesn’t. Our conscious, slightly more rational mind knows it’s not true. But we’re talking about almost lizard brain level automatic thought patterns here. You’ve got to expect things to be a little nutty.

So, particularly while you’re fishing around trying to find a resonance with yourself, a core event that things stem from, or how things are phrased best for you, ham it up a little. Make it end-of-the-world dramatic. Don’t worry about sounding silly.

If you said “I’m a purple cabbage” (an obvious lie), well, that wouldn’t bother you in the slightest, right? So, you also have nothing to fear about saying other ridiculously exaggerated statements about yourself. If they connect, the energy/feeling will come up and you’ll heal it. If they don’t, they’ll affect you about as much as being called a purple cabbage.

The bottom line is this. Really? The whole original sin thing? Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s complete bullshit. However, there’s no reason in hell it should be screwing up your life, OR making you feel like crap every second of every day. Even just in a tiny little way, in the background.

Nobody deserves to have this kind of pain and mess swilling around inside themselves, I don’t care what any church teaches.

On a side note, the funniest thing about all this? Apparently aliens might not have original sin at all. Thanks declarative priest dudes, good to know!