Non-ordinary Advice for When Positive Thinking Isn’t Working

I suspect that the fact that I have not heard back from you since our last session means that you are still quite depressed. I know that is a painful place to be.

Your best chance for pulling out of this, I think, is to watch your thoughts.

Like many other people, you developed habits of thinking and feeling when you were young. These undoubtedly helped you survive abusive situations, but now these unconscious habits tend to define who you are and limit you from getting the happiness and fulfillment you want. Sometimes you even defend these critical self-judgments as true and offer evidence to prove it. Greater understanding of all this doesn’t help much. What we need is to find ways to help you quit doing this to yourself.

My suggestion is to pay attention to what you are saying to yourself. For example, if you catch yourself saying I’ll never find anyone to love me, take a moment to notice the sensations created in your body…probably discomfort of some sort. See if you can notice that the voice is not the same as who you are. Be vigilant about this. Try to notice each time it happens. At first, it will seem constant, but if you watch closely, I think you’ll notice that it sometimes lessens or quits when you are busy or asleep.

Stop assuming that this mean voice has any righteous authority. It isn’t God talking, nor the devil. It’s not your parents either, though they may have once said similar things to you. It is just old conditioning left over from a rough childhood. It’s just neurons firing in old, well-worn pathways. It is no more significant to who you really are than when your leg jerks as your doctor hits it with a little rubber hammer. It’s just the way the nervous system is wired. If you quit assuming the voice is “right” about you, then its negative influence over your life will decrease.

Here’s a great technique I learned from spiritual teacher, Gangaji. When the critical inner voice says something, answer it like this, “Ok, you’re probably right, I’ll never find anyone to love me. So what! “So what” confounds the mean voice. It is accustomed to you arguing or trembling in surrender to its mighty judgment. It is used to easily convincing you of your total unworthiness as a human being. It doesn’t know what to do with “so what”. Make “so what” your regular response each time you hear that voice say anything critical or mean to yourself. When the voice says, “nobody is going to want to hire me with my job history”, answer “ok, nobody is going to want to hire me with my job history. So what!” That’ll take the wind out of its sails.

Now remember that little bit of distance which opened up when you started noticing that the critical voice was not the same as who you are? But who are you? Ask yourself that seriously. Say to yourself, “Who am I? Who is experiencing this depression? To whom do these thoughts come? To me, yes. But who am I?” Quietly ponder that.

At first, the mind will want to answer with all of the usual roles in life, or with the qualities you have identified with. “I am a good guy, a beautiful woman, a lousy artist, a depressed person.” But if you look carefully, you’ll see that any description you can think of for yourself is merely a shell around who you really are. The mind knows it can’t answer this question, so it soon falls quiet. That’s a good thing, because that also slows or stops the critical voice.

Even with no answer available to this question, if you try asking it repeatedly and quietly listening for an answer, you may find that the distance between you and the critical voice opens up a little further and you may see clearly that you are not that mean voice. Nor are you the voice of your parents and their problems. Nor are you the voice of your boss, or of your culture, or of those who have not loved you the way you longed to be loved. These things do not need to be “figured out” and really cannot be understood. See if you can just feel the truth to which I am pointing. (Those readers curious to explore this question further are invited to click here.)

I know it can seem difficult to be kinder to yourself. When I was in grade school once, my Dad spoke harshly to me the words, “no wonder you don’t have any friends.” To this day I can’t remember anything about what was happening or why he said that, but this zinger went into me like an arrow to my heart. I remember thinking, “I didn’t know that I don’t have any friends, but he must be right and he says that it is my fault.” This affected my ability to make and keep friends for decades to come. Years later I did the healing work to realize he had been speaking from his own pain and that it didn’t mean anything about me. So I quit giving authority to that judgmental voice of his inside my head and my friendships began to flourish.

This is the sort of inner healing work I am encouraging you to do. “Encourage” is from the French word “Coeur” for heart and means to give heart to another, or to inspire with hope. I am well aware that this work of recovering from abuse and depression takes great courage and heart, as well as vigilance and paying attention. It is difficult, yes, but not as difficult as the continued suffering you experience when you believe in the obsolete, judgmental voices inside you. Good luck!

Your comments, questions, and stories are welcome below. I will respond.

Do you have private questions about the body-mind connection or about recovering from trauma, loss, or abuse? Click here to leave me a private message.

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Paul Chubbuck is a practicing psychotherapist in Fort Collins, CO, using Somatic Experiencing® to help people release trauma, abuse, and loss. He may be reached at 970-493-2958 or through his website at www.releasingthepast.com.

At least 80% of all ailments are caused or worsened by anxiety. Practice these methods to ease your fears, calm your mind, improve your health, and stimulate more creative problem-solving.

Choose Your Thoughts

“If you hang around the pigpen, you’re going to get dirty”. Our feelings arise from the thoughts we think most often. If you’re thinking thoughts of success and gratitude, you’ll give more attention to things in your life that contribute to feeling successful and grateful. If you’re focused on worries of failure and unworthiness, you’ll notice mostly those experiences.

It may not come easily to “think positive”, but it’s worth the effort because moving your mind in more positive directions can really transform your life.

Start off easy by noticing something you appreciate — the beauty of nature, a friend’s smile, a piece of music. The possibilities are endless. Find what works for you. Even if you find the whole world depressing, look for just one thing which seems unspoiled and innocent — a child’s laughter perhaps, or moonlight. When you find it, really notice it. Let all of your senses take in and be nourished by the image (or memory) of this bit of goodness or beauty for several minutes, until you notice your body and breath relaxing or new feelings arising. Enjoy this choice you made to focus on something good. Practice frequently to expand your results.

Ignore the News

News media go to great lengths to bring us the worst news from 7 billion people around the globe. It scares people into consuming the media even though we are powerless to affect the vast majority of that bad news.

Yet in our own circle of friends, neighbors, and relatives, catastrophes are rare. Much more commonly hugs are given, gardens are tended, and good meals are served. Our nervous systems were designed to take in that good, along with the rare bad thing which, when it happens to someone we know, we may actually be able to do something about.

We don’t need to take so seriously everything produced by an industry whose motto is “if it bleeds, it leads”. When you need a positive frame of mind to solve your own problems, you may not want to consume a daily diet of mostly negative national and international news.

Give What You Have

Have you ever received an unexpected, warm smile from a stranger? It brightened your day a little, didn’t it? The suggestion here is to take the focus off your worries and turn your attention to ways of giving to others.

Need some suggestions? Warmly thank anyone providing you a service; compliment strangers on their yard, their dog, their car, or their children; volunteer to help someone with no expectation of a return favor.

Get creative with your giving. You’ll probably soon find your mood lighter and your fears less compelling.

Seek the Quiet Within

When we are fearful, we are not good at solving money problems, so it is very important to learn to let go of fear and regain our ability to think clearly. That’s a prime purpose of meditation. It is found in many forms, from many traditions, both secular and religious. When practiced regularly, it is proven to calm mind and body and to open a person to greater inspiration and intuition. Meditators all have stories of breakthroughs, “coincidences”, and mysterious miracles that happen when they maintain a regular practice.

In my family we joke about how many times, after searching for hours, we’ve found lost items right after sitting down for a couple minutes of quiet meditation. You can access this power, by whatever name you like to call it, to help you find what’s important to you.

Guidance for learning meditation can be found online and in books, religious teachings, spiritual paths, or from my free eBook.

Take Action

If practiced regularly, the above suggestions will help reduce your fears and create a more fertile ground for creative problem-solving, but appropriate action is also needed. Otherwise you will likely still be fearful about the consequences of your inaction.

So brainstorm regularly with trusted friends or advisors. Write down the next best steps to solve your dilemmas. What do you need? A better job? A tighter budget? More customers? Make decisions about what you can do now and what tomorrow.

Then get to work. If you take the best action you can each day, with the calmest mind and body you can manage, your circumstances will soon improve, and you’ll get the good night’s sleep you need and deserve.

Your comments, questions, and stories are welcome below. I will respond.

Do you have private questions about the body-mind connection or about recovering from trauma, loss, or abuse? Click here to leave me a private message.

If you enjoyed this blog, consider subscribing for future notification.

Email:

Paul Chubbuck is a practicing psychotherapist in Fort Collins, CO, using Somatic Experiencing to help people release trauma, abuse, and loss. He may be reached at 970-493-2958 or through his website at www.releasingthepast.com.

Making Sense of the Search for a Path and Trustworthy Teacher

Recently, I had a stimulating email conversation with M.C., a thoughtful young man from Australia.  I think his questions are shared by many of you. So, with his permission, I share our conversation here with you.

M.C.: Lately I feel like I have been caught up in the plethora of personal growth, health and fitness, personal success and wealth e-books and businesses flooding my inbox. I have my trusted sources/email subscriptions, yourself included, but they are few and far between. One fitness subscription I have, articles written by a bloke called Mike, have been a really reliable and honest source of information. But, as I have found with other online business people, Mike’s newsletter is constantly offering me the latest of his ‘buddies’ products. And out of curiosity I find myself checking out these ‘on sale’ offers with their irresistible marketing campaigns. The same goes for the Holosync support emails I receive which are supposed to serve the purpose of keeping me on track. Yet every second day the Director of the company is sending me deals of the latest personal growth or wealth generating e-product of his one his many ‘buddies’.

Don’t get me wrong, I like to have options and some of these campaigns are fascinating and offer thought-provoking ideas. But I constantly feel like someone is trying to sell me something. I feel like I want to just delete ALL of my subscriptions because I feel a lack of respect and privacy.

But I think I’ll just keep a safe distance and be wary of what’s out there and cut through the crap myself. If anything, the amount of information being sold on the internet, particularly in areas of personal guidance, has made me more determined to live honestly in my own life and be a source of truth. I’m wondering, have you had the same frustrations with this sort of thing? Particularly with the amount of people seemingly ‘cashing in’ on the wave of interest in personal growth and spirituality, a lot of it seems VERY impersonal.

On the other hand I was at the Domino’s Pizza staff rally for Queensland the other day and was inspired by one the guest speakers, A fellow called Bernie who is the head of an organization called yLead. YLead is an academy for youth self-esteem and runs all sorts of events, seminars, tours (including the very appealing ‘Tanzanian adventure’) and I’m guessing a fair bit more. This guy was truly passionate about his job and a lot of things he said in his presentation really hit home. A few things made an impression on me. One is that this guy isn’t content to sit back and watch other people do his work for him. This guy was in your face. Another was that there was a real person and a real presence in front of me, maybe something I’m not used to but definitely something I responded to.

I hope that real human presence isn’t being lost in place of the internet substitutes mentioned above. And if so, there must be a responsible and honest way to reach people via the sterile online environment. In saying that, I value OUR online email conversations very highly and I think a personal email exchange in a trusting and safe environment can be very beneficial and productive. Thoughts?

Paul: M.C., what you are touching on here, for me, is the question of “how do I find the best path and teacher(s) for me?” I agree with all you say about the slightly unsavory taste of much new age, online marketing as if so many healing practitioners and spiritual teachers are offering their goods in the noisy bazaar, mixed in with the tents of snake oil salesman, the fake Rolex watches, the pornography, and everything else imaginable.

However, as a practitioner of one of those healing arts, I can also relate to another side of the coin. There are a great many people today who see the many problems in the world with concern and compassion and who have dedicated their lives to making some positive difference. As one of those, I thought when I opened my practice 8 years ago that my compassion, good intentions, extensive training, and skills would surely bring an abundance of people needing my services to my door. This turned out not to be true. For several years, I survived only by working unrelated part-time jobs and tapping into retirement assets.

Finally, I decided to put money and time into a website, write pages full of content explaining my healing approach extensively, and to hire consultants to help me with design, search engine optimization, and other hi-tech marketing approaches. That began to pay off some time back with several new clients each week. Now, finally, my vision is being fulfilled, i.e. helping people and supporting myself.

When I waited modestly for suffering souls to find me, like the quiet shaman on the edge of the forest, only a few found me. The realities of modern life forced me to either give up my dream or compete in the bazaar along with all the other barkers.

But some friends saw it differently. They suggested that I had finally realized that I was, as the Bible says, “hiding my light under a bushel” and that I finally woke up to the 2nd part of that same verse, which goes on to say, “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good work”.

In learning how to serve in this marketplace, I sought to maintain my integrity.  I tried to communicate what I know with dignity and authenticity on my webpages, rather than with exaggerated promises and manipulation, the hallmarks of untrustworthy marketers. And people seem to be getting that. I had a new client last week who decided to work with me through reading the first couple paragraphs of my bio, which reveal a bit of my personal struggle.

There are lots of sincere and legitimate helpers and teachers around. It is rare that they are so radiant in their divine connection we would even know about them if they had no representation at all in the modern marketplace. If you want to find that kind of teacher, then fast and pray and go walkabout in the central Australian desert, the Amazon rainforest, or the Himalayas. If you survive, there are perhaps a few rare, unknown and worthy teachers who might find you. Those folks don’t have webpages.

But, in any case, there’s no one perfect teacher and different teachers are appropriate for a student at different times and phases of life. Even the “right” teacher can take a student only so far on their path. Then their ways must part. I have experienced this several times as a student. When that happens, it may seem that the teacher is falling short, no longer understands, or even is revealed as a charlatan. But it’s more likely that it’s time for the student to turn inward, become his/her own “guru”, or to find a new teacher.

Many modern teachers offer their services and workshops as commodities to large groups for large fees or via webinars and other even less personal media. It is hard this way to feel the connection and to build the true healing relationship, though I know that sometimes those big workshops or webinars may be merely the introduction, giving the student the opportunity to “sample the wares” before forming a closer relationship with a teacher.

Though it is somewhat out of fashion, I really believe in a mentorship model offering more personal relationship and less emphasis on the products and dollars exchanged.

Ultimately, I’d say trust your own feelings, sensations and intuition. I have found this of absolute importance as I go through this process. It is easy if one feels naïve, ignorant, and self-doubting, to simply give away power and trust to the teacher or the marketing materials. But it is a mistake to dismiss your feelings of doubt or reticence, what I call my “shit detector”. Those feelings mean either that you need more information before making a decision, or else that the teacher is not the right one for you at this time. But if you are consistently drawn to some teaching, like the way you felt about Bernie of YLead, then it’s likely a good choice for you.

Of course, if we knew how to consistently trust our inner guidance, we would not need outer teachers at all. And, if we are uncertain, we should still make the best decision we can, or else we’re just wallowing in fear and paralysis. If, through self-doubt and inexperience, we pick the “wrong” teacher, if we waste our money and our time with a charlatan, then we can learn from that too. We can recall that early in that choosing, we probably had niggling doubts which we ignored, allowing ourselves to be swayed by glorious, if dubious, promises. To learn this from our mistake is easily worth the price we paid.

M.C.: ‘To learn from our mistake is easily worth the price we paid’. If there’s one lesson I’ll take out of your last email, wrapping up the last 6 months or so, that will be it.

So yeah, I now know the trappings and perils of the online ‘bazaar’. Just today I received another email advertising a book on enlightenment for only $11. And the deal was oh so enticing, before I thought to myself, ‘hang on, Mitch, you probably already know 90% of what’s in that book, stop wasting your time, you already have the answers that are right for you’.

I believe that a lot of these self-help campaigns on the internet carry a strong message, if subliminally targeting the fragile subconscious of its target audience, that ‘You and your life are LACKING in some or several ways, THIS is THE answer that you NEED to FIX your life and make your life BETTER’.

Of course these programs may well go on to do just that for people, but nonetheless I see these marketing campaigns as taking advantage of the very vulnerabilities in people they are supposedly out to mend. There is a fine line here and I definitely have yourself in mind when it comes to remaining authentic yet competitive. Thank you for sharing, by the way, I had no idea it had been such a struggle for you starting your practice. This again, has lead me to consider, reconsider, and probably withdraw some internal criticism I would habitually launch at any marketing campaign that rolls along my browser. Still, I think my observations hold true in part and have lead me to draw the following: how about posting a free advert on the net simply reading, “You already have the truth within you!”, or something similar. Maybe this is too specific an example, but you get the idea. To me, this would be a refreshing reminder for those entangled in the ‘bazaar’.

Often I feel internal pressure to ‘have the answer’ and it’s a relief to remind myself that ‘no, I don’t have to’. I’m allowed to not know what I don’t know and know what I do know. Simple as that. This applies to the responsibility of the mentor I feel in making it loud and clear to the pupil that ‘you are on your own path, I can only provide you with guidance from what I have learnt from my own experience. Here’s the baton, run with it’. Often I see the subliminal hinting of the mentor that they possess some mysterious wisdom or that they are essential for the learning of the student, when this is not the case. As I’ve been on the receiving end of this sort of ‘pulling in’ treatment, naturally seeing this in others can get me fuming at times. But I am absolutely with you on the value of real world mentorship.

Gourmet food for thought. Happy to keep the ideas flowing. Cheers.

Your comments, questions, and stories are welcome below. I will respond.

Do you have private questions about the body-mind connection or about recovering from trauma, loss, or abuse? Click here to leave me a private message.

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Paul Chubbuck is a practicing psychotherapist in Fort Collins, CO, using Somatic Experiencing to help people release trauma, abuse, and loss. He may be reached at 970-493-2958 or through his website at www.releasingthepast.com.

Where is Your Highest Loyalty?

Loyalty! It’s a high virtue, right?

Well, of course it all depends on what we are loyal to.

If you grew up in an alcoholic or some other variety of dysfunctional family, or if you suffered childhood abuse or neglect, you found a way to survive…obviously, or you wouldn’t be reading this.

Perhaps you learned to be invisible to minimize the criticism, molestation, humiliation, or beatings. Maybe you became hostile to preserve some shred of your own identity among people who didn’t care to know you. Or maybe you learned to please others to placate their anger and gain some scarce attention.

Though as an adult, you might have faulted yourself for your shyness, your anger, or your codependency, truly, you deserve to feel very good about that strategy. Your instincts helped you live to tell the tale.

Trouble is, what worked for you back then probably doesn’t today.

A soldier, constantly vigilant for attackers in Iraq, once back home, must heal from his PTSD just to be able to relax enough to enjoy his wife and family. He’s safe now…but he may not feel safe.

Like the soldier with PTSD, some part of you that survived a difficult childhood, that learned a way of thinking, an attitude to hold, and a way to be around people, may feel a very fierce loyalty to these ways of surviving. It’s like the loyalty you might feel to someone who saved your life. You wouldn’t lightly toss them out on the street in winter. Similarly, we hang onto our survival strategies as if our life still depended on them…even when they may be making us miserable today.

If you haven’t yet done the healing work of letting go of these old survival strategies, they probably just seem like “the way life is”…things that are “obvious” or “go without saying”.

“It’s no use crying over spilled milk.”
“You can’t trust women.”
“You can’t trust men.”
“You can’t trust God.”
“Life is shit, and then you die.”
“Keep your head down or get it shot off.”
“The best defense is a good offense.”

You may be like many of my clients who have found that something about their lives just is not working any more, and they’re in enough pain to want to be really honest about getting to the bottom of it.

So my suggestion is, watch out for the gross generalizations you say to yourself and your friends. Watch yourself for the flareups of defensiveness, or the sudden ways you feel hurt, withdrawn, or angry. These will be the signposts pointing to your old survival strategies.

There’s a saying in 12-Step groups that, “You can be right, or you can have a relationship.” There’s a lot of wisdom in those few words. The fierce loyalty with which we hold on to these obsolete survival strategies may simply seem “right” to us, but to those we are in relationship with, they just feel righteous, obnoxious, close-minded, or abusive.

I wish they taught us these things as youth…when we were first experimenting with romance and real friendship. I know a lot of us tried desperately back in high school to look like we knew it all. Well, at least I did! We were afraid that if others found out we were almost completely ignorant about relationships, sex, romance, or even friendship, then we surely would not be lovable.

Too bad that we weren’t patiently taught back then that humility, kindness, and a willingness to let go of our fears and our pretend know-it-all thinking could actually increase our standing and make us more trustworthy…at least to those who were themselves trustworthy.

Oh well. As I’m fond of saying, “it’s never to late to have a happy childhood!”

It’s not too late to get very honest with yourself.

It’s not too late to let go of needing to be right.

And it’s not too late to count understanding another’s point of view as more important than proving your own.

Oh, what a multitude of human suffering that last one would cure.

And it is never too late to lovingly and sincerely thank yourself for the strategies which helped you survive a difficult childhood, and to let them go.

It might not happen overnight. You may be quite attached to them. But it’s ok to let go a bit at a time. Test the waters of new ways of being, ways which may include humility, openness, and not knowing the answer. I think you will soon find out for yourself that your life no longer depends on the fierce, unquestioned loyalty with which you have hung onto old ways of being “right”.

And in the space inside you where self-protection, rigidity, or righteousness resided, others may now find a lot more space for getting close to you…and for loving you.

Good luck!

Your comments, questions, and stories are welcome below. I will respond.

Do you have private questions about the body-mind connection or about recovering from trauma, loss, or abuse? Click here to leave me a private message.

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Email:

Paul Chubbuck is a practicing psychotherapist in Fort Collins, CO, using Somatic Experiencing to help people release trauma, abuse, and loss. He may be reached at 970-493-2958 or through his website at www.releasingthepast.com.

Q & A

Question: When someone says they are addicted to some substance, etc, or that they feel out of their body, is that the same thing as PTSD?

Paul: Addictions and the pain underneath them are almost always related to some kind of PTSD, in other words, an emotional wound or a past life-threatening experience. Some may think they their life was just fine until they got addicted, or that their addictions are purely genetic or physiological. I suspect that is someone who does not yet realize the significance of what has happened to them.

An addiction serves as a short-term remedy for pain, emotional or physical. The addictive substance or process takes a person out of their body to some extent, which reduces the pain. Usually that is not some dramatic “out of the body” experience, but simply not being as present in the body, removed a few steps away from their experience of the pain.  In common language, the person is “stoned”, or “out of it”, meaning they are not responsive as much as usual to their external environment.

Question: Is PTSD, with its dramatic and severe symptoms, an entity of its own? Are not addictions part of this spectrum of PTSD?  I was talking with someone who had an addiction, and I told them I had PTSD symptoms, and they said that they are the same thing — taking drugs to not deal with it vs. the PTSD symptoms of dissociation, freeze, etc, and I really was not sure of the answer.

Paul: In severe cases of trauma, various kinds of psychological dissociation may occur which allow the mind to distance itself from the overwhelming fear or pain. The most severe forms of dissociation include amnesia and multiple personality disorder. Considerably more common forms of dissociation include a lack of focus, difficulty experiencing intimacy, and minimal awareness of emotions or sensations in the body. These happen spontaneously, meaning that the person didn’t make a decision to withdraw or avoid facing their issues. Their nervous system just did it, because of the overwhelm.

With addiction, a person discovers that some substance or process does something similar for them, i.e. distances them from their pain, so they are naturally attracted to use and re-use that. When they have symptoms of unresolved trauma, they tend to be instinctively drawn to a substance or process which offers relief, however temporary. If they feel down, they want to come up (uppers). If they feel up (anxiety), they want to come down (alcohol & others). If they feel numb, rigid, or inhibited, they are drawn to something that lets them feel more alive in their body (e.g. addictive sex). All of these are merely temporary solutions, and many cause harm in the long run, but they do offer some relief from the pain.

Sometimes it seems that the medical establishment does not fully grasp the connection between addiction and PTSD, though many health practitioners certainly do. PTSD occurs in all gradations and variations, but the “official” medical definition focuses only on the most severe afflictions and symptoms. For example, someone who is depressed several years after losing their mate might not have severe enough symptoms to qualify for an official medical diagnosis of PTSD.  However, their prolonged lethargy and depression years later began with that loss and its effect on their physiology. It is useful to the healing process to see the connections between the overwhelming experiences one has had and the symptoms they developed.

I believe our society does not fully grasp how easily scarred children are, how much real cruelty routinely occurs in the upbringing of very many children, and how much more support, tenderness and love we all need at any age, lest we be damaged in our abilities to function. If society were to see this clearly, without denial, then it would be forced to change — to reorganize along entirely different lines and values.  Society as a whole is not yet ready to do that, so there is a failure to recognize these connections, a denial which supports the status quo. A belief system is built upon the assumptions, however false, that our culture provides well for its citizens and that PTSD, depression, neuroses, and unhappiness are mere anomalies to be explained away without seeing the whole pattern.

When it comes to recovery from addiction, of course, recovery work, such as rehab and 12-step work, play important roles. But if one wants to avoid relapse, they dare not neglect the “inner work”, the deeper process of introspection which takes patience, courage, and often professional support. The real solution, in my opinion, is to do this work with an approach such as Somatic Experiencing, to address the way the nervous system has gotten out of balance, dys-regulated, and thereby less resilient to present-day life. If this work is done, the pull of the addiction is considerably lessened.

Not everyone with trauma becomes an addict, but most people with trauma have learned some strategy of distancing from the pain, a strategy which diminishes the potential or quality of their life. Such a person wanting to heal can ask “how am I avoiding being fully present to myself, to my life, to my body, to my pain?  Am I willing to quit doing that?”.

It can seem scary to turn around and face what we have run from, but the rewards are huge — getting your life and your joy back!

Your comments, questions, and stories are welcome below. I will respond.

Do you have private questions about the body-mind connection or about recovering from trauma, loss, or abuse? Click here to leave me a private message.

If you enjoyed this blog, consider subscribing for future notification.

Email:

Paul Chubbuck is a practicing psychotherapist in Fort Collins, CO, using Somatic Experiencing to help people release trauma, abuse, and loss. He may be reached at 970-493-2958 or through his website at www.releasingthepast.com.

Opening in a Painful World

The Norwegians display an enomous outpouring of grief and compassion as they begin healing from a national tragedy.

As with the Japanese tsunami in April, when something occurs as tragic and traumatizing as the Norwegian murders last week, I cannot remain silent about it in this blog.  For one thing, such events bring the world into a collective awareness and grief. Worldwide, most with access to the news share in the terror, the tragedy, and the helplessness. For a few days, we all place a flower, at least in our hearts, and we are all Norwegian.

And beyond sharing the collective grief, we also join much of humanity in pondering how it can be that a person’s thinking could become so twisted, apparently by hate, as to convince himself that causing others great pain and loss could be justified or could ever effectively further any political aim.

I’ll leave the psychological analysis to others. So far, we know very little about the history of the perpetrator. We do know that severe trauma at any age can close the heart and the mind to the normal human qualities of empathy and compassion.  It is those qualities, not laws and prisons, which prevent most of us from seriously contemplating such an act. Even if we are hurt and angry, even if we feel passionately about a cause, most of us can, to at least some degree, “feel” in our own bodies and our imaginations the pain another would suffer if we were to harm them.

That is a good thing.  It is a major part of what makes us human and allows us to live close to each other…and to love.

I’m certain that many of the survivors and parents are severely traumatized right now, or inconsolable with their losses.  It will take time and tears to recover and to salvage their lives after this tragedy. I hope and pray they get the support they need.

Hundreds of sites nationwide provide impromptu memorials for the expression of grief and condolences.

For the rest of us, there is a choice.

Such an act can trigger us to close our hearts further. We can react from the instincts of fight, flight, or freeze, saying, “Just as I thought and feared, the world is an ugly and dangerous place.  I must protect myself and those I love at all costs”.

Or, we can open our hearts further. We can choose to recognize that the choice of more self-protection and attempts to control others only leads one direction…towards more pain.  We can choose to notice that even a world with such pain is also filled with flowers and that it is only love which can ever bring us and our world any peace, healing, and safety. With the deepening of this understanding, we can take this tragedy as a reminder to re-dedicate ourselves to whatever practices and teachings help us to open further to loving ourselves and each other.

I think the video below shows that the Norwegians are trying to choose this second path. May we all be Norwegian.

Your comments, questions, and stories are welcome below. I will respond.

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Paul Chubbuck is a practicing psychotherapist in Fort Collins, CO, using Somatic Experiencing to help people release trauma, abuse, and loss. He may be reached at 970-493-2958 or through his website at www.releasingthepast.com.

A Love Story by Paul Chubbuck

After my big push this past month to get my free downloadable eBook finished (learn more here), I can’t think about any healing topics this week. However, from time immemorial, our ancestors, who had no therapists but did have pain and loss, gathered around the campfire or hearth and told stories…tales that reconnected them to each other, and to our beautiful planet.  The following is such a story. It is timely as the SW United States is in drought right now and Taos, NM is shrouded in thick smoke from the fires at Los Alamos. May the rains come, and soon. For those who may not be so familiar with New Mexico, they really do call the summer rains there monsoons.

A very long time ago the People still spoke the language of Raven and even Rattler listened if a good man said earnestly to him, “Go in peace, Brother Snake, I will not step on thee”.   It was in the Moon-of-the-Big-Wind€¦the one we now call May. And it was in the valley of the Big-River-From-the-North, the valley where Taos Village lies under the Sacred Mountain at the place where the roads from the four directions meet. It was in that moon that there had been no water for the land for many moons, none, in fact, since the Moon-When-The-Limbs-of-the-Trees-Are-Broken-by-Snow.

The cacti, which should have found moisture by then to color the desert, kept their blossoms hidden. Coyote hid midday with Lizard in the shade of a large boulder, his mouth open and panting, dreaming of a big juicy rabbit. Frog buried himself deep in the mud underground. And Raven, who could at least easily fly the several miles to the river for a big drink€¦Raven played with her consort on the back of Grandfather Thunder every afternoon when he came around to visit the valley, she and her consort showing off to each other the flying aerobatics they had been practicing.

It was not that Grandfather Thunder ignored the needs of the People and their land. When the men sat below ground in the Kiva and asked that the corn be watered, Grandfather Thunder heard. When the corn and beans failed to sprout and threatened to miss the whole growing season, leaving the people hungry, Grandfather Thunder noticed. And when Coyote panted on his long trips down the arroyo, hunting for a small wetness to lick, Grandfather nearly wept with compassion.

The trouble was, Grandfather Thunder was having his own difficulties. Each day he would visit the Great Waters of the Far West. There he took his huge bag made from the hide of the Great-Elk-From-The-Other-World, the world where everything is just as big or as small as it needs to be, no more and no less. And Grandfather Thunder would blow on the Great Waters. As great clouds rose from the waters, he gathered them into his hide bag until it was sloshing full of beautiful pure water.

Then with a giant blow, he headed east, with poor parched Taos Valley in mind. However, each time, the coastal range reached up with hungry arms and demanded his water, and he could not refuse them. And when he crossed the Sierras, their jagged peaks hungrily slashed his hide bag, spilling much of what was left on their slopes. Though his bag was not nearly as fat as when he’d started his journey, still, he could hear some sloshing left as he blew past the Great Mountain Lying Down, barely clearing the heights of the place called Abalone Shell Mountain. This sacred place too reached its rugged arms out hungrily for his bag, stealing most of what was left.

When he rolled his huge black hulk into the air above Taos Valley, Grandfather Thunder was ashamed, for his bag no longer sloshed and was merely moist. He squeezed it and wrung it and as he did so, his grunts and groans brought forth great peals of thunder, but only a few streaks of rain. Do you know the word “virga”? That is when rain falls, but does not reach the ground. And when Grandfather Thunder wrung out his empty hide bag, he made virga. You could see that it was beautiful, the way the orange evening sunset swept across the mesas lighting the strands of virga as they fell from the clouds, but no matter how beautiful, virga does not grow corn and the People felt only teased.

Each night Grandfather returned to the Great Waters, sewed up his bag tightly with rawhide, and tried again. But even though he gathered from the Great Waters each day all he could possibly carry, each range and peak along the way greedily demanded a portion — as much as they could grab, so that by the time he reached Taos again, his bag was empty.

And by the beginning of the Moon-Of-The-Longest-Days, Grandfather was discouraged. On the night of that day, he sat down to think for a while on an Island, the one we now call Santa Cruz. As luck would have it, Grandmother Moon was full and as she rose up in the eastern sky, she called out to him, “Hey, Grandfather, why do you look so down in the dumps? Anything I can do to help?”

“Oh, thank you for asking, my dear friend. I don’t know how you could help. It is my job to bring the water to Taos, so that the beans and the corn may grow and the cactus may bloom, and the beasts may drink their fill. But for many cycles of your lovely face, I have failed to do that because the dry mountains between here and there slash my bag and steal my water before I can reach that far. I don’t know what to do.”

“Hmmm”, she murmured as she leaned down sympathetically. “Surely there must be a way.” Then she rose up to her fullest height and smiled her brightest face on the the Earth, inspecting it carefully.

After a long time of quietly watching from up there, she said to him, “I have a suggestion, old friend”.

“What’s that, Dear Lady? I have tried everything I know.”

“Load up your bag as full as you can carry. I will light a path for you where there are few mountains. Blow yourself high and I will reach down and lift you a bit over the few high mesas on this path. In this way, though it may be a bit further, I think you can reach Taos with your bag full.”

Grandfather was elated with new hope. Of course he could never see as far as Grandmother Moon could, so to have her help€¦well, what a blessing!

Quickly he blew up a storm over the ocean to top off his bag and then said, “I’m ready, fair lady. Lead the way.”

“First blow yourself to the south as far as a man can walk in 20 days,” she said, “and only then blow east.”

Grandfather Thunder followed Grandmother Moon’s silvery light to the south, and then to the east. Each time he approached high slopes or mesas, Grandmother reached down for his hand, and helped him clear them without scraping his heavy bag on the rocks below. And he liked holding her hand.

With her help, together, they approached Taos Valley while the darkness still covered the desert. Grandfather was so grateful, he turned to her and said, “Oh, thank you so much for your precious help, and for shining your lovely face on me tonight, and for holding my hand. I can’t remember when I’ve had such a wonderful night and such a delightful company.”

Grandfather reached as high as he could and Grandmother Moon stooped down and he kissed her right on her silvery lips. Well, when Grandfather Thunder kisses a lady, let’s just say, it gets her attention. You could even say, it was an electric moment!

Grandmother moon grinned at Grandfather Thunder in that way that women do that makes a man light up and his troubles go away.

And Grandfather Thunder grinned at Grandmother Moon in that way that said, “Are you feeling what I’m feeling?”

And Grandmother Moon grinned back in that way that says, “I thought you’d never ask!”

And Grandfather Thunder tossed his huge bag onto the nearest cloud, kind of temporarily forgetting what he’d come here for, and he started playing and dancing with Grandmother Moon. You’ve seen them do that, I’m sure, the way they play hide’n seek and then they waltz to music that the nearby stars fiddle for them. And each time they turned around one way, Grandfather Thunder kissed her on her shiny cheeks, and each time they turned around the other way, he kissed her on her silvery lips. And she didn’t mind at all.

Now down below, the People were rocked out of bed at early morning by the loudest, most continuous thunder they had heard in a long time, and when they went outside, they saw Grandmother Moon dancing with Grandfather Thunder, and the clouds building bigger and bigger.

Grandfather had been a bit distracted from his job after that first kiss. You know the way a man can get around a beautiful woman, especially when she shines like Grandmother Moon shown that night.  And he had not been careful when he tossed his bag on the nearby cloud. Now it was leaking torrents, which became a great downpour below.

Surely at first the people were thrilled, but soon dismayed, and then worried, for it was already carrying away their bean seeds and soil. Coyote, who was sleeping on the slope of a dry arroyo, awoke to a great rumble, saw a wall of water rushing towards him, took off with a yelp, and barely reached the rim of the gully with his life.

Well, as we have already seen, Grandfather was a bit distracted. But as the great rain continued to rush down, the elders went to their Kiva and all the rest of the people called out in their own ways to Grandfather Thunder to please and quickly “slow down the rain”.

“Oops!”, said Grandfather Thunder as he heard their prayers. He pulled himself away from Grandmother Moon’s silvery arms, righted his upset hide bag, and swept his arms across the sky, recapturing all of the rain which had not yet reached the ground.

“Sorry, Dear Lady”, he called out to her. “May we finish that kissing dance later? Right now I’ve got a job to do.”

“It’s a date”, she said, and sailed off to finish bathing the western regions with her silver glow.

Then with all his usual concentration, Grandfather Thunder spent the next 3 days and nights carefully and slowly making sure that every part of the valley received just the right amount of rain, enough to thoroughly soak the soil and sprout the beans, but not so much as to wash away any more of the precious soil. It was his way of apologizing for his lapse.

And it worked. And for the rest of that summer, as the corn grew through the Moon-of-the-Horse and through the Joyful-Moon, and the all the way to the Moon-When-The-Corn-Is-Taken-In, Grandfather Thunder came with his full bag to Taos Valley whenever it needed it, for now he knew the route, even when Grandmother Moon was in her dark time.

But when his job was done for the season, when the corn was in and the granaries full, when Coyote had eaten of fat juicy Rabbit and Raven could drink from puddles and nibble on the corn left in the field, then Grandfather Thunder met Grandmother Moon on a very high cloud above Taos Valley.

Those who were there say it started with them playing hide-n seek, and then it turned into a kissing waltz. When the Star Fiddlers broke into a swing tune, the lightning started flashing and the thunder rolled across the desert all the way to the top of the Sacred Mountain. And that was just the beginning of the night. From what I’ve heard, the people gathered to watch and before that night was over, Grandfather and Grandmother had kicked up a storm the likes of which the People had not seen before.

But since then, from time to time, even to this day, around the harvest time of year when the moon is full, sometimes a great cloud gathers over the valley. If you lead your dearest sweetie outside and lay down a blanket for the two of you, you can watch Grandfather Thunder and Grandmother Moon dance. If you’re real quiet and you listen real well, you might even hear the distant strains of the kissing waltz.

But then again, you might have other things on your mind.

Do you have questions about the body-mind connection or about recovering from trauma, loss, or abuse? Click here to leave me a private message. I’ll either answer it in an upcoming blog or privately. Either way, it’s anonymous.

If you enjoyed this blog, consider subscribing for future notification.

Paul Chubbuck is a practicing psychotherapist in Fort Collins, CO, using Somatic Experiencing to help people release trauma, abuse, and loss. He may be reached at 970-493-2958 or through his website at www.releasingthepast.com.

Your comments, questions, and stories are welcome below. I will respond.

We have another chance to choose

The experience of unresolved trauma can be a kind of personal hell, with all manner of seemingly endless suffering and torture.  In such cases, our minds are often not our best friends, haranging us day and night about the missed opportunities and poor choices we’ve supposedly made.

Everyone in pain wants a “quick fix” which will separate them from their suffering, preferably forever.  What a surprise it is to discover, then, that a big part of true relief lies in paying closer attention, both to the sensory experience in our bodies, and also to the beauty and aliveness everywhere around.  We have often completely neglected to notice these because our thoughts and our avoidance of the pain were grabbing all of our attention.

This paying attention is a process often called “mindfulness”.  It is an essential healing and life skill.  One can experience benefit in mere minutes of practice, though it can easily take a lifetime to attain mastery.

Why does mindfulness help us heal?  Because if you have been overwhelmed, traumatized, or abused in ways that left scars, your mind is probably often overactive with worries, hypervigilance, and self-criticism.  It goes with the territory.  These kind of thoughts trigger your nervous system just as if you yelled “fire” in a full theater.  Your nervous system, in turn, triggers various bodily reactions, called the “fight-flight” response, including accelerated heart rate, tight chest, etc.  Then your mind notices those and adds more worry, vigilance, and self-criticism.  That’s the vicious cycle and it’s not a pretty picture.

One of the most powerful tools to break this cycle is mindfulness practice…paying attention to some chosen experience, such as your breath, or to the flow of sensations in the body.  For more specifics, subscribe to my newsletter below and receive free tips on beginning a body-centered mindfulness practice.

There is a moment in the learning of mindfulness which I call “the choicepoint”.  It is when someone realizes that they can choose what they give their attention to and the thoughts around that.  That is a powerful moment and a turning point.  May you experience such a moment, and may this poem help you.

The Rapture

They say the Rapture came yesterday,
and went.
It seems I am still here.
along with all my friends.
Thus, to those who announced the party,
we are all surely damned.

But a different source of information,
Robin, gleefully announced,
“We are the blessed.”
Then a lavishly laden Lilac bush confirmed,
“This is heaven, we’ve arrived.

I looked about and saw it was true,
that the boundary between heaven and hell
had divided only my mind, and nowhere else.

I asked of Heaven,”How can I stay here with you, in beauty?”
It was clever Fox, prancing by, who answered,
“Open your eyes,
listen,
smell.
Heaven is not somewhere else.
Hell is also right here.
Which do you choose this moment?”

Do you have questions about the body-mind connection or about recovering from trauma, loss, or abuse? Click here to leave me a private message. I’ll either answer it in an upcoming blog or privately. Either way, it’s anonymous.

If you enjoyed this blog, consider subscribing for future notification.

Paul Chubbuck is a practicing psychotherapist in Fort Collins, CO, using Somatic Experiencing to help people release trauma, abuse, and loss. He may be reached at 970-493-2958 or through his website at www.releasingthepast.com.

Your comments, questions, and stories are welcome below. I will respond.

Noticing magic and miracles can open your heart

If you haven’t found something strange during the day, it hasn’t been much of a day.
Physicist John Wheeler

In Colorado, the Rocky Mountains do not begin gradually with rolling knolls, larger hills, and finally the real mountains, as with many ranges.  They arise suddenly from the plains like a wall, which means that there is a specific point…well, actually a very long north-south line, where one can go…the place where the North American continent erupts from horizontal to near vertical.

Yesterday morning I drove to the closest point on that line to pray and watch the sunrise.  On the way, I passed 3 deer walking unafraid down the side of the street, one doe on only 3 legs. I wondered first if I could do anything for her, and failing that, if it meant something…as if she were in my dream.

When I reached “the line”, I turned east to face a thousand miles of plains, the sun just breaking the horizon, my city, and one scampering rabbit. The mountains began their 9,000-foot climb a few feet behind me.

I practiced “ho’oponopono”, the Hawaiian art of forgiveness, saying to anything and anyone who has disturbed my peace, or whose peace I have disturbed, “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.” The Meadowlarks, Doves, Geese and Robins provided the musical background.

The trees are just now at that moment of their own abrupt transition.  Three days ago they were all apparently dead branches.  Two days ago there was a hint of green.  Yesterday, they shocked me, like the rise of the Rockies, with their sudden verdant unfolding.

If the backbone of a continent can so abruptly shift….if the season and plants can overnight transform…then surely any miracle is possible today.

What magic or miracle is in your life today? Are you willing to open to it…to notice it?

You know….the world is not a merely rational, logical, complicated machine. Quantum mechanics, often referred to affectionately by physicists as “quantum strangeness” has totally dis-proven that worldview, although in this rational, logic-worshiping culture, many of us still cling to the old Newtonian worldview like a life-raft in a storm.  If that works for you, you have my blessing. I speak to the rest of us, who yearn for possibilities which may seem impossible, for truly, the Universe is far, far more miraculous, full of extravagant and unimaginable possibilities.

There are excellent books and movies that take this deeper, such as The Holographic Universe, What the Bleep do We Know, and The Spontaneous Healing of Belief: Shattering the Paradigm of False Limits. All I have room to say here is…we should turn our doubting mind back on itself.  We should doubt the doubter, for it is the doubt itself, or the fear underneath the doubt, which cuts us off from the magic and miracles.

There is a scared one inside most of us, about 4-years old, who prefers to never again get his/her hopes up, lest he/she be cruelly disappointed. When we look at the breakthroughs or healing possibilities we desire, but tell ourselves, “that could never happen for me,” we slam shut the door which the Universe was opening.

Our instincts to protect that little one are exactly right! He/she does need our protection, our nurturing, our reassurance. But to let it run the show? To let our wounded inner child slam the door shut on the magic of life? Not for me! I will not spend my life refusing to ever again believe in Santa Claus!

Can you hold the hand, reassuringly, of the one inside who’s armored against the fear that his/her longed for magic will never come…and walk through that door anyway? You might be stepping into an adventure of great possibility and fulfillment. If not, I’ll bet that you are far more capable today of bearing disappointment than you were at age 4. Pick yourself up and see what other doors are opening. I’ll bet there’s something very exciting behind door number three!

Oh…and, by the way, I’ve been feeling both fabulous and productive since my magical sunrise trip to the edge of the Rocky Mountains.

Do you have questions about the body-mind connection or about recovering from trauma, loss, or abuse? Click here to leave me a private message. I’ll either answer it in an upcoming blog or privately. Either way, it’s anonymous.

If you enjoyed this blog, consider subscribing for future notification.

Paul Chubbuck is a practicing psychotherapist in Fort Collins, CO, using Somatic Experiencing to help people release trauma, abuse, and loss. He may be reached at 970-493-2958 or through his website at www.releasingthepast.com.

Your comments, questions, and stories are welcome below. I will respond.

The Healing Journey is sometimes chaotic,
but it has Huge Rewards.

We can learn to trust that the chaos of our growth process will sort itself out.

I made a colleague laugh this morning when he told me he didn’t have full registrations for the workshop he’s offering this weekend (and he does excellent work). I said maybe we need to copy America’s professional marketers. You know, “do your healing work and get more sex!”  There’s a lot more truth to that concept than there is in the ads showing sexy men and women drinking Coca Cola together.  Given how much pain a lot of people are in, how they struggle with loneliness and poor relationships, denial and addiction, poor self-esteem, anger, and lousy jobs, I find it curious people don’t flock to any credible opportunity to let those miserable old patterns go.  Real personal growth and healing, over time, can substantially reduce such suffering and improve your relationships.

Growth is sometimes easy and fun, like when we are able to be more real, be seen and it brings us closer to others.  Or when we discover new ways to have fun, communicate, or to express ourselves creatively.  At times like that, I truly wonder why the kinds of workshops and growth experiences I and many others are drawn to are not the places where most spend their weekends and their money.  If the numbers count for anything, apparently football on TV in bars, videos at home, family picnics, and surfing the web are curiously much more attractive than anything related to “releasing the past”.

But sometimes, like right now, I too hit an impasse, that stuck and scared feeling, and I understand.

I’ve just completed an excellent four-day training in group facilitation. Frequently, it was quite challenging. The lessons were highly experiential.  It can’t be easily put into words in a summary outline, then shelved.  Instead, it is more like turning everything upside down and shaking it. Now comes the hard work of integrating that into how I work and finding the courage to bring my new lessons into a form which serves others.  If I don’t do that, it becomes nothing more than an interesting memory.

And since returning I’ve been engaged in a challenging conversation with a respected mentor in which I’m being invited (rather intensely) to look at my shadow, i.e. blocks to getting what I say I want and expressing who I am.  Seeing ways I have not been the best I could be brings up shame, and I think maybe I too will retreat, drink, hole up, hang out, shut-down, and give up.  Who did I think I was anyway, to yearn for a larger vision of life than I was taught in my first 20 years?  Clearly, I’m just a deluded egotist and the sooner I let go my dreams, the less disappointment I’ll have.

But I’ve been through this enough to know that, however overwhelming or scary the experience seems to be, there is a satisfying breakthrough available just on the other side of the hill…a wider vision, a greater experience of joy and of empowerment, of realness and intimacy, and a greater closeness to the divine.  And along with that, a genuine letting go of our old habitual story and some of the no-longer helpful baggage most of us carry from our pasts.

So…since I’m still reeling from my own tsunami here, I’m going to keep this short, but it’s not because I’m retreating or holing up.  Instead, I want to invite you, as powerfully as I know how in this forum, to send me your questions about the places in your life you feel stuck.  Where do you just hit a wall and give up, even though you know that giving up will mean not getting what you truly want…giving up on becoming the best you can be, giving up on yourself?  If you’ll dare to ask the questions, I will do the best I can to offer something meaningful in response.  I’ll respond in this blog, but it will be completely anonymous if you use the form here.

Do you have questions about the body-mind connection or about recovering from trauma, loss, or abuse? Click here to leave me a private message. I’ll either answer it in an upcoming blog or privately. Either way, it’s anonymous.

If you enjoyed this blog, consider subscribing for future notification.

Paul Chubbuck is a practicing psychotherapist in Fort Collins, CO, using Somatic Experiencing to help people release trauma, abuse, and loss. He may be reached at 970-493-2958 or through his website at www.releasingthepast.com.

Your comments, questions, and stories are welcome below. I will respond.