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Schawn Austin | Healing History Counseling

Inspiration Corner January

January 24, 2018 by Schawn Austin Leave a Comment

A past that will not leave someone alone can make their present life very unpleasant. Memories of events that happened last month, last year, 30 years ago can continue to interfere until dealt with. It is possible to successfully deal with events from the past and have them stop interfering with life today. Memories of past events that intrude and terrorize are flashbacks.

Living with flashbacks can be overwhelming! It can be the hardest part of living with past trauma. There are ways to lessen, shorten and even stop flashbacks. To help people get better at managing flashbacks, I've created a free 6 part training on how to manage flashbacks! Sign up today by clicking on the button on this post! This training teaches about triggers, early warning indicators, tools for ending flashbacks, tips for enlisting the help of friends and family and much more! Check it out! Sometimes it can feel like life is one continuous game of Whac-A-Mole, that life is only putting out fires and crisis response. When a person grew up in a home that was unhealthy, scary, or constantly crazy they can have a strong desire for healthy, safe, and calm. Often they find that over and over again they find their lives has become a chaotic mess. This can be extremely frustrating. I believe that the chaos of a persons today is often an expression of the unhealed chaos of their childhood. Going back and healing the painful events from their past can help them create the healthy, safe, and calm today that they so desperately want.

I love the out of control, right to the edge feeling of being on a roller coaster. That doesn't mean I want my life to feel out of control or teetering on the edge. Many people find themselves in lives that resemble roller coaster rides and they don't know how to get it to stop. Often when these people look back over their lives, this is how their whole life has been. All the way back into their childhoods their lives felt out of control and unmanageable. When a person can follow the chaos all the way back to their childhood it is often best to start working there in their childhood. Unresolved childhood events can bring chaos into adulthood.

A horrible childhood can leave an adult with a constant ache inside. That ache is their child self. That person can heal their child self by being that better parent for that child self that they never had. As that child self heals that constant ache can disappear. It is not necessary to continue to live in the pain of a childhood destroyed. A persons past sometimes needs to be healed before it will stop messing with a person's current life.

As adults we sometimes forget that fun is allowed. We can forget to play. In the every day seriousness of life we fail to take the time to enjoy living. As that old saying goes - No one arrives at deaths door wishing they had worked more. Take the time to live while getting through life!

A fawn is very cute. But fawn is also the name of one of our four primary danger responses. Most people know about Fight and Flight. Many people have heard of Freeze, but very few have heard of Fawn. This is because it's existence was only suggested recently. The Fawn danger response is when someone attempts to avoid danger by being nice... to the extreme! This is when a person will expend a great deal of effort to keep the situation/individual from becoming dangerous. Then if it becomes dangerous, they will go to great lengths to diffuse the situation. They may take responsibility or blame for something that's not their fault or ignore their own needs or desires in order to make the dangerous situation safe. Adults who experienced intense danger when they were young may be more inclined to use the Fawn response to danger. Their best defense, as a powerless child, was to keep everyone happy.War is not a requirement of PTSD. Many people who struggle with PTSD have never been in the military nor have they been in a war. PTSD can develop anytime a person feels so endangered or scared that it overwhelms their brains ability to process the events (check out this blog post about the criteria for PTSD: https://healinghistorycounseling.com/know-ptsd-8-parts-pts…/). When this occurs, PTSD can develop. People's minds continue to work to process those events that are stuck unprocessed. For many people this means that over time they are able to process the event. But for some, about 20% of people who experience trauma that could lead to PTSD, time does not lead to change. Their minds continue to try to resolve the memories but cannot. This results in PTSD. People struggling with PTSD can heal. Often it helps to work with a person trained to help heal trauma and knowledgeable about PTSD.

Everyone's life becomes difficult at times. Not everyone's life is constantly difficult. Unfortunately many adults with childhood histories of trauma and abuse live lives that feel like constant battles. This can feel particularly unfair because life was already SO HARD and they so desperately want it to be easier, quieter, happier. But there are two major things getting in the way: First, unhealed trauma demands attention. This means that it will continue to interfere with and mess up a persons life until it gets the healing attention it needs. Second, It is during childhood that a person learns to love and connect and be a healthy person in the world. Children who grow up in abusive, neglectful, or unhealthy homes are not taught how to have healthy, loving, connected and balanced lives. But there is HOPE! Healing past trauma is possible. Learning how to have healthy loving relationships and lives is possible.

When a child or adolescent experiences extremely difficult events or trauma that goes unhealed, their emotional and psychological development can become delayed, slowed or even stop. A part of them gets stuck, at that time/age of the trauma. This is why adults with childhood trauma will sometimes say that they feel like a child inside. Until that trauma is healed, and that part of themselves is freed to grow up, they can continue to feel like a kid playing at being an adult.

"Why didn't I fight back?" "Why didn't I try to get away or scream?" These are often the questions that survivors of assault and abuse will torture themselves with after they have survived. They may hate that they didn't do ANYTHING or feel that somehow it means they were to blame. The truth is that their mind had most likely chosen the Freeze danger response as their best chance to survive. Some part of their mind, probably the part that most deeply wants to keep living, has determined (correctly or not) that they can't fight their way out, they can't run fast enough to get away, and that there would be no talking their way out of this. So their mind chose the Freeze response as their best option for survival. Later they may believe they had other options, but in that moment a part of them made the best choice it could.

When living with, and when healing from, childhood trauma it can be difficult to notice the bright spots. It is vital that we learn to be aware of those little happy moments. When we feel sad we actually are less likely to notice those things that are not sad and more likely to notice those things that will make us more sad. Taking the time to keep track of even the smallest joy can help us shift our whole mood. Consider keeping a joy or gratitude journal. Or simply list each night as you get ready for sleep everything good that you noticed or experienced today. At first you may have to really work at it. You may have to seek out things at first - I recommend cute animals online (there are always a zillion to find). Keep doing it, even if the first week has the same two things everyday. Over time you will start noticing more, and your list will grow, and a tiny shift will happen in your mood, then a little more. It won't make living with or healing childhood trauma easy. But it can make it less hard. And that is a good thing.

I Remember walking on railroad tracks as a kid. Trying to balance on the rails and looking for the crushed remains of pennies I had placed on the tracks the day before. I also remember walking across a railroad bridge and wondering what I would do if a train came. Although this is a fond memory of my childhood, I can't help but also think it was not a very safe choice. I bet we've all heard of people who were killed, or nearly killed when choosing to make their way along the railroad tracks. It's also a great analogy for examining the path we are currently on in life. Are we making the best choice? Are we getting where we want to go? Are we on a path that keeps us in constant peril? How do we change paths if this isn't the one we really want to be on? How is my past impacting the choice of path now?

Living with unresolved childhood trauma can feel like trudging down a dark path that doesn't seem to be going anywhere good. The new year is often a time of new directions and positive change. If you have decided to start down a new path I would love to hear about it. Having a temper that explodes over every little thing can be because of past events that are still upsetting. It can be helpful to think of it like this:  - Everyone has a cup inside. - This cup represents our ability to deal with frustrations, annoyances, and the really upsetting events of life. - Each event fills the cup some. A small annoyance may only fill it a little while a traumatic event may fill it much more! - When the cup overflows is when we explode! - We empty the cup by processing through and releasing the frustrating, annoying, really upsetting experiences. - Events that have not been processed through stay in the cup. - So if the cup is constantly filled most the way up, adding even a small amount may cause the cup to overflow.  Healing past events that are keeping the cup constantly nearly full will help empty the cup and reduce the frequency of explosions of anger.

Inspiration Corner December
Inspiration Corner Early Feb 2018

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