Guided meditation mentioned in the video: Sensational Awareness

How we’re wired as biological beings

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It’s counter intuitive to face our pain.

We’re biologically wired to move away from pain:
to take our finger off of the stove,
to not eat the poison mushroom,
to back away from the poisonous snake,

…and to move towards pleasure, towards the things that nourish and comfort.
That’s obvious, right?

If we grew up armoring ourselves against the pain in our environment,
it’s really not intuitive to heal by moving towards the pain.
That feels really dangerous.
And unsafe.
We already know how dangerous that is.
We’ve had that experience!
Why on earth would we go towards it?

Since, we’ve spent our lives protecting ourselves from the pain, we’re certainly not going to do something stupid like put down our armor and swords and expose our hearts and soft parts to the onslaught.
We know what that’s like.
That’s how we got here in the first place! Before we knew any better…
and now we know better.

This is the challenge with healing trauma.

This is why we go in loops…
We want to stop feeling the pain, so we stick a toe out, start lowering our defenses, opening to feeling, maybe even opening up to someone…
and WHAM! we feel the pain – sometimes instantly
and SLAM! the gate clangs shut, the walls go up,
and we’re back in our walled fortress, feeling horrible.
And round and round it goes.
Feel familiar?

Why we want to heal, even if it means facing the pain

There are three things to unpack here.

First, if we don’t allow ourselves to feel the pain, if we keep defending ourself from it, we also defend ourselves from feeling pleasure.
We can’t shut down our emotions selectively.
If we defend ourselves from feeling pain, we end up defending ourselves from all feelings… pleasure, too.
Let that sink in for a moment.
Really.
Reread that and breathe.

It’s important to realize / remember.
And it’s a big part of why you want out.


Second, because we don’t want to feel, we will never get close to anyone emotionally.
Let that sink in for a moment.

All of our relationships will only go as far as we allow ourselves to feel pain, and no deeper.
If we can only allow for a little bit of pain, say a little bit of conflict, we will also only allow for a little bit of pleasure, say a little bit of joy.

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Third, this also means that we will not be able to feel ourselves.
Those of us that have experienced lots of armoring, know what it feels like to not feel… I used to wonder if I even had a heart.
No kidding.
That was not fun.
And this means that I don’t know who I am, because I don’t know what I really feel about anything.
When I heard, “Just be yourself.” I didn’t know what that meant. “Of course I’m me. How can I be anyone else?” What I began to realize is that I couldn’t be myself because I couldn’t access who I was. I couldn’t really feel what was in here. My heart was buried, protected behind a lot of armor. My personal fortress kept me safe from everyone, unfortunately it also kept me hidden from me.

All of this you will likely have heard before, or figured out for yourselves, even if only out of the corner of your eye…

Why you’re able to face the pain and not get hurt

What most of my clients don’t realize, and even my clients who are healers have to be reminded of, is that the pain that we’re carrying, the stored pain that we’re defending ourselves from – is not as bad as the pain we originally experienced.

Whatever happened in childhood, or during the accident or loss, or whatever the original situation was; being in that situation was much more threatening that the pain you’re storing in your system. Mainly because the original situation was a full system experience – you were actually being threatened, or your system perceived that you were, which amounts to the same thing. The situation was actually happening… and you could only deal with part of it. What you couldn’t deal with you stored in your system for processing later.

What you’re running from, as long as that original situation isn’t still happening is the leftover fears, the unprocessed fears from the original situation.
And the leftovers are nothing like being in the real thing.
Yes, they’re absolutely still scary.
But, partly because you’re not in the situation and partly because what you’re storing is only a part of the original terror, it is not as bad.

Of course, if you haven’t faced that left over fear inside of you, you don’t know that.
What you remember is the original, overwhelming, full system experience.
But what you’ve got inside, is not that.
What you’re running from is actually the leftover emotions – the ones that you didn’t have the bandwidth to process at the time.
It reads as terrifying, but I can promise you, it is not the same thing as your original experience.

It reads as full-system terror because that is your only experience of it.
You haven’t allowed yourself to experience the leftover emotions because the past was bad.
You don’t want to tempt that again… so you don’t know that the left over emotions alone are not as bad as the actual thing. Or even if you do know intellectually, it’s hard to convince yourself that it’s safe to revisit them.

…And when you could get hurt.

Now, two huge caveats here, first, it is still going to be frightening.
Terrifying, even.
Facing scary emotions is still scary.
But the fear of facing them is actually the scariest part.
This initial fear is the toughest to deal with. Ironically, once you get through the fear of facing them, you usually discover that that was the scariest part. (Because now you know that you can turn in this particular direction, feel something, and not die. Seriously, this first step can be that big. And that revelatory.)

Second, you can re-traumatize yourself if you dive in too fast, if the fear of facing them is too much for you. Even if you aren’t under threat, but you get overwhelmed by the fear, you can feel like you are… which can amount to the same thing. This comes down to your level of self-awareness (how to measure this in a second).


So, I am not saying to take facing your fears lightly.
What I am saying is that when you’re ready to do it, know that it will just be terrifying.
It will not hurt you.
You will not die.

It will only be terrifying because it’s not physical.
You’re not actually in the situation. It’s not physically threatening. And that makes all the difference.
It’s the difference between sitting at home and someone telling you a very scary story vs actually being in a threatening situation.
These two things are not at all the same.
One is healing (when you’re ready for it).
The other is traumatizing (as you have experienced).

…And how to know the difference.

Which leads nicely to my final point… How to know if you’re ready?

The best indicator of whether you’re ready to face your fears, to start healing your trauma(s), is your capacity to be self-aware.
When you’re sitting at home and feeling your fears around a certain trauma, are you conscious enough to stay grounded in your body, aware that you’re sitting safely at home?
Or do you get lost in the stories, imagining that you are back in the threatening situation?
If you aren’t sure don’t do it.

If you can feel your fears and stay conscious of being in your body, that’s a good indicator that you’re probably aware enough to be able to contain your emotions versus them containing you. You’re likely in a state where you’re able to stay bigger than your emotions versus them overwhelming you.

This is not an exact science, so go slow.
Get yourself in a really safe space (mentally, physically, emotionally) and feel your way in gradually.
If at any point you start feeling like this could get overwhelming, stop.
Stop way before you get overwhelmed.
Resource yourself.
Then come back later and do a wee bit at a time.

It’s best if you don’t rush, and slow and steady will get faster and faster over time if you do it well from the beginning. The key here is safety. On all levels.

And, dear god, if you’re feeling ready, and you want to tackle something big, especially something that you have been working on and haven’t gotten to the roots of yet, you don’t need to do this alone. I have had, and continue to have, a lot of help with my own traumas. Some things I can do alone, but the big ones it’s much easier to have someone there whom I trust to have my back.
My whole system relaxes.
And I can go much deeper, much faster.

My Offer to You as a Healer

If you want help with something big, this is my speciality: creating safety so that you can lean-in, so that you can face your fears knowing that I’m here to keep you grounded and safe, centered and aware.

You don’t need to re-live or remember anything.
You just have to be willing to feel.

That’s already a big enough ask.

And as stated from the beginning, it’s counter intuitive.
Our bodies read this as a dangerous act, so safety is important.
Find someone whom you trust. Preferably, someone who’s done it before, and the bigger your trauma the more experience you want them to have. But first and foremost, find someone you trust. Even if you trust no one, when you’re ready, notice who your body relaxes with.

And keep breathing.
You will survive.
You already survived the worst of it. (But you won’t know that until you do it.)
Now it’s just letting go of the leftovers.

I hope that helps.

Happy Healing,
Elena