trauma

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CHANGING DIRECTION: How To Move Into the Future Despite Your Past

Michele Rosenthal 2013Guest Post by Michele Rosenthal, Author, Speaker, Post-Trauma Coach
Founder, www.healmyptsd.com 

Host, CHANGING DIRECTION, a weekly radio program

Author, BEFORE THE WORLD INTRUDED: Conquering the Past and Creating the Future

Have you ever felt like something that happened long ago still defines you today? Sometimes the smallest stress or the largest trauma moves you into situations that imprint so deeply they become a part of who you are. Sometimes, too, those events change who you are: Consequent beliefs, assumptions, interpretations and perceptions alter how you see yourself, others and the outside world.

I know how easily all of this can make you be not such a good friend to yourself! For over twenty-five years I was actually very unkind to myself as the negative events in my life shaped and distorted my inner self connection. Then, I went on a healing rampage. I knew that life was so much more than simply existing or struggling to exist and I wanted to feel better and be happier. It took years to find what process would set me free. Finally, I learned how to shed the past and now have dedicated my life to helping others find healing (much more quickly than I did!) after life’s big and small traumas.

What I’ve learned through education, training, countless conversations, direct interactions and coaching others is that simply finding a path to healing is not enough. As individuals we want to move in a direction that is positive, proactive, and productive. Figuring out how to do that can be challenging, which is why I’ve decided to expand (and retitle) my radio show to talk about how we go about “CHANGING DIRECTION.”

Beginning the week of April 29th, CHANGING DIRECTION will air twice every week: Monday’s and Wednesday’s at 2pm EST/11am PST. The shows will be thirty minutes in length so that you get in-depth, concentrated content in a timeframe that adapts to your on-the-go lifestyle. In addition to the healing support and information we currently provide our dedicated audience, we will also begin providing expert insights on how to reclaim yourself and transform your life in the areas of personal growth, career, health and fitness, finances, relationships, fun and recreation, and family life. Interviewing experts in all of these areas CHANGING DIRECTION offers ideas for how you can change the direction of your life day after day.

In celebration of this shift, we’re offering all of our new listeners a complimentary ebook gift: “52 Ways To Transform Your Life After Trauma” gives you one idea per week to discover new ways to be a friend to yourself by deepening your internal connection and challenging you to explore what it really means to be you. To claim your gift, click here.

You have enormous healing potential; the goal is learning to access it. You can do this. Dig deep. I believe in you!

I thank Michele Rosenthal for her guest post today, her courage to invite us to team with her in this this and her transparent beauty of character.

Michele Rosenthal is a keynote speaker, award-nominated author, post-trauma coach, and radio show host. To learn more about how you can be a friend to yourself by healing your past visit, ChangeYouChoose.com. 

Follow Michele Rosenthal on Twitter @ChangeYouChoose. Connect with her on Facebook: Michele Rosenthal, plus the Heal My PTSD fan page. 
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Everything starts and ends with Me ….Still talking about it

You make your own definitions of Me, self, and friendship. This is mine I share because it is friendly to Me. It is not meant to be a template.

I am the bride of Christ. When I speak of Me, I speak as one claimed by Love and in Love. When I speak of Me, I speak of this person I am in that complex union, dynamic and without lines. My self is the same as to say, Me with Christ and Christ with Me.

Using the term, Me, is a general term for that part that remains in each of us that is timeless, unchanged by trauma or indignity. The Me describes who you or I are still in any dimension or medical condition. The Me does not depend on a heart beat.

Being a friend to yourself means believing and treating yourself in ways that are consistent with your belief that although we are victimized in life, being the victim is a free choice. We are free to choose.

Out of this, our friendship grows to include the truth that we accountable to ourselves. We don’t look for nidus of control outside of our friend, Me.

Our friendship grows further to include presence with our personal journey, which in turn heightens our presence with what connections we share with others. These connections naturally require bank to generate and maintain and bank, as in any country, requires hard work. To serve others demands funds, even emotional and behavioral funds, physical funds and sociological.

Everything starts and ends with Me. (Refer to above.)

Question: What is your “Me, self, and friendship?” Please tell us. I’d love love to hear.

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Guest Post by Michael Cornwall PhD – Bandaid Your Emotional Injury

The Brain Limbic System

Image via Wikipedia

The physical home of emotion – the limbic area, is located in the center-region of the brain. The limbic system consists of a series of interconnected structures that include the frontal area, the hippocampus, amygdala, hypothalamus (anterior thalamic nuclei), septum, limbic cortex and fornix.  It is believed that these structures support a variety of cognitive, emotive, behavioral and biological functions including emotional behavior and long-term memory often necessary for emotional behavior to occur.

It is NOT essential for you, the reader, to know the names and functions of these structures – although it could benefit you.  Knowing that there are anatomical, electro-bio-chemical and hormonal correlations between your emotions and your brain is, however, critical to improving your emotional intelligence. Although you may decide not to know these structures, you will have to remember, at minimum, where your emotions live.

Your emotions live in your head.

More specifically, your emotions are an expression of your thoughts.

Without thought, you would have no emotion.

If you wish to change your emotion, you will have to change your thinking.

The limbic neighborhood, when in balance, can be described as resting.  While at rest, however, it can be instantaneously energized by thought and perception in an all-out effort to protect the body from real or perceived harm or the threat of harm. The stress response will cooperate with your thinking and automatically release neurochemicals and hormones into the bloodstream that are intent on providing the fuel you will need to protect yourself  from real or perceived threat. You can expect a sudden increase in heart rate, perspiration, flushing of the skin, hair standing on end, etc. All designed by Nature to give you the strength, energy and focus to run away very quickly, fight very bravely or just to freeze, motionless, in the hopes you will appear unthreatening to your attacker.

Let’s find a more familiar image to understand this phenomenon.

Imagine that you have a paper cut.

Blood flows from the cut, no matter how much you are against that from happening.

It is an automatic response to injury.

You can commit to do something about the cut by attending to it. You might wash it, put it in your mouth or cover it with a Band-Aid (or plaster).  Your effort to stop the bleeding will likely shorten the time the wound is active and susceptible to infection. While attending to the cut, you commit to memory how the accident occurred and tell yourself how to avoid similar injuries in the future. Injury and trauma are, in many ways, opportunities for learning.

But how does cutting your finger and attending to it compare to the expression and remediation of emotion?

Your perception of an event as threatening or dangerous is like injuring the nuclei of your brain.  Your thoughts activate a response in the brain that starts an automatic flow of neurochemicals and hormones into the bloodstream. These hormones and neurochemicals:

  1. Increase heart rate and blood pressure;
  2. Dilate the pupils;
  3. Constrict the veins in skin and send more blood to major muscle groups;
  4. Increase blood-glucose levels;
  5. Tense up the muscles that have been energized by adrenaline and glucose;
  6. Relax smooth muscles in order to allow more oxygen into the lungs;
  7. Shuts down the digestion and immune system to allow more energy for emergency functions; and
  8. Improves the ability to focus on the task of determining the location of the threat and how to respond to it.

Much like cutting your finger, there is an automatic flow of neurochemicals and hormones into the bloodstream that happens without your consent.  Similar to tending a paper cut, you can be a passive observer or you can actively respond by providing wound care.

You can put a Band-Aid on your emotional injury.

Here I will provide you with some self-care techniques and suggestions.

First, it should be noted that if the injury to the emotional areas of your brain were visible – if the flow of neurochemicals and hormones rushing here and there inside your head could be observed, rather than having it all happen deep inside your skull, you may be more active in responding to it, without all this comparison to a paper cut.

Instead, we will just have to imagine and increase our awareness of the phenomenon.

Wounds inflicted by thought require as much attention and enthusiasm for treatment as an injury to skin or bone.  We might imagine the paradigm from the following perspective:

  1. An Event Occurs: “You did a horrible job!”
  2. An Injury Results from Thinking About the Event: “You have no right to talk to me like that! I am a good employee.  I am a good person. I should be treated better.  It is awful that you are treating me this way.  I need your approval in order to be happy in my life.”
  3. An Automatic Protective Response Results from Thinking:   Your threatening thoughts instigate the flow of neurochemicals and hormones into your bloodstream, causing your body to go into a protective mode (a stress response).  These chemical will flow for some period of time specific to you.  The longer you ruminate about your perceived threat, however, the longer the chemicals will remain flowing through your bloodstream. It could be minutes, months or even years (chronic stress).  If you do not tend to the wound, you will be susceptible to infection, fatigue and a continued loss of homeostasis and likely reopen the wound each and every time you encounter the same or a similar misfortune.
  4. Attention to Thinking: “I am not in danger.  I am viewing this situation as threatening. I don’t have to view the situation as threatening.  I can view it as unfortunate. It is unfortunate that I am being talked to this way.  It is regrettable that I am being criticized this way.  I am being treated badly and that is difficult, but it is not awful. I can stand it and I will.  I can express my concerns.  I have a right to ask for respect, but I have no right to get it. I don’t need approval in order to be happy in my life.  It would be nice to have approval, but it certainly isn’t a necessary element of my continued happiness.”
  5. Interfering with the Flow of Neurochemicals and Hormones: Using more rational thought is the essential part of attending to the emotional wound.  It is also the first step toward improving emotional intelligence.
  6. The fact that the hormones and neurochemicals are already in your bloodstream will present some problem.  Although you may be thinking more rationally, your physical body will need time to readjust and return to balance.
  7. Be assured that these hormones and neurochemicals will dissipate, if you stop them from flowing using more rational thought.
  8. Your new thinking will eventually win over the process and you will be free of these toxic substances.  At least until you encounter misfortune, again – something you can certainly expect.
  9. To encourage the return to balance, you may breathe deeply, stimulating your vagus nerves.
  10. Breathing deeply (through your mouth, into the pit of the stomach and out your mouth) sends a message to the brain that all is well and that it is safe for the body to return to balance.

The next time you encounter some perceived danger or harm, try these techniques and suggestions.  How did it work for you?  Would it help to keep the suggestions in your purse or wallet, for when you find yourself in the middle of misfortune and want a quick guide?

Michael Cornwall, PhD  is an author, lecturer, clinical supervisor, educator and child behavior therapist in private practice.  In our community, you may know him as the author of blog, Emotional Intelligence Theory.

(502) 564-4321 x 2008

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Today on Radio in Summary

Amateur radio station with multiple receivers ...

Thank you Michele Rosenthal at HealMyPtsd.com, and to all who listened in on my first radio interview on being a FTY – Friend to Yourself.  What fun.  It was sweet and to the point.

We discussed using the marker of the new year to commit to this and see what 2012 brings differently from before.  This is freeing, as being our own friend is not selfish but rather the most selfless thing we can offer.  How it is done by starting with Me; the starting and ending point of all intentions in our life.  Knowing that we cannot give what we don’t have, that we cannot indulge the pleasures outside of ourselves such as adjustment and coping skills if we don’t have the Me to do it with (preferably a healthy me) and knowing that going where we find shame in our lives can free us up to get friendly with the rest of Me.  This knowledge helps us find the “how.”

To make being a friend to Me an easier process, leave the injustices of our lives alone, leave the sentiment of wanting happiness, of wanting what we should have gotten or been.  To make Me my own friend easier, do what any friend would do – the hard stuff.  The stuff that good-time-Jane won’t stick around for and the stuff that only Love can follow through with – do this.  That’s as easy as it will get and as hard as it will get.

We can do this.

Question:  Looking toward 2012, how would you change the direction of your intention and energy to be more of a friend to yourself?  What do you think you will experience differently if you do?  Please tell us and connect.

Thank you dear Carl d’Agostino for calling in, boosting my confidence and saying without saying it, “You are not alone.”  I’m still smiling.