Tag Archives: Abuse

Abuse & Neglect, Coping Behaviors, Healing, Overcoming, Pain, Rejection, Relationships, Transcender, Trauma Healing, Uncategorized, Victims

WE CAN HEAL

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We can HEAL!! First, we must make the powerful decision to heal. We make the decision that we are tired of and no longer want the pain, anxiety, and loneliness and choose not to let anything or any person, including us, stop us. If life circumstances interfere, which can happen, we stop and handle the situation and then return to our healing journey.

We must choose to develop every aspect of our authentic self – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual because we have a mind, body, and spirit, which are all affected by trauma.

Here is the secret:

WHEN WE FEEL, WE HEAL. The process is simple. It is not easy. To heal, we must fully feel all our feelings until we no longer feel them inside us – pain, sorrow, grief, anger, hurt, and fear.

Our feelings accumulate physically in our cells in the neuropeptides because we could not feel them during trauma and had to keep working to survive and keep going. As we feel all the stored feelings, love, joy, and light does come.

All our feelings are wonderful. They give us 30-50% of the information from our world we need to make a good decision. But we NEVER make a decision based on how we feel unless we are in danger.

Our bodies have an excellent healing system given to us by God. When we start to feel, it clicks on and helps us feel even if we do not know how! To heal, all we have to do is to feel the feeling fully and appropriately. God knew we would need this part of our spirituality in this challenging world.

  1. How did you handle your feelings when you were traumatized?
  2. What have you been taught about your feelings?
  3. Are you afraid to feel your feelings?

In the next post, I will share how to feel your feelings keeping everyone safe appropriately.

Abuse & Neglect, Coping Behaviors, Human Trafficking, Overcoming, Pain, Rejection, Relationships, Transcender, Trauma, Trauma Healing, Uncategorized, Victims, War

IN THE BEGINNING

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When do we need to seek the help of a psychotherapist/counselor? When our lives have been hard, painful, and lonely, we can’t work, want to give up, run away from everything, can’t function, sleep all the time, have poor relationships with ourselves and others, and if we become suicidal. (If you are, call for help immediately and call 988.) 

At the beginning of the healing journey, we are scared, sometimes almost to being terrified. Will I find myself? Will I like myself? Am I damaged beyond any hope? But the pain and loneliness drive us forward with fantastic courage with that bit of hope that healing can happen. And it can!

We, not anyone else, must choose the decision to heal. No one else can make the decision, only us. That hope gives us a glimmer that we may have the life we have always dreamed of having. Perhaps we can have friends who do not hurt and betray us. Maybe, just maybe, I can find the real me and like me.

The fear sometimes stops us one, two, or more times. Then we break through and get into psychotherapy and start healing. Please remember this about healing:

  1.  Healing will take the time it needs. Be patient with yourself. Love yourself to health.
  2. Healing follows steps but will be individualized according to your needs and life. You will learn in the journey you can trust yourself more and more. Sometimes we have learned from the trauma we can’t trust ourselves.
  3. We do not need to know how to heal. That is the work and knowledge the therapist has and will guide and teach you.
  4. It is okay to change therapists if the one you have does not help you the way you need. This does not mean they are not good. It means they are the right fit for you. Please don’t therapist hop, going from therapist to therapist. Sometimes this us, us avoiding us, doing the hard work of healing.
  1. Are you tired of the pain and loneliness and ready to heal? Make the phone call to a therapist.
  2. If you are ready but have not called, what is stopping you? Fix it.
  3. Are you doing the healing work of feeling your feelings? Great!
Abuse & Neglect, Coping Behaviors, God, Healing, Overcoming, Pain, Rejection, Relationships, Transcender, Trauma, Trauma Healing, Uncategorized, Victims, War

WHAT DO WE NEED TO HEAL?

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We are mind, body, and spirit and must work to heal all areas of trauma damaged. Trauma can come from a spiritual place such as a church, temple, religious people, cults, etc. Maybe we were physically, mentally, verbally, and/or sexually abused and neglected by parents, relatives, teachers, coaches, neighbors, and “friends,” etc. Sadly, today, people have become victims regardless of age or circumstance.

The trauma we experience may also be generational – trauma runs in our families for many generations. Trauma may be circumstantial, that is, in our particular family, neighborhood, etc. To heal, we must heal in all areas. The following are the areas and how it affects us. We can heal! It is our decision.

Body:

Medical research has documented that trauma affects our physical body function adversely, causing – autoimmune diseases, depression, anxiety, heart disease, long-term chronic diseases, poor concentration, stroke, brain effects, diabetes, etc.

Mind:

Mental and emotional trauma can cause depression, anxiety, flashbacks, hypervigilance, confusion, poor relationships, dissociation, blunted affect, numbness to feelings, exhaustion, agitation, bitterness, long-term grief, etc. This damage then affects all areas

Spiritual:

Our spirituality is the core of our existence. We are spiritual being having a human experience in a hard school called life. So spiritual trauma can cause a lack of faith, destroy hope, create distance /fear/anger at God, feel abandoned and/or punished by God, loss of purpose and meaning in our lives, lose any purpose for living, destroy any power or authority for our lives, develop a poor basis for values and/or goals, loss of direction, cause existential depression, cause damage to relationships, create shame and worthlessness, and leave us with insecurity and low self-confidence.

  1. How were you traumatized?
  2. What effects do you still suffer from the trauma?
  3. What choices can you make for yourself now?
Abuse & Neglect, Coping Behaviors, Healing, Overcoming, Pain, Rejection, Transcender, Trauma, Trauma Healing, Uncategorized, Victims, War

TO HEAL OR NOT TO HEAL

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When do we need to seek the help of a psychotherapist/counselor? When our lives have been hard, painful, lonely, can’t work, want to give up, want to run away from everything, can’t function, sleep all the time, have poor relationships with self and others, and if you become suicidal. (If you are suicidal, call for help immediately! Call 988.) 

More descriptions of when we need to seek help to heal from trauma:

  1. Depressed and/or anxious for 6 months or more
  2. Feeling worthless and of no value
  3. Constant loneliness
  4. Nightmares
  5. Anxiety/panic attacks
  6. Flashbacks
  7. Grieving beyond the usual intensity and length
  8. Hating ourselves and others
  9. Angry and bitter
  10. Jealous of everything and one
  11. Trauma of any kind can include neglect, poverty, gangs, isolation, scapegoating, war, rejection, etc.
  12. Abused – mentally, physically, emotionally, sexually, and spiritually.
  13. Neglected
  14. Shame filled
  15. Social anxiety
  16. Changing between depression and manic moods
  17. Hallucinations, delusions

Because we hurt, it feels awful being us. We have pain, loneliness, and no hope.  It is time to find a good psychotherapist. In my book, If Marie Did It, So Can I! How to survive, heal and transcend abuse and neglect, I outline how to find a high-quality therapist. You can heal, get out of pain and learn to like yourself.

  1. How many of the above do you have?
  2. How long have you been in pain and loneliness?
  3. Were you traumatized? How?

Abuse, Abuse & Neglect, Brain and Trauma, Coping Behaviors, God, Healing, Masks, Pain, Relationships, Transcender, Trauma, Uncategorized, VIRUS, War

Masks and Racism

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Psychologist here. Well, where are we now? The virus and all its challenges we thought was lifting and we thought life would come to a new better normal. Now, we have riots, racism that has been underground for decades. Now the virus is escalating. Now we have no clue what the politically right words are to use any more.  BUT all of it needed to surface like our trauma that is buried deep in the community so we can heal. Otherwise the darkness and all its pain in world go deep and infect us. This includes hatred, pain, fear and lies to name a few. We have to look at ourselves and see where we can make a difference and change our world.

The damage of racism is deep, old and full of fear. It is a place to put our insecurities, fear, anger, hurt and hatred. When we can blame and dump our stuff on someone else, then we sadly feel better and superior so we don’t deal with our stuff. Repeated thoughts and feelings create permanent neuron paths so racism is usually well entrenched physically in our brains so we have to WORK at changing it. We have to WORK at being kind and caring. My parents were racist due to culture and ignorance. I chose to do better for me and my children which meant I had to change deeply imprinted hate messages to God’s love messages. It took work!

And now to masks which is more complicated than it appears. That tiny mask is loaded feelings, beliefs, thoughts, hurts, sadness and tons of FEAR and ANGER!! We are afraid and angry about ours and the world’s situation. Basically, we can do nothing to be in control or change it, or in our world for that matter, except for the choice to wear or not. Our fear says we have lost control and there is no safe place in the world. Our little mask becomes something we can control. There are many reasons to wear or not so there is constant debate about it.

What is the answer? Feeling our feelings fully and APPROPRIATELY. NEVER act out on your feelings. Never hurt anyone because you are feeling. Seek God. He loves you dearly even if it does not seem like it. He is the only one that can fix and save us and our world. God helps us with the hard choices of choosing to be kinder and reaching out to help others. No laws are going to make the changes we need, only God can save us from ourselves.

 

Abuse, Abuse & Neglect, Coping Behaviors, Healing, Neglect, Overcoming, Pain, Relationships, Transcender, Trauma, Uncategorized, Victims, VIRUS, wholeness

LEARNING FROM THE VIRUS

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The more we are in this time of seclusion the more I am wondering what it is we are supposed to learn.  I am to learn more patience? I personally never wanted to learn it, but God in His wisdom knew I would need it. BUT patience gives us the time to evaluate a situation to make better choices and wait to not act out on my frustration or anger. Actually, frustration is a kissing cousin to anger. We need time to feel our feelings appropriately so we don’t just do what just “feels” right.

I realize this virus is getting to me. I wanted to get rid of something and it was very heavy, took it to the store and found out they would not take it when they usually do! I reacted with I am going to make you feel sorry for me so you will do what I need. Didn’t work. Afterwards, feeling my feelings of frustration and then my need in comparison to keeping the people working safe, my need was not important.

I realize my reaction was a direct connection to the world’s virus. I was and am tired of “putting up with all this.” I want what I want and want it now! This is enough I have tried to kind, patient, sweet, helpful…. I’m done!” Whew! Yup! That is what came and maybe true for many of you. The bottom line was I needed to do my feeling work which has been building in me– the frustration, anger and fear.  Being short with the store person was not okay. He did not need or deserve my reaction and my attempt to get what I wanted. He deserved kindness and understanding.

Most everyone in this world is struggling, hurting and scared at some level, maybe they can’t see even any hope for the future. We need to pull together as a world community. Stop criticizing and help each other. I you don’t like the way something is happening, what can YOU do to change it. Our complaining, being upset, criticizing people from the president on down hurts us and the world. Gratitude, kindness and understanding puts loving and wonderful healing energy into our world. Criticism puts anger, hurt, and fear into this world. So, that is our choice. Which side are you going to be on?

It is a hard time in the world, we are going to get out of it. Yes, our world will be different, it has to be. I have to become more caring, kind, thoughtful and thankful; not angry and spiteful. We have to share and realize we are not going to get our way from politics to a corner store. We have to learn to see the viewpoint from others point of view. To agree to disagree. The hatred in this county is destroying us individually and as a country.

We can all make a difference. Do something to help someone or support the people who are doing something.  We have to pull together, learn and grow. That is what life is, and we grow and learn when we hurt and struggle.

Blessing and safety everyone

 

 

Abuse, Abuse & Neglect, Coping Behaviors, God, Healing, Human Trafficking, Neglect, Overcoming, Pain, Relationships, Transcender, Trauma, Uncategorized, Victims, VIRUS, wholeness

FEAR AND HELP

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For those of us who have been traumatized, this virus may be triggering old fear. We may find ourselves becoming more vigilant and trying to stay safe. Sadly, there is not safe place now, no place to hide or escape to. The virus has permeated our lives from what we do, shopping, relationships, etc.

Before we could sometimes escape, run, hide, stay away; sometimes we just had to endure. Now, with this virus, we are enduring. That creates pain deep inside of us and possibly a panic to run anywhere to escape, but there is no place to go. Which leaves us in the pain and trying to escape it other ways, such as self-harm, drugs/alcohol, hurting others, etc.

I am reaching out to those individuals who relate to the above pain or to those who are caring for them or are in some kind of relationship with those individuals. This is important. YOU WILL GET THROUGH THIS! Please get help.

If, however, you are in a situation where you or your children are being abused because you can’t get out or away, there is help. Hotlines, police, someone you trust. There is help. Or contact me and I will contact someone to help.

This time is difficult but help is still available.  If you were abused and old memories and feelings are being triggered, surfacing again, call a therapist, a counselor and get going on your healing. Yes, healing is painful, hard and I wish we never had to do it, BUT if we have been traumatized, we HAVE TO HEAL! And when we heal, we find freedom, joy, love and we come to know it wasn’t our fault.  We also discover we like ourselves versus hating ourselves! That is often seen as a miracle. Another amazing thing are the gifts that God gives us when we heal! We always gain wisdom from healing! I love the wisdom! That is special knowledge that helps us get through life.

Please get the help you need. It is available even in these tough times.

Blessings, peace and healing.

Abuse, Abuse & Neglect, Coping Behaviors, Overcoming, Pain, Trauma, Uncategorized

FEELINGS AND THE VIRUS

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I just came back from a walk on my favorite lake, Lake Michigan. Yesterday it was a beautiful day and totally blue skies. The Lake was gorgeous and light blue. Today when I went, it was another gorgeous day with blue skies, BUT the lake was dark and seemed angry. How does it change like that? It should have been blue like yesterday! Maybe our earth is feeling the effects of the virus too? I don’t know I just know when the skies are blue, so is the lake and it wasn’t. This is like our life right now, it is Spring gorgeous and we in the darkness of this virus.

We are all feeling the effects of the virus – still in the house, battling on the front lines, struggling to get needed supplies and trying to maintain our mood without using alcohol, drugs, yelling or hurting someone. We are feeling irritable, stressed and maybe angry. Our stats for domestic violence and child abuse are up and so is the use for some of alcohol and drugs. Please remember alcohol is one of the most dangerous drugs we have in our world.

So, what do we do with our pent up, fearful, stressful, frustrating, angry feelings? There are three rules to following to feeling our feelings appropriately so we don’t cause damage with them. These apply to all ages of people, all:

  1. Can’t hurt ourselves. No cutting, suicide, alcohol/drugs, etc.
  2. Can’t hurt something alive – plants, animals and PEOPLE! This means no yelling, hitting, etc. Yes, you can pull weeds, LOL!
  3. Can’t damage property you don’t want to damage.

ALL OUR FEELINGS ARE GOOD, WHAT WE DO WITH THEM I GOOD OR BAD! All our feelings teach us about us and our world things we need to know to make a good decision. NEVER, NEVER make a decision based on your feelings unless in a dangerous situation. So, following the three rules we can feel our feelings safely. Here are some examples:

Anger – yell into a pillow, beat a punching bag or something else, fill you sink with water and yell into it, throw a ball against an outside safe wall, write an UNMAILED, UNSENT, letter to someone you are mad at and then destroy it. DO NOT WRITE ON EMAIL OR FACEBOOK, INSTANT GRAM, OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT.

Sadness and Loneliness -cry, talk to someone on the phone or online, reach out to someone alone, etc. Fear – feeling the feeling of fear needs us to relax into it, feel it and learn from it.

Blessings and safety to everyone.

Abuse, Abuse & Neglect, Coping Behaviors, God, Healing, Human Trafficking, Neglect, Overcoming, Pain, Relationships, Transcender, Trauma, Uncategorized, Victims, VIRUS, War, wholeness

FORGIVENESS AND THE VIRUS

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This blog may be hard for some people but very very important. These days of uncertainty we don’t know when a person may die. Don’t know if we will have a chance to say goodbye, or even have a chance to, without saying we’re sorry or forgive them before it is too late. We may not even be able to have a funeral. Please hear this, please.

So many times, I have worked with people and helped to comfort them when they are in deep deep sorrow and loss of someone, they really did love BUT became angry for whatever reason, in hindsight these reasons are never important. Or they decided to distance themselves from these people in their lives because they decided never to forgive them. I am not talking about situations where there is danger.

This is also true of the other way when people decide that we have done something so horrible so awful that they can’t forgive us and they decide to punish us for years. And there’s nothing that we can do to change it no matter hard we try.

It may sound like “I will never love you.” “you will never be welcomed in my home again.” ‘I will never talk to you again.” “You will never see your grandchildren again.” They My have believe lies about us that others or family members have said. Or they may create lies about us and get others to believe them.

It could be that WE choose to keep our distance physically, mentally and emotionally and not talk to them or share with them or share our lives with them. And we decide not to be around them. But whatever the reason or whoever does it is because they or we decide they or we are hurt. This may be true or not true. Or we couldn’t handle any more pain from them. Or they couldn’t handle any more pain from us.

At this point I am saying to you is it does not matter. What matters is bringing peace and healing to the situation. Healing is all that matters and is all that is important. Holding on to old hurts or pains or things you don’t like about somebody is wrong. We all goof, we all make mistakes and we all need to and have to forgive to be free of pain.

So, the pain and anger are handled all the wrong ways. We have to feel our feelings fully and appropriately, we do not hurt something else alive like people or animals. Hurt only causes more hurt and pain. It never feels good it never does what we think it should do like hurt somebody else that has hurt us.

Whatever has happened this is a time of forgiveness. Forgive them. Ask for forgiveness, forgiveness has an absolute miracle in it that God has put there for us. The three words” I am sorry.” And “Forgive me.” Are some of the most powerful words that can ever be said. Please, please hear me, please don’t let another day go by without bringing forgiveness in a situation that you may have hurt and pain and anger in it. This is so important.

If you choose, God forbid, not to do this then you may live with major regrets for the rest of your life. Those regrets don’t heal for a long long time and are very painful. You may become bitter for the rest of your life. Medical research says holding on to hurt anger, etc. hurts our physical body and we will get sick and die early.

Reach out to those people in your life where there has been conflict, hurt, anger, and unforgiveness. People that you need to forgive. People you need to ask forgiveness from. The miracle of forgiveness is so powerful it changes our and other’s lives.

Sadly, if the other person will not respond they choose to stay angry, God still has the miracle of forgiveness for you and will bring you peace. Still forgive. Don’t hesitate, Risk everything to do this. It helps you, others your family and it help the world to have less anger in it, and help everyone to heal.

Praying for all of you. Peace and blessings

Abuse, Abuse & Neglect, Coping Behaviors, God, Healing, Human Trafficking, Neglect, Overcoming, Pain, Relationships, Transcender, Trauma, Uncategorized, Victims, War, wholeness

STAGES OF LONELINESS CONTINUED

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The stages of loneliness continue in this blog. Remember, like grief stages, these may occur in random order.

2. Bitterness – Painful Feelings channeled. When we do not deal with our painful feelings, they may fill up and spill over and come out in ways we never intended. One of those ways is becoming bitter. When this happens, we may feel helpless and not have any survival skills that are working. The painful feeling turn into anger and we lash out at others.

This is a big one because we become someone usually, we do not like. Bitterness can consume us. We may seek vengeance. Again, when we don’t do our feeling work by feeling our feelings fully, they build up affect all aspects of our lives.

When I have become bitter, there is nothing okay in my life, everything is wrong, horrible and I feel like I want to lash out at anyone and everyone. Everyone is fair game.

I may even rationalize that it is everyone else’s fault and blame everyone for everything. I am critical, angry and obnoxious. This drives people further away and create more loneliness, the more loneliness the more bitterness. Often loneliness is so intense, the person gives up trying to be around people and isolates, which leads to more depression, fears, anger and bitterness.

3. Abandonment. A deep-seated fear, terror and panic is abandonment. These feelings are powerful and the core of our survival. As we all know, when we are born, and for many years as children, we have to have others taking care of us. HAVE TO! Or we will not literally survive. We will die. This is genetically ingrained in us. So, when we are abused/ neglected the fear is triggered and we know we will not make it. This is a primal fear. I then combine with the sadness that no one is there for us. We then have loneliness and terror of the most profound kind, literally- survival. This is a deep, deep seated terror because life always strives to live.

Underneath the loneliness is the fear, terror. It is part of the trauma, yes, but it is also part of the abandonment. We usually learn early that we have to hide the fear or we would get hurt worse. So, our protection system works to keep us away from it so much so we are not aware of it at all. We couldn’t face it, deal with it and keep going. It would have stopped us because it holds devastating truths about our lives.

To deal with this fear, we have to allow ourselves to be in the loneliness. We have to put our protective system on a shelf so we can allow ourselves to feel the feelings and go deep inside of us. Then these powerful feeling of fear surface and we can heal.
They are intense and have worked to take care of us all of our lives. These feelings have worked to protect us from the world as well as from the pain inside of us so we could keep going. I wanted to use ALL my OLD protective survival skills, we never lose them, just don’t need them, usually.  I choose to go after the healing and gifts it had for me. Here is some of getting to the core experience and its entanglement:

They will find out about the real me! Panic! No! Please no! They will then know for sure I am not okay, bad, awful, terrible and defective. They will know am the shame! Why would anyone be around me? I can’t survive! I decided because of what happened to me and how I was treated that I am the problem, actually many people in my family told me that I AM the problem. If I would just change then everything would be better and I would be accepted.  What a lie, it is an illusion on their part, using me as a scapegoat and desperate hope on my part. Since I am not okay, it then follows that people don’t like me because I am not okay and they don’t want to be around me. That is why I am lonely. Its’ all my fault. Whew! What a complicated way to not be okay.

Invitation to Breaking Free from Trauma class every third Thursday in Muskegon , MI. It is Live-Streamed!