Tag Archives: Healing

Abuse & Neglect, Anxiety, Coping Behaviors, Depression, God, Healing, love, Overcoming, Pain, PTSD, Rejection, Relationships, Trauma, Uncategorized, Victims

LOVE, WHAT IS IT?

Leave a comment

This question has haunted philosophers through the ages. Kierkegaard said love should focus on the person being loved first and foremost. Martin Buber said love was something more significant than affect – not a static feeling, but a dynamic state of being lived in the present. He also said we look for our soul mate to complete what we lack and silence the deep loneliness and feeling of separateness. Some have defined it as feelings of deep romantic or sexual attachment to someone. With all of these, sadly and strangely, we can end up with throw-away love relationships missing more mature and developing love. Psychology has defined it as a complex emotion involving strong feelings of affection and tenderness for the love object.

I have a different understanding of love. I see love as an ACTION based on decisions we make about ourselves, others, and God. It is a choice of what kind of person we want to be. Nice? Mean? Loving? Bitter? Kind? Caring? Want to make a difference in this life? Or getting and taking everything we can in life? The bottom line is, are we going to love or not? One brings love and hope, the other pain, selfishness, and sorrow.

Love is a choice of wanting the highest level of good for ourselves, others, and the world – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Choosing to love with agape love makes actions happen for the higher good of all life. Healing is one of those choices. In its highest form, agape love is God’s love which always wants our highest good.

When we love, we gain the following gifts:

  1. It helps release pain and bitterness.
  2. Help others and the world heal and be less violent.
  3. Make a difference and help others to do so too.
  1. What is love to you?
  2. What kind of person have you decided to be?
  3. When did you feel the love that helped you to heal and grow?

Please share these to help others heal. Also, I am a speaker, invite me!

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

GOD AND HEALING

Leave a comment

Where does God come into the healing journey? Does He sit in Heaven and just watch us suffer? Does He help? Close His eyes? Pretend everything is okay? Laugh at us? Does God even care at all about us and our desperate need to heal?

Here is what I know. We cannot heal at the deeper levels without God. God walked every suffering, painful step of my healing journey with me. I was never left alone and neither are you. You are His child He dearly loves. He cannot abandon any of us because it is against His rules. He never leaves our side, even though we may not sense Him anywhere near

God gave humans the gift of free will, and sadly, we often choose to use it to do the wrong thing, like trauma and evil. He cries, gets angry, and is sorry we were hurt. God feels everything we feel with us.

When I work with people, I can bring my knowledge, understanding, and compassion as a psychotherapist. I can bring techniques I have learned that help people heal. I do not have psychic powers to heal people. Only God heals. His healing, love, and touch are powerful and specific to each of us and our needs. All we have to do is ask, listen, and follow His leading as we heal.

As a psychotherapist, I could not help people heal as I do without God leading me at every step. God is the healer. If someone tells you they are a healer, become suspicious. God wants to heal and free us with love and peace. God wants our highest good.

  1. Do you believe in God? A higher power?
  2. Do you trust Him? Mistrust Him?
  3. Are you willing to ask Him to help you heal?

Even if you do not believe in Him, He believes in you.  Just ask.

Please share these to help others heal. Also, I am a speaker, invite me!

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

WE CAN HEAL

Leave a comment

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

Leave a comment

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, Healing, Overcoming, Pain, Rejection, Transcender, Trauma, Trauma Healing, Uncategorized, Victims, War

TO HEAL OR NOT TO HEAL

Leave a comment

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

Leave a comment

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, God, Healing, Human Trafficking, Neglect, Overcoming, Pain, Relationships, Transcender, Trauma, Uncategorized, Victims, VIRUS, wholeness

FEAR AND HELP

Leave a comment

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, God, Healing, Human Trafficking, Neglect, Overcoming, Pain, Relationships, Transcender, Trauma, Uncategorized, Victims, War, wholeness

STAGES OF LONELINESS

Leave a comment

The Experience of Loneliness

Loneliness seems to be a constantly companion in our survival journey. There are moments or seasons of our lives where it doesn’t seem so bad, then it surfaces like an additional punishment until we deal with it. Loneliness has feelings of being lost, afraid, sad, depression, desperation, defective, rejection, and other feelings. All of them need to felt, processed and learned from.

Tom said it this way:

“I can’t keep pretending! I can’t! I am lonely! Horribly lonely and there is no escape! I can’t escape me! I am the one that is bad and terrible because I don’t have any friends. Actually, if I am honest, I never really did. I knew I wasn’t okay and that is why I didn’t have any friends. There was a time when I was raising my children when it didn’t seem so bad. But since then it has come back to punish me. Now I’ve carried that awful pain into adulthood and I don’t let anyone close to me because they will know how awful I am and defective. I really don’t know how to be a friend. I have come to accept that I will be lonely the rest of my life.” (Tom came to accept his loneliness as permanent, until he did his healing work.)

I have wondered about loneliness, are the existentialist right? Are we destined to travel our lives alone with intense loneliness? With loneliness comes depression, anger, hurt and tangles around everything in our lives. We may blame others when we are lonely – Why aren’t they there for me? Where are they? They don’t care! Don’t they know I am hurting and so alone and lonely. If they would just…. But that never takes the pain away. We can be alone and be okay. We can be in a crowded room and be intensely lonely. It is a journey.

Here are the seven stages of loneliness I have come to understand.  It will take a few blogs to get them all in. Like grief the stages are not rigid, it is a process.

Parts of Loneliness

  1. Feeling lonely. This stage demands we acknowledge it and then feel it. We can’t out run it, it is inside of us. Its pain can drive us to do things we would not otherwise do such as: alcohol/drugs; promiscuous; travel (run); become bitter/angry; divorce; isolate self; never be alone; abuse; and the list goes on. The ultimate running away is suicide. Suicidal thoughts are not unusual when feeling loneliness or on the healing journey. Please never act on them and get help immediately. There is hope!

 

Reminder: Breaking Free from Trauma Class. Every third Thursday in Muskegon.  Also Live-Streamed.

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

Pride, Business and Loneliness

Leave a comment

Pride, Business and Loneliness

This pride is sometimes true sometimes a survival skills that works to boast our confidence and self-perception. It like all survival skills work to keep us going. Often it is based on things we think others will like in us or looking perfect. Perfect does not exist and is based on others illusion of what perfection is. So we work hard to show others we are not only okay but wonderful in whatever area of our life. It works to cover our pain.

It helps us gain just a little something to feel a little bit better about ourselves when we don’t. I may pretend I can do something or know more than what it know. I may work hard to look fantastic and still not like the way I look because I am not perfect. I can get a lot of certifications and degrees, but insecurity, shame, feeling defective is still there are part of the loneliness.

In reality, I have raised myself. I have failed in that task because I am lonely and hurting. I worked so hard to have people look up to me to show them I am okay. I had to prove them, actually to myself, that I am not the shame and not defective. I have to prove to you that I am acceptable, okay and not the messed up person I know me to be inside. I am really fragmented, shattered, and not repairable. I will never show you that part of me, the real me.

I am trying to fix myself, heal and be whole. I keep failing at that too. I can’t fix me. The shame has done its damage. I am shattered into a million pieces of sharp glass. When I go to pick up a piece to examine it and work to heal, I bleed profusely and end up in a pool of my own blood for days….

Under it all is insecurity, shame, pain and the horrible loneliness that drains me of every ounce of life energy. I guess I will always be less than, always less than. I am ready to lay down in the glass and let the glass do its damage. I am tired, worn out, weary. I can’t keep going. There is nothing left to fight with, nothing.

Somehow, I lift myself up one more time. Lord I collapse at Your feet in the millions of pieces of sharp cutting glass bleeding profusely laying in a pool of my own blood. I am done and I can’t do this anymore. Only You can. Do what You will. Have mercy on me, please.

Pride can help us get through. We sometimes work to become proud of what we do and what we know. It gives us the confidence we need to keep going. If we busy, we think we will look important. If I look important then I am OK. It often is just trying to keep going. Or maybe our way of running away from our loneliness. It may also be our fear of our real self, fear we are not OK and not wanting anyone to know. (see chapter…)

We should have be raised to know ourselves and the amazing person God created us to be with all the gifts and abilities. Then we would have confidence and grounding in who we really are. Then we would not need pride to boast us up. So we may create things to be proud of in ourselves or stay busy, real busy so we see ourselves as needed and wanted. Then I must be okay!

What do I do with these feelings and pain? Again, we I have to feel the feeling fully and gain the wisdom they offer. When we do that, our body releases the pain, our  heads  clear and we  gain strength.

PLEASE REMEMBER THE THREE RULES OF FEELING FEELING FULLY:

  1. CAN’T HURT YOURSELF
  2. CAN’T HURT SOMETHING ALIVE – PLANTS, ANIMALS, PEOPLE  ( includes not yelling or raging at them)
  3. CAN’T DAMAGE PROPERTY YOU DON’T WANT TO DAMAGE

In other words keep you, others and living things safe!

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

Reacting to Loneliness

Leave a comment

Ok so how do we deal with it?  It is painful, awful and I want to run from it.  When I decided to write about loneliness, my old ever helpful, maybe not healthy, protective survival skills surfaced trying to keep me away from the pain. That is that systems job in me – to keep me away from the feelings so I can keep going. BUT I came to a place where I couldn’t keep going.

 

My fears  surfaced! I was going to do what? Face my loneliness in a way that reveals it to the world? No way! But yes, that is what I am doing because I want to help you heal and grow and not be afraid of your feelings. I want you to know, like me, you can feel them, and release the pain that is in you and heal. Feelings are here to help us, all of them, even loneliness and have much to teach us.

Preparing to write often takes days, sometimes weeks. I don’t’ usually just sit down and wow it is there! As Clark Moustakas said, we have an incubation time where we immerse ourselves in the experience.  So I had to and needed to feel the pain of my loneliness. It came up like a vengeance. I hurt in a way I didn’t think was possible. I was intensely lonely and terrified. I isolated. I silently judged and was critical of everything and anyone. I was edgy and nervous. I forced myself to smile at people, but was a fake. The pain and loneliness colored everything and not in a good way.

Deep inside, where I really lived, I was desperate for someone to help me, to reach out to say something like – How are you really doing? Someone to just come and give me a hug, a “just because you need it hug”, hug. A few did, but they did not come close to touching where I was living in all my pain. But it was a lifeline. But truthfully and sadly, nothing really would have helped, because I really didn’t know what I needed. How like loneliness. We can’t be reached because we have walled ourselves off so we won’t be hurt. But we have to let people in to not hurt and be reached. There is no winning in this, except to feel the feeling fully until they aren’t anymore.

 What do we do with it?

We have to embrace loneliness and make it our friend or be destroyed by it. We can make it go away by being busy, pretending, addictions, etc., but at some point it will surface. When we embrace it, we learn, grow and heal at a deeper level. My loneliness taught me and helped me heal at a deep level I didn’t know existed. Thank God for being with me each step of the way!

Sometimes we think we have felt enough, but it just isn’t going away. At those times, we may judge us and think “I must be doing something wrong or I would not be feeling all this pain.” “I goofed.” “I am the bad, terrible person.” “I didn’t work hard enough or I would be out of this pain.” Something is still so wrong so very wrong with me because I can’t heal.” Here was mine: “Here I am supposed to teach others about healing and I am still in horrible pain. Yes I get! I need to feel and learn about it to help others, but enough is enough!” None of these are usually true. If we keep on the healing journey, we will heal.

Allow yourself to gain an understanding and compassion for and about you. We get this as we feel and go through the pain. I needed to face the pain of my decades of loneliness and gain its gifts. This writing  is one of those gifts for me.