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Fleur de Frost
24-11-2015, 06:14 AM
I've been reading a ton of (probably too many) varying angles on handling emotional trauma.

It seems like there are two schools of thought:

1) Let them go, give into the light, and rise above whatever trauma occurred your past. Stay positive. Lift a smile on your face even when you don't feel strong enough. Push your pain down and feel the love and light around you.

2) Feel everything deeply. If you aren't ready to experience happiness in that moment, don't. Favoring the light only represses the darkness, rather than healing its source. Accept the entirety of the emotion.

I know there's no right or wrong way. And, more than likely, I am waaay off in interpreting this so black and white. But is there one way that's healthier for your soul? I understand where both approaches are coming from... just makes it difficult to realize which is most helpful.

Thank you!

Shaunc
24-11-2015, 06:20 AM
I'd go with No1. The past is the past. It can't be changed just accept it and move on.

Mr Interesting
24-11-2015, 05:02 PM
Actually I think both work just as well as each other but it's less about the cure and more about the cause, or not so much even the cause but how we might be holding it in regard to identity.

A trauma that becomes ingrained into our identity, that shapes our reactions to the world and how we live in it, kinda needs the second one and it'll only come to the surface when we might be close to identifying why we might have chosen to be identified by it and so the emotion passing through us, in my experience, lets us feel the depths of that connection and be able to let all those go... or at least as much as we're able to until the finer more subtle connections can too follow the same path of feeling.

Whereas there seems also to be that other trauma which can be a matter of us deciding to let it shape us merely to fit into the world because we've neither the maturity or wisdom to let it go which is to say they are almost cloakings, an outer covering, and these we can see as limiting and just let go of as they are no longer needed.

But this tendency to define cure alls I think diminishes the role of healing and coming to realisations and that we're far better of in the long run developing our own methodologies and I've come to this recently because I've been doing a little teaching with some art stuff and the stuff I've done intuitively has had to become intellectualised and interestingly enough intellectualised to suit each particular personality I'd been working with. What this tells me is that if we take that further there is a tendency to simplify and homogenise that intellectuality as if such will fit every circumstance but it never does and what it comes down to with each and every individual teacher is using the minimum of that intellectuality to get each pupil into finding there own way to process and acclimatise to their own specific talents.

In this regard then we are all our own individual teachers and pupils and it's less about a proscribed set of actions to achieve something and more, for me, about being ourselves and having our own needs and wants understood and believed in as valid than it is about conforming to the outer simplified intellectualities which is almost to say that the trauma is merely there not to be fixed but to engage us in finding out who we are. The fact it's a trauma is almost secondary.

wolfgaze
24-11-2015, 05:29 PM
I've been reading a ton of (probably too many) varying angles on handling emotional trauma.


I strongly recommend exploring the book 'The Untethered Soul' (Michael Singer), if you haven't already read that one....

:redface:

knightofalbion
24-11-2015, 05:34 PM
Forget them or remember them, but either way learn from them.
Life's bitterest lessons are usually the ones that teach us the greatest lessons.

Those with the greatest compassion, understanding and empathy have usually been through life's mill, and though bloodied and bruised, have emerged with something beautiful from it all ...

7luminaries
24-11-2015, 05:46 PM
I think that until we can accept our experiences, and perhaps most importantly our feelings and our wounds from those experiences, we cannot truly transcend or move past them. The trauma will either hold us back unknowingly, or else it will burst through repeatedly until dealt with. I think the phase of ignoring it or keeping it boxed on the shelf is responsible for most of the poor decisions we make in any one lifetime, because we are coming from a place of unacknowledged motivations and poorly understood needs and perspectives.

That is, we can hardly expect to be treated with honesty and transparency when we cannot yet sort (or perhaps even pointedly do not care to sort) our own baggage. We will most assuredly be drawn to those who either are like us in their lack of self-awareness and lack of inner clarity and integrity, both...brutally maiming one another in the process of living all whilst claiming that was not our intent towards them...or whilst they claim that was their intent towards us...etc, etc....

Or else others are (and will continue to be) drawn to us precisely because they are predators who lack integrity but not clarity.
They are single-minded in their search to exploit and they can and will easily recognise our weakness...that is, our lack of either self-awareness, or of integrity, or both.

It is extremely difficult to face the reality of trauma or abuse. Often this involves revisiting trauma in childhood or other periods of trauma.
But it is necessary to do so, in order to accept what is. What is can only be different now going forward, if you are completely honest about what has been up to this point. And that includes your orientation and your feelings toward what was experienced. Your recognition of your feelings is vital and provides your inner guidance as to what is loving, good, and right-aligned, versus what is not.

And once we are in possession of self-awareness, it is often at least as hard for many to live with an integrity that is grounded in a realisation of authentic love oriented equally toward both oneself and others. That is, for many, even with some self-awareness, they find it extremely difficult to relate to others without manipulation or exploitation or generally putting their needs first without equally considering the needs of the other.

But living with integrity and practising authentic love toward self and others (that is, actively seeking the highest good of both self and others equally) is also necessary to heal from trauma. If we cannot walk the walk with integrity, practicing authentic love toward self and others, then we are still walking wounded and will attract more of the same. There is great truth on many levels to "being the change". This is a big topic, but the necessity of practicing authentic love toward self and others lies at the very core of all healing.


Peace & blessings,
7L

Lucyan28
24-11-2015, 10:08 PM
There could be a third one.

3) Get yourself busy =)

Work, hobbies and common activities like cleaning the house are really powerful, even though they could be silly. Sometimes the best therapies are the simplest ones.

And if you ask me I have a fourth one, I eat chocolate to ease the pain, and drink some beers in the weekends to cheer me up of course :D

Greenslade
27-11-2015, 09:40 AM
I've been reading a ton of (probably too many) varying angles on handling emotional trauma.

It seems like there are two schools of thought:

1) Let them go, give into the light, and rise above whatever trauma occurred your past. Stay positive. Lift a smile on your face even when you don't feel strong enough. Push your pain down and feel the love and light around you.

2) Feel everything deeply. If you aren't ready to experience happiness in that moment, don't. Favoring the light only represses the darkness, rather than healing its source. Accept the entirety of the emotion.

I know there's no right or wrong way. And, more than likely, I am waaay off in interpreting this so black and white. But is there one way that's healthier for your soul? I understand where both approaches are coming from... just makes it difficult to realize which is most helpful.

Thank you!Pushing down your pain doesn't always work, what we resist persists and pain often wants to be expressed in some way as if it takes on a Life of its own and wants to let the outside world know it's there. The more it's pushed down the more it fights its way to the surface and it comes back stronger every time.

There is a third way - turning hurts into halos. The word 'halos' can come across as a little pretentious but it's the sentiment that's important. In all walks of Life, whether people are Spiritual or not they all seem to have one thing in common, and that's the need to connect at a deeper level even though the connection may not seem to be very much on the surface. When someone who has felt trauma connects with another it's empathy at its best, only one who has suffered trauma can really understand how another feels and that alone can make a huge difference. Just the knowing that the other person has 'been there', that's why people who have been through it make the best counsellors and support workers. The trauma becomes a 'tool' to help another and in that way not only do you help them, you help yourself.

loopylucid
27-11-2015, 10:21 AM
Hi fleur, For me personally expressing or repressing never worked as well as understanding.
Im gentle with my emotional pain, in a bid to understand it and what ive found over the years, is that usually my reactions bear little fruit, in terms of recovery.
Ive also interestingly explored over the years where in me, the pain got triggered off so badly, and ive often found its not so much what happened to me, but at its very core is usually a responsibility within myself, to a feeling, born before the circumstance that occurred, that needs healing.
Because to me, the point is not that I will ever live a troublesome free life, r a painless one, so what then can I do, to not make this life a constant set of battles? how can I learn to feel pain without anger, grief without questions, fear without failure etc.
Its a long road into pain, understanding its essence outside its circumstances, ie why can anything hurt me, whats there that's fragile? Paves some very quick footprints to its path of recovery for me. It takes away blame aspects, which I find most unhelpful and a band aid in recovery terms.
But I don't think one size fits all with these things, which is why exploring your own determination of healing, will herald varying results for all.
But one thing I do stay true to, is the emotions by themselves, not cluttered with anxiety towards there being, has bought a new way of feeling to me, which allows it all, but is no longer damaged by its presence, just journeying through its lessons knowing I am always stronger than my circumstances, wiser than my reactions and more able from my experiences.
Took me nearly 30 years of not doing that, to get it tho lol
Pain and fears have been amazing mentors to me, not that I would of said it at the time!

Loopy

Shrek
27-11-2015, 11:07 AM
I am agree with both.

1. Stay and develop positiveness will overcome negativity.

2. Accepting ourselves will make us aware both our good and bad side. We will understand ourselves more deeply. Understanding our own mind is the most fruitful thing. Overcoming will happen after it naturally. When we see our mind without want it to be different, we will see it clearer. Then any negativity will transparent and lose its power over us. Slowly but sure. Like a fruit, need time to mature.

Miss Hepburn
27-11-2015, 02:23 PM
Oh brother...I have so much trauma...don't ask....
Me?....

There is forgiveness...understanding (for me) it all happened for a reason...sometimes I drew it directly to me....sometimes
it was past life learning/molding/teachings...BUT....all of it was perfect
and custom made for ME! :notworthy: Thank you, Lord....for making a System so perfect.

The blaming game that it just 'happened because they were mean'...
just doesn't cut it for me.
Nothing is as it appears...there are so many layers to everything!

I have trauma I created myself by putting my foot in my mouth over decades....when they
pass suddenly in my mind...I (((cringe))).

I put everything down in that moment and do the EFT fast technique...to clear it and
take away it's 'juice'....or power to shame me. :wink:


So far so good...I am clearing out so much residual cr*pola....so I can move right into love.