Healing Exercise: Disconnecting Trauma Triggers
How do you know you’ve really healed? In my experience, all the triggers are gone.
If you’ve seen What The Bleep Do We Know? you may remember the part about synapses: we create neuropathways in our brain with our thoughts. Our thoughts are like cars that ride down highways in the brain, which then get parked into our cells. Whichever highways we drive down the most become the strongest. When we become emotionally attached to the thought or belief, it gets reinforced and that synapse becomes stronger. All the information that is created in our mind – all the joys and sorrows – can be felt by the physical body as well as the spirit.
Your Brain Has An Information Highway System
Imagine there are highways in your brain that can take you down different emotional paths: trauma, pain, love, happiness, peace, fear, anxiety, harmony, contentment. Every time you reinforce the stressful feelings, it’s like applying more pavement on that highway. The more you reinforce the feel good emotions, the stronger that connection becomes in your brain, and in your body and spirit.
Your spirit was born to feel joy. It wants to feel in it’s natural state. But of course being on this plane in the universe, otherwise known as the school of hard knocks, we’re bound to get in the Pain Lane and barrel down Heartbreak Avenue at some point. The idea isn’t to avoid stress and pain but to re-connect it to something positive and reinforce that source of strength within until the synapse of stress and pain becomes weak and stops plugging in altogether. I’m not claiming this is an easy process, but it’s an empowering one.
How Triggers Are Made
Take my story, for example. I said to God before I got here, give me a father who will challenge me and who I can help in some way. I’m going down there to work as a healer, minds well get me to work out of the womb. I’ll have plenty of experience by the time I’m asked to serve the greater community.
Lo and behold, I was born to a father who had some problems. They may have started before the war, coming from a strict family who he aimed to impress. But the severe damage was done during the Vietnam War, when his sensitive mind was exposed to major trauma. He came home alive, and a war hero, and was spit on by anti-war protesters. He tried to block it all out, and continued this process of tuning out and into his own world.
He never received any kind of healing for childhood and war wounds, and went about his business as if it were no big deal. Of course, as his kid I knew better. He often shared horrific war stories with me, and as a child I would listen, without judgment. Later on, I provided him Reiki therapy which he loved. Living with a war veteran gave me the inspiration to develop a therapeutic yoga program for wounded soldiers, which I teach right now.
Trauma Healing 101
The little, and big traumas in life create sore spots or bruises on the psyche. If they’re not healed, they become relived by future events that trigger the past. When a trigger is charged, the brain can become confused between the present and past. Suddenly, the current boyfriend is your cheating ex or a sudden stop of the car instigates a physical reflex from memory of a past car accident. Just seeing someone or something may place you back in a painful time, losing sense of the present reality.
Recognizing You Broke The Spell of the Past
I recently visited my father after not seeing him for a few years. We’ve lived on opposite coasts for a long time now. No matter how hard I tried in the past, I would always get triggered somehow. Either he would say something that reminded me of the neglect and abandonment I had lived with as a kid. Or he would digress to painful experiences in the past like my parents divorce without sensitivity to how uncomfortable it made me feel to rehash things that I had worked hard to recover from. His drinking used to always make me cringe inside and gave me an urge to try to stop him from pouring the glass.
But this time, for the first time ever, I didn’t feel any triggers. Triggers are those little jabs in your mind, body and spirit, the sensation of the car driving down that Pain Lane. It’s similar to an acupressure point that’s sore when you have toxins blocking an energy pathway. This time, I had no toxins left connected to my Dad. There was no more pain to plug into. I had practiced forgiveness, acceptance and gratitude for so many years, that finally those old neuropathways broke and the new ones held strong in love and forgiveness. I finally was able to see him, just as he was, a man doing the best he could. Looking back, he had given me so much. He had given me more spiritually than he would ever realize.
I also finally really, truly felt a healthy non-attachment. Dad was Dad, and he chose the life he’s living, which isn’t an easy one. I was free to choose my own life. He gave me that gift. He was the human delivery system from Heaven to bring me into this world so I could serve my purpose, which included learning from, and being inspired by him. I left his house feeling deep levels of acceptance, love and compassion. I knew he loved me, as best he knew how. I also felt a deeper love and compassion for myself, recognizing the strength I needed to live through it, and to get to this beautiful side of the rainbow.
Healing Exercise To Disconnect Triggers
You can practice discovering your triggers and re-programming your brain so you no longer have to experience those mental and physical jabs of stress that come with carrying around old emotional baggage with you.
First, pay attention to your body.
Your body is a great source of information when it comes to triggers. Notice if you feel any uncomfortable sensations in your body that are connected to a memory or person. You may feel heaviness in your chest, digestive distress, tight muscles, tight jaw, your heart may start racing, you may feel queasy or jittery. Notice what your body is telling you. Recognizing where you feel the discomfort physically can also be an indicator of where you’re storing that stressful emotion attached to the trigger.
Second, try to extract any good that came from the experience.
You may have to dig down layers to find the gem of wisdom, especially if the ego is tied up in blame, anger, resentment, etc. Throw out all the inner rantings in your mind and get to the core: what did this experience give you that you didn’t have before? How has it inspired you in your life? What has it led you to that you otherwise may not have found before?
Third, begin to detach from the pain.
The best way to do this is to re-direct the mind to what you feel grateful for, to what your strength is. Every time you find your mind wanting to walk down the dark corridors of the past, re-direct it to the present where you have the power to choose what to focus on. You have the power to choose where to direct your mind. If you find your mind stubbornly going back, it may be trying to resolve something, so get out a journal, read a self-help book, contact a healer or therapist and talk it out. Sometimes painful memories have starting points that lead us down a trail. That trail may have markers, keep following them, picking up wisdom along the way. By the time you know it, you’ve made it to the end of the trail with a pile of wisdom, feeling rejuvenated and content, recognizing how far you’ve come.
You can’t move forward and disconnect triggers if you’re denying pain or giving it all your power. Your existence was not created from pain, it was created from a miracle. Sometimes you have to wade through the pain and feel it for it to process. Eventually you’ll find yourself become the observer of the pain, not the participant. From there, you may discover a new self within, your present self, that no longer has a need to live in the past. Those new neuropathways will keep connecting to positive thoughts, to powerful experiences, and your entire body will feel it. Each cell in your being will vibrate to gratitude, love and peace.
Like every healing exercise, this is a practice. It’s a piece of your puzzle to work on regularly until it fits and you can step back and see the progress made. In the meantime, have patience with yourself and the process. Change doesn’t always happen overnight, but when it does happen, you’re set free. Your spirit gets some of that divine joy back, and you once again remember where you really came from.
I promise you, it’s not in those dark places. Though it’s through those soul flexing places that you find the strength to be here and gain the compassion to help others.
Lauralyn is a Healing Yoga Therapist, Intuitive Medium, Angel Therapist® and Reiki Master. She is currently providing yoga therapy to wounded warriors at Fort Bragg.
©2011 Heaven Healing Arts
To learn more or to schedule a private session, please visit www.heavenhealingarts.com
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