Tag Archives: post traumatic stress

Spiral of Dark and Light

There is a prejudice of exposing dark feelings and thoughts. We must transform them into something useful, powerful, active, enlightening – light. If you are diving into darkness just to dive into darkness, what's the point? Doesn't there need to be something useful come of this immersion? There is great wisdom in darkness. This, is where the unexposed becomes exposed. This, is where light naturally comes forth without effort or searching. There is no need to transform dark into light. Darkness, when fully felt, moves into light. This is not a transformation – this is the movement of nature. This is a subtle difference.
Transformation implies something unwanted is being changed into something wanted. . .

WE are not searching for the light. We are searching out the dark. Why do we do this? Because we have spent so long being afraid of the dark. Avoiding it. Punishing it. Denying it. Making it wrong. Burying it. Then, uncontainable, it lashes out . . . or in. Does darkness not have its natural place in the world? No one tells the night not to come. It does. We welcome the morning sun and a new day and the coming night all the same. Night is dreamtime. SO is our inner darkness. It is the place of great insight. It is where we are most awake. So why try to bring it to light? I do not want to convince you of what is right. I am simply observing what is already happening. Dark is as natural as light. You cannot stop one and expect the other to flow. In this way, when we shut out the light or the dark, neither flows freely in us. There is a buried cycle that yearns to move completely.

It works coming around from light to dark as well remember. Once light feelings and thoughts have been realized, they flow naturally into dark feelings and thoughts. Do not judge either one! Breathing in is as important as breathing out. We do not judge one or the other as wrong or needing to be diminished. If we did, we would not be alive! So too it goes with emotion and thought. These are a part of us too. We think. We feel. Think it all. Feel it all. Thus we embrace the whole world. What keeps us moving in this cycle? What is the oil that keeps it running smoothly. . . acceptance. It infuses our feelings and thoughts. It gets in the spaces between and prevents light and dark thoughts and emotions from becoming stuck. It is unidentifiable as it swirls in the background, but we know it when we feel it. This warmth and softness; this prickling nudge; this brewing eruption – only defined by the unlocking effect that we feel from its purpose. And where does this acceptance come from? This great mystery. . . unfolded in our hands. . . as we touch one another. We honestly connect to one another. Accepting where we are at. Without acceptance, connection does not exist. With no connection, neither the dark nor the light can be known. You see, we need it all – dark, light, acceptance, connection. There is a natural cycle that yearns to be heard. Light and dark is not a dichotomy. It is a spiral. Like the earth moving through space. Can you feel it? Remove all judgement . . . and you will.

When I was in the thick of healing from suicidal thoughts, this knowing is what healed me. During an MFR treatment with my friend and mentor Dave Frederick, I unlocked a stuck vision of darkness that had been embedded deeply in the consciousness of my fascial web. In a space where I felt safe enough, I allowed Dave to gently coax it to the surface . The next morning a rush of suicidal feelings surfaced. I emailed Dave and he immediately reached out by phone. His acceptance of where I was prompted me to feel what was under my shamed version of darkness. I had never imagined anything beyond it. It was all so futile. Gradually, with patience, I found the courage to reach further than I ever had. There was indeed something under the dark. In fact, it was this answer hanging on the edge between waking and sleep. I did not know what it was at the time, but I felt tremendous relief that the darkness was not a death end. There was more beyond that I could feel while alive and breathing. A truth about darkness began to emerge. The shamed version disappeared and with it the urge to kill myself. Since that morning, I have not felt the need to die to find the answer to life's toughest questions. Do I continue to dance with death and dark thoughts and emotions? Absolutely. This dance feels very alive. Flowing without resistance or shame through the dark thoughts and feelings paradoxically sets me free in life. It's where I feel the light.

When someone commits suicide – I care deeply. These are the most beautiful and honest people I have ever read about or known. Perhaps they did not have someone who could do what Dave did for me. Perhaps they had no one who would accept their dark thoughts and emotions; or understood and spoke honestly with them when they most needed someone to understand them. Perhaps they were the leaders of truth-filled, vulnerable conversation and were breaking new ground, but not fast enough for the pain that was chasing them. . . I do not know another's point of no return. I do know that if they could have seen another way out of their pain – they would have taken it. No one can, long-term, bear the pain of endless darkness that is denied, shamed or otherwise not understood and accepted. I wish they had known a John Barnes trained therapist like I did.

Dedicated in memory of Chester Charles Bennington

The Biggest Missing Piece

running horse

I want to say that if any of you have felt bad for me and my experience, I want you to know that it is not helpful for either of us. I want to say to you, that you are feeling worse for me than I am feeling for myself. I want to say to you that I WANT to have the power to heal myself, all to myself. Feeling bad for me just makes it a little bit harder for me to take my power back and makes you just feel awful about something you have absolutely no control over. So stop trying to fix it! Stop ruminating on mine or another’s pain. Instead, focus on coming fully into yourself. Focus on softening your fascial resistance and seeing and accepting yourself as the powerful person you are. Then, and only then, will you see accurately, the true powerful nature of another. Only then will you be able to help another in the most effective way they can receive it.

Now on to what I have discovered . . .

I cannot accept that I created this awful thing that happened to me. I CAN however accept that I had a deep desire at 19 for my life to mean something. At that time I felt I was just one of the crowd and I wanted badly to stand out. I did not want to be a cog in a wheel. I had this deep sense that there had to be something more to my life. That is exactly the thinking I was immersed in when I was run off the road on my bike and taken.

Was my desire to stand out THAT strong? Did I get what I wanted? Well, I wouldn’t have asked specifically for that horrible experience in order to bring about my desire. I DO know, however, that that horrible experience has caused me to move, with great depth, into the feelings about myself I strongly desired at 19. I can say that I feel that the tentativeness of life I have experienced has caused me to feel, very deeply, how valuable life is. All the interesting and wonderful experiences I would have missed! So, yes, my life DOES mean something very deeply to me – much more deeply than I feel I had before.

Before my horrible experience, and it was horrible by any standard, I didn’t think about enjoying life – I just DID life. So, now that I’ve cleared a large majority of the bracing and fear of my horrible event of being physically taken, held and raped by someone I didn’t know. After experiencing all of that and in the aftermath . . . feeling it fully, it has lost its tight grip on me. I had an experience that allowed me to feel what most people just read about or watch on TV. I had the opportunity to feel fully, the depth of terror, shame, and loss of control. And by feeling through these things and in the depth that I did, what emerged was also the incredible rush of feeling . . . joy . . . of feeling deep love and trust of myself . . . of feeling complete, absolute freedom from limitation. I have mastered getting into channel 3, from way, way into channel 5.

Until now, I don’t feel I appreciated the depth of good feelings that have come out of my honed ability to feel all of these horrible things deeply. I don’t feel I have, until now, accurately acknowledged that my extensive experiences of letting go of resistance to completely awful feelings, gave me the ability to feel very good things deeply as well. I distinctly remember these feelings. They were moments of ecstasy I came into unlike any I had experienced prior to my horrible event. I admit, I have not been letting them in – not for lack of wanting to feel good. I go home every night and have a drink and wait for the good feeling to hit me. I want it badly, but not this way. I did not know how to get at it. I’m pretty sure the missing piece – and it’s a really, really big missing piece – was that I hadn’t acknowledged the ecstasy I was coming into. The lack of acknowledgment of the truth of the good I was feeling, caused me to ignore it even when it was happening. The other shoe is not dropping. I’ve stopped waiting for it. In fact, I’m pretty busy being in the flow of life and enjoying it, to care if the shoe even exists.

Life is supposed to feel good. And I have to admit . . . it honestly does, so much of the time.

Coming home . . . again

MFR III Gang 2014

The MFR III Gang atop Airport Mesa, Sedona, Arizona (photo courtesy of my friend Karen)

This is long, but it’s my journey from cocoon to butterfly and it took 3 years 🙂 Never give up. . .

When I came home from MFR III in 2011, it was a bit of a rough entry. The turbulence was what I needed. It broke open an understanding of where my sensitive intuitive nature had been shutting down. I became aware of an old belief: if I stop feeling and anticipating what my kidnapper is feeling and going to do, something really bad will happen. I think I felt some level of control if I could sense what was going to happen next and brace myself for it. Then he did something I couldn’t imagine and I went to a place I didn’t know. I cocooned with this until I was ready for another intensive – my first as a therapist – in December 2013.

My left side bracing had been steadily increasing since 2011. In December 2013, I went to Malvern in hopes of resolving a chronic left foot problem which had pretty much stopped my ability to run. It was an opening, not a resolution. In June 2014, during Advanced Unwinding, John facilitated another opening and I got out of the trunk of the car. I also was pulled out of the back seat and watched it drive away. I felt a sense of completion. The experience of being kidnapped seemed a memory and not a current event anymore. I continue to feel the tethers disentangling from me.

At MFR III this year, my goal came from a sense of “now what?” I felt the urge to continue to integrate a newer feeling of lightness of being and becoming the foam on the wave – but I had left a huge void where the terror and shame had been. I knew I needed to fill it. I didn’t want it to back-fill with old beliefs again. This was too important.

The “now what” became clear, while assisting at Subtle Energy, prior to MFR III. Peggy, our speaker, asked us to ask ourselves what we wanted out of this time here. An answer comes to me – clarity. Then a message, a very clear voice says to me: the healing you are doing in this lifetime is clearing your karmic debt from every lifetime – all of it. This is what you are here for. I feel the enormity of this mission. It is a lot of responsibility. It is important to my essence. I also feel the result of this message. This feeling of actual joy I have been trickling into feels entirely foreign and new and right.

At MFR III, the night of our inner journey unwindings, I stay on my feet the entire hour and a half. I am flying expansively, driving up into the galaxy and diving back down to earth. Then I notice I have no voice. I have been completely silent throughout the unwinding. Sobbing, I go looking for it on the ground. As I crawl around desperately, my inner guide says “look up”. I do and a new sound of sobbing I have not heard before comes out. The sound leads me to standing and I walk through a door. On the other side I meet three spirits. The one says “Welcome home. We’ve been waiting for you.” I feel the middle one downloading information into my head. He says “don’t worry”, sensing my fear, “you will only access this information in your dreams.” I relax. They are still with me strongly now as I write this.

The next day, I am silent as we are out on the rocks. I listen to everyone talking about their insights from last night. I am so glad we don’t have to each say something like we did in 2011.

After class, I went to see my very first therapist at Therapy on the Rocks. She immediately caught on to my automatic anticipation of what was going to happen next. My trust in the process was bigger than my fear and I went into that still point from 2011. I let my kidnapper do what he had done back then and stayed present. Then I escaped to a safe place. I said to my therapist that there were some little bits left but for the most part, that was it. “Yes,” she confirmed, “they’re just breadcrumbs.”

Feeling more spontaneity in my movements, the group unwinding the following day became a demonstration of complete trust in my group, my intuition and the power of the unknown.

I let my energetic body lead and take me off the ground. I am falling, twisting, struggling not to come down. Just before I touch ground, I have the sense of being in my mother’s birth canal. I don’t want to come out. My left shoulder gets stuck coming out, frees itself and I emerge, newborn, lying on my back. I feel betrayed. I didn’t want to come down this time – in this life. Knowledge of what is going to happen in my future – knowing what I am here to do – I just want to crawl back up that birth canal and go back from where I came.

In an instant, I remember a story my mother told me about five years ago. She said that the first week I was home from the hospital, I got myself into snitfits and cried so hard I turned blue. She had no choice but to put my head under a tap of running water to get me breathing again. This happened more than once. She went on to tell me that by the time I was two, we would be out shopping and I’d be set off and she would hold onto my hand until I passed out and then put me back in the cart. As I got older, I no longer cried that hard. My voice had been pretty much silenced by then. But there was only resignation.

Lying on the ground, I grieve for what I have been through. I grieve for the enormity of responsibility for clearing my past karmic debt in this lifetime. Resignation turns into resolve. I say to my group urgently “I need my feet on the ground! I need my feet on the ground!” They let go and I feel them solidly. A new wave of crying. I can’t get up. “Bring your power back into your body,” I hear my inner guide say. I fill my abdomen up and expand out. I try to stand from my supine position. I can’t figure out how to do it. I contemplate going into channel 5 and sitting first. No. I have to stand from my own power. As I fill myself up more, a feeling of acceptance comes in behind the energy and accelerates it. This is what I need and I launch up to my feet from my back. And I fly.

There is some residual resignation and I say to my group, “well if I’m going to be here, I’m glad I’m here with you.” I feel their support and love softly embrace me.

After the group unwinding, we are instructed to go off on John’s property and find a special place for ourselves to be with our power animals. I am ready to go like a horse in a starting gate. We set off and I skip along down to the riverbed. Once there I am no longer skipping – I am flying. I realize there is no one in front of me. A realization hits me. I don’t feel chased – I am leading the way. Instead of fear, I feel exhilaration!

The last day, we do intraoral techniques and I trade with my raven friend. She is on my vomer and I feel the sense of being forced – tissue memory. I get up and I have disappeared somewhere. I don’t know where I’ve gone, but I’m not there in the room. I wander aimlessly, soft and vulnerable. I make eye contact with John and walk slowly towards him. I carefully move into his arms, barely holding on to him. “Can you soften into me a little more?” I let down my guard a bit more and connect. I feel the grounding come into my pelvis and legs. Ami comes over. She is pulling stuff out of the back of me. She says to John she can do some more work with me back at the house. I feel soooo disappointed in myself. I was doing so well! Barbara comes over and I sink into her. She lets me rest my head on her chest and I feel a mother’s love deeper than I have ever felt it before. It is what I need.

In the parking lot, saying good bye, I pull out a heart-shaped rock I found here in June and put it in her hand. I say to her that I need to stay connected to her heart as I go home. It is really, really important. I still feel her now, as the tears roll down my face. . . there are some older breadcrumbs. How do you connect with your heart deeper than you have in this lifetime?

Coming home . . . again is new. In 2011, I cocooned. This time, I am transforming and expanding.

In my hot tub I let myself unwind. I float into a position that feels like I’m in a womb. I feel acceptance of this part of the journey I am about to take – softening into the unknown, now that the terror has been diffused, I softly and without resistance, flow down the birth canal. As I emerge, I feel myself say “this is going to be so cool!” The once seemingly horrible events in my life are filled with an anticipated excitement of what the resulting transformations will be. It’s going to be fantastic!

I am listening to Destiny by Zero 7. As the song plays and I feel the support of my room mates my arms drift together until they’re a foot apart. There is tension between them. I feel the handcuffs. I can’t open or close my arms. Then a voice says “soften”. My torso softens and my hands drift apart – opening. Wow! They stop at a distance and I know they have further to go. I’m looking for another feel. My inner guide says “now move into who you really are”. I have the sense of shifting to the left in my head and mind. My arms open, like wings, and I expand out more.

Resolving Thoughts of Suicide

Image

Picture taken at the garden of Musee Rodin, Paris, France. August 2013

Once the big shocks of trauma and many of the symptoms of post traumatic stress resolved, a new layer emerged. It was there all along, but hidden under nightmares, hyper vigilance, outbursts of rage, and short term memory problems. That layer was a strong feeling and thoughts of wanting to kill myself. I understood the process of healing and realized I needed to go deeper to resolve it. Relying on the courage and skill of my therapist and the help of a group I call the MFR Tribe, I was able to get to the bottom of very serious feelings and thoughts of suicide. The lasting effects of resolution are still evident 6 years later. 

Building on my increasing skill at healing – it takes practice and I was two years into treatment – I had gained enough trust in the process and my therapist to reach out, deliberately decide not to kill myself and instead go into the feeling of dying. My therapist was able to steer my persistent thoughts back to feeling my body – which is where the resolution ultimately happened.

It is entirely possible to be free from thoughts of suicide, but to do so requires a highly centered therapist, skilled in this specific area. It cannot be done alone or with someone who cannot remain centered until resolution happens. It also must be initiated by the suicidal person and not the therapist. The healing process cannot be forced and the suicidal person has to take the lead. The power has to be firmly in their hands.

Here is a look inside the process . . .

I began to feel suicidal after a treatment and the next day, sent this email to my therapist.

February 28, 2007
Hi Dave,

I was glad to see your email on MFR Talk. It snapped me back from wherever I was after my last treatment – which was not particularly present. Thank you.

I find myself saying/feeling the words “this work has changed my life” to more and more people. Everything else I read and learn pales in comparison. It does not get at the heart of the matter.

Having said that, I have found the heart of the matter of what continually leads me in a downward spiral. It is a feeling of profound isolation. Of total disconnection with everyone and everything. I have never come back to my body – only visited like one visits a grave site. I am continually asking myself what I’m still doing alive, because I’m supposed to be dead. I’m a walking dead person! I know that until I relive (or undie?), you and I are merely treating a body with no soul and that is not fair to you or me. I also know that transcending this will be a big step forward.

So the question is, how do I get to this place or what is the question I should be asking myself or . . . yep, totally stuck here. I know that this work has changed my life and so I have faith that it is the way through. Any advice you can give will be gladly received.

****
From Dave:
March 1, 2007
Just time for a short answer now, things did not feel complete last appointment, you may have noticed me hovering around as you left.

Just to be safe do we need to include another health care provider? or counselor?

Assuming not, how does it feel to be stuck?  What does it look like to be unstuck?  You say it is like visiting a grave site, do you need to “be in the grave”?

Do you need a 2 week intensive with John?

May I put out the body of your letter, without name or any form of identification on the chat line?

More later

Dave
****
March 1, 2007
Hi Dave,
Thank you for your quick reply. I sat with the questions you provided last night. There were two things that came up. The first is that stuck feels hard and dry like a rock in my jaw eating into the center of my head. It also feels like being stuck standing, facing a corner in a room with no way out. I want to feel what unstuck feels like but so far I just wait.

The second thing was visiting myself as if visiting a grave site. I feel like I’m continually trying to feel in my body only to find it feels dead. Very cold in my throat and solar plexus, yet burning in my solar plexus. Then I feel the isolation.

Yes, please post. Anything would be helpful and I’m not in a position to post myself. I’ll be able to read any replies directly.

The other component of this is what I like to call my logical mind clinging to the past. If I feel the feelings of isolation then I can remain in my small cocoon. Then I make it tangible by establishing new relationships with people and then have them “abandon” me. I’ve worked on this with my psychologist in the past, but we’re pretty much at a dead end now. So I’ve just come to accept that I will always feel isolation. Fortunately my body rebels at this so all I can do is just keep searching for a way out. This is where MFR comes in. I feel connections now that I’ve been to Sedona. This has never happened before. I want to go back. When I saw the cancellation in March I felt sad because I want to go back but have various excuses not too (family, money, the usual).

I apologize if this is too much information. I just needed to get it out in black and white and I trust you.

Thank you for caring.
Patti
****
This is what some call the Dark Night of the Soul. It is not a fun place to be. I wanted to just be left alone, but could barely stand the feeling of it. Talk of people’s happiness and how wonderful life was just intensified the feeling of isolation, so it was best to be alone or to be with Dave – a person who had the capacity to just allow me to be. This created an atmosphere of engagement and non-resistance, which interrupted my feelings of isolation and created a safe space where I could feel below death.
****
From: Dave

Friday, March 2, 2007

Patti!

Have you seen the wave of support out there for you, even though they don’t know who you are. I hope some of the responses have been helpful.

The other thing to try is to feel it even deeper, when you have an appropriate time, like holding on to an object tighter and tighter. Hold on to it so tight that eventually you just have to let go.

Please let me know how you are doing.

Dave

****
The number of responses that came from Dave’s help request on MFR Chat stunned me. People who didn’t know me but understood what I was feeling because they had been there themselves. Then Sheila posted the question “What if you WERE dead? How would that feel?” This prompted a feeling of falling into a deep, cold, black void. I felt my body and mind resisting the feeling, but I was losing my grip fast.

I called Dave. He guided me down into that void. Into the feeling of death. I felt intense fear and softened and allowed the feeling. I felt under the coldness. Then something shifted. There was light and warmth under the coldness of the void.

This all happened in a short phone conversation. It was all I needed. That final nudge to feel what was under the void. I had never thought there was anything good under it; and I had resisted it all these decades, for fear of dying, yet never knowing I could challenge my fear of death simply by feeling it go through my body – quite safely – without having to kill myself to experience it. Huh.

Feeling beyond the previous “dead end” into something that felt good, my mind no longer needed to search for a reason for the dead feeling and I stopped thinking about killing myself.
****
March 8, 2007

Dave,

I started to journal my unwinding adventure and discovered I had no need to because I FEEL it’s affects. Words would dampen the intensity. Needless to say, I now know I can go to the places of my worst nightmares and you will be there cheering me on. That is the most powerful thing one person can do for another human being. 

So thank you for being there, in the middle of all that, guiding me with your big heart, comforting arms and compassionate words. Thank you for bringing me back from the abyss – finally, I feel alive!!

Now I can spend my vacation getting used to my new body! It feels strange and new and wonderful!

And I am actually feeling excited about the next time. That’s new too.

And please say a big thank you to the wonderful people who sent their encouragement. I could feel their support and it allowed me to summon my courage to feel into the fear.

Until next time,

Patti

****

Dave’s email to the MFR Chatline:

March 8,2007
Subject: “Dave’s Client” clatient?

Details would be inappropriate, but I want to say thank you to all of you for your kind and wise words and your support.

Be easy with your self.

Dave

PS We use different terms to refer to the folks that we try to help in a professional way. Both patient and client can be pejorative. One term is associated needing care which may imply a level of dependence and the other is associated with an impersonal exchange for service solely for financial gain. I’d like to suggest the compromise “clatient”.