How To Resolve Childhood Trauma??

[Girzo]

I feel like you focus too much on division between "happy period of life" and sad one. Obviously you feel like a piece of shit. You should always expect that. It goes in circles, around and around. Whenever you get any progress the wounded ego strikes back trying to survive and puts you in homeosthasis. It's a process, feeling good and bad are parts of one thing. If you have choosen a practice you should stick to it and come back to it as soon as you have noticed you stopped doing it. Don't make division between "back then" and "now". It's a trap in which I have fallen many times, beware - be aware.

Edited September 13, 2017 by Girzo

[Nahm]

@Santiago good luck with all that. If we're not all experiencing how and what we put our focus on, then I don't know anything at all. I am open to that possibility. 

[Annie]

@Santiago Awareness is key. Read "Running on empty" by Jonice Webb. It's an eye-opener! Best vibes your way!

[Santiago]

11 hours ago, Girzo said:

I feel like you focus too much on division between "happy period of life" and sad one. Obviously you feel like a piece of shit. You should always expect that. It goes in circles, around and around. Whenever you get any progress the wounded ego strikes back trying to survive and puts you in homeosthasis. It's a process, feeling good and bad are parts of one thing. If you have choosen a practice you should stick to it and come back to it as soon as you have noticed you stopped doing it. Don't make division between "back then" and "now". It's a trap in which I have fallen many times, beware - be aware.

 

2 hours ago, Annie said:

@Santiago Awareness is key. Read "Running on empty" by Jonice Webb. It's an eye-opener! Best vibes your way!

Yes, awareness is key indeed.

Thanks for the reminder, I did notice that division too.
Right now I am working in getting back to my old good habits that make me feel much better.

Edited September 13, 2017 by Santiago
clarity

[Santiago]

@Emerald
 

I just went to the gym and I was trying to think in things that I believe in and that I have hidden/denied because they go against that stories I made up that will supposedly help me to get accepted:

*I was pushing myself hard in the gym in a hypertrophy routine(to gain volume), even tho I do believe a more functional approach is healthier.
But the hypertrophy routine is more optimal to achieve the physique that I associated acceptance with.

*I was even feeling some discomfort while doing squats lately and I kept doing them anyway, because I wanted those "gains". Only a couple weeks ago I decided to stop for a while and do a variation that will help me to fix the muscular imbalances that cause the discomfort and I only did this because I was starting to risk injury and an injury could threaten achieving my ideal physique.

*For the last years whenever I am doing my bulking routine I almost stop eating vegetables because my bulking calories are too high and If I ate veggies I would need to be eating all day long to reach the calorie count. So I sacrificed a very strong belief I have that is that eating healthy makes you feel much better, it improves your quality of life. So I denied this, I am even eating pasta almost every day in order to reach the calorie count and I think eating all that wheat is bad but I still do it, hurting myself just to fulfill that story of being aesthetic and muscular and then getting acceptance by people because of my physique.

*I avoid smelling flowers even tho I love doing it. I have this idea that people will think I am gay or just weird.

*Whenever I am meditating if somebody comes close I just don't want them to know that I am meditating, I'd rather have them think I am just chilling there, because it is just weird to be meditating with 26 years old, people my age play computer games, go drink alcohol, get high, play football, etc, but they don't meditate. This has made meditating almost useless for me, even tho I had some good times doing it.

*Whenever I travel I spend a good ammount of time worrying about taking the perfect pictures that I can show on my facebook. And I would rather just be present in the moment and enjoy, but I have this need for approval that just makes my travels much worse...

*Whenever I see a cute girl and I want to look at her because she is beautiful, I want to look at her eyes and see if I connect with her, but I just don't do it or do it for a second and then stop, because I feel she will think I am weird or desperate... So I am even denying my sexuality...

I could go on forever with this list but for the sake of the reader will stop it here.

 

Just want to add one last thing, and this is the most terrifying aspect of self-rejection for me, it's the fact that if I don't fix this I will never let myself do anything right, I will never let myself achieve anything, I will keep procrastinating and not studying/working how I should, because I can't identify with being intelligent or capable of doing anything good or challenging:

As I have mentioned before, there was this period where I was facing my fears, creating healthy habits and getting rid of the bad ones, editing my negative thought process, etc. And I was feeling amazing, I even had overcame my stuttering problem that was the thing that motivated my change in the first place.
So when I noticed that I had cured my stuttering, that I didn't worry about it anymore and that I could speak whenever I wanted and express myself fluently, it just made me feel a little uncomfortable, because as a motivator to go through all of what I went in order to reach this point I was using the idea that If i discovered how to cure stuttering I could share it with the world and help many people out there, this was one of my main motivations back then. So when I noticed I had finally done it, that I had finally understood stuttering and every single aspect of it, I was now ready to share this with the world, make videos or write a book, who knows. This is the moment where things started to fall apart, this is where my childhood traumas kicked in, I didn't feel that I was capable of discovering anything, I couldn't be that smart, I couldn't be capable of overcoming a problem that many people have and they have no idea of how to get rid of it, I was terrified about the idea of me presenting myself as "the guy who overcame stuttering", this goes against what I learnt as a kid, this goes against the idea that I am stupid, useless and that whatever I do is wrong. I didn't feel that I would be capable of putting into words what I had learnt about stuttering in all those years, I felt that I would probably mess it, communicate wrongly and up and end up looking like a fool. But I had to do it, I had promised to msyelf that If some day I overcame stuttering I was going to try to help the community sharing my experiences, and I was so afraid that I just stopped all my healthy habits altogether and I came back to play computer games, watch videos, and hating myself.

This just makes me so sad, I AM TERRIFIED, I am afraid that If I don't fix this my life will be completely miserable, If I was capable of destroying all that happiness and progress I had made just because I was afraid then I can't trust myself for anything at least until I heal this self-rejection part of myself.

Edited September 13, 2017 by Santiago

[Gabriel Antonio]

Dude, you are pushing yourself too hard. 

I can come up here with a list of all my negative qualities. The result? I will feel miserable afterwards. Sometimes we just got to allow ourselves to feel happy in the present moment, as it is. Yes, your past is horrendous and terrifying. But seriously do you want to really carry all that weight? 

I feel like you need some yoga. Or any activity that releases all your clogged energy, you know? 

I always give this advice, but have you tried psychedelics? Dude, you can't imagine how much you're missing on. I can see myself in you. I was like that in the beginning of this year. 

Anyway... I have been finally able to feel good, you know? The way we are supposed to feel. Happy with what life is bringing me. I thought that was unacceptable.

"No, no, no! I have to check x, y, and z before I can allow myself to be happy." >> You always postpone life and feel unhappy. 

Remember: you are not guilty of anything that happened to you. You are perfect just the way you are. You might not want to accept this statement, but it is fucking true, dude! 

 

[Emerald]

@Santiago I read both of your posts. And regarding the 'stories' aspect of what I posted, I think that the story you're attached to is the story of redemption. It seem that there is an inner drill sergeant inside of you that demands a lot of effort and achievement to compensate for a perceived lack of worth.  So, when you fear that you'll never be successful and continue to fight your own success through life, the reason why this is is because your inner drill sergeant is fighting it out with the subconscious aspect of yourself that just wants you to accept what is.

It would seem as though the answer is to continue with trying to redeem yourself through adding value and fixing yourself. So, you keep trying to force yourself to go in that direction. Then, you lose strength because you've been fighting yourself and you end up distracting yourself with other behaviors to medicate against the struggle and feeling of failure.

So, my recommendation is to try to honor that part of yourself that resists and truly allow yourself to just be for a while. And then watch your inner drill sergeant mindfully to see how it works. You'll probably notice lots of feelings of guilt and critical thoughts will pop up. And it's important to let the inner drill sergeant know that you can never really add value to yourself or take it away. Redemption can't happen through becoming better at this or that thing. Redemption can only happen through becoming aware that no redemption is necessary. Also, I recommend trying to refrain from "figuring out" anything too. Because this is an improvement project too, after a while.  You have to really just allow yourself to be.

I hope this is helpful.

[Santiago]

17 hours ago, Gabriel Antonio said:

Dude, you are pushing yourself too hard. 

I can come up here with a list of all my negative qualities. The result? I will feel miserable afterwards. Sometimes we just got to allow ourselves to feel happy in the present moment, as it is. Yes, your past is horrendous and terrifying. But seriously do you want to really carry all that weight? 

I feel like you need some yoga. Or any activity that releases all your clogged energy, you know? 

I always give this advice, but have you tried psychedelics? Dude, you can't imagine how much you're missing on. I can see myself in you. I was like that in the beginning of this year. 

Anyway... I have been finally able to feel good, you know? The way we are supposed to feel. Happy with what life is bringing me. I thought that was unacceptable.

"No, no, no! I have to check x, y, and z before I can allow myself to be happy." >> You always postpone life and feel unhappy. 

Remember: you are not guilty of anything that happened to you. You are perfect just the way you are. You might not want to accept this statement, but it is fucking true, dude! 

 

I definitely expect too much from myself:

*Have a godly physique

*Eat super healthy

*Be a good engineer

*Discover the cure for stuttering and sharing it with the community hopefully helping thousands/millions of people

*Master my emotions and conquer all my fears

*Travel all around the world

If I put perspective and think about other people I would never expect any of this from them...

Maybe you are right, I just can't imagine what it would be like to just let go and be OK with not working out efficiently, not trying to improve my problems, not trying to do all this positive things for myself... Wouldn't it be a mess?
 

4 hours ago, Emerald said:

@Santiago I read both of your posts. And regarding the 'stories' aspect of what I posted, I think that the story you're attached to is the story of redemption. It seem that there is an inner drill sergeant inside of you that demands a lot of effort and achievement to compensate for a perceived lack of worth.  So, when you fear that you'll never be successful and continue to fight your own success through life, the reason why this is is because your inner drill sergeant is fighting it out with the subconscious aspect of yourself that just wants you to accept what is.

It would seem as though the answer is to continue with trying to redeem yourself through adding value and fixing yourself. So, you keep trying to force yourself to go in that direction. Then, you lose strength because you've been fighting yourself and you end up distracting yourself with other behaviors to medicate against the struggle and feeling of failure.

So, my recommendation is to try to honor that part of yourself that resists and truly allow yourself to just be for a while. And then watch your inner drill sergeant mindfully to see how it works. You'll probably notice lots of feelings of guilt and critical thoughts will pop up. And it's important to let the inner drill sergeant know that you can never really add value to yourself or take it away. Redemption can't happen through becoming better at this or that thing. Redemption can only happen through becoming aware that no redemption is necessary. Also, I recommend trying to refrain from "figuring out" anything too. Because this is an improvement project too, after a while.  You have to really just allow yourself to be.

I hope this is helpful.

I appreciate a LOT the fact that you took the time to read such gigantic posts, I really do, and I know how time consuming it's to come and read and think of a good answer and put it into words, so thank you very much.

So let me see if I understood what you said, because as I have said before my native language is spanish and my english is good but not too good.

 

You mean that I feel like I am worthless from my childhood and so I have found myself an arbitrary list of things that I should do in order to finally be worthy(eat healthy, physique, super intelligent, cure stuttering and help the community, etc) ?

So i start this cycle of: first I reject myself because I suffered a lot of bullying when I was a kid and so I feel like I am shit, then I say I need to do X to be good enough and compensate, then I start trying to do X, but because I really don't wanna do it I just start failing at it, and then I punish myself and even confirm that I am a piece of shit for failing at X?

The only problem I find with this, as I said before is that I can't imagine what would I be doing if I didn't have all this expectations over myself... wouldn't I just be eating anything and not minding it? not working out? fapping and not caring to even try to form a relationship? Wouldn't I just stop my engineer career, even tho I am very close to finishing it? Would I keep working, or maybe I would just accept going to the streets and living there...

How does exactly this "accept yourself and stop trying to do all this things" work?

[Emerald]

2 hours ago, Santiago said:

I definitely expect too much from myself:

*Have a godly physique

*Eat super healthy

*Be a good engineer

*Discover the cure for stuttering and sharing it with the community hopefully helping thousands/millions of people

*Master my emotions and conquer all my fears

*Travel all around the world

If I put perspective and think about other people I would never expect any of this from them...

Maybe you are right, I just can't imagine what it would be like to just let go and be OK with not working out efficiently, not trying to improve my problems, not trying to do all this positive things for myself... Wouldn't it be a mess?
 

I appreciate a LOT the fact that you took the time to read such gigantic posts, I really do, and I know how time consuming it's to come and read and think of a good answer and put it into words, so thank you very much.

So let me see if I understood what you said, because as I have said before my native language is spanish and my english is good but not too good.

 

You mean that I feel like I am worthless from my childhood and so I have found myself an arbitrary list of things that I should do in order to finally be worthy(eat healthy, physique, super intelligent, cure stuttering and help the community, etc) ?

So i start this cycle of: first I reject myself because I suffered a lot of bullying when I was a kid and so I feel like I am shit, then I say I need to do X to be good enough and compensate, then I start trying to do X, but because I really don't wanna do it I just start failing at it, and then I punish myself and even confirm that I am a piece of shit for failing at X?

The only problem I find with this, as I said before is that I can't imagine what would I be doing if I didn't have all this expectations over myself... wouldn't I just be eating anything and not minding it? not working out? fapping and not caring to even try to form a relationship? Wouldn't I just stop my engineer career, even tho I am very close to finishing it? Would I keep working, or maybe I would just accept going to the streets and living there...

How does exactly this "accept yourself and stop trying to do all this things" work?

The main thing is to devote your time to raising your awareness of all of your internal happenings so that you can untie yourself from the illusion of SELF-improvement. Any sense of improvement to the SELF, is just a thought process that you're believing in. It's not actually real. Value in itself is arbitrarily assigned. So, there is no way to add value to the self in any real way. And the self is also just a collection of thoughts when you look carefully. I think Adyashanti is the one that calls this "feeding the hungry ghost." When you can see this clearly, the inner drill sergeant will lose its power and function, and you will hear the voice of wisdom which will guide you in whichever direction that you really want to go in. It's just that the inner drill sergeant is much louder than the voice of wisdom. So, you can't hear it anymore. And you have no idea what you would do if that inner drill sergeant stopped ordering you around. But the whole process of the drill sergeant phenomenon is a form of violence against the self. So, it causes a lot of suffering... some that you may not even be aware of yet.

So, my recommendation is to set yourself up some basic routines for health, wellness, and work. Keep it very simple. But only do this for functional purposes. Don't do it with the mindset, "I'm going to improve myself." Just do these things mindfully because they're good for you, not because they make you good. I believe that this is why (aside from using them for meditation) monks keep routines and practice discipline. Since they are devoting their time to awareness and being, they must install routines of "doing" to make sure that the practical tasks of life don't fall at the waist-side. But they are ideally not using this to add value to themselves or trying to redeem themselves. It's just what must be done. It's as the saying goes: "Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water."

Now, you will fail at first at keeping the "self-improvement" mindset at bay, while you do the basic routines. You will want to size up your growth, because that's what you're used to using for motivation purposes. You've forgotten how to motivate yourself without a whip and carrot. But just become aware of this internal process, and the hamster-wheel-like nature of it. And eventually, with enough awareness, the drill sergeant will lose its power over you because you are no longer under the illusion that you need him to motivate you toward self-improvement and redemption. There is a saying that goes something like, "Thoughts are like paper tigers. They look scary and powerful... but if you don't feed them with your attention, they die." So, if you watch the thought process without buying into the thoughts, you will see how it works and what motivates it and it will let go of you eventually.

 

Edited September 14, 2017 by Emerald

[Santiago]

Sorry I didn't answer before.. I didn't really know what to say..

It seems too hard to let go of the gym/diet, and I am not even sure I am still buying into this..

Just think of this.. I am virgin at 26, I am now trying to get some intimate relationships even tho in the past I dated some girls and never liked them because I was thinking too much and had super high standards(still have them..), so I am willing to try again. And we all know how being fit and muscular attracts girls, this is not my imagination that if I am muscular girls will like me more, it's a life fact and I can notice how girls check me out much more now. Of course there are many more things to attraction than just looks, but they do count, specially they make the first steps super easy.

So now you propose me to just stop doing all these things... it includes leaving the gym and diet... it means I wasted many years of my life working for nothing.. It's impossible for me to quit the gym at this point, It's the highlight of my weeks, I am always looking forward to going to the gym and I enjoy it a lot, it relieves so much stress,  if you take that out then you take a lot with it. It's like a double edged sword. 
Dieting is essential too.. If I wasn't dieting I wouldn't have this gains in the gym, I could even become fat if I overeat.

Apart from that I am also not convinced about not doing all this healthy stuff: meditation routine, positive affirmations routine, eating healthy, monitoring my thoughts and correcting the ones that don't serve me, etc. I have done it in the past and it worked, at least until my childhood fears kicked in...

 

You also told me to do shadow work to help with childhood trauma, but now should I do it or instead go for the "you are fine as you are" approach?

I am confused with all this. I can see what you mean, but I also can see so many benefits I would be losing or risking by letting go and just accepting myself the way I am right now.

[Emerald]

18 minutes ago, Santiago said:

Sorry I didn't answer before.. I didn't really know what to say..

It seems too hard to let go of the gym/diet, and I am not even sure I am still buying into this..

Just think of this.. I am virgin at 26, I am now trying to get some intimate relationships even tho in the past I dated some girls and never liked them because I was thinking too much and had super high standards(still have them..), so I am willing to try again. And we all know how being fit and muscular attracts girls, this is not my imagination that if I am muscular girls will like me more, it's a life fact and I can notice how girls check me out much more now. Of course there are many more things to attraction than just looks, but they do count, specially they make the first steps super easy.

So now you propose me to just stop doing all these things... it includes leaving the gym and diet... it means I wasted many years of my life working for nothing.. It's impossible for me to quit the gym at this point, It's the highlight of my weeks, I am always looking forward to going to the gym and I enjoy it a lot, it relieves so much stress,  if you take that out then you take a lot with it. It's like a double edged sword. 
Dieting is essential too.. If I wasn't dieting I wouldn't have this gains in the gym, I could even become fat if I overeat.

Apart from that I am also not convinced about not doing all this healthy stuff: meditation routine, positive affirmations routine, eating healthy, monitoring my thoughts and correcting the ones that don't serve me, etc. I have done it in the past and it worked, at least until my childhood fears kicked in...

 

You also told me to do shadow work to help with childhood trauma, but now should I do it or instead go for the "you are fine as you are" approach?

I am confused with all this. I can see what you mean, but I also can see so many benefits I would be losing or risking by letting go and just accepting myself the way I am right now.

If you would feel wrong to get rid of these practices, then keep them. It would ideally just be simpler if you minimized them to the basics. But if you have to fight with yourself to do it, it will have the opposite effect. So, keep them and remain mindful of your internal state as you do them to better understand your motives and to integrate those parts into your awareness. Be sure to pay extra attention to critical voices or feelings like "I need this to be valid."

But the number one thing to glean is to watch your motivation and come to know the stories that you want to have happen that keep your ego alive. Certainly, it is true that certain skills are needed to fulfill certain roles. Certain skills are needed in life. However, the thing to question is why you want to have those skills and/or fulfill those roles in the first place and if it's coming from a positive or negative place. For example, if you want to attract women because you simply want the excitement of the experience, then this is positive and authentic. But if you want to attract women, to solidify a sense of self-worth or to prop up low self-esteem, then it comes from a negative place and is not authentic to you. Don't let fear lead you to some kind of obligation to be this or that way to be acceptable to yourself.

As you exercise awareness and reintegrate parts of yourself, anything that isn't authentic to you will fall away naturally if you let it. And it will be like setting down a heavy stone that you've been carrying for your entire life. The main thing is to have the courage and wisdom to know when it's possible and desirable to put down those stones. But don't try to pick up a new stone by the name of "putting down the stones"... if you see what I mean. Just let go of what you can let go of. And if you can't let go yet, then let go of the fact that you can't let go yet. And just watch mindfully as you engage in your daily activities.

[Santiago]

Thank you Emerald, I will be doing my best to observe my real motivations when I do whatever I am doing. Because I don't really have a clue what I really want to do or who am I, I don't know which one is my real-self and which one is the ego trying to be accepted/loved...


And I just had this thoughts which go deeper into this dilemma:

Maybe I actually want to eat healthy, I want to meditate, do exercise, etc.
Maybe I truly believe in all this things and feel like I should be doing them. 

Just imagine that my true self believes in all this things, and I am resisting it because I think it's socially weird and I can't use any of this things to connect with people, so I am afraid I will be a weird person that does all this weird stuff and that is unrelatable. Because people my age don't do any of that... I feel like a girl will ask me what I do for fun and when I tell her I meditate, or I take a walk in the park, or I like to observe my mind and learn about it she will be like WTF, she will think I don't have any friends, that I am a social outcast, a weirdo...
So I am not honoring myself doing all this things that deep down I want to do, and even tho I am sacrificing that part of myself in order to be more "normal/accepted" I am not even managing to connect with people, because I am against all this stupid things like watching tv and drinking or doing drugs, so instead of being in the middle(instead of not doing what is socially acceptable neither doing what I want to do), I might as well try to come back to my old good habits and honor my beliefs.

What I do know is that in the past when I have been doing all these things I have felt happy as never before.
 

So, this could be interpreted in both ways, you could for example tell me that I just put a random collection of ideas I took from watching self-help videos and I convinced myself that when I do all this stuff I will be happy, and on the other hand you could tell me that I actually enjoyed doing them and the fact that I honored this part of myself even tho I thought it was socially weird was what made me happy, because I was being true to myself even tho I was risking being rejected and being weird in the eyes of society.


So now I am stuck trying to figure out what is really going on.. Do I want to have this "healthy lifestyle" and I am resisting it because I feel I will not fit in society? But even tho I am resisting it based on fear of rejection and judgement I am also resisting the socially acceptable lifestyle because I think it's LAME and my true self is against that lifestyle, so I am stuck in between.

Or maybe I just want to do all this stuff because I made myself a to-do list that I need to complete in order to be good enough? Is it a mix of both?

I could also be using all this idea of "the healthy lifestyle" in order to disconnect myself from society, just because I am terrified of connecting with people, I fear rejection and I fear judgement. After all it's super hard to avoid eating unhealthy foods when you meet people and so it's the perfect excuse not to go out... I do have this mindset that people just stimulate and numb themselves with all this trash tv and food and drugs.. So What to do?

I think I will do my best from now until end of the year to actually start doing all this habits and stop some bad habits, and see what happens, as I said before in the past I was really happy when I was living this lifestyle, I felt amazing, so I shall try it again, even tho it's super hard to make new habits and stop the old ones.... I will also keep an eye on my thought and feelings during the process and try to see what my motivations really are, as you told me to do.

Edited September 17, 2017 by Santiago

[Privet]

How about the opposite of crying - anger?

When I feel strong tension in my body or mind (which is stored suppressed emotions and other traumatic stuff I guess) I turn music loud and let myself go insane, dance like and idiot, rock my head, sing with the song, walk around in circles and make stupid faces, and all kind off stuff I can come up with, I try to express myself as freely and non-judgementally as I can. 

Try to make yourself angry, you can mix this with crying also, listen to some metal music alone in the room if you listen to such a music, try to sing it at least silently, you'll catch fire and warm yourself up with practice and eventually and will be able to release the portion of tension every time you do this and feel a relief.

Also, strong determination sitting seems to help trauma a lot, you just sit and it upacks by itself, it feels shitty and you continue to sit and suffer and it just works itself, all that is required from you is to just sit and let youself suffer and be aware of it, hundreds of hours.

Here are the excerpts from "The Mind Illuminated", a book about meditation:

Quote

Stored unconscious residues from the past well up to the surface and are released. The result is a profound healing. You don’t have to do anything to help things along. This purification is a natural process of the mind. Simply allow it to unfold organically.

Quote

The emotional purification in this Stage can be the equivalent of years of therapy. You can purify your mind of afflictions you’ve accumulated throughout your entire life.

Also what I've learned from my experience is that crying and trying to savor your suffering sometimes is just snowballing and ineffective, you just cry-cry-cry and feel no relief. It's like when you fell from your bicycle, scratched your knee, this wound is covered with a shell and you tear off this shell for weeks and weeks, instead of letting the fucking wound to heal itself. Just be aware that your knee has a wound and don't touch it until it's healed.

Edited September 22, 2017 by Privet