Facing Fears, Healing Trauma
and other easy peasy client questions!

Hey, good people. Happy Wednesday.

I hope <laugh> things have settled down for you a little bit. I've been talking the last few weeks about how things have been wonky, weird & challenging. Things have settled a bit in my life. They're not, smooth sailing as yet, but I'm sleeping better, and that's manna from heaven! So I hope things have also settled down in your world too. November with the theme of death is, thank goodness, behind us. And I hope, if you've been dealing with some endings, that things have come to peaceful conclusions, in your worlds.

So this week I got a wonderful email from a former client or current client, rather, and it's a chock o' block full type of question! So I would love to remind you that if you have questions that are general and not about your specific circumstances or life, but you'd like my point of view on something, please, please, please email me and I'd love to address those in future videos.

So lemme get down to it. My dear has emailed me this question: Does facing our fears and things that once traumatized us actually help us heal and expand? Or could that potentially just stroke our egos? Some people constantly put themselves in familiar situations that mimic their past traumas or perpetrators [or I would assume she means with perpetrators] in hopes to prove to themselves and others that they can handle challenges. I think it's a constant loop of toxicity if one is not careful with their intention. Uh, I'm not sure if this question or observation makes any sense, – it makes sense to me!

What we have here is probably about six different questions. So I'm gonna chop this up.

The first one: does, facing our fears and things that once traumatized us, actually help us heal and expand? We actually have two questions in there, the first is about facing our fears.

Yes! I am a huge proponent of not just facing fear, but unpacking fear for the false flag that it is. So, is fear real to you? What about it stops you? What about fear keeps you in a loop of judgment? Is fear necessary? So fear in and of itself is, what I call a distractor implant. It's not yours. It's usually something you've picked up from an experience from someone you've had an exchange with, family, friends, et cetera. And fear is always designed to stop you. So where can you acknowledge that fear is stopping you and negate it? Blunt it? Put it down? I've got clearing statements for that. But that's a whole other conversation! So that's fear.

Now, she's introduced trauma into the same question and we'll parse that out. Does facing our traumas actually help heal us or expand us? Great question! And I think this is really, a more personal question that each of us individuals would have to answer for ourselves. And before I get into this, I wanna be very clear, I'm not a psychotherapist. <laugh>, I'm not your therapist, so you might wanna ask these questions of your therapist. Even though people do come to me with, psychological or therapeutic types of issues, I'm very quick, to refer people if I think that's necessary.

But you're asking from my point of view of trauma. And trauma is, uh, kind of a wiggly beast, right? We have the trauma that we know about. Then we also have our subconscious and unconscious mind. We also have our own anti-conscious biases that try to keep those traumas or experiences stowed away. So, our conscious mind is not obliterated by said trauma.

So, again, a very personal issue on how you deal with your traumas. I have worked very, very hard doing shadow work, which maybe I'll address in another week. Shadow work is digging into anything that you've let be unconscious, it's digging into what you've chosen to be unconscious about.

We don't consciously choose to be unconscious <laugh>, but that happens a lot with trauma, right? It can go into an unconscious or even a subconscious realm where it's just inaccessible to us. I've been very, very deliberate about unpacking my own unconscious responses to trauma.

I've done inner child work and other modalities so that I could see the truth of my own life, my choices, the expression of my body, my being, how I show up, how I parent, how I manage my business, etc. I've deliberately chosen to look at past trauma, and particularly my unconscious responses to those traumas. And that has been exceptionally difficult. It's not easy work, and not everybody is up to it. But I do encourage it [shadow work, unpacking your unconsciousness] and having trained professionals to help you in that is very important.

I help some folks with their trauma. I do coaching work, but I do not claim to be the end all all. I think a lot of different types of practitioners are necessary: bodywork practitioners, psychotherapists, psychiatry, and medication if that's necessary. So it's a specific and, tailored approach that you, yourself, guide your own psyche through.

So, that was a very long answer <laugh> to what was just the first part of that question! I think my answer also touches on the question of stroking our egos. I will say this, and this is not to indict an entire system, but psychotherapy and psychiatry can keep us in an infinity loop of looping around said traumas without actually, getting to root causes, or, a baseline of relief. So, I would just always encourage you, if you are in this work for yourself, I encourage you to keep coming back to the question of: are we moving the needle on this? Am I getting better? Can I breathe? Can I sleep at night? These are anxiety or depression symptoms that can and should improve over time.

So, always stay in the question, always investigate: what am I getting out of this? And if I feel I am, what does healing look like? How will I know I'm getting better?

You should hopefully feel it <laugh> in your body, in your bones and, hopefully, you'll experience some space in your mind and in your being.

Moving on ..some people constantly put themselves in familiar situations that mimic their past traumas. That is a whole huge topic, this repetitive behavior. And, I know this is pop psychology, but I've gotten a lot out of it, and that's about attachment theory. I'm thinking about the repetition of codependence and addiction. People have addictions to all sorts of things. So when we think of addiction, don't just necessarily think about substance abuse, gambling, sex addiction, et cetera. We're also addicted to our unconsciousness. Right? We're all to some degree – addicted to not knowing what it is that's keeping us stuck.

So those are some big, big issues to look at. But yes, we do these repeating things because there's usually some underlying unconsciousness, probably related to trauma, that keeps us stuck.

And a lot of that has to do with family and attachment theory. As for outside of psychotherapy, inner child work is fantastic. Some people do medicine ceremonies to get to the bottom of this stuff. Whatever you choose, I have no judgment. Some people work with me to facilitate their consciousness. But for whatever modality you choose, just always stay in the question. Check-in with yourself: Am I moving the needle? Am I getting better?

And isn't that the point, right? We wanna get out of that constant loop of toxicity. I referenced sleeping better, eating better, getting up, going for walks, and feeling excited about life. And to get there, beyond attachment theory and investigating family relationships, a lot of the looping of toxicity can be addressed with a thorough education of neuroplasticity, which can be done with brain training (The Dynamic Neural Retraining System). I don't wanna get off on a whole thing about that. That's a whole nother call! But that's another impediment to our healing – how the brain has been wired to trauma.

So attachment theories and trauma and all the things! A lot is going on in there!

To close out – keep track of your relief if you are going through a shadow work journey. If you are going into psychotherapy or psychiatry, or you are going through something big and maybe you are getting acupuncture, keep track of your experiences. Do I feel better? Is this helpful? Maybe this wasn't so helpful. This felt like it was re-traumatizing. Or, are we talking about the same thing every week?

So keep track and, don't be afraid to switch it up. Make different choices for yourself, obviously with responsibility, some gravity and care. But you deserve to get better. Everybody deserves well-being. So keep, searching, searching, searching. Never stop. Don't ever stop getting better.

That's a lot. I've said a lot today! <laugh> Ask me questions! I'd love to continue to talk more about this stuff. So I hope, my client that asked this question, and all of you – got a lot out of it!

Send me follow-up questions if anything needs some clarification. Ciao, for now, I hope you all have a fantastic week.