Rewards, Glory, and Honor

Rewards, Glory, and Honor

I love to have adventures. I put the responsibility squarely on my dear dad who read me adventure stories for years before I went to sleep, Jules Verne, H. Rider Haggard, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Allan Poe.

Adventure! The lure of discovery! The discovery of hidden treasure! Clues! Surprises! Excitement! Rewards! Glory! Honor!

So how did a girl with a love of adventure, but with a tendency to depression and anxiety satisfy that urge for adventure?

By going inside.

Indiana Jones ain’t got nuthin’ on me.

Inside, into the labyrinth of our minds. Infinite possibilities for exploration, the discovery of who we are deep inside, the recovery of treasured memories buried under incomplete junk experiences, the completion, and therefore elimination, of traumatic experiences. The clearing out of subconscious material can that make living easily and well so challenging. Coming to understand just how deep and complex and amazing we are. Learning to value our own selves, to feel self-respect for what we’ve come through. Oh, yeah, that’s my kind of adventure!

One of the marvelous things about going inside is that, on some level, I know I have already survived everything in there. Unlike Allan Quatermain, or the Jules Verne characters, I’m not facing unknown monsters. I may have forgotten, but never completely.

And, while I am the only one who can dive into the depths of my mind, I can always have a person whom I respect and trust topside,  on the surface, holding a safety line for me.

Sometimes, when I go inside, I discover an incomplete traumatic experience that involves someone else. In the outside world, that person has moved on, changed in ways I may know nothing about, but inside, they are frozen in time. And I am often stuck there with them, locked into that moment in our relationship, replaying the experience again and again, retraumatizing myself again and again when the memory, often out of my awareness, gets triggered by a smell, or a random thought, a snip of a song, or something else.

Definitely Jules Verne territory, so very SciFi.

As the intrepid explorer, I grasp that slippery thought, and follow it in, safety line clipped to my utility belt. I observe the thought, I have emotions and feelings about the thought, and now, because I am living in the present, I can feel all the way to the end of the experience and let it go, sweeping the ashes into the dustbin of oblivion. Ahh.

Now, when the trigger fires, the memory may flare for a bit, but the punch is gone, and it’s just story. I have reclaimed part of my soul. I am freer than I was, and I have more room for joy. Talk about rewards. Talk about glory. Talk about honor.

And I have changed my attachment to that person, clean it up, released resentment or fear or anger, and made room for more clean love. Talk about rewards. Talk about glory. Talk about honor.

How have I changed from ignoring my past to recognizing it as the key to my best life?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 10172013

Choosing Happiness

Choosing Happiness

What an interesting choice I made back in the day when I decided to choose happiness. I find it kind of poignant that, when I made my grand and dramatic declaration of intent, I had no idea what happiness was, what I would need to do to get there, and how much more wonderful it was than ever I dreamed.

I was just tired of feeling bad all the time.

Little by little, I was able to start paying attention,and noticing when I felt good. And then noticing what I did that made me feel good. Trauma by trauma, incident by incident, I began to clean out my past. Each thing I let go of, each thing I worked through, made more room for joy, made the path to my perfect self a little easier to navigate.

What makes me feel good? How am I nurtured? What makes me comfortable?

I used so many different techniques to clean up my stuff. There is not one right way. You need to find the ones that work best for you.

And if you want to be happy, you need to do this. Why would I choose to be happy?

When we ignore our own past, we are setting ourselves up for really interesting times.

Old patterns will replay over and over and over. Look for your “why does X always happen” things for examples of what I’m talking about.

We may find ourselves screaming at current loved ones about things we should be saying to people from our deep history.

Anxiety reactions and phobic responses are both very often based on ancient personal traumas. Curiously, so are many allergies.

I had a thing about phones ringing late at night. I would get so anxious I could hardly breathe. My hands shook like crazy and my heart pounded. I took to unplugging the phone. Imagine my relief when I discovered the single incident that happened when I was ten that scared me so much, and resolved it. Now, I just don’t like the phone ringing in the middle of the night, but it’s no longer traumatic. (I used hypnosis. It took 20 minutes.)

I had nightmares that would have made Stephen King itch.

Point is, if we don’t address the topics from our past that need addressing, we are likely to be living in our own version of “Groundhog Day,” replaying the same events over and over and feeling like we are just horribly unlucky, and longing to be happy and not getting there.

My most recent triumph has been the releasing of about 25% of my physical stuff from my home. I’d wanted to for ages, but something was in my way. Actually, several things. I got them rooted out, and used Creative Questions, “Why is it so fun and easy to clear my home?” as an example.

Each of us has something to clean up, some of us more than others. It is worth it. You are worth it. This life, of feeling loved, of being happy and peaceful, of loving with all my heart, of satisfying work, of daily joys, is so pleasant. Being relaxed, no worries, falling asleep feeling peaceful, these are benefits that cannot be dismissed.

How have I changed from ignoring my past to cleaning it up with an open and loving heart?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 09/27/2013

Go, Man, Go

Go, Man, Go

One of the things I take for granted is my level of energy, my stamina, my gung-ho-ism. I kind of noticed it this morning as I was thinking about writing my daily appreciation. (Did I tell you that I’ve been doing that each morning? Kind of a nice way to start the day.)

I haven’t always had a lot of energy for fun stuff like I do now. I know now that I had a lot of energy back then, but I burned it up on stuff like pretending everything was okay when it really wasn’t, like holding onto incomplete experiences that left me traumatized, and with really bad habits, like internal dialogs that were all about how much I sucked, whingeing all day long, moping, heaving heavy sighs, aching and weeping. Well, it was all in a day’s work; feeling miserable takes a lot of effort, and that means energy. And, because one of my favorite hobbies was worrying, I didn’t sleep much, or well. On the bright side, it meant that I could always at least complain about being exhausted.

What makes me strong and vibrant?

I’ve had some really wonderful teachers who helped me get rid of a lot of my old, unfinished business; old hurts and betrayals, injustices, abuses; and something amazing happened each time. Each time I dumped a bit of my old story, I reclaimed a bit of energy.

Why do I radiate health?

The same way I can’t hold your hand  when mine is full of stuff, I can’t use my energy for fun if I’m using it up holding onto a lot of old pain. And, frankly, I’d rather deal with my stuff and then go play.

Why do I choose to release my story and live free?

So, I’ve used methods where I remembered and released, and other methods where I just released, and then I found ways to change my old behavior so I wasn’t just falling back into the old habits.

That last bit is hugely important. It’s why so many of us struggle over and over with trying to change. When I want to change the one big bad habit, I also have a bunch of little habits that support it. It makes changing the one big bad habit so much easier when I’ve identified the little ones.

For example,if I get home, go straight upstairs and turn on the TV, chances are excellent that I will do almost nothing else all evening.  I get a lot done when I get home and don’t immediately go upstairs. If I can spend even just ten minutes downstairs fiddling around, I tend to feel like I wanna do things instead of flop.  Weird, but it works for me.

I’m learning to see my little habits that support my big bad habits. I will tell you this, it is way easier to address a bunch of those little ones than to white-knuckle the big ones. Creative Questions are such a good way to tackle the little ones. I love to use the “How have I changed frrom X to Y?” for those, and to use the “What makes me X?” question helps me find useful motivations.

How have I changed from holding onto my old stuff to feeling energized and free?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 09112013