Category: Mental Health

Healing from Trauma

Oprah Winfrey and Bruce Perry address the issue of healing from trauma in their book, What Happened to You?  In a chapter on Coping and Healing, they explore the impact of relational deficit in the early years of a child’s life; what neglect and parental conflict does to a child’s development, their worldview and their stress response; and the importance of an understanding, nurturing and patient carer/parent/therapist for healing to occur.   In the process, they discuss, in depth, the nature of neglect, differences in the way individuals are impacted by trauma, behavioural manifestations of adverse childhood experiences, and the road to healing, including creating a new worldview.

This chapter of their book is very rich with stories, insights, principles and personal disclosure by Oprah – disclosures that are enriched by observations by Bruce on her life experiences.  Oprah, herself, and the vast work that she does in the area of trauma healing, is an exemplar for coping with, and healing from, trauma.  What she has learned through her own life experience and ongoing discussions with Bruce over many years, has led to her establishing the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls (OWLAG) in South Africa. 

The emotional environment in early childhood

Bruce maintains that the quality of the emotional climate in early childhood impacts our worldview and our stress response.  If there is stability, nurturing and predictability, our brains and our behaviour can develop.  If the opposite exists, this has an adverse impact on our childhood development and our capacity as an adult to deal with challenges and stress.  We can develop the mindset that we are not lovable or not worthy of people’s attention.    Dr. Gabor Maté utilises a process he calls “compassionate inquiry” to unearth these negative self-stories – vestiges of an early life lived in an environment of neglect.

Bruce highlights the fact that different, deficit emotional environments can result in very different traumatic effects.  He illustrates this point by an in-depth comparison of two boys who manifested their traumatic upbring in contrasting ways.  His explanation shows clearly why one boy became fearful and aggressive while the other “had no feeling at all” and engaged in threats and thefts.  His description of their respective adverse childhood experiences and their differentiated impacts brings into sharp focus the key role that quality relationships play in early childhood.

This discussion of the differences in personal development of the two boys led Bruce to assert that an important consideration is not only “what happened to you?” but also “what didn’t happen for you?” – in terms of the behaviour of a parent/carer who provides undivided attention (in lieu of distracted attention), gentle touch (rather than physical abuse), consistent nurturing (instead of an on/off approach) and regular reassurance (instead of a belittling attitude).  Not only does the quality of relationships in early childhood impact brain development but also the development of social and motor skills.   Bruce contends that “relationships are the key to healing from trauma”  because trauma often results from deficient relationships.

An environment of conflict

Bruce notes that if you are a young child and you are in an environment of parental conflict, you have limited options.  You are too young to flee and unable to fight as you are easily overpowered and may draw physical attacks from either or both parents.  Often in this situation, a child will dissociate – retreat to their inner world. Dissociation becomes a problem when it is prolonged or becomes a habituated response to everyday challenges – this can lead to what is termed a dissociative disorder.  I can relate to dissociation as a stress response  as my parents had frequent verbal and physical conflicts over my father’s alcoholism and gambling – my mother would berate him over his misuse of our family income.  This would sometimes escalate into a physical attack on my mother, on a number of occasions this put her in hospital. 

When I was young, my natural response would be to dissociate from the  traumatic experience, as flight or fight was not an option – fight was out of the questions as my father was a very successful professional boxer.  However, as I reached the age of 12, I used to get on my pushbike and ride into the night as fast as I could (flight response), hoping that when I returned the conflict would be over.  The physical exertion of bike riding at speed served to release some of my pent-up tension and fear from the conflict.

Both Bruce and Oprah make the point that there is a positive side to dissociation in that it could be a life-saving response in some situations but is also part and parcel of what each of us do every day – e.g., day dream.  Bruce contends that the “capacity to control dissociation behaviour is very powerful” – it underpins our capacity for reflection and focus and to achieve a “flow state”.   I experienced  a number of personal traumas in my early childhood and adulthood, including a serious care accident in the family car when our car was hit on the side by another car, rolled a number of times, went over a 10 foot embankment, and came to rest on its hood.  I have learned to control my dissociative behaviour and, as a result,  developed high levels of reflective cognition and focused behaviour – reflected in my PhD, Professorship and this blog (this is my 700th  published blog post for my Grow Mindfulness blog).

Reflection

“What Happened to You” by Bruce and Oprah stimulated a lot of reflection for me and in some instances, “flashbacks” as well.  I began to appreciate more how my five years spent as a contemplative monk (from ages 18 to 22) served to provide me with a highly structured, stable, reflective and meditative environment with high quality relationships that together enabled me to self-regulate after a traumatic upbringing in a conflicted parental environment.  In my upbringing, my mother’s unconditional love and support offset to some degree my father’s (PTSD-induced) behaviour.

I am sure my period of development in an environment of daily silence, meditation, prayer and study helped me to achieve a degree of peace and tranquility (sometimes punctuated by moments of panic over my deteriorating home situation). As I grew in mindfulness, I was able to develop resilience, a positive mindset and the ability to find refuge in meditation.

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Image by Luisella Planeta LOVE PEACE ?? from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

The Wounds of Trauma and Their Impact on Relationships and Communication

In their book, What Happened to You?, Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Bruce Perry, provide a chapter where they bring together an understanding of the wounds of trauma and their impact on relationships, communication between people and physical illness.  Throughout, they stress the mind-body connection and how the brain processes experiences.   Bruce’s explanations are lucid and, together with Oprah, he illuminates the ideas and concepts with stories and examples.  Oprah draws on her own traumatic upbringing and thousands of interviews with traumatised individuals of all ages; Bruce draws on his research and clinical practice, especially with traumatised children.  The book reflects decades of experience and the ongoing conversations between the authors. 

The book is incredibly rich in ideas, insights and stories and I found that I was better able to absorb its content by listening to the CD-Audio version which is narrated by the authors as an everyday conversation.  The interchange of ideas and experiences adds to the clarity of their explanations of the wounds of trauma and the elucidation of their impact in individual cases.  With the audio version of the book, Bruce also provides a series of diagrams that illustrate the conceptual framework behind the book and the shared understandings.

Understanding the wounds of trauma

Bruce contends that trauma-related symptoms are often overlooked – they are assumed to result from a functional breakdown or represent psychosomatic illness.  He maintains that the symptoms of the wounds are often “dismissed, missed and misunderstood” by doctors. He illustrates this by sharing the heart-rending story of Chiara who suffered from Diabetes and at age 16 was admitted to hospital in an unconscious state resulting from “diabetic coma”.  His explanation of how doctors tried unsuccessfully to treat her highlighted the doctors’ blindspot in relation to  the wounds of trauma.  Bruce explains how he achieved an effective diagnosis of Chiara’s condition by identifying the trigger for her traumatic response and using his understanding of neuroscience to develop a treatment protocol implemented by the doctors.

Bruce explains that different physical symptoms – such as chest pains, headaches, abdominal pain and fainting – are all potentially related to a “sensitised stress response” resulting from trauma.  When I heard him explain “fainting” as one potential impact of trauma memory, I recalled how often I used to faint in Church in my childhood – simultaneously, I was experiencing the trauma of a violent, alcoholic father suffering from PTSD as a result of war service and imprisonment in Changi.  My doctor had no explanation for these fainting spells.  However, at the time, my home environment was heavily charged with parental conflict – unfortunately, none of us understood trauma, PTSD and the full extent of the wounds and impact of trauma, including addiction.

The impact of trauma on communication and relationships

Bruce draws on the concept of “sequential processing” of the brain to explain the impact of trauma on communication and relationships.  Basically, the concept involves recognising that all sensory experience is firstly processed by the “lower brain”.  Part of this processing involves matching the new input with “the catalogues of stored memories of the past”.  The degree of matching with a traumatic experience determines whether or not a maladaptive stress response occurs.   The smart part of our brain, the Cortex, can be shut down when the perception of risk (as a result of current or prior trauma) is very high – so the “thinking brain” is drowned out by the “survival brain”.

Bruce illustrates this by sharing the story of 3 year old Joseph who witnessed the abduction of his 11 year old sister, which resulted in her murder.  At the time, Bruce was working with the FBI Child Abduction and Serial Killer Taskforce.  He discovered that the FBI officers were unable to get any useful explanation from Joseph and he was asked to work with the child to try to find out information necessary to find the perpetrator and enable a conviction.  Bruce provides a very detailed explanation of how he went about winning the boy’s trust and gaining the necessary information for conviction of the murderer.

As part of Bruce’s explanation of his process with Joseph, he discusses the impact of the “power differential” between the FBI Officers/himself as a stranger and the 3 year old traumatised child.   He explained that when you are the person with all the power, you can be unaware of it or its potential impact.  This fact has been brought home to me many times in co-facilitating the Confident People Management Program over 15 years (involving 2,000 managers in multiple programs and locations).  What we have found is that the majority managers on the program (mainly drawn from the public sector) are totally unaware of their power to shape the team culture.  At the outset of the program we say to them, “What you say, how you say it, what you do, how you do it and what you omit to do, shapes team culture hour in and hour out every day” – we add “whether you are conscious of it or not”.  

Bruce’s discussion of the impact of trauma on communication in relationships highlights the wisdom of this advice that we have been giving to managers.  He explains that the goal of communication is to achieve a “Cortex to Cortex” transmission.  However, on both sides of the communication (giver and receiver), rational thoughts are first processed through “the emotional filters of the lower brain”.  Hence, the message can be distorted in its transmission and reception.  He explains lucidly that “our facial expression, tone of voice and words are turned into neural activity by the other person’s senses” – they can trigger a traumatised response or build the relationship with staff through developing trust, mutual respect and safety.  A by-product of this approach is the development of a sense of agency in the manager themselves.   One of the participants on our program provided concrete evidence of the wounds of trauma and their impact when she explained that her current highly nervous state resulted from a manager shouting at her in front of other staff – this experience was traumatic for her, the impact being compounded by the power differential (and possibly stored memories of like, past adverse experiences).

Reflection

Many researchers and therapists talk about the wounds of trauma and their impact on relationships and communication.  However, Bruce and Oprah in What Happened to You, “join the dots” and “pull it all together” from their decades of experience and ongoing conversations and collaboration.  They enrich the meaning of the neuroscience concepts and insights with relatable stories that clearly illustrate the points they are making.

At one stage when talking about the power differential, Bruce mentioned that it may take 10 or more sessions before a client will feel safe and be prepared to “share some of their most emotionally difficult experiences” or acknowledge their contribution to those experiences.  This discussion reminded me of my experience mentoring a manager who was traumatised on a daily basis by a narcissistic Director who continuously belittled him by publicly calling out his “mistakes” in front of his staff  (sometimes the “mistakes were not his, but the Director’s).  It took me 7 coaching sessions of 90 minutes each over a few months before he admitted that he was defensive in his communication.  He said he experienced the insight as a “blow to his stomach” – an expression which showed the embodiment of his resistance resulting from the wounds of ongoing trauma and their impact on his feelings of safety while working with me (the “power differential” was at play in a major way as I had been engaged as a consultant by the Director to coach the “inefficient” manager).  I have come to realise that in this interaction, I was an external consultant with a high degree of expert, personal and referent power – I was the one that was in a position of power, what Bruce describes as “at the top of the power differential”.

There is so much that plays out in our daily interactions that we are unaware of, especially if we are in a power position.  We can grow in mindfulness and self-awareness through personal study, reflection and mindfulness practices such as meditation.

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Image by Wilfried Thünker from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Perspectives on Recovering from Trauma

Trauma is a complex area and the process of recovery is rarely linear.  It often involves progress/regress over an extended period, sometimes a lifetime.  Various experts have studied trauma and its impacts from multiple perspectives, drawing on research, clinical practice and reflection on their personal experience.  They have adopted different approaches to facilitating recovery from trauma, recognising that the experience of a traumatic event and its subsequent impacts vary from individual to individual.  Health Means bring many of these conceptual and practical perspectives together in their Biology of Trauma 2.0 Summit.

Recovering from trauma and its impacts

There can be differential impacts for people witnessing the same traumatising event, such as a mass shooting, sudden death of a close relative or a car accident.  The depth of trauma response, according to Bruce Perry, is influenced by the timing, pattern and intensity of the initiating event as well as the degree of mitigating factors, especially “relational health” – the quality of connectedness and of supportive relationships.  In his view, “connectedness can counterbalance adversity”.  Improving relational health with a therapist as well as supportive others is a key element in recovering from trauma.  Dr. Elena Villanueva provides a pathway to relational health by offering a group-based recovery process, incorporating facilitation by health experts and a personal care plan.  Her holistic process is offered in the form of a Mind/Body/Energy Program.  Bruce Perry is a co-author with Oprah Winfrey of the book, What Happened to You: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience and Healing. 

Bessel van der Kolk places considerable emphasis on the “visceral impact” of trauma – the generation of deep inner feelings.  He argues that recovery processes should focus on the “emotional brain”, rather than the “rational brain’.  He maintains that the mind-body influence is bi-directional and that a person can  experience “visceral overload” when exposed to a traumatic event.  He suggests employing healing modalities that recognise the mind-body-emotion connection, such as movement (e.g., Tai Chi), singing or chanting, and a wide range of mindfulness practices.  Bessel is the author of The Body Keeps the Score: brain and body in the transformation of trauma.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz draws on neuropsychotherapy when treating traumatised people.  This integrated mind-body approach incorporates psychotherapy practices along with neuroscience findings. She contends that it is possible to develop resilience through trauma recovery.  Her approach is multi-modal, incorporating practices as diverse as exploration of family history, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), somatic therapy and mindfulness.  Relationship building, positive psychology, reflection, reprocessing and resilience development are integral to her approach.  Arielle is the author of The Post-Traumatic Growth Guidebook: Practical Mind-Body Tools to Heal Trauma, Foster Resilience and Awaken Your Potential.

Gabor Maté agrees with the approach of exploring what happened to a traumatised person, rather than trying to find out “what’s wrong with them”.  He also adopts a non-judgmental approach to addiction, asserting that many people who suffer from addiction have experienced trauma in their life.  In line with this thinking, he adopts and teaches an approach he calls “compassionate inquiry” which among other things helps a person to discover their “negative self-messaging” resulting from the experience of trauma.  He aims to help the traumatised person to confront and name the underlying pain resulting from an identified trauma.  He also employs a holistic approach incorporating “body-work”, mindfulness, connection with nature and self-care approaches such as proper nutrition and stress management.  Gabor is the author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction. 

Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness

David Treleaven, creator of the Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness Podcast, discusses the importance of understanding the window of tolerance when working with people who have experienced trauma.  The window of tolerance is the level of arousal that an individual can tolerate in a productive way – they are able to share, process, and receive information when they are within this personally tolerable zone.   Trauma, such as that suffered by some people during the pandemic, reduces the window of tolerance.  David stresses the need to offer people who have been traumatised a choice of meditation anchors to avoid unconsciously triggering a trauma response.  He is also acutely aware of the need to ensure that mindfulness practices are accessible for people with disabilities, especially physical disabilities. David is the author of Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing.

There is widespread recognition that various forms of mindfulness can assist in trauma recovery.  However, researchers and clinical  practitioners such as Sam Himelstein, who has dedicated many years to working with traumatised teenagers, highlight the need to tread cautiously and sensitively when dealing with people who have experienced trauma.  Sam offers insightful principles and guidelines for trauma-informed mindfulness.  He found too that in some situations a conventional approach to mindfulness would not work as it would take a traumatised teenager outside their window of tolerance.  He found, for example, that listening to music together built a connection and a trusting relationship so that the impacted teenager felt free to begin sharing both their trauma experience and what was happening for them.  Sam is the author of Trauma-Informed Mindfulness with Teens: A Guide for Mental Health Professionals.

Reflection

Recovery from trauma frequently involves some form of somatic therapy such as somatic meditation, resting in your body or resting in your breath.  This is often supplemented by other therapies that address the visceral impact of trauma, negative self-thoughts, supportive relationships and the flow of energy in the body.  Overall, the complexity of trauma suggests the need for a holistic approach, as adopted by most of the practitioners discussed in this post.  Health practitioners are becoming increasingly creative as they develop a deepened understanding of trauma and its impacts.

Underpinning many of the approaches discussed is mindfulness practice in one form or another.  It is acknowledged that as we grow in mindfulness, we can identify our own traumas and their impacts, strengthen our connectedness and relationships, build resilience and adopt a positive mindset.  Dr. Edith Eger, Auschwitz survivor and author of The Choice: A True Story of Hope, encourages us to explore our “inner landscape” and move from a victim mindset to true freedom.

Sounds True offers a Healing Trauma Program conducted by 13 of the world’s top trauma recovery experts including Gabor Maté, Jeffrey Rutstein, Peter Levine and Arielle Schwartz. The program offers practices, skills and tools that have proven effectiveness. The time frame for the program allows you to lean new behaviours and put them into practice, as well as offering Q & A sessions to explore what worked for you and any blockages to your progress.

Sounds True also offers a shorter 8 week course, Trauma and the Embodied Brain, conducted by Bonnie Badenoch, PhD – therapist, consultant, trainer and author of The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships.

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Reflections on Personal Trauma  

In their book, What Happened to You?, Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey discuss sources of trauma and their impact on people’s lives.  Bruce draws on extensive research as a neuroscientist and years of clinical practice as a child psychologist.  Oprah explains that her insights are drawn from more than 50,000 interviews conducted over a lifetime of discussing trauma with people of all ages. 

I’ve been listening to the CD-Audio version of the book and it is quite fascinating to hear the interaction between the authors – Oprah and a world-famous brain and trauma expert – as they share personal stories and understanding about patterns in human behaviour catalysed by trauma.   The focus is not on “what’s wrong with you” but “what happened” for you.  After listening to the first few chapters focused on the biological, psychological and behavioural impacts of trauma, I thought it appropriate to share reflections on my own life stimulated by hearing the conversations between Bruce and Oprah. 

The conversations are very rich with personal stories, case studies and scientific insights (illustrated through very clear and cogently explained diagrams provided in PDF format).  They spontaneously stimulate personal recall and reflections and I have attempted to capture some of my insights about my personal experience in the following: 

Striving for balance 

Bruce and Oprah highlight the impact of trauma in creating a “distorted worldview” and throwing our overall stress response system “out of balance”.  This loss of balance results in “emotional dysregulation” and dysfunctional behaviour.  The stress response of a previously traumatised individual is “sensitive” to cues that are perceived as threatening and can lead to maladaptive behaviour because of distorted perception of the cue, e.g., a sound, sight, smell. 

I spent 18 months in an orphanage owing to my mother’s serious illness and my father’s posting overseas.  I was about four years old at the time and I recall that when I first left the orphanage I used to be terrified of the moon and adopted evasive behaviour – having not seen the moon before as a toddler.  My younger sister ran away from school in Year One because she was traumatised by the period that we spent in the orphanage separated from each other (boys and girls were kept apart).     

Oprah and Bruce make the point that we are continuously trying to seek balance in our life – we attempt to offset the pain of loneliness or the pain of fear by seeking “rewards”.  These rewards can take many forms but often lead to addiction – to drugs, alcohol, food, or aberrant behaviour.  The need-to-please is but one example of this ineffectual “seeking rewards” and I can identify that set of  behaviours in my early twenties.    

Bruce points out that the real rewards lie in realising our personal “rhythm” and achieving connectedness (and associated sense of belonging).  He maintains that each of us has a personal rhythm that is different for different individuals.  He mentions the response of a young child to behaviour designed to achieve a relaxing rhythm – we can relate to the child that needs to be hugged to “settle”, another that needs to be pushed in a pram, while a third child has to go for a drive in a car before they will settle (or alternatively, as I found with one of my young daughters, avoiding car trips and walking instead).   

Bruce suggests that each of us can increase our sense of calm and reduce agitation if we engage in activities that align with our personal rhythm – for me, that means engaging in the reflective activity of writing or walking, the smooth motion of Tai Chi or adopting a mindful approach to playing social tennis (through conscious breathing, visualisation, recall of personal competence in other settings and adopting an intentional mindset informed by reflection on my mistakes and behaviour during a game of tennis).   

Both Bruce and Oprah assert that we need a “healthy combination of rewards”, and that “personal connectedness” is the real reward that can offset the “pull of addictive behaviour”.  For both, connectedness in the form of “positive interaction with people” is not only rewarding but also assists with the development of emotional regulation (offsetting dysregulation).  I’ve found connectedness on a personal and professional level that has helped me to achieve a sense of balance and self-worth.   My current marriage (of 37 years) is especially affirming, and my professional relationships developed through my work in the action learning arena have countered any sense of isolation or negative thoughts of not contributing.   

Experience of being loved 

Both Oprah and Bruce argue that the way we were loved as children influences our capacity for love and the way we go about giving and receiving love.  A critical parent will beget a child who is sensitive to being criticised and yet be highly critical as a parent.   In their view, “safe and stable nurturing” is an essential environment for developing the capacity to love – the absence of such an environment can negatively impact our “regulatory network”, our neural development and biology, and lead to dysfunctional behaviour.  Oprah maintains that “dysfunction shows up in direct proportion to how you were or were not loved”.   Bruce argues that a pattern of love that is attentive, responsive and attuned creates predictability and develops resilience.   

My experience of being loved as I was growing up is very mixed.  I experienced unconditional love from my mother, while from my father my experience was one of disconnection and for the most part, disinterest.   While Oprah and Bruce discuss situations where an individual experiences genuine carer’s love in their early years and discuss, in-depth, the impacts of a lack of love, I have not yet encountered in their conversations a situation where the childhood experience of love is very mixed.   

My mother worked most of her life to keep the five of us fed and educated – at a time when the stay-at-home wife was the dominant role of women.  Her efforts were supported by food packages dropped off by volunteers of the St. Vincent de Paul Society.  She desired the best for each of us and was warm and loving, always putting our needs before her own.  Oprah and Bruce highlight the positive impact of attentiveness to the needs of a child as a key to balanced personal development.    

In contrast, my father was absent for five years in my early childhood and when he returned (after fighting in World War 11 and being a member of the Occupation Forces in Japan), he became a violent alcoholic who frequently hurt my mother and made our life hell.  We often lived in fear as he was not only very strong but had been a very successful professional boxer. He created a fearful and unpredictable environment that left us all in a high state of arousal and anxiety.  His love was uncertain, punctuated as it was by periods of disinterest and angry outbursts.   I only understood years later that his “emotional dysregulation” was a result of his own traumas and PTSD (having been injured in the war by a bomb, captured and confined for three years in Changi prison in Singapore).  It is difficult to conceive of the horrors that he must have experienced and the flashbacks that tortured him.  

Bruce maintains that where a young child experiences unpredictable behaviour on the part of the caregiver, they can live in fear.  Besides the freeze/fight/flight pattern this can lead to dissociation – where we disengage from the external environment to focus on our inner world.  Bruce states that we each engage in dissociation when we allow our mind to wander or daydream.  It becomes a problem when this is a frequent behaviour or leads to an ever-deeper withdrawal.  My teachers used to write on my report card that I daydreamed excessively.  I can also recall times when I dissociated because the events that I was encountering were too fearful and/or conflicting for me to bear.  

Reflection 

I have experienced multiple traumas in my life and continuously seek to understand their impacts on my behaviour.  For instance, I find that I talk to women more easily than men (a residual effect of my ambiguous and unpredictable relationship with my father).  I also dislike elevators, preferring to walk up stairs – a result of being confined in an orphanage in my early years and being boarded in a convent in Grade 2, 100 kilometers from home and my parents.  Oprah and Bruce provide a very digestible way for each of us to explore the impact of trauma in our lives – and gain an understanding that can lead to behavioural change and genuine self-acceptance.  

I have found that as I grow in mindfulness through my research of trauma and practice of meditation and reflection, I have gained increasing self-awareness and emotional regulation.  It has helped me to experience calmness and develop resilience in my life.  

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Image by Jaesub Kim from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives) 

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog. 

Building Tolerance through Understanding

We have each experienced situations where someone seems to overact to what appears to be a minor stimulus – a sound, a sight, something said, or a gentle touch on the arm.   For example, I have seen people become hysterical while just observing a one-on-one facilitation process or hearing a very loud note sung close to them.  More than likely, we have each observed a disruptive person in a team meeting or training course, someone who is withdrawn and refuses to engage in conversation or someone who is overly aggressive.  Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey in their book, What Happened to You? maintain that understanding the impact of trauma on others helps us to build tolerance for what seems initially to be aberrant behaviour.  They argue that the foundation for that understanding is learning about how our brains operate.

Understanding how our brains work

Bruce illustrates the processes of the brain by showing an inverted triangle with the cortex at the top and the “lower brain” or reptilian brain at the bottom.  While the cortex enables us to think, create and plan and is conscious of time (past, present and future), the lower part of the brain has no sense of time but serves to regulate bodily functions.   The fundamental problem with our emotional and behavioural response to stimuli is that all sensory input (perceptions) are first processed in the lower part of the brain and interpreted there after matching with prior experiences (which are stored along with the emotional content).  This is why someone who shares a disturbing event with others can become quite emotional even when the event occurred many years before.

The associated problem is that sensory input (sight, sound, taste, touch and smell) can stimulate recall of a traumatic experience – “a powerful, frightening or isolating sensory experience”.  Bruce discusses a case study of a veteran of the Korean war experiencing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  The sound of a motorcycle backfiring would generate an “extreme survival response” such as immediately lying prone on the ground behind some form of shelter.  Bruce comments that what was originally an “adaptive protective memory” (for surviving in the trenches “where you had to keep your head down”), had become a maladaptive behavioural response.  The veteran’s life became “miserable” because he was frequently startled, always on the alert (scanning a room or the environment continuously) and often “jumpy”.

Maladaptive responses

Oprah pointed out that people like the veteran who have maladaptive responses to stimuli, often ask “What’s wrong with me?”  The book she has produced with Bruce, changes the focus to “What happened to you”.  Understanding what people have experienced and the depth of the impact on their lives helps to build tolerance and empathy, and ideally, compassionate action.  Bruce explained that for each of us “every moment builds upon all other moments that come before”.  The net result of our personal history shaping our brain’s development is that “each of our brains are unique” – our experiences, traumatic and otherwise, shape our perceptions of the world, what we feel and how we respond.

Oprah describes in detail her own traumatic experiences and maintains from her numerous interviews with people who have experienced trauma, that the result is often self-sabotage in the form of addiction, abuse, promiscuity or “the need-to-please”.  She argues that there is considerable work to be done by the individual and their therapist to identify the trauma-inducing event, the “evocative cues”,  and the related emotional and behavioral responses. 

Reflection

We can become more tolerant of other people if we acknowledge Bruce’s findings (developed through neuroscience and clinical practice) that “each of us sees and understands the world in a unique way” – and this conclusion applies to us also!  Our view of the world is not the only view nor is it necessarily complete, accurate or uncontaminated by our life experiences.  We are challenged to recognise our own fallibility, especially if we too have had traumatic experiences that will have shaped our perceptions and responses.  We can build our tolerance of others too if we work to understand what trauma does to the brain and its impact on behavioural responses.  Bruce suggests that we approach others with a degree of “curiosity”, wanting to understand what happened to them (not what’s wrong with them).  Frank Ostaseski, author of The Five Invitations,  encourages us to cultivate openness and curiosity – to replace criticism with understanding.

As we grow in mindfulness through reflection, journalling, research on trauma and meditation, we can develop greater openness and curiosity, increase our self-awareness (including of the impacts of trauma on our own emotional and behavioural responses) and cultivate understanding, empathy and compassion.

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Image by John Hain from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Developing Self-Love to Realise Our Potential

Often we are weighed down by our past actions, words and omissions.  In Lighter, yung pueblo offers us a way to “let go of the past” in order to expand our future.   Central to this lighter life is self-love.  To achieve genuine self-love, according to yung, we need to make three core changes to our life – (1) radical honesty, (2) positive habit building and (3) self-acceptance.

In the introduction to Lighter, yung shares his own story – an early adult life of drug abuse.  Addiction to drugs became the escape from his inner pain, sadness and anxiety.  It was a way to avoid spending time in dealing with challenging emotions and personal hurt.  It took yung several years to break the habits that were destroying his life and frustrating the realisation of his potential. 

A key turning point for yung was when he reached “rock bottom” physically and psychologically and simultaneously experienced gratitude for all that his parents had done for him. He began asking himself how he could behave the way he did after all the sacrifices, effort and encouragement they provided to help him reach his potential.

For yung, genuine self-love is a prerequisite to achieve our potential and build rewarding relationships.  He makes the point that the goal of self-love is not about diminishing ourselves, overlooking the needs of others or considering ourselves “superior” – it involves humility generated by acknowledging that we share “the fragility of the human condition” with others and are highly inter-connected and inter-dependent. 

Three core changes to expand our future

The core changes identified initially by yung lay the foundation for moving beyond our present blockages to realise our potential:

Radical Honesty – involves being fully present to our thoughts and emotions.  It requires us to avoid suppressing what is unpleasant about ourselves and facing up to our real self – no matter how much it hurts and pains us.  It means facing the truth and challenging the lies we tell ourselves about who we are or what we have done.  It means being open with ourselves to achieve authenticity.  The aim is not to punish ourselves but to honestly and calmly “look in the mirror” without distortion or veils.  Radical honesty is a life-time pursuit.

Positive Habit Building – radical honesty helps us to identify our habits that are harmful rather than helpful to our goal of achieving our potential.  These may involve any aspect of our life, e.g. angry outbursts with colleagues, failing to listen to our life partner, not having adequate rest or sleep, or eating foods that lead to inflammation.  We find these harmful habits difficult to change – they become habituated responses and ingrained over time.

yung suggests focusing on one or two habits that you want to change and consolidate them as habituated behaviour through frequent repetition over a reasonable period, e.g. three months.  Trying to achieve habit change on multiple fronts simultaneously can lead to dissipated energy, self-defeat and falling back into old harmful habits.  Narrowing our focus can lead to successful change and positive reinforcement in that we will feel better, have a sense of accomplishment and experience “moving forward”, rather than being “stuck”.

Being truthfully present to ourselves is a real challenge. yung found that meditation helped him to progressively achieve a radical honesty that was initially unnerving but ultimately rewarding.  He encourages us to find our own path to mindfulness and self-awareness.  It could involve yoga, Tai Chi, chanting or any one of a multitude of mindfulness practices.  He maintains that once we choose a single focus and practice, we should maintain it as a daily activity to build the desired new habit and realise the benefits.

Self-Acceptance – Inherent in the challenge of developing radical honesty, is the need to achieve self-acceptance, “warts and all”.  It is difficult to face up to our frailties and vulnerabilities and to own them, rather than deflect them because they are unpalatable. Failure to accept ourselves, can create a roadblock in our journey to true self-love.  It does not mean that we are complacent, but rather that we are willing to identify ways to heal from the past to live more fully in the present and the future.

Self-acceptance may not be an even road – there will be “ups and downs”, progression and regression.  We might come up against something about ourselves that we now find repulsive.  However, taking these deeper “cuts” slowly and with persistence over time, can lighten our life and heighten our integrity and resilience.

Reflection

Genuine self-love is necessary for lasting, deep relationships.  If we can be honest with ourselves and accept our frailties and vulnerabilities, we will be better able to accept imperfections in others and be more willing to acknowledge our inter-connection and inter-dependence.  We will be inspired to take compassionate action for those in need.

As we grow in mindfulness, we can develop the self-awareness, courage and resilience to achieve radical honesty, build positive and nourishing habits and achieve a genuine self-acceptance. 

Tina Malia, in her mantra meditation, In Sunlight, sings a relevant refrain:

Lead us from illusion to truth

From darkness to light

(Sanskrit translation)

Note: “yung pueblo” (meaning “young people”) is the author’s pseudonym chosen to acknowledge that humanity is not yet mature in realising compassionate interconnectedness.

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Image by Joe from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Healing from Trauma in a Sustainable Way

Healing from trauma in a sustainable way requires three main conditions, (1) understanding the complexity of trauma, (2) adopting a holistic healing perspective and (3) providing social support.  Unfortunately, as trauma expert Dr. Jeffrey Rutstein points out, when we observe poor behaviours on the part of people who have experienced trauma, we assume they are thoughtlessness, ungrateful or carelessness and fail to see the person involved as a “profoundly wounded person”.  He maintains that people who have been traumatised need “tenderness or caring or empathy”(especially socially ostracized drug addicts).  Dr. Gabor Maté often adopts a process of “compassionate inquiry” which encapsulates these understanding and empathetic attitudes.  Jeffrey and Gabor are two of the presenters in The Healing Trauma Program provided by Sounds True.

Understanding the complexity of trauma

Dr. Elena Villanueva, drawing on neuroscience research, her work with hundreds of trauma sufferers and her own deep and prolonged trauma experience, asserts that when we are unable to process traumatic or heightened emotional experiences, “they get stuck in our cells, tissues and organs” and lead to debilitating conditions in our bodies.  Elena herself had a history of trauma extending from early childhood through adolescence to adulthood.  She was raped at ages 15 and 38, frequently isolated, kidnapped by her separated mother, constantly on the move in different houses and schools, and experienced financial stress and divorce.  Her resultant symptoms and conditions included loss of memory, panic attacks, inability to speak, and high blood pressure. She was depressed and extremely anxious resulting in suicide attempts on three occasions. 

Elena highlights the pervasive influence of trauma in terms of its distortion of our bioenergetic field.  She spoke of her own experience of being dissociated from her body until three years ago.  Elena found it exhilarating to “pop back into her body” and once again feel her muscles, the sun on her body and face and the in-out flow of her breath.

Jeffrey, a clinical psychologist, maintains that people experiencing trauma lose their sense of agency over their own body and their life – they feel at the mercy of their emotions, other people and their external environment.  Gabor states that emotional deregulation, that he himself still experiences, occurs when he recalls traumatic memories and related emotions.  He becomes another person who is perceived as “frightening” and “scary” – ironically, at a time when he feels “the weakest internally”.  Trauma-induced emotions take over and he loses both a sense of agency and emotional regulation.   Gabor argues that underpinning inappropriate behaviour is shame because “shame is the most dominant impact of trauma” and this leads people to try to deal with this unbearable burden by compensating through their divergent behaviour.  The related pain and unfulfilled needs often lead to addiction fuelled by negative self-talk.

The negative self-talk associated with trauma distorts our thoughts, emotions and biology as a result of the hijacking of our amygdala.  The lower level of our brain takes over control of how we respond to triggers – leading to fight/flight/freeze responses.  In the book, What Happened to You, Dr. Bruce D. Perry makes the point that the body stores emotional memories that can be activated by a song, the sound of a voice, the smell of food, or any other sensory experience or precipitating event.  He explains that these strong associations are “stored in neural networks” and even when the specific experience cannot be recalled, the negative association can impact any aspect of our life, including our capacity to achieve intimacy.   

Adopting a holistic healing perspective

If we understand the complexity of trauma, we can readily appreciate that a single modality will be inadequate to help people heal from trauma in a sustainable way.  For example, if the symptoms of physical ailments are removed but negative self-talk persists, recovery will not be sustained and traumatic memory will find another way to impact our physiology and bioenergetic field.  What is required is a holistic healing perspective and this realisation underpins the approach adopted by Dr. Villanueva in her Modern Holistic Health orientation and the recovery solutions incorporated in her Mind/Body/Energy Healing Program.

Numerous modalities have emerged for healing from trauma and aiding trauma recovery.  The following are some of the modalities that have been adopted around the world, often in different combinations:

Trauma is complex and its impacts are far-reaching and vary with each individual.  While individual variations occur in the pervasiveness, depth and intensity of trauma impacts, group activity (supported by individualised testing) can help people progress in terms of diagnosis and healing.

Providing social support

Social support has been shown to develop resilience in individuals in post-traumatic recovery.  This perceived support extends not only to their own social networks and frequency of supportive interactions but also to peer support, coaching and technical guidance through counselling and provision of resources.  Dr. V’s Mind/Body/Energy Healing Program  mentioned above employs multiple healing modalities in concert with group-based activities such as monthly healing sessions with qualified coaches supported by resources such as breath meditations, the 5-part Trauma Masterclass video recordings & transcripts and monthly Bioenergetic Tests.

Social support helps people to appreciate that they are not alone in experiencing trauma and its multifaceted impacts, provides encouragement to persist with the healing process, engenders vicarious learning and offers positive reinforcement of the possibility of recovery.  Social support generates a sense of belonging and connectedness so essential for positive mental health.

The GROW organisation is an example of mutual social support for the process of recovery from all forms of mental ill-health.  The peer to peer support process enables participants (Growers) to overcome mental ill-health issues and achieve personal development.  eGrow groups have emerged as an alternative to face-to-face meetings.  Testimonials of recovery by participants, in both face-to-face and online programs, provide the impetus for the sustainability of recovery for other participants.

Reflection

It is difficult to understand what impact trauma has had on our mind, body and emotions.  Trauma practitioners through their various modalities and group support help us gain insight into how trauma is affecting us, even late in life.  Mindfulness is consistently advocated by trauma experts as a way to help deal with the ongoing effects of trauma.  As we grow in mindfulness through meditations and other mindfulness practices including spending time in nature, we can gain self-awareness, build resilience, and access calmness and composure in difficult situations or when triggered by a sensation or an event.

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Image by enrico bernardis from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Recovering from the Impacts of Trauma

Dr. Elena Villanueva, health influencer and international speaker and podcaster, provides a comprehensive insight into trauma and its health impacts in a 5-part Trauma Masterclass.  Elena adopts a unique approach to trauma recovery and healing by engaging a specialist team, adopting a holistic health perspective and employing multiple modalities (in excess of 24 tools/techniques).  She is the founder of Modern Holistic Health which adopts an evidence-based approach to holistic health, drawing on the latest scientific research.

In her Trauma Masterclass, Elena explains that trauma results not from an overwhelming event itself but our perception and interpretation of it, leading to “undesired responses” on the physical or mental level and the associated mistaken beliefs and thoughts and emotions that result from viewing the event as “dangerous, frightening, harmful, life threatening” or in any way negative.

Elena provides detailed illustrations of how trauma affects our physical and mental health, drawing on the latest neuroscience research and information.  She discusses the symptoms of trauma, including chronic pain, the impact of negative thoughts and the power of language to shape personal reality and physical/mental health.  Elena explains the potential impact of challenging emotions in hijacking the amygdala and resulting, over time,  in “atrophy of the frontal lobe”.

Of particular note, is the way Elena identifies the biogenetic changes that can be wrought by challenging thoughts and emotions resulting from trauma.  She states that one of the core issues is that trauma is experienced in the body and is easily triggered.  As Bessel Van Der Kolk illustrates in his book, The Body Keeps the Score, the impact of trauma extends to the mind, brain and body.  Elena elucidates the multiple impacts of trauma including distortion of energy, negative effects on heart health, biological changes and the lingering perception of powerlessness.  

Recovering from the impacts of trauma

Elena points to the power of neuroplasticity to aid the process of recovering from trauma – how the brain can adapt its structure, connections and functions to deal with various stimuli.  During the Masterclass she provided case studies of her patients who had made a considerable recovery from trauma in a relatively short period.  Elena explained that people who take out a monthly service subscription with Modern Holistic Health have ongoing access to the Masterclass videos and to members of her team who offer a wide range of healing modalities.

In the Masterclass, different team members offered diverse modalities that illustrated the effectiveness of Elena’s team approach.  For example, Rosita Alvarez led a process that involved “layered healing modalities” including sound and eye movement.  Karla Rodriguez facilitated a powerful process that involved an ever deepening identification of emotions underlying bodily pain such as grief, anger or resentment.  This mind-body-spirit process was identified as incredibly effective by many people in the online audience.

Karla also led a process called “resonance repatterning” which involved making affirmations that expressed positive intent and resonated strongly with the individual involved, e.g. “I reclaim the power to say, ‘yes’ and ‘no’, & to be heard”.  The exercise illustrated the power of language to shape our future and manifest our desired reality.  To this end, Elena suggested that statements such as “I want a loving relationship” should be replaced with “I desire a loving relationship”.  She emphasised that we have to unlearn bad habits that reduce our sense of what is possible.  Dr. V. offers a podcast series to assist people with understanding trauma and moving towards unlearning and recovery.

In the book, What Happened to You?, Oprah Winfrey describes her own adverse childhood experiences which occurred even when she was  as young as three years old.  In particular, she discusses receiving continuous “whuppings” from her grandmother which were administered as severe forms of punishment for even the slightest mistakes – often resulting in welts and, occasionally, bleeding.  The “switch” chosen was a branch (or a number of branches “braided together”).  Her grandmother had the mistaken belief in the philosophy of “don’t spare the rod” – today, her actions would be viewed as criminal. 

Oprah, like Elena, maintains that learning how the brain and body react to trauma helps us to understand “how what happened to us in the past shapes who we are, how we behave, and why we do the things that we do”.  Oprah is a firm believer in the “unique adaptability of our miraculous brain” – and she is living proof of this.  Because of her own early life experiences, she has dedicated herself to helping people of all ages, especially young  children, overcome trauma and its impacts. Her tireless work in this area was reflected in the drafting of the National Child Protection Act that, when it became law, was known as the “Oprah Bill”.

The book represents a series of conversations between Oprah and Dr. Bruce D. Perry on the topic of “trauma, resilience, and healing” – conversations carried out over more than thirty years.  Bruce explains in the book that the title, “What Happened to You”, reflects a conscious choice to take the focus away from “What’s Wrong with You” in order to change the narrative and facilitate the process of recovery from trauma.  As Dr. Gabor Maté explains, we need to understand the pain lying beneath trauma and its precipitation of addictive behaviour. 

Reflection

There are many modalities that can be employed in healing trauma such as “compassionate inquiry” used by Dr. Gabor Maté.  Dr. Elena Villanueva and her team offer diverse modalities that are used at different stages of healing from the multiple impacts of trauma.  The team approach of Modern Holistic Health adds a special dimension as patients can move between coaches to utilise different modalities as part of their overall case management. People can work with Dr. Elena Villanueva and her Modern Health team by joining the Mind/Body/Energy Program.

Trauma is a complex area with often hidden impacts on mind, body and spirit resulting in lingering mental and physical health problems.   Many of us have had “adverse childhood experiences” resulting in trauma.  As we grow in mindfulness through mantra meditations, other mindfulness practices and related healing modalities, we can achieve peace and calm and improved health outcomes.

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Image by John Hain from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Mindfulness Meditation – Being With Things As They Are

Allyson Pimentel presented a guided meditation on “Mindfulness” for the MARC, UCLA  meditation podcast series.  In the meditation, she described mindfulness as paying attention in the present moment with an attitude of acceptance and kindness and a  “willingness to be with things as they are”.   She suggested that mindfulness can be either formal (as with the UCLA guided meditations) or informal  (occurring  throughout our day as we focus on the present moment).

Mindfulness then entails paying attention in a kind way to things as they are occurring in our life in the present moment – not wishing them to be different or to go away.  In this regard, Allyson maintained that mindfulness meditation can serve as a refuge – a safe place to nourish, restore and renew ourselves in challenging times.  We can feel overwhelmed by external events (such as  storms and severe weather events) or internal experiences (such as challenging emotions, deprecating thoughts or painful bodily sensations).   Mindfulness meditation offers the opportunity to regain our equilibrium when faced with these challenges.

Allyson likens mindfulness meditation to a “wildlife reserve” where our own “animal bodies” are protected, kept safe and nurtured so that we can cultivate the “beauty” of kindness, gratitude, generosity and wisdom.  Mindfulness meditation, then, can be a place of quiet restoration, renewal of our sense of wonder and gratitude and a means to mind-body balance.

Guided mindfulness meditation

Allyson progresses through the meditation by focusing in turn on bodily sensations, challenging emotions, disturbing thoughts and the ease and calmness of our breath:

  • Bodily sensations – we are asked to focus on a part of our body where we feel tightness and to be with this bodily sensation in all its dimensions (such as soreness, pain, tension).  Allyson invites us to soften this part of our body and allow some degree of ease to permeate our bodily sensation.  This involves a process of recognition and acceptance of what we are experiencing in the moment, rather than rejection or fighting against the sensations.  After focusing on a particular bodily part and accompanying tight sensation, we are encouraged to undertake a process of progressive body scan and relaxation.
  • Challenging emotions – we now focus on any challenging emotion such as resentment, anger, frustration or annoyance.  This involves being with the emotion, not attempting to deny it.  It requires an openness to what is – in all its amplitude and disturbance.  Again the process involves recognition and softening towards what we are experiencing, not hardening our hearts.
  • Disturbing thoughts – we might be simultaneously experiencing disturbing thoughts such as negative self-evaluation and self-censure.  As we get in touch with these thoughts and their impacts on our body and emotions, we can learn to diffuse them by accepting their presence and being with their intensity, while acknowledging that “we are not our thoughts”.
  • Breathing – finally, we can take refuge in our breath which is ever present to us.  We can focus on our breath wherever we experience it in our body, e.g., our chest, abdomen or nose.  This involves acceptance of the nature of our breath, not trying to control it.  As we tune into and listen to our breath, we can experience ease and freedom.

Reflection

At the end of the guided meditation, Allyson invited us to observe any aspect of our body that still feels tense or tight and to be with the sensation.  At the time, I had a tightness in my right ankle from a bit of swelling there.   The act of focusing and softening eased the sensation of tightness and pain.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation and informal mindfulness practices throughout our day, we can access the well of ease, experience a refuge from challenges we are encountering and restore our equilibrium and sense of balance.

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Image by Dominik Rheinheimer from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

                                                                                                        

The Final Stages of the Hero’s Journey for the Frontline Midwife

In a previous post, I discussed the story of Anna Kent as a midwife volunteering in South Sudan in terms of the first 8 stages of the Hero’s Journey.  What I will discuss now is her Sudan story expressed in terms of the final stages of the hero’s journey (Stage 9-12).  I’ll be drawing again on her book, Frontline Midwife: My Story of Survival and Keeping Others Safe, in which she tells her story in graphic detail.

The final four stages of the hero’s journey – stages 9 to 12

The final four stages of her hero’s journey in South Sudan were deeply formative and life-changing and enabled Anna to develop a new perspective, skills and determination to help others in need wherever they were in the world:

9. Reward – there is no doubt that Anna emerged a stronger person as a result of overcoming personal challenges, including self-doubts and questioning of her obsession with volunteering.  The reward, too, that she experienced involved saving the lives of mothers, children and babies.  However, she had to deal with the sense of guilt she felt for the death of baby Mariam.  James tried to reassure her that she was not responsible for the death of the baby – in his words, “it was everyone in the world’s fault”.  She accepted intellectually that “every aid worker has a patient they carry in their conscience”.   Emotionally, though it was a continuous challenge to overcome the sense of guilt which pervaded her nightmares as she relived the traumatic event.  Unfortunately, our brains carry a negative bias – we see the negative much more strongly than the positive.  For a time, Anna found that her negative thoughts overwhelmed her rewarding thoughts – her personal satisfaction that she had saved many lives who otherwise would have died without her skilled and brave intervention.

10. The Road Back – this is both a physical journey and a metaphorical one.  On the physical level, it involves returning to her “ordinary world” – life with her boyfriend Jack in their comfy home in Nottingham.  The metaphorical aspect relates to being comfortable with her new self in an environment that is starkly different on every dimension to the one she was leaving in South Sudan.  It also meant dealing with the grief of leaving her mentor, James, her colleagues and the Sudanese people who she grew to love and admire for their courage, gentleness and stoicism.  Her short recreation spells during her volunteering in South Sudan forewarned her of the pending difficulty of the “road back”.  She found on her brief recreation trips that she could not share with Jack the horrors and traumas she had experienced and realised that she was totally lacking in libido.  Friends would ask about the exciting bits of her story but all she could share were her stories about snakes, not the reality of the poverty, harshness, and deprivation of the basic rights of women in South Sudan.  She found that she and Jack had so little to talk about, and their time together involved lots of silence as Anna tried to come to grips with crossing the threshold back into her former life. 

11. Resurrection – on her return home Anna broke off her relationship with Jack and moved to her parent’s home.  This created significant stress for her as she was unable to talk to her parents about her Sudan experiences or her reasons for breaking up with Jack – both these topics were too raw and traumatic.  In speaking with James her mentor, she shared her angst and he informed her that he had experienced similar dislocation and disorientation on his return from volunteering abroad.  James suggested that he made the mistake of “trying to be the person I once was when that person has gone”.  Anna recognised that everything changes with overseas service in a different culture and land where deprivation is rife – your values and perspectives change and you see “luxuries” and waste with new, intolerant eyes.  The way home for her involved a dying to the old person she once was and becoming a new, stronger, values-driven person. 

12. Return with the Elixir – another phase in Anna’s transition to her new persona began with entering a share house with two other nurses.  What she found was the ability to party together and share their experiences in a way that was cathartic.  Out of this period came a very strong resolution by Anna to build on her newly acquired midwife capabilities.  She enrolled in a midwifery degree at Nottingham University and had a very rewarding and enlightening work experience in Ethiopia as a student midwife.  She felt stronger and better prepared for subsequent volunteering missions involving Haiti following the earthquake in 2010 and Bangladesh working with Rohingya refugees – and these experiences entailed different journeys with new challenges and companions (as discussed in her book). 

Reflection

Throughout her hero’s journey in Sudan and beyond, Anna had to face her traumas which had “many heads” and in the process develop her resilience.  An experienced volunteer nurse, Anita, had told her “you’re gonna have to work out how to sit with these painful feelings without reacting to them”.  Like James, Anita suggested that meditation would be helpful as well as focusing on what has been achieved, not what her inner critic perceived as a “failure”.  James even suggested that Anna meditate for “an hour every day” and often encouraged her to be in the moment and experience what was before her – e.g., children playing with kites made from sticks, and the earth glowing from the setting sun. 

Anna demonstrated that as we grow in mindfulness through meditation (no matter how difficult we find it) and other mindfulness practices such as being in the moment, we can learn to regulate our emotions, deepen our self-awareness and develop resilience.

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Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.