Did you experience trauma as a child?

I did, but honestly, for decades I thought I’d put it all behind me. In fact, it took me decades to even realize that I had experienced childhood trauma. I didn’t understand that the trauma I experienced in the first weeks of life, when I was operated on for some kind of intestinal issue, would affect me decades later–physically and emotionally.

And I didn’t know the extent of the emotional neglect for decades.

I had adjusted so well–I thought. Made a great life for myself.

My body told a different story. The body keeps the score.

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A wise therapist shared an analogy with me that has helped me a lot.

Because of the Childhood Emotional Neglect I grew up with, along with an infant medical trauma, I had learned quite early on to wall off my feelings. I felt the Lord had told me once, “You have to feel it so we can heal it.”

But honestly, I didn’t quite know how to feel all those suppressed feelings without getting stuck in them.

The therapist clarified the process with a simple analogy.

Picture two fireplaces.

In Fireplace #1, you put some kindling in, maybe a log. You light it, and close the fireplace door. Then you just sit with it. The fire burns, and eventually goes out. (You let the feeling wash over you, and eventually it ebbs away. That’s how feelings work—if you allow yourself to just feel them.)

Fireplace #2 starts with the same process: kindling, log, start the fire, shut the door. But this time, you keep opening the door to put on a new log. Thus the fire keeps on burning.

And what is the “log” you’re keeping the fire burning with? Your beliefs! What you have made the incident to mean.

When you start to feel the feelings, you go into the “story,” usually punctuated by “never” and/or “always” or that kind of sentiment.

Maybe there’s a “therefore’ in there, too.

As in, when a memory comes up where you did not feel loved, you not only feel the sadness of that, but you start to think, “They never loved me. They always ignored my feelings. Therefore I must be unlovable. I have to prove my worth.” Etc.

This is what you can use a Healing Code for: the beliefs that are fueling the fire of negative feelings and keeping you stuck in them.

Another thing that’s helping me work through some early traumas is the practice of “that was then, this is now,” or holding “both/and.” Growing up, nobody seemed to care about my needs. You sit with that for a while, feel the sadness and loneliness of it. But now, I have a husband and children who love me. Now I have friends. Life is good NOW.

Living fully in the present is my ongoing goal. I used to always try to plan and envision the near future; it was a strategy that served me well as a child, but now it’s robbing my joy. It’s true that all we really have is the present. The past is gone, and the future is not yet.

For me, I entrust the future into God’s hands, as He knows it and goes before me into it: “The Lord himself goes before you, and is with you. He will never leave you or forsake you. Do not be discouraged, do not be afraid.” (Deuteronomy 31:8)

Dr. Aimie Apigian is an M.D. and a trauma expert. In her new and highly recommended book, The Biology of Trauma: How the Body Holds Fear, Pain, and Overwhelm, and How to Heal It, she talks about how trauma is not an event, but the body’s reaction to something that at one point overwhelmed the nervous system, and triggered a trauma response: either fight or flight, freeze, or fawn.

If the trauma response was not properly dispersed at the time, it can get stored in the nervous system. Then whenever some event similar to the first trauma occurs, the body/brain may have the same trauma response.

No doubt you’ve experienced this yourself. Did you ever “fly off the handle” over some little thing and wonder what on earth set you off? You got dysregulated. At that moment, the demand on your nervous system, possibly triggered by some unconscious unhealed “heart issue,” exceeded your capacity.

Dr. Apigian points out the demand can be great or small. But any time demand exceeds the system’s capacity to deal with it, a trauma response occurs.

The original trauma may not seem like a trauma to an outsider, or to the adult person, but that does not matter. This explains why someone can feel like they did not have trauma in their background, when really they did. And it explains why one can be “triggered” easily whenever their capacity is low, even if the demand is not very great.

Dr. Elizabeth Stanley talks similarly about the “window of tolerance” in her book, Widen the Window: Training Your Brain and Body to Thrive During Stress and Recover from Trauma. A person with a wide window is more easily able to function effectively during stressful and challenging events, as well as recover afterwards. They will be more resilient and flexible, tolerant of uncertainty, comfortable with curve-balls and change, and they can stay socially connected during stress.

Someone with a narrow window of tolerance will be easily anxious, irritated, or overwhelmed; less resilient, more distracted; their decisions are more likely to be impulsive or reactive; and they will likely have more interpersonal challenges.

Additionally, those with a “highly sensitive” nervous system will inherently experience more demands because their nervous system takes in more information, and processes it all more deeply—all of which are demands on the nervous system.

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I realized some time ago that overwhelm has been a defining factor of my life.

It started, no doubt, when I had surgery as a one-week-old baby for bowel obstructions. Then I burst my stitches. And got pneumonia.

Photo by Josh Riemer

Implicit memory—the memory stored in the nervous system and cells—suggests that it was an overwhelming, traumatic experience that shaped the first 7 weeks of my life, and set my nervous system’s “thermostat” to overwhelm.

On top of that, there was growing up with Childhood Emotional Neglect, and possessing the trait of Sensory Processing Sensitivity, or simply, being a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP).

Being highly sensitive means that I feel and process everything deeply, I am easily overstimulated (hence the overwhelm), I am by nature emotional and empathetic (hence the CEN was more damaging), and I am sensitive to subtle stimuli (I take in a lot more information than less sensitive people). Which of course, can also lead to overwhelm.

I didn’t realize all this, of course, until much later in life. And I am so grateful to God for The Healing Codes and the other tools he’s led me to, such as Immanuel Prayer and my CHRIA tools, because I believe God has used them to heal a lot of those cellular memories and begin the process of rewiring my nervous system.

I say all this to let you know how effective energy healing can be.

As the negative energy from those cellular memories heals, it frees up energy to find creative solutions.

One idea for dealing with the overwhelm I’m facing now, being a caregiver to a family member with a terminal illness as well as needing to handle everything in the home, along with my business and more, came to me this morning. Read More→

Have you heard of the phrase “tend and befriend” to describe a way to deal with stress and get your nervous system back on track?

The term was coined in 2000 by Shelley Taylor, a psychology professor at the University of California.

The “tend and befriend” theory says that when faced with a perceived threat, humans will tend to their young and rely on others for connection and support. This, she and her group of researchers observed, was especially true of humans, and human females in particular. Laboratory animals, when shocked, would attack each other. Humans, when threatened or stressed, typically affiliate with one another instead of attacking each other. Read More→