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REBOOTING THE SPECIES
03/02/2022
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When we understand how negative programming causes us to attract negative situations and outcomes, we realize that some kind of trauma is inevitable. We also realize that we are programmed to endure and contain trauma, instead of being taught to emotionally process traumatic events so we can more readily release them and not become emotionally distorted or stunted, stuck in a painful past.
It took eons for the polar ice caps to start melting, although it’s happening now at an accelerated rate, due to global warming. But this is not the kind of global warming we need and, ironically, many of the factors involved in climate change result from disconnectedness due to our collective trauma. We need a global heart-warming, with conscious, caring coherence that brings us back into alignment with ourselves. Yet how can we care about global warming if our hearts feel wounded or frozen… or if we can’t even feel our hearts at all?
We need a safe, connected environment where we can work through all our internal weather—the ridges of high pressure, the whirlwinds of conflicting emotions, and the vacuum in the eye of a storm. We talk a lot about the weather, in a social context, but very little about our internal weather systems. Yet what we are weathering inside—consciously or subconsciously, silently or reactively—has a far greater impact on the emotional climate of our world than anything else.
Have your assets been frozen?
When we carry unresolved trauma, parts of us get frozen, paralysed and no longer available to us. Unconsciously impaired, we compensate for our diminished capacity by doing things differently, avoiding certain things or denying that there’s a problem. But containing our fear and denial requires a lot of energy that could be invested in other things. Our frozen assets therefore prevent us from gaining interest, from benefitting from the investment we have made in developing those assets, and from having access to something that is rightfully ours to enjoy.
There are many precious assets frozen within us: healthy self-worth, self-expression, creativity, joy, passion and true intimacy. Added to that is the everyday trauma of living in a toxic, ‘digitally re-mastered’, de-natured world. Most importantly, negative programming by parents, teachers, religious leaders and society sets us up for a lifetime of reactivity and disempowering beliefs, with each new challenge, stressor or trauma getting added to—and triggering—what is already there.
This is what is happening now: our fear of harm, our sense of injustice, our desire to reclaim our lives, freedom, health and autonomy—all of these issues are pushing us to heal so we can finally free ourselves from the ancestral trauma that keeps us small, subservient and separated from self, others and the deeper truth of our super-humanness.
“It’s time to be defined by a vision of the future,
instead of the memories of the past.”
—Dr Joe Dispenza
Breaking through resistance to our best self
Why do we resist confronting ourselves and making a life-changing breakthrough? Trauma can cause us to shut down, freeze, go numb, flat-line or distract ourselves from dealing with the pain. If we use these strategies to remain heavily defended, there can be no breakthrough.
The negative programming that keeps us stuck in that cycle can make us cynical, defeatist, uncaring and dispassionate. We may simply flat-line because, even if we crave a breakthrough, facing our pain/trauma can bring up some very uncomfortable emotions. Bringing our hearts back online for healing makes us vulnerable, and many of us resist going back into the pain that caused us to shut down in the first place.
We may therefore keep a lid on the shame, guilt or deep regret that we have kept hidden for so long, for fear of the ‘truth’ coming out; in facing it, we are forced to acknowledge it and relive painful feelings. Yet the pay-off is that we can finally connect with a deeper reality, beneath the lies masquerading as truth—lies that were imprinted at a price, through neglect, abuse, exclusion, deprivation, shaming or the threat of harm.
The intensity of traumatic events can wipe out many good things that happen to us. Happiness, pleasant memories, our appreciation of beauty and many of the joys of being a sentient human being can be overridden in an instant by a traumatic event. The intensity of the fear, pain, shock or abuse is such that that is what is remembered, even if subconsciously, then stored and handed down through our cellular databanks. It is the intense charge behind the trauma that creates so much pain and distortion in our lives.
We may have to break down to break through…
We become very good at holding in our trauma–pain and sustaining the numbness that results. But keeping it buried gives it power, whereas expressing and resolving it releases tremendous energy that can bring unexpected rewards. If we can summon the emotional courage and self-love to engage in a healing process with others, everyone wins.
Trauma is frozen energy that cannot move.
—Thomas Hübl
Let’s face the music and dance
We must love life at least enough to want to give it one good shot, to allow its full potency to reach us. This means allowing ourselves to access the deeper truth of who we are. To get to that, we must wade through some of the painful stuff that covers it up—all the mistruths we have believed about not being worthy, amazing and powerful. If we don’t push ourselves to go there, we may never reach our greatness, never allow ourselves to express it and never allow the world to experience or benefit from it. And where’s the fun in that? Where’s the purpose in that? The precious uniqueness of you gets lost, squandered and wasted. That’s not what life is about and it’s not what we are here to do.
Don’t die with your music still inside you.
—Wayne Dyer
So, we need to ask ourselves some big questions, before digging a little deeper:
Do I love me enough to be my best self?
Do I love life enough to let it in, to let me out and to let myself find fulfillment?
Will I choose to make something of my life before it is too late?
Or will I die with my music still inside me?
We truly don’t know who we are or what we are capable of until we emerge on the other side of our pain, having dissolved our frozen assets.
What better gift could you give yourself?
What you need is also what so many others need, and your breakthroughs will inspire theirs. That’s not to say that your life only has meaning if you help someone else, but if it helps you to find purpose and meaning, then it becomes a win–win. Use whatever strategies you can find to get to the core of you. Unless you do, by this time next year, you’re likely to feel dissatisfied with yourself, because the real you is bursting to get out and the pressure is building. Crises are happening all around you, pushing you to heal and reclaim yourself.
What you need is also what so many others need, and your breakthroughs will inspire theirs.
Don’t resist the resistance
Being willing to drop your defences, to turn around and gently face yourself, and to finally give yourself permission to open up to the so-much-greater you that you already are, will rekindle your love of life, self and others. Will you choose to reclaim the authentic you that’s dying to break free, shed the lies and live life out loud?
Pondering some tougher questions can help us unearth some hidden parts of ourselves trying to get out, to be expressed, healed and transformed. It can also put us back in touch with our trauma and resistance to reconnecting. That resistance is there for a reason: initially, it was to protect us in a time of threat; but it’s ultimately the way for us to build emotional muscle, by working with the resistance to reach the other side—and, in so doing, becoming particularly strong where we felt wobbly, vulnerable or weak.
Negative programming = resistance to you being you.
So let’s dig a little deeper to dissolve our frozen assets and work through our resistance to being all we can be.
- 1What one thing about yourself do you not want to confront?
- 2What one thing about yourself would you most like to resolve/dissolve?
- 3What, if anything, makes you feel your life may not be worth living? Why?
- 4What’s missing in your life? Think in terms of love, acceptance, respect, support, validation, fulfillment, creativity, community, peace, laughter, trust and emotional honesty, and list them in order of importance to you.
- 5What scares you most? What do you most fear losing? What do you feel you might already have lost?
- 6What does your heart yearn for?
- 7What unhealthy compromises do you make (such as saying yes when you want to say no)?
- 8What stops you from being your best, full-on self? What keeps you small?
- 9What things do you avoid doing/having, even though you know they help you?
- 10What is the cost for staying stuck in addiction, anxiety, unhealthy habits and/or whatever agitates your system and prevents you from connecting with yourself and finding peace?
- 11What does make your life worth living? Why?
- 12What forms of support or input would help you to stay committed to doing what works for you and enable you to break destructive habits and make a breakthrough?
- 13If you removed all blocks, fears, self-doubt, objections, resistance and denial, what would you be doing and how would you be showing up differently?
- 14What is the payoff for healing your trauma/fears/self-doubts/disconnectedness?
- 15What is your vision of your ideal, fully actualized you? Who/what do you really want to be?
Tough questions! We must give ourselves the time and quiet space to dig deep to reach the raw truth and retrieve our most honest answers. Write them down, so they don’t go back into hiding and so you can chart your progress in this process. Click the button below to download the questions for reflection.
(You can reach out using the contact button in the menu bar above, if you want a safe place to talk about anything that comes up for you.)
Are you ready to start your trauma-thaw?
What will it take for you to feel the power of your own pain, to see the impact of ancestral trauma, to understand how the two amplify each other, and to face that deeper reality so you can finally turn things around?
To heal our past and open up our future, we must love life more than we ‘love’ being stuck in trauma. Not that we really love trauma, any more than we love being held captive by a kidnapper; but if we can’t see a way to escape and if we are deprived of human contact and love, then any show of humanity may be welcome. This is why so many people submit to the ‘authorities’ who claim they are taking care of them, even though they’re holding them to ransom and violating their rights—a kind of Stockholm Syndrome of sanitized subservience.
Remember that crises generate trauma, yet most crises (including the current one) are due to the numbness, indifference and overwhelm caused by long-standing trauma and negative programming, which keeps us stuck in a loop. It’s this progressive de-humanization that has made us ripe for robotization (which we’ll explore in the next blog).
To escape from that distortion, it helps to find a way to love life itself—such as by being in nature and allowing its peace and beauty to touch us. If we can heal our trauma and emerge into a fuller expression of self, we can regain our appreciation for life and find meaning, purpose and joy in living. Then we begin to see what’s really possible, moving beyond our perceived limitations to the expression of our true potential.
This is what this year holds for you: a truly liberated you. If you don’t want a repeat or worsening of the past, change the one all-important part of you and your world that you can change: you. Changing that changes everything.
It is a privilege and an inspiration to share our journey of healing and self-reclamation, despite the layers of guilt or shame that we might have to navigate along the way. Loving ourselves enough to thaw the emotional icebergs preventing us from being intimately connected, actualized and fulfilled is the greatest gift we can give ourselves, each other and the planet.
“Every one of us who is working to help others is the embodiment of the self-healing mechanism of humanity. We each play a part in activating the global immune system.”
—Thomas Hübl
As in medicine, politics and other aspects of life, working with the whole is much more powerful and effective than working with individual parts. Separation, divisiveness and fragmentation prevent true healing and wholeness, whereas deeply connecting with others enables us to consciously access, activate, love and contribute our stellar selves.
Collective healing, sharing and envisioning of a united, freedom-fueled future brings us back together and generates the kind of human fulfillment that makes life truly worth living.
Let’s not waste another precious moment living with frozen assets. I look forward to your suggestions and thoughts in the comments below.
Main photo by Jernej Graj on Unsplash
REBOOTING THE SPECIES: READ THE WHOLE SERIES
Ready for the trauma-thaw? Let’s liberate our frozen assets
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Ripe for robotization: 7 ways to stay human
4
I just LOVE this blog post dear Olga! Thanks so much! I’m reading your booklet A Talk on the Wild Side https://olgasheean.com/a-talk-on-the-wild-side/ at the moment, deep and funny wild words beyond my wildest imagination…