Sometimes, hearing another person's change story is one of the most effective ways of jump-starting our own.
Because of this…
…any time our attention is not on our selves (little ‘s’ there 📦) and the issues it is generating, this creates a space for common sense, wisdom and perspective to sneak in under the radar, and start the healing.
It's why I tell stories and share metaphors. Because we're always trying to bypass the mind. #ThinkLessLiveMore
(🤫 Shhhhh, don't tell it, ok?!?!)
Anyway I was listening to an audiobook by George Pranksy. The Secret to Mental Health, it's called. It's a great little mish-mash of mental health-focused Syd stories, 3 Principles theory, metaphors and case histories.
It was one of the latter that really blew me away, because it put into words something I've seen with my own clients, time and again.
Healing from trauma
‘Jennifer’ had suffered an extremely traumatic event—a sexual assault—and was really struggling with flashbacks, anxiety, and insomnia. Despite two years of standard counselling, there was no improvement.
This little vignette of Innate Health coaching that George tells, is the source of a line I've shared previously, where he reassures an understandably nervous and skeptical Jennifer about both of their roles in the healing process:
“I'm going to help you learn how to forget. Your job is to want to forget.”
(I could not love that more 😍)
Anyway, she has 12 sessions, all the symptoms go away completely, she's very grateful for the miracle and gets on with her life with her family.
But then…
‘Relapse’
She has occasion to drive past the location of the crime and has an unexpected flashback. She thought she was done with it all, but the memory returned. What was wrong? Had it not worked? Was she not healed?
💔
I see this with clients, especially when working from an Innate Health perspective.
That work has absolutely nothing to do with examining the bad stuff that has happened in someone's life, and everything to do with understanding how we experience the world, and who we are, underneath the noise of experience.
Which is confusing to people at first because surely… surely! if something really bad has happened in the past, we need to get that out in the open, don't we? Stop it from festering. We need to talk it through, isn't that the whole idea?
No, and Yes.
No, because it's terrifying and why would we encourage anyone to deliberately relive difficult, painful experiences—to actively harm themselves with their own thinking!—in the name of ‘treatment’?! 😱
That's like trying to settle a snow globe by shaking it really hard! Frankly, I find encouraging someone to wilfully resurface deeply painful memories to be barbaric, and it's definitely not what I'm about.
And yet at the same time… Yes, because it's the resisting, the constant running away from, the fear of the resurfacing of deeply painful memories, that keeps people stuck.
The necessary first step
To me it's just so logical and sensible to help people first understand how all of this is actually being experienced; how the 3 Principles work to deliver our ‘reality’ to us via Thought, moment by moment.
To not help someone who's suffering to see the truth behind this quote:
“Thought, in and of itself, is harmless.”
~ Richard Carlson
…is totally irresponsible!!
So it's a necessary first step (and second, and third, and fourth…) but it doesn't mean that the mind won't ever furnish us with scary stories from the past again.
Indeed, I am always careful to set the context for any ‘restorative’ work that I do with people, whether it's 1:1 or in a group setting, because anything can happen!
Nobody knows how the mind-body is going to respond (I was emotionally very labile, when I first had insights around the Principles), but however it does, it's all part of the natural healing process. Crucially:
Years ago, when I was feeling my way into all this, I took on a coach of my own and the way he described the process of healing was quite beautiful:
Like ascending a mountain via a path that spirals upwards. We revisit the same situations time and again, but from a much higher vantage point each time.
And that's been my experience of working with clients who are struggling with the past. You can't escape it, or deny it, and there's healing to be done, but it's done by life, not by us.
Healing from trauma is yet another example of the narrator-mind trying to take control of something it has absolutely naff-all to do with: the process of change.
Healing doesn't happen from a low or insecure state of mind; by analysing, or by ‘trying’ to change our thoughts.
Rather, we find the memories that need confronting will arise naturally, when we're in a place, psychologically, where we're actually able to experience them and not be completely freaked out.
(In the book, Jennifer's unexpected re-living of the assault had evolved in her memory, and didn't seem half as scary as before; another thing that George reassured her about!)
But this only happens when people first have a grounded perspective on experience in general – clarity on how the psycho-spiritual human operating system works.
So yes, I too have witnessed apparent ‘relapses’ from clients who've had insights about the nature of thought, seen their quality of life drastically improve, only to unexpectedly re-experience traumatic memories again.
And when they ask me “Why?” my response is always the same:
“Because you're ready.”
💝
Giles
Book recommendation
By: George Pransky