Last week I was talking with my friend about Dr. Larry Dossey’s New York Times bestseller, One Mind, and how we are all loved. She told me how she has always helped people and has never expected anything in return. She never asked for anything but was always grateful for whatever she got. And yes, being grateful is extremely important, but I pointed out that in addition she could also ask for what she wants. The spiritual realm is filled with loving energy and God, our angels and guides want to help us. They know that we all deserve to be happy. Since we have free will, however, we need to ask them for help. There’s only so much they can do without our permission. It’s like we’re holding them back if we don’t ask for their help.
A Prayer Answered
A few days later she called to tell me that her prayers had already been answered. She had merely said, “You know the details of my life, I need your help and guidance.” And she got it in two areas. First, the man she had been talking to on-line, who seemed like the ideal man for her, turned out to be a fraud. When he called, she could tell immediately that he wasn’t who he had appeared to be on paper. When she went back and looked more carefully at his emails, she noticed that the language and sentence structure was not consistent. It was almost as if more than one person was communicating with her or maybe he had copied notes from other people. She took immediate action. First she blocked his emails and phone calls. Then she did some checking and discovered that he was using a false address. Next she contacted the dating site and reported him so as to protect other women from him. Then she cancelled her membership because they weren’t doing a good job of monitoring their subscribers.
This experience and how she handled it was very important because she grew up being abused and her various marriages were to abusive men. The kind of abuse varied from emotional and psychological to financial. The pattern kept repeating despite the fact that she is a highly trained nurse with numerous degrees and certifications and years of professionally helping people who were in abusive relationships. When I asked her permission to share her story with you, she said: “be sure to tell them that we are all vulnerable when it comes to personal relationships no matter how skilled we are.”
Saying “No” to Abuse
The exciting thing here is that she caught his deception early and stood up for herself. She even took it a step further by turning her anger into righteous indignation and taking action to have him removed from that dating site. This was real progress in her standing up for herself, changing the negative pattern and thereby changing her life.
The next thing that her guides helped her with was getting her house sold. It had been on the market for close to a year with no real interest on the part of buyers even though it was in a quiet neighborhood, on the water, and most importantly, she had remodeled it herself. And I mean, she did almost all of the labor herself. She designed it, bought the materials and did the physical work. This was really beautiful workmanship, a rarity these days. Well, she now has a contract in her hands. Not only that, she has the closing date she wants and is getting paid cash almost at the full asking price. The best is yet to come because this is mainly a story of healing from abuse.
Her husband, who she is separated from, told her that he should get all of the money because he made the down payment. She pointed out what she had put into the house and said that she was tired of being hurt by his words. He acknowledged that she was correct and that they should split the money. Not giving up his abusive ways, he then pushed to move back in with her. Her response was an emphatic no–another huge step in standing up for herself and in breaking the old patterns. She told me that she literally felt the tension release from her upper back and shoulders, and then, “I felt myself getting lighter and I slept so well.”
Healing From Abuse
When I congratulated her on how she handled these situations and pointed out how strong she has become, she responded by saying that it was because of me. I was surprised. She went on to say: “I’ve learned a lot from listening to your program and to all of the advice you’ve given me over the years. Even though I didn’t act on it at the time, I was listening.” I realized that in those numerous conversations, we provided a safe place for each other as we shared our experiences, our sadness and our tears. In addition, she attended my workshops and meetup group often telling me how helpful my Creative Problem Solving Process was in helping her release the fears that prevented her from moving forward. She said she kept all of the work that she did in those sessions and often went back to review the information so she could continue to gain new insights and healing.
As I was thinking about the process that she has gone through in her healing from abuse, I realized that she has incorporated many of Dr. van der Kolk’s approaches. She really put together her own healing in a way that followed her intuition and time line. She came to my meetup group because she was stuck. She didn’t feel creative and she had boxes from her family home that needed to be unpacked that had been sitting for years. She couldn’t get herself motivated to face what was in those boxes, to face the pain of the past. The process I use helped her dissolve her fears and move step by step into her new life. In a very short time, she started taking Tai Chi, which reconnected her with her body while strengthening it and ballet to satisfy her love of dance. She began to express her creativity through designing, making and eventually selling jewelry. She continued to expand her creativity by joining a painting group, where she quickly became a valued part of their community and received affirmation for her talents. She remodeled her home, putting up dry wall, pounding nails, laying floors. It was as if she was remodeling her life and with every stroke of her hammer was becoming stronger. She went to Dr. Lewis Cone, who has been on our show previously, to heal her body, starting with migraine headaches that had plagued her almost daily. He quickly identified her allergy to milk, and the headaches were gone in a couple of days. She continued her gardening, which brought her peace, privacy and more creativity. Somewhere along the way, she made the decision to only do things that bring her joy. She left the work that was painful, left abusive relationships and put her talents to work in new meaningful and fulfilling ways. This path led her to a new city, a new home and a job where she already had good friends and quickly became valued by her students, boss and colleagues. Her courage to face the pain from her past and present led her to new choices and experiences that brought her healing, creativity, joy and self-determination.
At the end of our conversation, I said, “I’m so happy for you. It’s like you took the cork out of the bottle and let out your true Self!” Her response was “The best part is feeling good from the inside out.” Yes! Her story is one of choosing to become strong, healthy, happy, creative and
most importantly, getting to know the Self that had been hidden under layers of fear from years of abuse.
The Body Keeps The Score
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk is correct–The body does keep the score and it does want to and know how to heal. His New York Times bestseller, The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, is a must-read for all of us because we all have either experienced trauma or abuse or know someone who has. We must be informed about what really works so that we can stop spinning our wheels and start truly healing.
