CHAPTER 7
HOW TO DISCONNECT FROM OLD TRAUMAS ONCE THEY START
Other ways to understand and deal with our fears & patterns
Many psychological techniques help us remember and release long forgotten traumas of middle and late childhood, complete with the 'belief statements' we consciously or un-consciously made at the time. These statements like, "I'll never love you anymore," "Something bad always happens when I try this," and "I can never do this," have been found to actually dictate what happens to us later on.
While our conscious minds can 'update' our evaluations of whether we can or can't do something, our sub- conscious mind recordings still stay just as they are. If it was a statement of fact when we were five, it remains a statement of fact when we're 10, 20, 30 and 50. The recording doesn't change, regardless of our age. Belief statements never appear as, "I can never do this at five, but from then on, I know I'll be able to do it."
Belief statements are also known as command statements. Whatever it says in the un conscious mind is a command that our bodies carry out. Through their connections in the limbic system of the brain, these 'orders' affect our organs, our movements, our thought patterns and what we transmit to the world through our energy field. This is not exactly how subliminal programming and hypnotism work, but it's close. Our brains and nervous systems will follow the orders in the sub- conscious mind in a routine manner.
When we can consciously see one of our patterns appearing, it doesn't do much good to strain and fight it with our conscious minds. As I said, conscious intention is located in a different part of the body from the old tapes. The imbedded scripts that run us were written many years ago. And they don't have one character in the plot saying, "Let's stop for a minute and see what somebody in the future has to tell us." Scripts are not whole people. They're scenarios of how people related in past traumatic incidents. They're literally written down as energy forms in our sub- conscious minds.
But we might be able to do something to stop it by 'turning it off' at the source instead of trying to influence it. The old traumas that affect us have fear as their central emotional theme. These scripts 'come to life' and grab hold of us because we just happen to be acting fearfully in our current situation. What connects them together is that the current situation and our current fears are very similar to , those imbedded in our inner scripts. So, for instance, a fear that says, "I won't survive," in connection with a money issue is the connection to an imbedded scenario in which we didn't survive, or our parents thought we wouldn't survive, when there were money problems. Once the fear activates the script, it tends to play itself out to the end of that old drama.
Therefore, the only effective way to stop this drama from continuing the way it did in the past is to eliminate our adult fears about the outcome of our current situation. The way to do this is to find some way of handling what we think is hopeless and out of our control, so it's no longer hopeless and we do have control. This will release the connection from the current to the past event. When that release occurs, the energies and command statements of the old scenario drops off.
We haven't removed the material from inside us. We've just turned off its switch.
This is where therapy or professional consultation that helps us cope with difficult situations can be helpful. We feel better when we have a heart to heart talk with someone who really cares and acknowledges all of us without letting us get lost in the negativity that's been taking us over. Short term therapy is one such vehicle. It helps us sort out our current situations and get free of the entanglements that are blocking us.
But these communications don't eliminate the un conscious trauma that adds so much energy to our current feelings. They just help us realize that our adult situations are not hopeless. People tend to continue in their downward spirals when they don't reach out to other people in their difficult situations. Just like in our childhood development, the choices we make are determined by our interactions with other people. When nobody's there to communicate with, the block to pleasurable expansion still stands in our way.
In order to handle the current upsetting experience and disconnect from the embedded patterns, we must understand why we have the emotional upset. We must see what decisions we've made and acknowledge how our situations are affecting us. This is what I said way back in Chapter 1 about the purpose of therapy of any kind. Personally, I've found astrological analysis very helpful many, many times. It helps me make sense out of my confusion. My books and counselors explain to me why I'm having these kinds of events in my life, and what I should do at these times. That gives me back control over my destiny. It also tells me what to do with my emotional energies. I use astrology because my past, successful experiences give me confidence in it.
We also must back out of the energies of the blocks that we're being inundated with. Stop trying to move into the blocks when they don't give way and they only make us feel worse. Feeling worse and having thoughts of hopelessness are signals that the old patterns are active. Recognize that the upsetting thoughts you're aware of in your conscious mind are just energies of the past events appearing on your computer screen or TV set. They, and their companion emotions have appeared through the limbic system of your brain.
This is a great time to do Netherton processing; the words and feelings are all there to clear out. But without that technique, we just feel blocked and upset. The old football adage of, "drop back ten and punt," is very appropriate advice. When you give the energies of the trauma time and space to dissipate, you'll get more of your common sense back and you can absorb the good advice that others give you.
I use massage, especially if the massage therapist is a psychic or a psychological counselor whose techniques I find valuable. At these times I need all the nourishing I can get. But more importantly I especially need release from the energies that have formed in my body. My conscious mind gets their messages of gloom and hopelessness. Those are the messages coming right out of my imbedded blocks.
I'll also stop all of my work if I feel blocked about moving in every direction. I know that at these times my inner fears and un-cleared patterns have been triggered, and they say there's no way out. Experience has taught me that, in reality, there is a way out. So I do what I can to disconnect my behavior from the behavior that occurred in these hopeless past experiences. Since my blocks often involve my work, I stop the work because I know whatever I do will be guided by the doomed scenario now controlling me.
I know the world looks a lot bleaker through this filter than it really is. And the massage and energy release sessions help to remove the solidification of that filter. Although my mind tries to rush even faster to 'save' me, I know this is also a part of my old doomed pattern.
Since I've had good results with rest, affirmation, meditation and prayer, I work with these, too, but only after I've released from the pattern I know is set up to cause everything I try to fail. I still don't move back into work when I feel blocked just thinking about it. I switch my efforts of expansion and moving forward into making contact with others and rejuvenating my inner self.
This is why prayer to a higher power is very helpful if you have confidence in it. The universe does give us what we ask for, and does not require us to provide the how. All we have to do is ask for the what. The more we then spiritually center and calm ourselves, the better we'll be able to receive this assistance.
When we don't understand our emotional upset and don't have a way of working with it, purely objective advice only fixes the situation; it doesn't fix 'us.' A person might come home from a meeting with a lawyer and still get very upset when thinking or talking about the situation. Legal confrontations are usually connected to old patterns of battling, and to un-conscious command statements about survival. So they're filled with a lot of emotion.
But lawyers rarely help people sort out their interpersonal emotional conflicts. They usually just take the legal functions off our hands and reassure us with their expertise. That does indeed eliminate a major part of our overwhelm. But by the nature of their jobs, most lawyers don't deal with the emotional roles people happen to be hooked into. So even though we're getting confident, knowledgeable support, we can't give our trust over to it when the unconscious scripts that say we won't survive, or we'll lose, are still inside us and active. It's this un conscious energy that creates the overwhelm and gets people all wound up emotionally.
If one is willing to let go of the battling ego position, while still handling the necessary legal matters, a second person can be used to work with our own emotions. This is one kind of situation in which a past life regression can be very helpful. It might be able to identify who your legal adversary was in a past life and what would be your best course of action based on your 'karmic lessons.' Some people use psychics whose judgment they trust to do the same thing. Christians might benefit from a study session on God's word with an astute minister who can relate spiritual guidance to everyday affairs. Affirmations and prayer can help those people who have a regular successful practice in this manner.
But remember: None of these effective counseling’s or self-help practices eliminate the old tapes. They just help us disconnect from their disastrous conclusions.
There are two simple ways to disconnect from a difficult situation in which someone has just been abusing you with their ‘trip.’ One is to get back in your own quiet space, talk with people about mundane everyday affairs in a logical manner to bring you back into objective reality, and go off and do your own thing that you enjoy.
It lets you get back into your 'space,' and the charge can disconnect and dissipate. Another thing to do, when you really feel as if you've been 'mind f--ked' is to speak with someone familiar with the objective nature of your situation, or to get with people who see life from your own clearer perspective. That'll reconnect you more with your soul.
So whatever we do objectively must change our attitude in the present moment from fearfulness and being blocked to feeling OK and expanding our energies outward. If the expansion is right for us, we'll receive an ongoing pleasurable response from the world. When we remove the fears, the love energy of expansion automatically begins to flow outward again. This process disassociates our adult situation from the blocked childhood one.
How-to self improvement courses that give us emotional support and nourishment work because they address and acknowledge our fears at the same time they give us solutions we feel confident in trying. TV psychic hotlines are successful because they promise this, too. The psychics are portrayed as real friends who understand us and can give us accurate concrete information about the future so we feel confident in pursuing a particular course of endeavor. Satisfying experiences with what we call a benevolent God or a supportive universe can also help in this way.
Our successful track record will allow us to give our own efforts away to the workings of a higher power in whom we trust. Doing this spiritually will also give us emotional consolation and help us let go of the tensions of fear.
We're often counseled to keep a positive outlook on life. While this is excellent advice it's a rare person who can do it when their buttons get pushed. When situations arrive in our lives that are confusing and overwhelming, we don't know which way to expand. We don't know which direction to move out into. So we don't do anything and that makes us feel blocked because we are blocked.
Again: consciously break the block in spite of the fears that you experience in trying to do so. But, as I've said, it's hard to do alone; inside the block, you're already alone. This is the secondary trauma I spoke of back in Chapter 1. In order to avoid the fears involved with overcoming the block, we stay alone. When it gets so painful that you can't stand it anymore, that's the time to reach out to get help, even if we're not sure whom to reach out to. That unsureness is also part of the block. But as long as we keep expanding our innermost energies, we'll eventually get in touch with a 'positive parent archetype' who will guide us out of the confusion.
So the goal is to keep regenerating a positive 'action' even when we don't 'feel' positive in the situation. This positive action may very well be taking a few days off for rest and fun, just as much as it may be to plunge into work and outside consultations.
Remember: it's the decisions about our current situations that activate the disastrous ones from the past. While those episodes ended in hopelessness and disaster, our current circumstances do not have to follow the same path. Only when people give in to the scripts, and there's no one there to help pull them out, do the scripts win.
This is why it's soooo helpful to actually remove the old scripts. The past events are extreme situations with dire results. Even if we get blocked in our current adult life, as naturally happens to everyone, it then becomes enormously easier to let go and move forward again. You're not buying into as many life and death situations in your stack.
