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“About a third of my cases are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives. This can be defined as the general neurosis of our times.”
― C.G. Jung |
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Salvaged Faith
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How? How Can I Be Well?
To achieve harmony of mind, of body, and of the human-spirit, we can't ignore the reality that the environments in which we live, our income levels, our social status, our ancestry etc: These all are part of what determines our own health-and-well-being across our personal lives. As I shared elsewhere on the site, and as I shared recently with a leader in public safety I've been working with. . . . . |
"If you wish to continue to see our First Responders taking ourselves out? Then, by all means, continue to fight us to protect your budgets. Taking our access to income away? If you wish us death, that's a good way to go about it."
Straight-Up. It's really as simple as that.
As it is for the individual, so it is for the collective that is our families, communities, and the over-all societies in which we share space with one-another. There is so much I could ramble about here. I'll be mindful to simply lay down some crumbs for others to follow. It's my goal with this site really to show others WHERE to look. It's not my role to tell anyone EXACTLY what to see with the looking.
With this in mind, however, for me, learning about the social determinants of health helped me see below the surface of my own symptoms. It's below the surface symptoms where I found the deeper, societal influences that cause us all, traumatized or not, to live somewhat in an unconscious state of chronic, life-imposed stress. An imposed stress for now that none of us can avoid really.
I've grown to think that on-the-whole in Canadian Society we place far too much emphasis on success as meaning power, wealth, and status acquisition. I really don't think that the competitiveness among us that this focus generates is doing any Canadian walking really a lick of good. Add often layers trauma upon our souls, living in an already highly stressful, money-motivated and competitive society, the injuries of trauma can take that daily chronic stress we're already living under and it (the trauma) can then literally destroy neurons in the brain in a way that this world we reside in together no-longer makes any sense to us at all.
Dr. Gabor Mate argues towards me successfully that capitalism, as we live it together, is not only crazy-making: According to Dr. Mate, capitalism is eroding planetary human, plant, and animal life, making all of this world right now dramatically and unnecessarily sick.
Otto Scharmer, my virtual leadership mentor, says the same. He supports Dr. Mate in suggesting that for us to be well in North America, perhaps it's time to take a serious look at how we do capitalism today. His life's work is sharing eloquently how important it is for the future of the planet, animal, and humankind to shift how we practice living the capitalist life.
This is supported as well by two of my other virtual mentors, Dr. Robert Sapolsky, and Sir Michael Marmot.
Dr. Sapolsky's life's work was in research studying stress and the impact that stress imposed upon primates living competitively in social hierarchy has in determining outcomes of disease.
Sir Michael is my go-to source for education about the social determinants of health.
It's their life's work studying the impact of competitive stress in regards to hierarchy in what can be toxic-living-environments that opened my eyes WIDE towards learning to respect how negatively powerful stress imposed upon us can be.
Sir Micheal found this out in the environment that is the British Civil Service. He has graciously discussed what he found in the Whitehall studies, put together over many years to validate his own findings. Dr. Saplosky's studies effectively mirror the findings in the Whitehall Studies. It's my sincere view that we've much can learn from these researchers.
'We're living in a time of massive institutional failure, collectively creating results that nobody wants', Otto Scharmer, his students, and his colleagues suggest. Studying via Edx alongside these fellow-humans, along with the others I mention, has left me with now some time for some intellectual rest:
I'm personally persuaded, as an outcome of my studies through all these fine, generous fellow-humans I found to mentor my own recovery, to now agree with the work of Otto Scharmer and the Presencing Institute out of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology); Drs. Gabor Mate and Robert Sapolsky; Sir Michael Marmot and others as well:
We've allowed ourselves to become somewhat disconnected from this life of ours, having allowed ourselves to believe that who we are and what we become, is NOT influenced, in any way, by the surroundings and life-styles we, as a society, have created for ourselves to live by.
Scharmer and his team go on to say, that we're suffering, all of us, through three, tragic disconnects from reality as an outcome of how we've engaged in being human in North America now over decades. Scharmer and his fellows suggest, and I sincerely believe now and agree with them fully, as Indigenous Understanding of Wellness too suggests:
Nowhere are these disconnects more apparent than in the 'ego-minded' leadership style that invaded our societies in North America as our baby-boomers came into and took too-strong a corporate hold over all reigns of current, existing power:
“We collectively create results that nobody wants because decision-makers are increasingly disconnected from the people affected by their decisions. As a consequence, we are hitting the limits to leadership—that is, the limits to traditional top-down leadership that works through the mechanisms of institutional silos.”
“We need to articulate a different view of economic, political, and spiritual affairs—a view that is not primarily Left or Right, that is not wrapped around the primacy of this mechanism or that one, that doesn’t believe that the solution to our problems lies with Big Government, Big Corporations, Big Money, or Big Ideology.”
― C. Otto Scharmer, Leading from the Emerging Future: From Ego-System to Eco-System Economies
What is the point, you ask?
The point I wish to make is: As it is for the collective, so it is for ourselves.
As it is for ourselves, so it is for the collective.
When we agree to heal our trauma: The impact is to potentially heal this entire world over time. One of us at a time learning to be well, as well as we possibly can be, given our own personal limitations:
As trauma hoped to destroy, so-too will a shift in focus towards wellness ripple across the pond that is our well-being in this shared-society. As we agree to drop the pebble that is wellness into that same pond that once accepted the stone of traumatic experience, so-to will our healing spread to others like a benevolent virus, leading us all, in our own uniquely chosen way, to get to a place in the future that on-the-whole proposes to be more healthy than perhaps humankind has had opportunity to experience consistently in the past.
"You're a dreamer", some might say.
Well, to quote John Lennon: I'm not the only one.
We need to accept that it's time in this world for a shift. To recover ourselves, we must accept that we don't know everything we need to know. We need the courage, humility, self-compassion, and granted grace, to proceed towards wellness by first raising up our own hand and asking for help. Particularly when traumatic stress injuries lies at the root of our own un-well-ness:
I can't tell anyone else precisely what to do. But for me, in response to my own traumas in life, I've come to agree:
That shift must now fully begin with me.
What is it that we need to be well when traumatic stress injuries and resulting conditions, PTSD, Depression, Compassion Fatigue, and/or Substance/Alcohol Use Disorders come along in this life hoping to steal well-being away?
First, as out-lined in the tri-phasic model of trauma treatment that I've adopted from Drs. Baranowsky and Judith Herman, we need to find 'safety and security' of our very person.
Secondly, we must be in relationship with right, trauma-and-violence informed helpers with modalities under-their-belt to assist us safely in working through our trauma memories.
Thirdly, from there, we're in a much better place to reconnect, or, perhaps for the first time in our lives to AUTHENTICALLY connect to full reality that is the core of healthy living through this often-wild-yet-incredibly-wonderful, human life.
This model for recovery not only supports itself in terms of validity. This model is supported by the concepts shared a long-time-ago by Abraham Maslow in his theory of learning, Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs.
Maslow's model, for me, in turn, supports a model we can adapt and apply to what human-growth in life, and through recovery from any physical or psychological damage we take-in across the life-span, looks like. What Maslow's ladder offers is a reference to what wellness looks like, as is expressed in the concept he shares called, 'self-actualization' (another word for 'enlightenment' or for 'growing up all the way' as humans).
There's a course, here at Future Learn that speaks to living the good live, regardless of level of disability, a course that includes reference to the value in turning back to Maslow for some right guidance for ourselves. It's yet to be announced, so today I simply mention it, as I just today added this course to my own Future Learn wish-list.
A bit of gold I've found in reviewing from psychology Maslow's principles, lies in the fact that what he's expressing here as a theory is all about how we learn. What Maslow offers, as well, is a way to reflect on the steps we must take if we are supporting ourselves best in a way that promotes and promises our own human growth.
He shows us the value and importance of understanding ourselves as living this life on a continuum. The model lays out clearly what it is we are to learn and achieve along life's way. Maslow shares this in a form that grants for reference purposes the goals we must be willing to put before ourselves in order to progress all the way to the top of Maslow's expressed hierarchy:
Self-Actualization. Enlightenment, if you like. Or, more aptly stated: Growing up all the way.
This translates to meaning that if there is a meaning to life (which I agree with my friend, Pat Solomon is a horrible question to ask ourselves): Then becoming across our life-span our most authentic self as a human being:
If this is not the meaning of life itself. Such a focus certainly grants us something to attach to. Maslow's model grants us a view of 'all-that' which we can choose to be focused on in order to BRING MEANING into our lives, which is the bit of advice I took-away from my podcast interview, available here on the site, with Finding Joe, Producer & Director, Mr. Patrick Takaya Solomon.
Trauma in our lives or otherwise, we are fully-permitted to create a meaningful life that is uniquely our own. A life of our own, fates-circumstances, and other's influence, granted. But, as the mystics might suggest, we bring meaning to the life we perhaps CHOSE to live, when, perhaps, we were but still unseen energy, mapping out this journey with perhaps God herself, when we learn to ultimately agree with our best-selves inside, part of all-that-is-the-kingdom's garden, that we not only are 'permitted' to live such a meaningful life:
As we are granted life in the first place, a best-self directed, meaningful human-life, is precisely what each and every one of us still deserve.
There's an expression that Otto Scharmer and his team shared with us during the course referenced above, "Leading From The Emerging Future" on Edx that is apparently, though not proven so, attributed to Albert Einstein:
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy taught me that it is our thinking that gets us into more trouble inside than does anything else. Many philosophers and ancients of wisdom suggest, "What a human thinks, said human becomes."
I've learned across my recovery, with the help of Joseph Campbell, that we are, in fact, story-telling creatures. We dictate stories of life to ourselves every millisecond of our day. Our inner-story is in fact what we're thinking through all the time. Our inner-story, ultimately, becomes the outer story that we live.
We are, each one, writing a story that unfortunately ends up with a rather pissy-title if you ask me:
Obituary. So, all I'm actually suggesting is . . .
If the story we're each living is going to end up with such a title anyway, we may as well agree to make the story the best one the story can possibly be.
What is it that we 'think' with? That maybe in our past didn't help us all that much?
The brain, of course. But we use the MEMORIES and the INFORMATION we've taken in across our lives, consciously, sub-consciously, and as Jung suggests, unconsciously when we are engaged, consciously or not, in a thinking, story-telling process inside.
Some call this our inner-dialogue. I accept that take too.
My experience and recovery process validates this as fact now for me. Because I now KNOW that I'm talking to myself inside all the time these days. I'm talking to myself now as I share my writing with you. Talking to oneself, contrary to perhaps some shrinks opinion, is EXACTLY what we must learn to do if we wish inside to be and to remain well.
For all others visiting here, this is a crumb I'll leave behind. Something I hope that you'll valiantly question on way to perhaps courageously validating this take on things for yourselves.
Given what I propose thus far:
Doesn't it make sense that perhaps what we learned prior to our traumatizing experiences; with all the beliefs and information we'd accumulated as memories up to the point; with traumatization acting to create our inner-story-telling (thinking) in a way that was askew because of all the meaning our faulty information and beliefs told us that traumatizing experience meant, whatever that meaning is for any one of us:
Doesn't it make sense that we may have been, in fact, unsupported inside in terms of helping ourselves out of the story that our trauma and resulting conditions had become?
Doesn't it make sense that to get out of the mess we may have to agree to put some time in reeducating ourselves?
I KNOW I self-destructed in the face of my own traumatic experiences, simply because at the time of the traumatic stress injuries that hit me upside the brain during those events: I didn't have the memories and information, the story I needed to help make RATIONAL sense of what the traumatic experiences themselves actually meant.
At the time those horrible things I witnessed came along to wound me so deeply, I simply didn't know then what I now know well today.
I wish I did. It would have saved me much time. It would have perhaps saved me from losing my family. It might have saved all I'd hoped for and built as a man over the years I'd lived in marriage with my partner and kids.
I didn't know then what I know now. Part of my own healing has come with a now RADICAL acceptance of all evident and facts-based reality.
I hope this makes sense to you at least at some level.
This is what I've learned. The idea of 'wellness' goes much deeper than any marketing gimmicks might hope to use against us to sell stuff to us that in the end we may find out we didn't even need.
So, for me, this take on things, and this deeper message about what it is to be well, is making now the most sense in terms of the story I will continue to share with myself inside. Moving forward towards a deeper sense of wellness. That remains the goal.
It remains my personal hope for myself, that I can continue to build a wellness than I've been able to achieve in my life before trauma, or with those past remissions, like the one I'm in now, It remains my hope that I will continue to be able to achieve remissions as many times as is necessary now along the way.
I hold this same wish inside for any-and-all who've found this site. It's on this foundation and understanding of the bigger-picture things that I wish to help guide others towards understanding what wellness is more fully all about.
Beyond the quick fixes. Beyond the promises of new-age, self-help tidd-bits. Beyond all the barriers that still stand in our way, living in this society of ours that still can't wrap it's own head around what constitutes normalcy in regards to the human condition on-the whole . . . . .
When it comes to supporting the recovery of our physical and mental health after-the-fact with any injury, achieving wellness is really the only rational choice we have to make once the damage is already done.
My own understanding of wellness has morphed into acceptance, radical acceptance of all that is the reality of life as life happened for me. I've worked through education, applying principles I picked up from CBT, from my virtual and physical mentors, and by testing what I was learning with application to my personal experience.
I was able to tackle change to my entire belief system in order to change the troubled 'thinking' that I believe was THE problem that took me off the rails for a time, and hauled me around so far astray from where I wanted in life by now to be.
As an outcome of this education my world-view has radically changed. With that change in world-view, the traumas I've suffered simply now, for me, make a whole bunch better sense.
I'm now achieving remission more often than in my past efforts to recover. I no longer hope to run back into the world when any remission comes along to bless me with some peace. I'm no longer as naive as I once was. Remissions don't mean, "I'm cured. Hallelujah!"
Not anymore.
I've had to learn the hard way not to fly back at the world as though a miracle has happened when I'm simply experiencing some respite with an achieved remission of my symptoms.
"We can't solve problems by using the same thinking that created them."
To fully appreciate all that being well personally, for others, and in the society means, it's helpful for us to understand that it is the social influences put upon us in the form of stress (chronic and traumatic distress) that can paint a much clearer picture for us as we hope to bring meaning to this one wild-and-wonderful life. This supports us well, in my studied experience, empowering us to then make sense of the stories of the traumatic experiences we've suffered in life themselves.
I'll leave you with this adopted bit from new testament scripture. Please don't let that make you roll-your-eyes now and run the other way. It's simply reality that I still hold dear to myself certain lessons from my own Christian upbringing:
"In this world, there will be trouble. Take heart. For I have overcome the world."
~ Yeshua
What I believe Yeshua, the man, wished us to hear in these words is:
"I have overcome the stress imposed upon me in this wild-and-wonderful life of mine. If I can overcome such things, being human myself, then, quite possibly, so , in fact, can you."
For The Next Bits I Wish To Share About Wellness: Please follow this link to The Next Page
Straight-Up. It's really as simple as that.
As it is for the individual, so it is for the collective that is our families, communities, and the over-all societies in which we share space with one-another. There is so much I could ramble about here. I'll be mindful to simply lay down some crumbs for others to follow. It's my goal with this site really to show others WHERE to look. It's not my role to tell anyone EXACTLY what to see with the looking.
With this in mind, however, for me, learning about the social determinants of health helped me see below the surface of my own symptoms. It's below the surface symptoms where I found the deeper, societal influences that cause us all, traumatized or not, to live somewhat in an unconscious state of chronic, life-imposed stress. An imposed stress for now that none of us can avoid really.
I've grown to think that on-the-whole in Canadian Society we place far too much emphasis on success as meaning power, wealth, and status acquisition. I really don't think that the competitiveness among us that this focus generates is doing any Canadian walking really a lick of good. Add often layers trauma upon our souls, living in an already highly stressful, money-motivated and competitive society, the injuries of trauma can take that daily chronic stress we're already living under and it (the trauma) can then literally destroy neurons in the brain in a way that this world we reside in together no-longer makes any sense to us at all.
Dr. Gabor Mate argues towards me successfully that capitalism, as we live it together, is not only crazy-making: According to Dr. Mate, capitalism is eroding planetary human, plant, and animal life, making all of this world right now dramatically and unnecessarily sick.
Otto Scharmer, my virtual leadership mentor, says the same. He supports Dr. Mate in suggesting that for us to be well in North America, perhaps it's time to take a serious look at how we do capitalism today. His life's work is sharing eloquently how important it is for the future of the planet, animal, and humankind to shift how we practice living the capitalist life.
This is supported as well by two of my other virtual mentors, Dr. Robert Sapolsky, and Sir Michael Marmot.
Dr. Sapolsky's life's work was in research studying stress and the impact that stress imposed upon primates living competitively in social hierarchy has in determining outcomes of disease.
Sir Michael is my go-to source for education about the social determinants of health.
It's their life's work studying the impact of competitive stress in regards to hierarchy in what can be toxic-living-environments that opened my eyes WIDE towards learning to respect how negatively powerful stress imposed upon us can be.
Sir Micheal found this out in the environment that is the British Civil Service. He has graciously discussed what he found in the Whitehall studies, put together over many years to validate his own findings. Dr. Saplosky's studies effectively mirror the findings in the Whitehall Studies. It's my sincere view that we've much can learn from these researchers.
'We're living in a time of massive institutional failure, collectively creating results that nobody wants', Otto Scharmer, his students, and his colleagues suggest. Studying via Edx alongside these fellow-humans, along with the others I mention, has left me with now some time for some intellectual rest:
I'm personally persuaded, as an outcome of my studies through all these fine, generous fellow-humans I found to mentor my own recovery, to now agree with the work of Otto Scharmer and the Presencing Institute out of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology); Drs. Gabor Mate and Robert Sapolsky; Sir Michael Marmot and others as well:
We've allowed ourselves to become somewhat disconnected from this life of ours, having allowed ourselves to believe that who we are and what we become, is NOT influenced, in any way, by the surroundings and life-styles we, as a society, have created for ourselves to live by.
Scharmer and his team go on to say, that we're suffering, all of us, through three, tragic disconnects from reality as an outcome of how we've engaged in being human in North America now over decades. Scharmer and his fellows suggest, and I sincerely believe now and agree with them fully, as Indigenous Understanding of Wellness too suggests:
- We are disconnected from reality at the level of our relationship with Nature.
- We are disconnected from reality at the level of our relationships with one-another.
- Most tragically of all, I agree with Scharmer, his team, and with Indigenous Understanding: We are most tragically disconnected from reality in relationship with ourselves.
Nowhere are these disconnects more apparent than in the 'ego-minded' leadership style that invaded our societies in North America as our baby-boomers came into and took too-strong a corporate hold over all reigns of current, existing power:
“We collectively create results that nobody wants because decision-makers are increasingly disconnected from the people affected by their decisions. As a consequence, we are hitting the limits to leadership—that is, the limits to traditional top-down leadership that works through the mechanisms of institutional silos.”
“We need to articulate a different view of economic, political, and spiritual affairs—a view that is not primarily Left or Right, that is not wrapped around the primacy of this mechanism or that one, that doesn’t believe that the solution to our problems lies with Big Government, Big Corporations, Big Money, or Big Ideology.”
― C. Otto Scharmer, Leading from the Emerging Future: From Ego-System to Eco-System Economies
What is the point, you ask?
The point I wish to make is: As it is for the collective, so it is for ourselves.
As it is for ourselves, so it is for the collective.
When we agree to heal our trauma: The impact is to potentially heal this entire world over time. One of us at a time learning to be well, as well as we possibly can be, given our own personal limitations:
As trauma hoped to destroy, so-too will a shift in focus towards wellness ripple across the pond that is our well-being in this shared-society. As we agree to drop the pebble that is wellness into that same pond that once accepted the stone of traumatic experience, so-to will our healing spread to others like a benevolent virus, leading us all, in our own uniquely chosen way, to get to a place in the future that on-the-whole proposes to be more healthy than perhaps humankind has had opportunity to experience consistently in the past.
"You're a dreamer", some might say.
Well, to quote John Lennon: I'm not the only one.
We need to accept that it's time in this world for a shift. To recover ourselves, we must accept that we don't know everything we need to know. We need the courage, humility, self-compassion, and granted grace, to proceed towards wellness by first raising up our own hand and asking for help. Particularly when traumatic stress injuries lies at the root of our own un-well-ness:
- BC Association of Clinical Counselors
- BC Psychological Association
- First Nations Health Authority
- Badge of Life Canada (Therapists).
- North American Fire-Fighter Veterans Network
- BC First Responder Mental Health
I can't tell anyone else precisely what to do. But for me, in response to my own traumas in life, I've come to agree:
That shift must now fully begin with me.
What is it that we need to be well when traumatic stress injuries and resulting conditions, PTSD, Depression, Compassion Fatigue, and/or Substance/Alcohol Use Disorders come along in this life hoping to steal well-being away?
First, as out-lined in the tri-phasic model of trauma treatment that I've adopted from Drs. Baranowsky and Judith Herman, we need to find 'safety and security' of our very person.
Secondly, we must be in relationship with right, trauma-and-violence informed helpers with modalities under-their-belt to assist us safely in working through our trauma memories.
Thirdly, from there, we're in a much better place to reconnect, or, perhaps for the first time in our lives to AUTHENTICALLY connect to full reality that is the core of healthy living through this often-wild-yet-incredibly-wonderful, human life.
This model for recovery not only supports itself in terms of validity. This model is supported by the concepts shared a long-time-ago by Abraham Maslow in his theory of learning, Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs.
Maslow's model, for me, in turn, supports a model we can adapt and apply to what human-growth in life, and through recovery from any physical or psychological damage we take-in across the life-span, looks like. What Maslow's ladder offers is a reference to what wellness looks like, as is expressed in the concept he shares called, 'self-actualization' (another word for 'enlightenment' or for 'growing up all the way' as humans).
There's a course, here at Future Learn that speaks to living the good live, regardless of level of disability, a course that includes reference to the value in turning back to Maslow for some right guidance for ourselves. It's yet to be announced, so today I simply mention it, as I just today added this course to my own Future Learn wish-list.
A bit of gold I've found in reviewing from psychology Maslow's principles, lies in the fact that what he's expressing here as a theory is all about how we learn. What Maslow offers, as well, is a way to reflect on the steps we must take if we are supporting ourselves best in a way that promotes and promises our own human growth.
He shows us the value and importance of understanding ourselves as living this life on a continuum. The model lays out clearly what it is we are to learn and achieve along life's way. Maslow shares this in a form that grants for reference purposes the goals we must be willing to put before ourselves in order to progress all the way to the top of Maslow's expressed hierarchy:
Self-Actualization. Enlightenment, if you like. Or, more aptly stated: Growing up all the way.
This translates to meaning that if there is a meaning to life (which I agree with my friend, Pat Solomon is a horrible question to ask ourselves): Then becoming across our life-span our most authentic self as a human being:
If this is not the meaning of life itself. Such a focus certainly grants us something to attach to. Maslow's model grants us a view of 'all-that' which we can choose to be focused on in order to BRING MEANING into our lives, which is the bit of advice I took-away from my podcast interview, available here on the site, with Finding Joe, Producer & Director, Mr. Patrick Takaya Solomon.
Trauma in our lives or otherwise, we are fully-permitted to create a meaningful life that is uniquely our own. A life of our own, fates-circumstances, and other's influence, granted. But, as the mystics might suggest, we bring meaning to the life we perhaps CHOSE to live, when, perhaps, we were but still unseen energy, mapping out this journey with perhaps God herself, when we learn to ultimately agree with our best-selves inside, part of all-that-is-the-kingdom's garden, that we not only are 'permitted' to live such a meaningful life:
As we are granted life in the first place, a best-self directed, meaningful human-life, is precisely what each and every one of us still deserve.
There's an expression that Otto Scharmer and his team shared with us during the course referenced above, "Leading From The Emerging Future" on Edx that is apparently, though not proven so, attributed to Albert Einstein:
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy taught me that it is our thinking that gets us into more trouble inside than does anything else. Many philosophers and ancients of wisdom suggest, "What a human thinks, said human becomes."
I've learned across my recovery, with the help of Joseph Campbell, that we are, in fact, story-telling creatures. We dictate stories of life to ourselves every millisecond of our day. Our inner-story is in fact what we're thinking through all the time. Our inner-story, ultimately, becomes the outer story that we live.
We are, each one, writing a story that unfortunately ends up with a rather pissy-title if you ask me:
Obituary. So, all I'm actually suggesting is . . .
If the story we're each living is going to end up with such a title anyway, we may as well agree to make the story the best one the story can possibly be.
What is it that we 'think' with? That maybe in our past didn't help us all that much?
The brain, of course. But we use the MEMORIES and the INFORMATION we've taken in across our lives, consciously, sub-consciously, and as Jung suggests, unconsciously when we are engaged, consciously or not, in a thinking, story-telling process inside.
Some call this our inner-dialogue. I accept that take too.
My experience and recovery process validates this as fact now for me. Because I now KNOW that I'm talking to myself inside all the time these days. I'm talking to myself now as I share my writing with you. Talking to oneself, contrary to perhaps some shrinks opinion, is EXACTLY what we must learn to do if we wish inside to be and to remain well.
For all others visiting here, this is a crumb I'll leave behind. Something I hope that you'll valiantly question on way to perhaps courageously validating this take on things for yourselves.
Given what I propose thus far:
Doesn't it make sense that perhaps what we learned prior to our traumatizing experiences; with all the beliefs and information we'd accumulated as memories up to the point; with traumatization acting to create our inner-story-telling (thinking) in a way that was askew because of all the meaning our faulty information and beliefs told us that traumatizing experience meant, whatever that meaning is for any one of us:
Doesn't it make sense that we may have been, in fact, unsupported inside in terms of helping ourselves out of the story that our trauma and resulting conditions had become?
Doesn't it make sense that to get out of the mess we may have to agree to put some time in reeducating ourselves?
I KNOW I self-destructed in the face of my own traumatic experiences, simply because at the time of the traumatic stress injuries that hit me upside the brain during those events: I didn't have the memories and information, the story I needed to help make RATIONAL sense of what the traumatic experiences themselves actually meant.
At the time those horrible things I witnessed came along to wound me so deeply, I simply didn't know then what I now know well today.
I wish I did. It would have saved me much time. It would have perhaps saved me from losing my family. It might have saved all I'd hoped for and built as a man over the years I'd lived in marriage with my partner and kids.
I didn't know then what I know now. Part of my own healing has come with a now RADICAL acceptance of all evident and facts-based reality.
I hope this makes sense to you at least at some level.
This is what I've learned. The idea of 'wellness' goes much deeper than any marketing gimmicks might hope to use against us to sell stuff to us that in the end we may find out we didn't even need.
So, for me, this take on things, and this deeper message about what it is to be well, is making now the most sense in terms of the story I will continue to share with myself inside. Moving forward towards a deeper sense of wellness. That remains the goal.
It remains my personal hope for myself, that I can continue to build a wellness than I've been able to achieve in my life before trauma, or with those past remissions, like the one I'm in now, It remains my hope that I will continue to be able to achieve remissions as many times as is necessary now along the way.
I hold this same wish inside for any-and-all who've found this site. It's on this foundation and understanding of the bigger-picture things that I wish to help guide others towards understanding what wellness is more fully all about.
Beyond the quick fixes. Beyond the promises of new-age, self-help tidd-bits. Beyond all the barriers that still stand in our way, living in this society of ours that still can't wrap it's own head around what constitutes normalcy in regards to the human condition on-the whole . . . . .
When it comes to supporting the recovery of our physical and mental health after-the-fact with any injury, achieving wellness is really the only rational choice we have to make once the damage is already done.
My own understanding of wellness has morphed into acceptance, radical acceptance of all that is the reality of life as life happened for me. I've worked through education, applying principles I picked up from CBT, from my virtual and physical mentors, and by testing what I was learning with application to my personal experience.
I was able to tackle change to my entire belief system in order to change the troubled 'thinking' that I believe was THE problem that took me off the rails for a time, and hauled me around so far astray from where I wanted in life by now to be.
As an outcome of this education my world-view has radically changed. With that change in world-view, the traumas I've suffered simply now, for me, make a whole bunch better sense.
I'm now achieving remission more often than in my past efforts to recover. I no longer hope to run back into the world when any remission comes along to bless me with some peace. I'm no longer as naive as I once was. Remissions don't mean, "I'm cured. Hallelujah!"
Not anymore.
I've had to learn the hard way not to fly back at the world as though a miracle has happened when I'm simply experiencing some respite with an achieved remission of my symptoms.
"We can't solve problems by using the same thinking that created them."
To fully appreciate all that being well personally, for others, and in the society means, it's helpful for us to understand that it is the social influences put upon us in the form of stress (chronic and traumatic distress) that can paint a much clearer picture for us as we hope to bring meaning to this one wild-and-wonderful life. This supports us well, in my studied experience, empowering us to then make sense of the stories of the traumatic experiences we've suffered in life themselves.
I'll leave you with this adopted bit from new testament scripture. Please don't let that make you roll-your-eyes now and run the other way. It's simply reality that I still hold dear to myself certain lessons from my own Christian upbringing:
"In this world, there will be trouble. Take heart. For I have overcome the world."
~ Yeshua
What I believe Yeshua, the man, wished us to hear in these words is:
"I have overcome the stress imposed upon me in this wild-and-wonderful life of mine. If I can overcome such things, being human myself, then, quite possibly, so , in fact, can you."
For The Next Bits I Wish To Share About Wellness: Please follow this link to The Next Page
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Mind
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Spirit
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Disclaimer: These materials and resources are presented for educational purposes only. They are not a substitute for informed medical advice or training. Do not use this information to diagnose or treat a health problem without consulting a qualified health or mental health care provider. If you have concerns, contact your health care provider, mental health professional, or your community health centre.
Darren Gregory © 2018. All Rights Reserved
