Sujati A.
Goernitz
My mind wants to make sense of physical and emotional disease, of why I feel bad (without apparent reason). When I changed my doctor, I had an overall physical checkup. My doctor noticed that my blood sugar level was pretty high, which surprised me, having never eaten a lot of sugar.
My doctor explained that my body might pour out sugar in the morning to ensure that I had enough energy for all the threats to my survival. And that did ring a bell! Because of past experiences I have been working for a while with a therapist on my physical reactions to feeling threat and fear in my body. Allowing my body to relax and, in such, allowing my emotions to calm down.
For years and years, these emotions, with a certain kind of light, certain seasons, temperatures and situations made (and still at times make) my heart race, make me feel so sad and make me feel desperate, hopeless and helpless.
From what I have figured out through years of therapies and personal development, I lived through traumatic circumstances as a very young child. Probably sexual abuse by my oldest brother, who committed suicide when I was seven – never to be validated since he is no longer alive and nobody in my family knows anything about that.
That physical-emotional (betrayal of love) trauma was and still partially is trapped in my body. So I wake up in the middle of the night with my heart racing. Feeling menaced, which, before having learnt about trauma, I would have tried to understand what is so threatening... And for sure my mind could find something. And then – wanted to fix it. But that didn't change it!
Again, and again this same feeling would come up. But, thanks to my therapist, I can now do some things to calm down my fight and flight impulses instead of entirely going into the thread. And by that, also calming down my racing mind.
Coming back to myself. Not projecting and searching outside of me what is wrong and desperately wanting to fix it.
I now know and understand that if I fix what seems be wrong outside – and believe me, there are always things that are wrong! – that there would just pop up other wrong things!
Luckily for me, the emotional charge is much lesser now, thanks to the therapy I have been through. I have deep gratitude for it. And, it still happens that I wake up in the night with my body feeling threatened and my heart pounding.
I also now understand it as an old story replaying in my body. I don't need to find things that aren't working in my life today to justify this feeling...
And don't get me wrong! By all means, if you have life-threatening things in your life, please do something to change them! But again, don't get caught up in the net of wanting to fix all the outside. Because, even if you do, the inside pressure of the unresolved trauma will create or find other problems.
Trust me, when you live in a body that feels threatened, you attract and perceive threats wherever you are. That is what your body-emotion-mind system knows and repeats. That is what it will recognize. Not love, not peace, and not joy. Threat and menace everywhere. That is what the system is used to, and it's so much easier to repeat.
Having been abused, the mind creates a story to make sense of it: "The story of a bad me that deserves to be abused". Because, why on earth would there be abuse? It must be my fault! And this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, a never-ending self-perpetuating story of mishaps and misery.
I am so grateful to all the therapists and healers I met on my healing journey, my path to my Wellbeing! And, also, to all the spiritual masters that showed me I am not my mind, not my thoughts, not my body – and... there is something (or no-thing) that is before all of this. Something that can't be broken, nor does it need fixing. That "I" is always whole.