You Are Not Lazy. You Are Traumatised.

In the past I often blamed myself for not being as proactive and assertive as I thought I should be regarding the goals I wanted to achieve in my professional life. At the same time, as I finished my training and started working as an EFT Practitioner, I began to understand how intricately yet diversely humans will react to trauma.

Since then I have met people whose childhood adverse experiences had been so devastating that in reaction they had become incredibly successful, and that very success would padlock the doors to their past for once and for all.

I also met people who had remained frozen in time, incapable of taking a step forward - perhaps like myself? And I've met others who would had apparently moved on but actually remained caught up in Groundhog Day - "I'll give you a winter prediction: It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be grey, and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life."

I have met people whose trauma had affected them in such a way that their bodies responded accordingly and for that reason their whole lives had been rearranged: new relationships, new places, situations, challenges and different resources had become the new normal for them. Their new lives had been set in a way, though, that their attention turned completely to making their bodies cope so they could live a normal life, or as close as possible to one. In such settings, any attempt to heal the root cause of whatever had been going on with their bodies, would mean they'd be losing something in the process.

It's quite straightforward: If you have been attending physio sessions twice a week for the past twenty years because sixty percent of your body has been paralised due to 'that accident', it's very likely that you also have changed all your routine, and/or are under the care of others - you are being looked after like you never been before the event that has made you paralised in the first place. You have forged new relationships, you go to certain places, you've acquired certain rights, you know exactly what you should be eating to cushion your stomach before intaking the prescribed medicine, and you get to talk about it to the physiotherapist when you see them twice a week. Discussing medicine side-effects is the common talk in your support group. In fact, the only friends you have are in your support group and you only know who you are and your importance, when you get to speak in your support group.

So what would the cure mean to you in terms of your everyday life? What would you loose if you got cured and your body worked perfectly again?

Sometimes, healing doesn't look safe from the perspective of a traumatised brain. Nor being proactive, neither moving on.

The primitive part of your brain which process trauma will scream and shout before you're able to be rational about getting help for your mental health. It will scream if you consider changing things around and launch yourself out there.

That happens because your brain's main function is to keep you alive. And you know what? You're being looked after and things are far from perfect, but at least you're alive and you're safe just as you are. Just like my brain has done to me all these years: "Things are far from perfect and you're frozen, but you're not in danger anymore. Plus, how much energy is this whole business thing that you've decided you want to do now it's going to cost me? I mean, what if anything happens, what if we need to run again, how am I going to keep you alive? You better sit on your arse and procrastinate. That's how I'll keep you alive - I'm in control of your thyroid as well, by the way, which means you will be a bit depressed, overweight, slow and not feeling like your original self anymore, but that's good. I won't part with my fuel."

Adding to the drama, there's that thing called ego which will inevitably make you compare yourself to others and that's when the guilt, the self-blaming and self-loathing thoughts take over. All of a sudden the problem is that you can't send e-mails, be creative at elaborating some nice newsletters for your subscribers or do some good networking - you're too lazy. You're too shy, you're not really a business person. You're a failure.

No you're not. You're just traumatised. And facing a healing path may seem daunting and quite unfamiliar with anything you have experienced so far, but what I've learned from my own process and in my EFT practice is that you don't really lose anything. Quite the contrary, when it comes to EFT, things tend to fall into place quite naturally for clients as the sessions progress. The effects of tapping on acupressure points as event-related wording gets voiced out will cause a long-lasting chemical change in the brain and before you know you have changed old trauma-related habits, you have become more relaxed, more efficient and you are seeing things - and yourself - from a different perspective.

*photo title: 'beach covered in seals' by photoeverywhere at www.freimageslive.co.uk