healing trauma

NO MORE TRAUMA!

By Judith Barr

UTILIZE THE TRAUMA TO HEAL THE TRAUMA …

NOT TO CREATE MORE TRAUMA

There is so much trauma in our world.
We’re having trouble facing the truth
of the causes and the consequences.
We need help to face the truth.
We need help to heal the trauma …
not just bandage it.
We need help to heal the trauma
to the roots and from the inside out.

Utilize the Trauma To Heal the Trauma... Not To Create More Trauma
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This is the message that complements Judith's blog post on the same topic: https://judithbarr.com/2019/09/21/no-more-trauma/

NO MORE IGNORANCE; NO MORE DENIAL; NO MORE DELUSION!

The leaders in our country and world are acting out their childhood traumas on their countries, on our world, on our planet.

Impeaching them, electing someone else, a revolution … none of these is going to solve the problem. The next leaders will also act out their childhood traumas on the national and global stages.

And the leaders aren’t the only ones.  We, the citizens, act out our childhood traumas in our lives, in our families, in our schools, in our businesses, in our communities, in our countries, and in our world. 

Not only that, but also … we are connected to the leaders whose traumas somehow reflect or intersect with our own. This is unconscious and ends up causing us to decide and act in ways that aren’t really free, that certainly aren’t healthy, and that are often destructive. 

And as I’ve indicated in previous blog posts, this ends up causing us to abuse our children, abuse each other, abuse ourselves, and abuse our planet … either outright and directly, hidden and secretly, or perhaps more subtly, through enabling and collusion.

This will continue until we do our own inner healing to consciously and purposefully work through our young traumas.  

Here’s a step you can take:


Until we heal from our early traumas …
we are held captive –
by our own traumas …
by our leaders’ traumas …
by the traumas we’re trying to forget and bury,
while at the same time acting them out without awareness.

Until we heal from our ancient traumas …
we consciously and unconsciously try to
keep our traumas hidden and buried.
Yet they remain alive and active within us …
like volcanos waiting to erupt.

Until we heal from our long-ago traumas …
we are held hostage –
by the traumas we are creating and re-creating
in our lives,
in the lives of our children,
in the lives of our families,
in the lives of our countries and our world.

Have the courage to wake up …

Have the courage to understand this …
Have the courage to explore and find the roots of your own trauma …
and to heal it.

Here’s another step you can take:


Be aware that you are being triggered by what’s going on in our country and world today.
There are here and now situations that need to be addressed in the here and now.

But your unhealed childhood traumas interfere with your successfully contributing to real, sustained resolution of today’s problems for the long-term.

Be aware that those triggers are rooted in your childhood traumas.
Be aware that the feelings that are triggered are connected to your childhood traumas. 

Don’t act out on those feelings
and don’t bury them.
Have the courage to safely feel the feelings
the child you once were felt in the midst of your trauma.
Know that the child you once were is still alive inside you,
driving you without your realizing it …
until you heal his or her trauma. 

NO MORE BLINDNESS; NO MORE DEAFNESS; NO MORE NUMBNESS

Here’s still another step you can take:

 

Get the help to end your blindness to what’s going on.
Get the help to end your deafness to what’s going on.
Get the help to end your numbness to what’s going on.
What’s going on within you …
What’s coming from you …
and what’s happening on our planet.

 Climate activist Greta Thunberg has said to the adults of our planet:

“Adults keep saying we owe it to the young people, to give them hope.
But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful.
I want you to panic.
I want you to feel the fear I feel every day.
I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis.
I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is.” *

What needs to be melted is our numbness.
I have been writing, teaching, urging, and working with people for years …
to feel their panic.
If people had felt the panic from their childhood traumas,
we wouldn’t be in such danger today in so many ways …
individually, communally, and globally.

So it may seem strange to hear a depth psychotherapist who is filled with love and compassion for people in pain to say something similar to what Greta Thunburg is saying:

 I want you to feel your panic from long, long ago …
I want you to find a safe way to feel that panic from your ancient traumas
so you will stop re-creating your trauma and panic in your life and in ours …
today, tomorrow, and in our future.
That, in fact, is the deepest hope!

Find a good therapist to help you safely feel your panic and safely utilize your traumas to heal your traumas. In that way you will collaborate with us all in healing our past traumas and saying ‘no’ to creating new traumas.

This is the work I do with people, day by day by day.
If I can help you, let me know.

Thank you and Many blessings to each of you … and to our planet . . .

Judith

*‘I want you to panic’: Climate activist Greta Thunberg, 16, lays it on the line for world leaders

NOTE: To understand more about trauma and its course, read  https://judithbarr.com/2018/10/28/haunted-now-what/ from this time last year.

© Judith Barr, 2019

HOW IN THE WORLD DID I GET HERE?

By Judith Barr

Recently I shared with a group of my colleagues about the backstory to the
publication of my new book.  The responses were meaningful, touching, heartful.
People appreciated knowing something about the process that led me to
“birthing” How Did We Get Here?
I hope the backstory will be meaningful to you, too.

My first book, Power Abused, Power Healed, took 7 years to birth –
from my first sentence to publishing.
It was a learning, growing, profound sacred journey.
At the same time, it was a wild ride … and I was pregnant with my book for 7 years.
Near the birth I was saying “What being on the face of this earth has 7-year pregnancies?!?”

As our paths often unfold, all this time I was growing, developing, expanding,
deepening in ways I knew, and also in ways I didn’t yet know.

The book was born …
For the first time in my life, I had written and published a book.
For the first time in my life, I began doing interviews on radio shows
(and some tv and print media).
For the first time in my life, I became a trusted source for some media hosts.
I received lots of feedback about how down to earth and clear I could make my points –
and how delighted they were that I wasn’t speaking “therapese” to the audience.
I was moved.

And I was passionate about helping people see that we need to explore and heal
our own relationships with power.
And I was passionate about helping people see what is really driving us …
beneath what most people know.

How can we make changes we really need to make if we are unaware of
what is driving us to be the way we are?
How can we grow into who we were meant to be
if we don’t know where we have gotten stuck in our growth and development?
How can we heal from wounds and trauma we have experienced long, long ago
if we insist on keeping those wounds and traumas buried and held at bay,
so we can pretend – to ourselves and others – that we have moved on?

People kept asking me when I was going to write another book.
Regardless of how tactful my outer response was, my inner response was ‘no.’
The ‘no’ was really to another 7-year pregnancy.
But my muse and I couldn’t stop writing.
To that there was only a ‘yes.’
So I wrote my monthly blog from 2009 on.

As interviews and blogs unfolded …
As I witnessed what was going on in my practice,
in the lives of those around me, in our country and our world …
I began to see –
I had a gift in connecting the dots between our wounds and traumas as individuals
and our communal wounds and traumas as countries and a world …
between our healing as individuals and our healing communally and globally.
I began to see –
That this gift was developing as I witnessed and wrote and taught
and helped people heal.
And that this gift gave me a new way to help our world,
a way that was not available to me previously.

Then on May 15, 2018 …
A tornado hit my town, my neighborhood, and my home.
That experience opened me on a heart and soul level in ways I couldn’t have imagined.
Within a month and a half … My muse awakened me in the middle of the night,
“took me to the computer,” started “dictating,” and told me we were writing a book.

She didn’t say how long the pregnancy would be or wouldn’t be.
She called me, awakened me, and …
There was no ‘no’ at all within me. Only ‘yes’!

I witnessed as I surrendered to what was emerging …
Knowing that this was my next way to work to help us heal –
ourselves, our countries, and our world.

People all around me – up close and personal and media in all venues –
were asking how we got here.
And many were saying, “This isn’t who we are.”
I knew they were not aware of aspects of themselves and all of us
that were driving us individually and globally.
I knew they weren’t answering the question “How did we get here?”
at the deepest levels possible.
I felt I could help people understand on those very deep levels.

This has all come very quickly …
Much more quickly than I could have imagined!
I am sending both of my books to the Frankfurt Bookfair …
hoping there will be international publishers who will want to translate
both of my books into their language(s).
I’m also exploring how to get word out to major influencers, the media,
laypeople, the therapeutic community, and more …
so I can help my book have the greatest positive impact possible.
I welcome any inspirations, connections, networking you can share to this end.

Thank you for reading, receiving, and connecting with me through my blog …
and with me in relation to my book, which, as you can see,
is both very personal and very much a part of my passion
to help us all become more conscious …so we can heal ourselves and our world.

*****
The best way I can give you a brief description of my book itself …
is what is written on the back cover.

How Did We Get Here?
Our Refusal to Know the Truth About Ourselves

So many of us ask ourselves in these times, “How did we get here?”
So many of us even believe we know.
Sadly, when most of us try to respond to this difficult question,
our answers barely scratch the surface.
Few of us – far too few of us –try to go deep enough to see
even the barest roots of why our lives, our countries, and our world
are in the condition they’re in.

People have all sorts of explanations for how we got here – nationally and globally.

It’s financial. It’s political. It’s patriarchal. It’s prejudicial. It’s misogynistic.
It’s abuse. And more.
Each viewpoint can be discussed and seem to explain the cause
from a valid standpoint.
Yet … they are all accounts at or near the surface.
No matter how long we have believed the explanations …
no matter how deep they appear to go …
none of them reaches the roots of the way in which we got here.
None of them even alludes to the reality
that there are root causes deep beneath each explanation.
And none of them even hints at the central reality that underlies all the explanations.

So … how did we get here?

In our adult lives, whether we realize it or not, we re-enact again and
again the wounding and trauma we experienced as children.
More of us than we know were wounded long, long ago.
As a result, more of us than we can conceive are re-creating the trauma in our lives today…
affecting us, those close to us, our country, and our world.

Imagine if everyone made the commitment to explore and heal those roots in themselves!
Find out more and be part of the healing.

My heart is full as I share with you,
Hoping my book and I will be heartfully received…
Hoping you will utilize this post to help you become part of the healing …
Hoping if you are inspired, you will pass this along to others as a way to help in the healing.

Many blessings from my heart to yours …

Judith

You can order my new book now!

 

https://judithbarr.com/how-did-we-get-here/

You can order through my website
Or
You can order through Amazon  …
For best international shipping costs use Amazon: US | CA | UK | DE | ES | FR | IT

© Judith Barr, 2018

 

 

 

 

Tornados: Trauma Experienced … A Preview

By Judith Barr

Tornados: Trauma Experienced, Witnessed, and Then What?
A Preview

A month ago, on a Tuesday late afternoon, much of Connecticut and parts of New York were hit by tornados and other storms. The physical damage was mind- and heart-boggling – to people, homes, businesses, property, trees, all utilities, and other physical damage I can’t name right now. The emotional trauma was also mind- and heart-boggling.

Everyone who was affected in any way experienced trauma … even people who had to drive home during or after and experience all the damage. Drives that were usually 10 minutes, took over 2 hours. Drives that normally took 20 – 30 minutes, took 5 ½ hours. The repair people experienced trauma, too. My heart has always been open to people who have experienced trauma – childhood, current, that caused by people, and that caused by nature … My heart opens even wider now.

I was in the middle of leading a 6-day intensive here when the tornado struck. Everyone is safe, thank goodness! I am in the process of working with the individuals and the group to help heal the current day impact of the tornado trauma, as well as the ancient traumas the tornado triggered in people. What a difference this is making – and will make – for these people. And what a difference this would make for our world … if we all worked with our ancient trauma.

Untended, unhealed, our ancient traumas create more trauma in our current day world. We can see and feel that in the world today.  Too many of us just try to get back to some illusory “normal,” try to get back to functioning, try to keep ourselves numbed and anesthetized … so as not to feel the pain of the trauma. But that is exactly what causes the trauma to haunt us. And that is precisely what causes our trauma to create more trauma in our world today.

It is up to us – the adults, the parents, the teachers, the healers, the leaders – to tend to and truly heal our own ancient traumas; to make sure we don’t cause trauma to our children (or anyone else) with our unhealed trauma; and to help our children truly heal from any trauma they experience at home with us, at school, or elsewhere in our world.

As you go into your summer months, take this call with you. Take this consciousness with you. And please … for your sake, for the sake of our children, and for the sake of our world … do your own inner healing work related to your trauma.

This is what I do with people every day … help them heal their trauma and its impact on their lives, other people, and our world.  I hope this article preview is at least one way I can help you as you heal your trauma.

Many blessings from my heart to yours …

Judith