Name It to Tame It: Practices to Release Stored Trauma
Mind, Body and Compassionate Inquiry: Building your emotional first-aid kit and getting your BA in Non-Judgmental Awareness.
This week, we talk about confronting deep-rooted trauma, defence mechanisms and conditioned beliefs, we start thinking about rewiring our responses and adopting non-judgmental questions over self-criticism. Wow, a mouthfull.
So, first thing first, a breathing exercise.
Don’t forget that you can always listen as well:
Breathe in for 5.
Out for 5.
Focus your energy at the centre of your chest.
Envision a golden white light, circulating around your chest.
In for 5.
Out for 5.
How does the white light move?
In through the light for 5.
Out through the light for 5.
In through the light for 6.
Out through the light for 6.
In through the light for 7.
Out through the light for 7.
In through the light for 8.
Out through the light for 8.
Last week, I was so busy managing FOR MY SAKE!, adding a fresh intro to the podcast (we have an intro, though!), working, committing to nutritional meals, posting on social media, joining epic workshops, communicating my self-worth at work (will write about this soon enough) that I….
I broke down while organising my physical space.
Or simply put, I cried and threw a mop.
Why?
Because compassion was an endangered species in my life last week.
The truth is that rewiring your mind for compassionate inquiry is really not a walk in the park.
Compassionate Inquiry is a way of questioning, it is a way of being in certain perfectives, a way that we have not thought about things before.
It is not linear or sequential, it is about what arises in the moment, what needs to be asked or said in any specific moment.
It is about helping ourselves become in contact with our Selfs in the present moment.
Trauma is all about losing contact with ourselves, naturally fleeing the present moment.
7 Challenges Your Mind Faces When Rewiring To Compassionate Inquiry
Confronting buried trauma is uncomfortable, disorienting and scary as hell.
Our brains are full of toxic bodyguards, also known as the defence mechanisms that do not serve us. We hang out with Denial, Avoidance and Rationalization a little too much.
As we grow up, we are fed a steady diet of beliefs and behaviours. Changing these dietary requirements is as hard as telling my Eastern European family that I am a vegan.
We want to heal so badly that we forget to rest-and-digest. We then become, involuntarily, emotionally flooded which makes it borderline impossible to stay present.
Let’s be real: nobody criticises us as much as we criticise ourselves. So when we have to do the whole “turning the spotlight of kindness onto ourselves”, it just feels awkward and counterintuitive.
“Trust the process” with compassionate inquiry is like trusting a blind date - you just resist it naturally.
Change is annoyingly slow and the instant gratification monkey in our brain hates that.
Sticking with compassionate inquiry, even when - no, especially when - progress feels microscopic, is the real test of our patience and of how much we want to get to know ourselves better and… be better for ourselves.
7 Steps To Rewiring Your Mind To Compassionate Inquiry.
Step 1: Non-judgemental awareness, also trending as mindfulness.
It is all about the present moment, witnessing your thoughts, emotions and sensations as they come to you without pushing them away, getting caught up in them and/or reacting to them.
Like it or not, being a witness is the cornerstone of compassionate inquiry. Not having the mental space, where you can observe your inner dynamics without immediately reacting, means that you cannot possibly get to the unconscious patterns and triggers that drive your behaviour.
8 minutes of your time to understand witnessing in a cool way? Let’s go!
Set a daily practice of merely 5-10 minutes when you just breathe. This breath is an anchor. If your mind goes to the next day’s task, tonight’s meal, or today’s turmoil, pull it back with the next inhale.
Do a quick body scan from head to toe - can you feel any tension, or maybe a sensation? Don’t go and try to change them now, witness.
It would be super cool for you to note mindful activities into your to-do list that you just stick to. After I am done at work, I allow myself 5 minutes of email-checking and responding. I then close the laptop, find my headphones and leave the house. External world - off, internal world - on.
Step 2: Going for the past traumas. With Care.
It will show up, okay?
The unresolved trauma will make its way and bring emotional pain and discomfort.
What you do here, though, is not judge or belittle. You witness, welcome, and integrate these emotions because you have two options:
to let them reappear,
to reduce their impact on present (and future) choices and behaviour.
Unresolved trauma looks like anxiety, depression and any uncomfortable physical symptoms.
I have seriously uncomfortable physical symptoms - hand thrombosis and seborrheic dermatitis (for your sake, don’t google them) - that I call my blessings in disguise.
Once I have a flare-up - I know. I know damn well what I haven’t done: I have not paid attention to my mental and emotional well-being.
The earlier super simple, 5-minute grounding helps me, and can help you, establish safety.
Step 3: The Body Does Keep The Score (reference to Bessel van der Kolk’s brilliant book, by the way)
Your body is the sometimes-wacky compass to the connection between physical sensations and emotions.
Your body holds onto stress and trauma as if its life depends on it.
It doesn’t.
Your emotional life, however, does depend on:
a head-to-toe body scan,
physical expressions - a tangled yoga enthusiast here, but any movement can do that - that just gets rid of the tension,
mindfully say “f- you” distractions, “hello, hello” being present while stretching, walking, even cooking or brushing your teeth (change the hand if its hard to be mindful when you do the latter two),
paying attention to when and how your breath changes when you are distressed during the day.
You feel heavy because you are too full of truth.
Express, allow it to exist outside of your body.
- Sarah Lee -
Step 4: The Emotions that the Body Brings Out. Yep, it’s time.
When your body says ‘hey, notice me’ - your breath changes, you start to sweat, you feel like putting someone’s head through a wall, you don’t remember what you came to the kitchen to get, you feel unheard or in any way just darn uncomfortable - you need to ask ‘what are you showing me?’.
You witness and identify: print an emotional wheel and just use it when any of the aforementioned - and some more - arise.
NAME IT TO TAME IT was my first mantra ever because it is true: when you name an emotion, your diminish its power, its intensity.
Go a little deeper - trace it to a belief that may be causing it.
Ask the belief: where did you come from, are you even valid or just annoying the hell out of me?
Remember that to become a fully certified manager of emotions, you need to accept them without judgment.
Step 5: Regulate.
To become a fully certified manager of emotions, you also need to learn to respond to the emotions in a healthy, balanced way.
Okay, somewhat healthy and relatively balanced in the beginning - it is a whole process to maintain mental stability, and a damn hard one.
After you have taken several deep breaths, pressured your muscles to just let go, you need to really take a step back (or forward actually) and challenge the thought that provokes you.
You challenge when you reframe.
Is there another way to view this situation?
Grab your first-aid kit.
Instead of the emotional luggage only, we need to build a first-aid kit:
bring awareness of your automatic reactions and underlying triggers,
pack a way that allows you to process your thoughts and emotions,
take a recorder of sorts - a notebook or a voice recorder perhaps - to give you clarity of the manifestations of these patterns,
make sure to take all the open-ended questions (I did not say answers) that will help you solve this case,
wrap up all the ways to rest-and-digest because, trust me, you will need them.
Seriously, list.
Don’t give me the ‘I don’t like journaling’ excuse though. We all carry a phone all the time - open the Notes application.
Step 6: Treat yourself like you would a daughter.
Can you offer - now, on the spot - kindness, concern, support and compassion to a good friend?
Why can’t you do it for yourself? Now. On the spot.
Haven’t you been a good friend to yourself all these years (not that you are old or anything, but you do live with yourself 24/7).
The truth is that without self-compassion, you compromise your own life, your own well-being, your own self-image, your own healing.
Read this again - no one suffers from your lack of self-compassion but you.
Find a belief that bugs you. Now. And tell me, how do you counter it?
Seriously, now. How do you say ‘screw you, Mind, that just ain’t true’.
I can’t expect you to be brutally honest without being brutally honest myself so here it goes:
I have the tendency to eyeball. When I am angry - I tear up, when I am raging - tears just roll down my cheeks, when a family reunites at the end of a Monk episode - I cry my eyes out (God forbid if I watch two episodes).
I was (self-, but not only) labelled as “weak”.
As my best comrade, I compassionately yelled at myself:
“What the hell do you mean? Wasn’t it you who endured years of mental and verbal abuse and ended up in a good place anyway? Wasn’t it your 15-year-old self who chose not to continue this and put conscious effort into moving the f on, into healing? Isn’t this same person hitting a ‘publish’ button after a ‘publish’ button to help others do the same? What are you going on about weakness because you cry over an episode of Monk?”
Feel free to share your ‘what the hell do you mean’ moment.
Replace the annoying self-critical thoughts with compassionate ‘what the hell do you mean’ rants on how epic you are.
One of the very few quotes of Buddha that I can share, and I do when I can, is that you, yourself - as much as anybody else - deserve your own love and affection.
If Buddha says it, it must be true.
Step 7: BA in Open-Ended Questions, MA in Compassionate Inquiry.
Set an intentional, safe space once in a while. Book an hour in your calendar for it if you have to.
No interruptions, messages, phonecalls, reels and posts, okay?
Get a BA in open-ended questions. Start simple with “what am I feeling right now?”, “what does this emotion want to tell me?”, “what did the distress yesterday bring out?”, “why am I feeling demotivated?”, “why did my reaction seem like its on steroids?”
Sketch it out. Randomly note/record whatever comes up. (Most of the time, I don’t make sense of my scribbles).
Dump the judgment, comparison and ‘I should(n’t) have done that’-s. You cannot change the past and that is a fact.
What you can do, though, is imagine that the moment occurs now and you deal with it the way you want to. How would that look? What would you have said/done differently? What would help you get to that ‘different’ next time? Write/Talk.
Be your own non-judgmental, super-prepared best friend who doesn’t listen to not only respond, who listens to hear.
I sincerely treasure your presence here and I want to remind you that the happiest you have ever been... won’t be the happiest you will ever be.
Naming and taming,
Katrin
Katrin, what an incredible post! Youve clearly put so much time, effort and love into this! Thank you for your notes on releasing negativity and stored trauma ❤️