CHAPTER 1

Setting the Context

Over the last couple of decades, through my own need for healing, I have found several tools and skills that I have used consistently to heal emotionally from childhood trauma and inadequate care. These techniques and processes, have helped me become aware of who I am, and to make better choices for myself.

This is the knowledge I want to share with you. You may have come to this book with a clear purpose in mind or as a result of confusion and distress. However your reaching for this material has come about, it was most likely driven by an inner prompting, a need or pain, that so disturbs you that you must find a way to feel better.

There are two key ideas that can enable us even in that distress; the first is that pain is a driver and without it most of us would not shift in our behaviour and attitudes. The second is that our feelings are vital signals to action and living our truth.

That may seem self-evident. However, our society, family and workplace cultures often encourage us to deny our feelings, and work only with analysis and decisions. We are pushed to do and act rather than reflect and feel. Yet painful feelings, denied experiences have to go somewhere in our systems, and so often end up as pain, and finally even disease in our physical bodies, which we endeavour to medicate away.

Paying attention to our feelings takes time, becoming aware of intuitions and insights takes reflection, and allowing images and feelings to come into our awareness, takes openness and trust. We have to go more slowly and tune into ourselves constantly.

Awareness takes time and discipline, a willingness to `not know' and allowing the knowing to arise in us. Our technological and city-based living encourages us to go faster and do more and more; yet we often gain limited satisfaction in this, but end up feeling more and more disconnected from ourselves, our families and mates. We may also feel disconnected from our communities and from nature.

Not surprisingly our happiness arises from inside of us. It is a naturally occurring feeling that also gets suppressed, when we deny our other feelings. When we do this the painful feelings build up and often burst forth, sometimes inappropriately.

A key message is this. Your feelings are real and important and need to be fully felt and experienced to experience life and move on.

We often spend lots of time and money trying to understand why we feel as we do, but understanding rarely resolves and releases pain.

A Unique Time in Human Evolution

We human beings are unusual in the animal world, in that we are born with a limited number of instinctive behaviours, such as the flight or fight mechanism.

Instead, we have a huge capacity for learning behaviour, skills and tools, and the way we learn these, is through watching others do things successfully and through making mistakes. Mistakes create emotional pain which is a deterrent to doing a 'wrong' thing again. The term 'wrong' becomes emotionally loaded with feelings of judgement, guilt and shame.

Many parents in their efforts to teach children and young adults how to live in the world use fear and guilt and shame as penalties. When this happens constantly, the mistakes that we make in order to learn, can become deep wounds, loaded with these feelings. These wounds are formative and often transformative in our lives. However, the down side is that we often carry these wounds with all of their pain, as if they were all that we are and can be; often we don't learn the real lesson.

Let me make explore that further with you.

Seeing yourself only as wounded is not transformative. There is no learning in it and it becomes the only thing you can offer to others; saying this is who I am. This is often what creates and sustains co-dependent relationships; you have your pain and I have mine. It also says "I come to you in hope of healing, but I cannot let go of my pain".

What is needed is to feel it fully and release it.

Wounds not fully experienced and felt create emotional and even physical ill health. They are dysfunctional and debilitating for our lives and everyone we come in contact with. In my country Australia, we say "so-and-so has a chip on his shoulder", an attitude of pain and suffering he or she is carrying around, an anger through which he or she see the world and every experience. Often, something has happened that has caused this pain or fear and the person is still living through that.

Having spent most of my life stuck in such a process I do not judge others only encourage the development of awareness, healing processes and release of pain.

One of the problems for the human species, is that what parents teach children of their own experience and learning, becomes quickly outdated in our fast-moving world. As a consequence, those teachings are based on ways of thinking and feeling that have largely lost their relevance and functionality. This learning or accepted knowledge can often become prejudice and fearbased functioning.

It also becomes the lens that limits what we see in the world, and in ourselves, and therefore limits our behavioural choices. When we share with children, the reality of what we have experienced through stories and the telling of that experience directly, they are better able to choose what this experience means for themselves, uncluttered with others' fear, pain and prejudice.

Children and adults love to hear stories. Why is that? Is it an in-built instinct or mechanism for the transfer of experience and learning? What we dislike is the didactic and the directive; because we are by nature primed for exploration and learning.

What I want to highlight here is that there are depths to our being that direct our behaviour and thinking and feeling that we must explore in order to really change.

Overview of Techniques

Over many years I have found specific skills and practices essential for learning about inner processes, changing behaviour in a deep way and in releasing old patterns. In combination, these have transformed my process of healing.

If you have been reading self-development books, going to seminars, and are still feeling frustrated with a lack of progress, it may well be due to some missing skills. Those skills that enable the application and integration of your learning.

The techniques I am referring to, are simple and available. You may have heard of all of them and have used some of them. However, it is the combination and application of them that provides the leverage in shifting blocks and moving through issues more effectively.

The techniques are;

• journaling

• focusing

• emotional freedom technique

These three techniques are processes for reflection, unpacking and releasing past and current issues.

While these techniques are simple in concept, we are dealing with the most complex system in the world, the human being. When you are working from inside out, with all of the subjectivity and complexity of the human psyche, the process is even more challenging.

These skills underpin the development process and the cycle we typically go through to learn. Some of us will have learned these skills as we grew up but most won't.

As well as explaining these skills and how to develop and apply them, I also want to give you some self-development maps and models. Although they are just ways of thinking about how we function, and are not 'the truth' or the only way, they are helpful. I am not sure where the saying came from but it is relevant to this process.

"The map is not the territory"

Models and maps can both expand and limit our thinking and that is one of the things we need to challenge when learning. Albert Einstein, a famous and highly successful thinker and scientist is quoted as saying;

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

So when we come to deal with our accumulated knowing, behaviour and attitudes, it is necessary to develop different ways of thinking about ourselves and how we function in the world.

For instance, if someone identified that he had become too negative and judgemental, part of his first stage of changing this, would involve learning both how he was currently negative and how positive thinking would look, sound and feel different. Otherwise he will spend unnecessary time beating himself up for being negative because that is how he currently operates.

One of the prime issues for self-development is that when people begin to learn a new skill, they often don't give themselves adequate time to learn. It take six months to fully integrate any new skill or behaviour.

We sometimes have unrealistic expectations of ourselves and while we understand something with our minds, applying and developing of the skill requires consistent effort.

This book isn't about a single simple answer. We are profoundly complex beings, and learning arises from reflection on past and current issues, the practice of skills, absorbing new ideas, and being stimulated and challenged.

You will find as you begin learning these skills, that one in particular will be more central to your development process. The other skills will become integrated through that core skill. At this point however, let us get on with identifying and learning these skills.

Journaling, focusing, and EFT or Meridian Tapping are all skills for developing, healing and recreating the inner self. They are the means of bringing forth into our awareness the thoughts, images, words and feelings we experience everyday so we can choose to keep or change them.

They are essential skills to reflecting on our experience and the resultant thinking and functioning, that may need to change.

They also enable us to release emotions, find the silent space of the spirit and integrate ourselves. We often live our lives in compartments and roles, and this can lead to a sense of disjointedness and emptiness. In addition the consumer society promotes the pursuit of material satisfactions and this means living in the outer world.

We cannot live like this. We are organic and complex beings and need to find our inner path to live sustainably.

DEFINITIONS

Journaling is the practice of setting down in words and/or pictures on paper on an on-going basis reflections on daily events, expression of clouded or overwhelming feelings, dream analysis, visualisation results, meditation peaks & troughs, choices, life history review, inner prompting, and inner dialogues. The journal has always been considered a great way to see the repeating patterns of our behaviour, thinking and feeling, and these are the clues to the inner experience and unconscious triggers.

Focusing is the practice of becoming aware of your body wisdom and the inbuilt felt senses so you can engage with and release emotions and pain. It is a gentle placing of awareness and attention into the body and respecting the feelings as messages from your body wisdom. Major shifts in functioning, better decision-making and integration of different voices into your life processes are available through this process.

Emotional Freedom Technique or Meridian Tapping is a tapping protocol on specific acupuncture Meridian end points to remove the emotional charge from painful past experiences and traumas. These experiences are the underpinning drivers and triggers for dysfunctional behaviour and reactions to life events.

EFT is being used by practitioners and individuals across the world for childhood abuse, sexual and war traumas, anxiety and depression, as well as many physical symptoms.

Clearly there is more to all of these techniques, and I will explore them in detail in the following chapters, and provide clear instructions on developing the skills.

Spiritual Paths and Awareness

Many people who are oriented to spiritual practice or the New Age movement, enjoy and value on guided meditations, astral travel, essential oils, crystals and Angelic card readings. These activities are uplifting, inspiring, fun and healing.

However, it is important to balance these with clearing of blocks, attitudes and conflicted thinking, so that the deep connection to spirit is made possible. It is the work within that makes the richness of humanity and spirituality available and an ongoing presence in each life.

"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." (C.G. Jung)

It is vital to maintain the disciplines of journaling, focusing and EFT to fully open the self to the spiritual experience.

Balancing the inner work with the satisfactions of treatments, group activities and fun is the key.

Some cautions in using these techniques

My experience has been that our psyches normally offer up our issues and blocks at a rate we can cope with. However, while you are learning these skills and doing your inner work, this can occasionally feel overwhelming.

I do recommend that you find a counsellor or friend with more experience to help you when you need it. It might be inner work but it is common to all of us, so seek help and take care of yourself.

Please check out the Maps and models chapter for a psychological framework to be aware of in your own process and learning.

CHAPTER 2

Beginning to Learn Techniques

These techniques will help you to reflect on, and release your emotional baggage. Practicing them builds your personal skills in managing problems and developing your resilience.

Reflection is a key step in learning and letting go, one not highly encouraged in our current fastpaced society, but one absolutely necessary to healing.

Reviewing and reflecting on your experience, allows you to see choices where you might usually assume none. Many choices we make automatically, are actually not healthy as they are based on family programming and our own negative experiences. So reflection is the first step to making better choices.

Check out the learning cycle and learning style maps in Chapter 7 on Maps and Models.

So some of these techniques will suit you well and others may be a struggle to persist with. Do learn each one and use it as they work well together. Sometimes exploring your experience and feelings through a different mechanism can provide greater insight.

It is important that you develop some confidence in each technique and process before moving on to learn the next one.

There is a chapter providing exercises for integration later on. This will help you consolidate your use of the combined techniques.

You will get better results in releasing emotional baggage and learning the techniques if you take it slowly. If you try to rush through and apply the techniques too quickly, the process could become frustrating and you may find it difficult to persist.

CHAPTER 3

Journaling

Journal Therapy is a healing process allowing the writer to improve physical, spiritual, and emotional wellness, through the processing of events and emotions, and the creation of new meaning out of these experiences.

Unlike traditional diary writing, where daily events and external happenings are recorded, Journal Therapy focuses on the writer's internal experiences, reactions, and perceptions. Through this process, the writer is able to perceive their experiences more clearly, which has been shown to have both mental and physical health benefits.

There is scientific evidence that the benefits of writing out inner turmoil are more than just psychological. Dr. James Pennebaker, a researcher in Texas, has conducted studies that show that when people write about emotionally difficult events or feelings for just 20 minutes at a time over three or four days, their immune system functioning increases.

Journal Therapy has been used effectively for grief and loss, coping with life-threatening or chronic illness, recovery from addictions, eating disorders and trauma, repairing troubled relationships, increasing communication skills, developing healthier self-esteem, gaining a new perspective on life and clarifying life goals.

Journal therapy is also very effective in groups, and it is common for group members to establish a deep sense of connection as authentic self-expression is shared.