Yesterday, my PT told me that she thought my lack of flexibility in my left hip was a psychological problem rather than a physical one. Wow! She determined this because when I was lying on my right side with my knees bent, she could get a greater range of motion when manipulating my left leg than she anticipated. I remember expressing surprise, but I didn’t know what it was about.
So the question is, what was the trauma? I have developed a protocol for trauma release to use with my students and healing clients. It involves having the conscious mind tell the nonconscious mind that the trauma is over, and it is now safe. However, and this is a biggy, it doesn’t work if the conscious mind doesn’t feel it is safe. I have talked about this before.
I have discovered there is an instinctive fear of being killed by one’s social group if one can’t perform appropriately. By appropriate, I mean in such a way to support the survival of the group, not some trivial distinction. I have the kids tell their nonconscious minds that no one will kill them if they don’t learn to read. Most kids find the thought that their life might be at risk because of a reading problem ridiculous. These are the kids this protocol works with. However, if someone’s relatives, parents, grandparents, even great-grandparents, were killed for being different, no less for something to do with reading, this is not going to work. Their conscious minds know that the danger could easily be a reality.
When I tried to do the release with myself, releasing the trauma of the injury Mike caused 15 years ago, I couldn’t make it work. My conscious mind had another issue in mind. Clearly, it can’t be a continuing fear of Mike and his klutzy ways; he is no longer here. And besides, he was more scared of injuring me than I was of being injured.
As I lay awake in the early morning hours, I started feeling into the issue. What came up was an incident that occurred when I was about 22 months old. Did I have a consistent memory of that incident? No, it is a recovered memory. No, not with the able assistance of some practitioner that believes in recovered memory. No. Mine surfaced sometime in my twenties or thirties when I struck a particular sitting position. There may have been some other trigger besides the posture, but I don’t recall.
I was sitting on the floor with my back against a wall and my legs straight out in front of me. I could see the room. It was empty; the floor was a parquet. The sun was streaming in the windows on the 12th floor. I recognized the room as the living room of the apartment where we lived for the next eleven years.
My mother was sitting to my right in the same posture. Unexpectedly, I felt a bubble reached out from my mother and enveloped me. I was scared to death. I thought I was going to be annihilated. Knowing my mom, I know she was feeling great joy and love for me. But it was so intense; it was frightening. After a few seconds, the bubble broke, and I was free.
One would think there is nothing more lovely than a child being enveloped in maternal joy, but this was probably the first time I experienced it, and it was so intense. To this day, I look at mothers holding their children and observe their sheer pleasure at feeling such love for someone. But my mother never allowed herself to feel that. I believe she saw all forms of affection as a form of sexual contact. What can I tell you, she was weird. She was damaged goods for sure. She was also one of the bravest people I have ever known. And the life I have as an adult is due to that bravery. She was an amazing woman in both good and bad ways. I saw her as the little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very, very good. And, when she was bad, she was horrid.
As I lay in bed that morning, I sat with that fear. It is alive and active because I have had to bury it and fight it all my life. Hopefully, I can release it now and be done with it.
I went to Bikram, came home with an active back problem, took to the sofa with a heating pad, and read for the rest of the day.
That night, I finally watched Frozen. My 12-lb. white Havanese, Elsa, was named after the character in Frozen. Then I read an article in the Times written by a father who loathed all Disney princesses until he had a daughter. He has now watched the show umpteen times and reported being impressed with the movie. I was too. As I watched it, I was trying to figure out which young man would rescue each of the two women. I’m not giving a spoiler, but it was a surprise. I also found out that the much-touted Elsa is not the star of the show; her sister Ana dominates the movie and does most of the heavy lifting to solve the problem at hand. I went to bed feeling great.
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