Tapping on insomnia

One of the most debilitating symptoms of undischarged traumatic stress is insomnia. When you can’t fall sleep, sleep only a few hours a night or you wake up constantly during the night, you just can’t function properly. Lack of sleep brings us to our knees, literally and metaphorically.

Insomnia is not a symptom you can easily ignore. If it goes on for longer than a few months, sleep becomes an obsession. It’s akin to being afraid of having a panic attack: you become more and more afraid of not sleeping and your entire life starts to revolve around getting as much sleep as you can, however you can. You will try anything to get a few hours sleep so you don’t go through your day like a zombie.

When you’re suffering from insomnia, your nervous system is in sympathetic mode, that is, flight or fight. Insomnia is usually the result of years and years worth of thwarted flight and fight responses that you couldn’t complete because of survival and safety issues. You might have been a good sleeper at one time, and something that might have seemed harmless was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

You might also have spent years in freeze mode. Sometimes it feels better to be numb than to feel anything. We can also oscillate between being shutdown and being overwhelmed. However, as time goes by things have a way of melting and erupting, whether we want them to or not. We become triggered more easily because our barrels only have so much space. Something has got to give if nothing is being emptied.

Insomnia is one of those issues you just have to get to the root of. If you don’t, you might sleep well some nights and then go back to either waking through the night or not being able to fall asleep: two steps forward, 6 steps back.

Your quality of sleep is a strong litmus test for your stress levels, so lowering your stress levels on a daily basis is really important. But so is getting to the root of why we’re stressed. Sometimes we don’t have any control over some of our stressors because of circumstances, but start where you are and do the best you can. A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step as Martin Luther King said.

Don’t wait until bedtime to relax, take every opportunity during the day to observe your breath, where you might be pushing through, when you’re not listening to your body, when you clench or brace and so on. Learning to sleep well again involves changes in how you live your life. What was once adaptive isn’t serving you anymore so you need to learn a new way of being in the world that is more true to who you really are.

Fill in the blanks to these statements and tap on your answers. Trust what comes up.

When I think of going to bed at night I feel …

Sleeping feels …

Not sleeping feels ...

A part of me doesn’t feel safe to sleep deeply ...

A part of my body feels … which keeps me awake (or does it feel like the whole of your body, be specific about where you feel stress/tightness/constriction) and that feels ...

My thoughts become distorted when I’m stressed and it’s hard not to believe them ...

Not sleeping and how it feels reminds me of ...

Pin the tail on the right target

I have just finished reading Kathy Brous’ new book, Don’t Try This Alone: The Silent Epidemic of Attachment Disorder. I laughed and I cried throughout, and most of all I felt hopeful after finishing it. Her tenacity and willingness to reach out for help and to keep going is amazing.

One of the gems I got from the book was to pin the tail, or tale, on the right person or situation, or you’ll never get true relief. Now I’ve heard that said a millions times before in different words, but the way she explained it really struck a chord with me. I really really got it. Maybe we need things said a thousand different ways over many years to really download it into our cells.

She would repeat “Move the tale, move the tale” throughout the book when she was recounting incidents/people where she felt triggered. And what she meant by that was to go back to when you first felt that same way. That is, the first person or situation that triggered that feeling or sensation in you.

Oftentimes, it’s our parents or another important figure in our early life who is the initiator but we often find it easier to project our wounds onto others and this is why we don’t find complete relief. Or maybe we’ve forgotten, or suppressed where the real pain came from just because it’s too painful. We pay attention to current woes not linking them to our past when they first happened.

In hypnotherapy, this is called the initiating event and everything else that happens after that is a trigger; an echo or reminder of the original experience. Because we’re so good at dissociating from pain, especially early pain, the initiating experience might not trigger us until we’re in our 20s or at 50 as in Kathy’s case. Dissociation is a brilliant survival mechanism until it becomes chronic and persistent.

In EFT, an important question is “What/Who does that remind you of?”. And I’ve asked this question of myself and others hundred of times, but “Move the tale” really makes the initial pain become laser sharp and crystal clear. When I watched Gabor Maté do a few sessions in Cork with some people, he got to the root straight away by the types of questions he asked and it only took him a few minutes because his focus was where it was supposed to be: the root. You could see the look of relief and hope on people’s faces as they realised where their pain really came from.

What's the problem with anger, part 2

There’s a lot of shame surrounding the emotion of anger. You are shamed for having it, feeling it and whatever you do, don’t dare express it. This is especially true for women. Is it any wonder anger gets stuck when many of us don’t have a clue what to do with it?

We are told it’s not a real emotion because it’s acting as a cover for other emotions like sadness which is a much more respectable emotion to have, at least in some circles. If I had a cent for every time I’ve seen a meme or quote deriding anger, I’d be a millionaire.

As Karla McLaren reminds us in The Language of Emotions, emotions can arise in clusters. When we allow anger to do its job of protecting us, emotions like sadness may well come up but not because we’ve gotten rid of anger because it’s “bad” and a smokescreen for other, more acceptable emotions; but because we’ve allowed ourself to feel it and its accompanying sensations in the body. There are very few experiences in life that call for just one emotion.

I think another reason anger is so disparaged is because it’s a reminder that we’re animals, we are instinctual and we have a wild side. Anger can feel fierce, scary, out of control and too powerful but that’s only because we haven’t learned how to properly use and feel it. The concept that we have the potential to be wild, instinctual animals doesn’t conform to many people’s idea of what constitutes a “civilised” society. But we’re not doing so great as a civilised society, are we? We’ve a myriad of chronic health problems caused by unresolved trauma, not to mention the violence that we see against people and nature. Unlike what many seem to think, these issues aren’t caused by anger, they are caused by unfelt anger and other emotions. As psychiatrist Ivor Browne says; trauma is unexperienced experience.

What's the problem with anger?

I think anger must be the most misunderstood, maligned and disowned emotion, though fear is a close second.

How many times have you heard someone being described as an “angry person”? The ironic thing is, this label is usually given by somebody who disowns their anger, is afraid of anger and is supposedly never angry which I don’t buy for one minute.

People who pretend, unsuccessfully, that they are never angry because anger is a “bad”, “low vibration” and “negative” emotion, usually act it out in passive aggressive ways, while smugly thinking that it’s not anger.

One of the most important things that I’ve ever heard about anger is from Karla McLaren who says that if we don’t honour our anger and let it do its job (reinstate healthy boundaries, and say a healthy No), fear will have to step in. That’s when things get really messy and complicated. Here is an excerpt from her book, The Language of Emotions:

If you can imagine your healthy anger surrounding you— protecting you, defining you, and constantly monitoring your behaviour—you can easily see that trouble with your anger will degrade your psychological boundaries, your relationships, your personal space, and your self-respect. If your anger is not channelled properly and honourably, you’ll exhibit poor psychological hygiene. In this case, your fear will need to move forward in your psyche, not to increase your intuition and focus, nor to simply help you respond to change or novel stimuli, but just to help you make it from one moment to the next.

Without your boundary, you’ll be unable to monitor your behaviour or identify proper behaviour in others (which means your relationships will consistently unsettle you), you’ll dishonour people or let them dishonour you for no good reason, and you’ll be vulnerable most of the time. When you’re in this sort of turmoil, your relationship with your fear will decay almost immediately. You’ll have no privacy and no sacred space in which to regulate your emotions, and though your fear will move forward to protect you, its intensity may actually destabilise you when your boundary is weak. Fear asks you to focus yourself, but that’s nearly impossible when you don’t know where you begin or end; therefore, your increased focus will most likely turn into anxiety or paranoia.

Do you know what happens when we disown anger? It gets stuck in our bodies because we refuse to acknowledge it, never mind feel it. Paradoxically, we become the very people we don’t want to be, which is an “angry person”. And because we’re so angry but are in denial about being angry, many things become the trigger for our unacknowledged, unfelt anger. We are literally like pressure cookers waiting to explode which lowers our immune systems and creates all sorts of health problems.

Try tapping on the following and repeat whatever feels right on all the points, or just tune in to how you feel and tap without words:

Even though I’ve grown up thinking that anger was bad and I am bad for feeling it, I love and accept myself anyway

Even though my culture tells me that angry people are … and I don’t want to be one of those,I completely accept how I feel

Even though I don’t know how to feel anger, that’s ok, I can learn

Even though anger feels … in my body and that makes me feel … I completely accept my feelings

Your inherent ability to grow

Crabs shed their shell so they can grow, but before they can grow a new and bigger shell, they are soft and vulnerable.  And, as Gabor Maté says, there is no growth without vulnerability. The risk of being vulnerable feels terrifying to someone who has been hurt by the people entrusted with protecting them. They have suffered early and betrayal trauma which impacts their development enormously.

Your shell protects you but it also keeps you small. It is safe but it is also constricting. It is comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time. It is your house but it is not your true home.

To grow we need to move and that means change, and change can feel very frightening when our foundations are shaky. We hold on for dear life, even if we’re miserable. Notwithstanding all of that, we have an inherent ability and desire to grow, otherwise it wouldn’t feel so painful being confined in our shells.

When our development is stunted, at any age, we suffer. Life is all about moving, growing, changing, developing and evolving. It is against our nature to become stagnant, things will out eventually. The dam that we’ve built to protect us from a river of unwanted emotions and sensations won’t last forever. Some of us wait until the dam bursts and then we’re forced to face our pain but we can choose to feel it before that happens.

Gabor Maté

I went to see Gabor Maté last weekend in Cork for a workshop. It was really excellent. He is so down to earth, he’s just himself with no pretences.

Most of the information I already knew as I’ve followed his work for a long time, but I also learned a lot of new things because he has a way of using language that makes you look at something you knew in a completely new light which is a real gift. He’s a poet at heart. He also recommended EFT as a modality for healing trauma which was great to hear.

Some of the gems that I took with me from his workshop were:

• Growth happens when we are able to be soft and vulnerable. Gabor used the analogy of a crab having to shed their shell in order to be able to grow. Of course the price of this is that he’s soft and vulnerable while growing and could be hurt as he’s more defenceless. But there’s no other way to grow.

• What I understand from this is that trauma is like a too tight and constricting shell that we can’t seem to shed, however hard we try. It keeps us small and safe but at a huge price. But trying and struggling too hard to shed the shell just doesn’t work. We need to be gentle with that shell that has protected us when we needed it, and when the time is right, and we feel safe enough to be soft and vulnerable again (or for the first time), the shell will come off.

• Peer attachment and orientation does our children no favours. Children are supposed to attach to (hopefully) wise adults who can provide them with unconditional love and a safe place to grow, make mistakes and learn from those mistakes without being shamed and ridiculed.

• The coping mechanisms that we learned in early childhood to survive become our personality. But they are not who we truly are. I really believe that healing trauma is the journey back to our true self. As Gabor said, it’s why we call it recovery, we are recovering our true self when we heal trauma.

• When we fail to fully individuate from our parents/caregivers (an extremely common phenomenon), we feel more pressure from our peers. This is because we’re not sure of who we are, we don’t love and accept ourself, maybe we even feel we are bad people. This is not to say we’ll never feel pressure from our peers, but if we’re true to our real self and feel fundamentally ok about that self, it won’t incapacitate us as it can so often do.

• We often have to choose between attachment and authenticity, especially as children. Attachment is a biological imperative, we need it and sometimes we have to give up who we truly are to get love, even though what we get can be very far from real love. As adults, we can make another choice and choose our authentic selves.

Are you from a bad or a good family?

Isn’t the concept of good and bad families just the most ridiculous thing you have ever heard of?

When some people talk of ‘good’ families, they’re not referring to members of that family treating each other, and others, with kindness and empathy. They’re referring to living in the ‘right’ neighbourhood, being white, having money, having a formal education; though if you have enough money, they might make allowances for you about the education part.

Being from a ‘bad’ family means living in a financially poor area in the ‘wrong’ neighbourhood, where most people who aren’t white live, and there is usually addiction, violence and abuse in the home. Rather than these things being seen as signs of unresolved trauma, they are viewed as badness, laziness, good for nothingness and maybe most of all, a sense of they being inferior to 'good' families.

How many times have you heard someone, usually a man having committed a sexual crime, getting off scot free for being from a ‘good family’ and being a so-called upstanding member of society? Are we joking? Why on earth is that taken into account in a court of law? He has committed a crime and as the saying goes, he must do the time. Actions have consequences, it isn’t about punishing someone, because as we know, that doesn’t work. No one can be rehabilitated if they or we don’t hold them accountable for their actions.

If you’re sexually abused by your father and your mother is complicit in that abuse and therefore it continues, you are utterly and totally betrayed. Your childhood is gone. To add insult to injury, much of society judges you for having a father and mother who not only didn’t love you, but abused you. But your parents’ actions and behaviour say absolutely nothing about the person you are. Talk about isolation. When you grow up, maybe you have to make the choice to cut contact with your parents for your own sanity and maybe even not see your extended family because there is collusion and secrecy. A double whammy if ever there was one. We, as a society can do so much better by people who have been hurt so terribly.

As Oprah said recently when she reported on the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study, we should be asking “What happened to you?”, not, “What’s wrong with you?”. The awful thing is, most people don’t even have the courage to ask “What’s wrong with you?” straight to your face, they’ll act it out in the most unkind ways instead.

The truth is, people who have been traumatised at the hands of their caregivers are often shamed for the very abuse they have had to suffer. They already feel bad because a child will never ever blame their parent because they need them to survive. Children already feel at fault and responsible for the abuse, and society, instead of showing compassion and understanding, heaps more shame upon them by saying that they came from a ‘bad’ family, not a traumatised family.

Acknowledge

I don’t think we realise just how important and transformative acknowledging how we feel is. We don’t have to like what we’re feeling. We don’t even have to like our self for feeling what we’re feeling. We just need to acknowledge the feeling is there for whatever reason and tapping can help us enormously with this.

There is something really powerful about admitting exactly how you feel and tapping on it. One of the biggest core beliefs that blocks the feeling of so-called negative emotions is feeling like we’re a bad person for feeling a certain way.

Typically, this will be anger for women and fear for men. But remember, you can tap on anything, for example:

Even though I’m feeling angry at … and it makes me feel like a bad person/disloyal/guilty/ashamed, I deeply and completely accept myself anyway.
Even though I feel jealous of … and I shouldn’t feel this way because … I completely accept how I feel about this and myself
Even though I’m afraid of … and I’m weak for feeling this way because … I completely accept myself anyway

You’ll find you’ll start to shift in your attitude towards “negative” emotions and how you feel about yourself when you tap. You could also ask yourself where you picked up these messages about certain emotions and tap on that too.

There really is no such thing as a negative emotion, just emotions that are difficult to feel. Once you start to acknowledge how you feel and allow yourself to feel it, the emotion will have done its job and won’t get stuck in your body or mind as dis-ease. What we don’t feel, we act out or in. Feeling is one of the most important things we can do to improve our life and health.