Heroes in Business - Trauma and Protection

Episode Date: April 6, 2022

We distinguish symptoms that are the remembering of trauma and symptoms, and are the remembering of the way we protect ourselves from trauma. We give examples of each and describe how to resolve it in this episode of Guided Self Healing Fearless Living with Dr Andrew Hahn. Lifecenteredherapy.com

Hi, this is Dr. Andrew Han, and this is episode 41 of the podcast, Guided Self-Healing, Fearless Living. And today's date for me is March 31st, 2022. So again, I want to invite you just to, if you're listening to this podcast and you're not driving in a car, just take a few deep this podcast and you're not driving in a car, just take a few deep breaths, even if you are driving in a car, take a few deep breaths. If you're not driving in a car, you may just want to really pause and shift in the center and just bring your attention really here for the time we're together. And this podcast, I think, will be a little bit shorter.

And this podcast, I think, will be a little bit shorter. And we're going to continue on our journey of the One Hour Miracle, which for me, on March 31st, it's very exciting because the publication date is actually on April 5th. So it's less than a week away. And it's very exciting for us. And if you haven't bought the book, it's called The One Hour Miracle. And just remember that miracles really are not just about the literal meaning in the Bible of something that's seemingly beyond anything rational, but it's really about gaining freedom from your suffering. And every time you do anything to gain freedom from your suffering, it's a little miracle. And sometimes the miracles actually look like miracles because very dramatic things happen.

And sometimes they don't look quite so dramatically miraculous, but they're miracles nonetheless. So we're up to chapter five of the book, and chapter five is about trauma and protection. And why is it important to know that sometimes your problems are the reliving of a trauma, and sometimes your problems are the reliving of a trauma. And sometimes your problems are the reliving of the way you protect yourself from making sure the trauma never happens again, even if it limits you a lot, because symptoms can be either and or both. So let's look at some examples and we'll know why it's different. But the the real reason the big picture difference is if you're reliving a trauma essentially what you need to do is find the being who's traumatized in

that moment which will be a discomfort and let them share their story and then they may say that they need something more than just sharing their story at which point you provide for them whatever it is that they need but let's suppose you're not reliving the trauma but the way you're protecting yourself from ever experiencing it again because you're afraid to ever experience it again then you're really what you're going to find when you find the sensation is not the traumatized one, but the choice that the traumatized one made to protect themselves, it will feel like a kind of protection or an armor or a dense energy to make sure that they never experience it again. And in that case, the key is not just finding the trauma and choosing to relive it while you bear witness and hold that person.

It's to help that person realize that they made a choice and that they can now make a different choice because they don't have to worry anymore about reliving the trauma because we may have already taken care of the trauma or because it's no longer relevant. So when life calls for us to handle the protection and the protector, and the one who's choosing the protection, you do a very different process. So what's the difference? Again, in the first case, let's be really clear about this. If you have a trauma and you're reliving the trauma, when you focus on the suffering that will be reliving the trauma, when you focus on the suffering that will be associated with the symptoms that are an outgrowth of the trauma, you'll feel a discomfort in your body. And when you feel the discomfort, you'll say, discomfort, you teach us, what did you come to share?

Where are you beginning? And what's happening? And it will share its story. If, however, you're in a situation where you're reliving the protection from the trauma, you'll feel that in the body. And really, you can ask the same questions. What have you come to share? Where's this beginning? What's happening? But what you'll find out is that you'll get a story where the person is going to say, I am making sure I never experience what happened to me again. And I'm choosing to limit myself so that I never went into that situation again. And of course, at that point, like I said, the key is to say, you don't have to still make that choice. That's something that happened in your past or in another lifetime even, and it's no longer relevant. So you can make a different choice. So let's give you a couple of

examples of what I'm talking about, which I'm going to make up off the top of my head. Let's suppose someone can't leave their house, like, and you know, whenever they get scared they run into a dark closet well let's suppose you're reliving a trauma and let's suppose in another lifetime um you were thrown into a well and you died in the bottom of the well well um there'd be a a lot of fear associated with that. And there would be a reliving of the trauma by when you're scared, you go into the closet and you're actually reliving being thrown into the well. You're not living a protection. I know it's a funny example, but can I tell you, sometimes funny things come off the top of the head, but I think you get the idea. But let's take a different example. Let's suppose it's a beautiful sunny day and you're three years old

in a car, you know, you have a ball and it goes out into the street and you run out into the street and you nearly get run over by a truck and you get totally scared and you run into your house wanting to get as far away from sunshine and balls and freedom and everything and you run into the house and you hide in the closet right well then you might come in and you might say you know it's really funny what i noticed that and the people around me noticed that i'm really you know my agoraphobia when i start to tell you about hiding in the closet i noticed that literally i hide in the closet or figur you about hiding in the closet, I notice that literally I hide in the closet or figuratively I hide in the closet when I want to be who I truly am. So I don't want to come out of the closet because if I am who I truly am, I might get annihilated. And of course,

that's why people stay in the closet if they're afraid. I mean, if you think literally when you say coming out of the closet, you know, if they say who I am is unacceptable, the best way to protect myself is to go into a closet where no one can get to me. So very different circumstances, obviously. Or if we take the examples in the book, we had two examples of depression. And in one of them, when the person found the depression, which was to be weighed down, helpless, hopeless, and they couldn't move when they really found that story, they were in a story where the depression was that they were literally weighed

down, helpless, hopeless, and they couldn't move because they were in the French Revolution, and they were about to be guillotined and in the story they couldn't move anything except for their neck so their depression was the reliving of the trauma but in the second case it wasn't the reliving of the trauma it was reliving protection and in that story of course what happened was that a very small boy wanted to give his father a very special present and the father not only didn't receive the present but pushed the boy away and left and the boy hadn't even realized this but he said i can't i have to not care about this that was his internal experience i have to deaden myself because it's too painful so in that case of course the depression was

the reliving of a protection from the pain of having to deal with the fact that it was annihilating, it was overwhelming to have his father walk out on him when he had given him this gift. The feelings were too powerful, so he had to deaden them. And of course, if you deaden the feelings, that's what depression is. It's a kind of death. But really, it was just too painful to experience the living experience of how much hurt there was. Or let's suppose you're constipated, right? Well, constipation could be a reliving of a story of being poisoned, at which point it would be the reliving of the story. And so you eat something a little bit off and suddenly you have a horrific constipation because it's helping you remember a traumatic

death in another lifetime from being poisoned. But alternatively, let's suppose that you remember a traumatic death in another lifetime from being poisoned but alternatively let's suppose that you're a little child again and you are in the car and with your father and you need to go to the bathroom and your father says hold it and you can't hold it so you soil yourself and then your father yells at you for soiling yourself and not being able to hold it. And from then on, literally and figuratively, you say, I can never let myself go. I can never literally let myself go because it's associated with being humiliated and shamed, so I'm going to have to hold everything back. I'm going to have to stay constipated both physically and emotionally. But the constipation, of course, isn't the problem. It's the protection from the sense of if I really let go, I will be humiliated and that's unacceptable. So to try to give you certain examples of what we're talking about. Now, the reason this is important is we can always be grateful for any of our symptoms because they're trying to help us heal and grow. So even when we're reliving a trauma, we could say, well, you've shown up in my life to try

to help me master something. In that sense, we could be grateful that it's here to help us heal and grow. But it's not that we're being grateful because it's protecting us. We're just being grateful in a universal sense because everything can help us heal and grow. But let's take the second example. And in the second example, of course, we really are grateful for our symptoms because they are protecting us at some cost to them. You know, it's like calling in a protector and it says all right i'll become dense and i'll protect you i will cover over who you really are because you can't be who you really are it's too dangerous so i'll become a dense energy and i will make sure

that you get to hide and stay hidden behind that dense energy. So in that case, what we do is, it's a very different experience when it tells you that that's what it is. And of course, we can determine it if we know how to do that. But even if you don't, if you ask and it sounds like that, you can say, thank you so much, because constipation protected me or depression protected me. But I don't need you anymore. So I'm going to, since I asked you to come in,

I can choose to have you leave because I can witness you now. I don't believe I am you anymore. I've gained perspective. And I can choose to bring you outside of me and witness you from the outside because from the point of view of the witness you're already outside of me i can notice you as that young man said this heavy wet dense feeling of oatmeal and chest well when we choose to bring our attention there it's not who we are it's just something that we can bear witness to and hold and And we can actually thank it

and have it use our consciousness or our hands or whatever and bring it out, which is bringing out not only the protection, but the person who without awareness was choosing to bring the protection in. And then of course, what we can do is we can heal it by channeling light into it. And that heals, that transforms the protection into love,

an ultimate loving protection, and it heals the one who made the choice. And then, of course, what you'll find is you feel spacious inside because you just took out this dense energy. And you could say hidden, waiting to be found, was the truer self that was in hiding because it was unsafe to come up and then we can invite it out.

We find it in the body. We feel it in the body. We put our hands lovingly where it's been held and we say, come on up, come forward and touch my hand and go forward and back and left and right and up and down until I become that truer self. And it gets to keep all of its wonder and its authenticity. But it also gets to have all of the experiences you've ever had since then. So it's also gained discernment and wisdom. And then when the situation comes up again,

you can say, I've already had that experience. I don't have to shut myself down. So distinctions between the reliving of trauma and reliving of the protection of trauma. And of course, we'll talk about this in much more detail later. But just to get the general notion is really important. And having said that, I invite you to find anything that you can find and to ask, you know, the sensation when you're doing your own healing work. Are you the traumatized one or are you the one who's protecting the traumatized one? And believe me, the sensation will tell you. And depending on what it tells you, sometimes it will say it's both, at which point you'll get the traumatized one and the protector.

sometimes we will say it's both at which point you'll get the dramatized one and the protector and if there's protection there thank it bring it outside channel energy and you will take care of the protector and you'll take care

of the one who needed it and you'll find who you truly are which is a great effect so do it, buy the practice but not if you're in the car wait till you get home who you truly are, which is a great effect. Go do it. Buy the practice. But not if you're in the car. Wait till you get home. Anyway, having said that,

you can always reach me. I hope you buy the book. It's called The One Hour Miracle. If you want to reach me, all you have to do is write to me at ahahn, A-H-A-H-N, at lifescenteredtherapy.com. And if you want to do our training, we have just created a beautiful online training that anybody can do. And we're going to have online training for people who really want to learn this in depth. And we're going to have it for people who want to learn it more simply and all of that's available to you

and it's all in our website lifecenteredtherapy.com so you can go there and meanwhile i wish you a good day i wish you great healing and i wish you freedom from suffering until i see you again be well