Heroes in Business - Understanding, and Healing Symptoms and Suffering

Episode Date: January 4, 2022

If you are suffering from symptoms whether they are physical, emotional, mental, relational or spiritual, learn how to become symptom-free and self accepting in this episode of Guided Self Healing Fearless Living.

Hi, this is Dr. Andrew Han, and this is episode 36 of Guided Self-Healing, Fearless Living. And again, we are continuing on with going through the book we've just finished writing. The book is called The One Hour Miracle, And if you have an opportunity to buy the book, you can go to Amazon and we still are two and a half months away from it being published. So if you could pre-order the book, that would be lovely. And of course, send it to your friends as gifts or whatever, anything that you would like to do. Because to be perfectly honest, we would be really grateful if you do pre-order the book because it gets us into better book reviews and it gets us better interviews. And we just want to share and spread this word.

So you can go to Amazon or any place and just order the One Hour Miracle and we'll see what happens. That's a call to action. Anyway, we're now up to Chapter 2 of the book, which is about understanding and healing the symptoms that we have and the suffering that accompanies them. So let's start off by talking about why people come for healing, which is really the same as what causes suffering, because people come because they're suffering. That's why people come for healing, which is really the same as what causes suffering. Because people come

because they're suffering. That's why people come. So let's go back to our basic premise. We believe that people come for healing for only one reason, which is that they are suffering because of trauma. Now, trauma in our way of understanding things means only one thing. Now, trauma in our way of understanding things means only one thing. It means that there was something that couldn't be taken in stride or handled and integrated into our lives. And that's why people come. So trauma for us is not something that's just an horrific event. It's anything that subjectively cannot be handled and integrated.

And the way to think about this perhaps is it could be some horrific, awful event, or it could be a small event, or it could be an unusual event. It could be anything. But no matter what, if we can't handle it for whatever reason, we get stuck. And perhaps a way to think about that is what we might call total load theory. And so, you know, if we're close to the edge and something, a little something happens, we go over the edge and we hit a tipping point. Or we may be far from the edge and have a horrific thing happen and go over the edge. or we may be far from the edge and have a horrific thing happen and go over the edge. But the key is once you can't handle it, you're traumatized and you're stuck. And stuck means that you've stopped growing, you've stopped evolving,

you're just really stuck in one spot and you keep playing it out over and over and over again. So let's look at what we mean. Let's suppose, as I think we've talked about in a much earlier podcast, you're in my office and a motorcycle backfires and you suddenly have a panic attack. Well, it's not likely again that you're having the panic attack because a motorcycle has backfired, the panic attack because a motorcycle is backfired. But it is what that motorcycle backfiring touches in you or catalyzes in you. So let's suppose you were a soldier in a war 20 years earlier and you never handled the fact that bombs went off near you and nearly killed you and you couldn't handle that. Then what we would say is you stopped growing in that moment on some level. That's stuck there. Other levels of your life continue to go forward, but that level gets stuck and you're still that soldier.

And then when the motorcycle backfires, you're back in the war 20 years ago. It's not that you were having an experience. You're unconsciously living that experience over and over and over again. And in fact, you could say almost you unconsciously create opportunities to heal those experiences by manifesting them over and over and over again. So the suffering that brings you to therapy, right, which in this case, we could say, is this reaction to loud sounds, in fact, is an invitation to remembering that which has been dismembered, because really, that younger you has taken on a life of its own. It's no longer an aspect of your own being.

It's been dismembered. That younger you has been dismembered and is living a life of their own. And when the motorcycle backfires, they take over and they're here and you're no longer here. And in fact, you're not living in the present moment. You're still living 20 years ago, right? not living in the present moment you're still living 20 years ago right so and what we want to know what we want to say is that being who is here which is the you from 20 years ago it has a life of its own it has its own history that started back then and um And the symptom that you're having, of course, is an invitation or a clue to remembering the very thing that couldn't be handled. So, of course, from our point of view, when we don't realize what's going on, the symptom is horrific.

But from a whole other point of view, the symptom is a way, the very symptom, the thing you really want to get away from is an invitation to remembering the thing that couldn't be handled in the first place. So we unconsciously are creating an echo of the situation because, of course, we're not reacting because the motorcycle backfired. We're reacting because of what it catalyzes in us. So you could say that we keep bringing back to ourselves over and over and over again echoes of the original situation, which is life's invitation to fully process the original situation and be able to move on and come back into the present moment. So again, so we can review this. So once we know what causes suffering, what creates healing, and it's very simple to say, which is all we're trying to do, all healing is, is mastering what couldn't be handled in the first place. And that mastery means moving from being unconsciously associated with the experience that happened in the past, in this case,

you know, perhaps some 20 years ago, that we are now unconsciously associated with, and we are unconsciously associated with the traumatized one and what we want to move is being consciously choosing to become that traumatized one right consciously choosing to become them while holding them so it's like we want to choose to become the one who's traumatized to choose to become the one who is traumatized. And as soon as we do that, we no longer unconsciously identify with them. We identify with the one who's choosing to be them, who is then bearing witness to them and holding them with an open hand with acceptance. And as soon as we do that, we are free because we no longer are stuck in that moment where something couldn't be handled, saying, I'm now re-experiencing the original situation, but this time I'm doing it with perspective. instead of being the character in a play or a movie or a novel it's like suddenly we have become the actor who is choosing to become that character and fully enrolling themselves but even when

they're fully immersed in the role they haven't forgotten that they were an actor who chose to become the role and when the when they finish that, they go back to remembering who they truly are, which is the actor who has chosen to experience the role. And that is called freedom, right? Because what happens then is we bear witness and we accept the traumatized one. And when that happens, they become reintegratedated we remember that which has been dismembered and we know that um because we no longer will have the same reactivity and from my point of view just to say this again it doesn't matter whether when we choose to become them we're kinesthetic at which point it's like we're a character in a play.

So, of course, then we would be on the floor, you know, remembering them. But this time we're choosing in a funny way to be on the floor as opposed to unconsciously being on the floor. So it's like we're acting them out fully, but we're not being re-traumatized because we've chosen to be them, or we will see them like we're watching a movie, and we'll be very immersed in the movie because we'll identify with the character we're seeing, right, and all of what they're experiencing, right, but we will not be them, or it's like we're reading a novel, and there's this, we're fully immersed in that novel, and there's this was fully immersed in that novel and there's this character in the novel and we know what they're experiencing we know what they're feeling we know

what they're experiencing we know what they're imagining we know everything but we're not them we're just immersed in the novel that's the key so how do we do this again, here's the key in life, because from my point of view, the physics and the metaphysics are the same. Who we fundamentally are is energy. And when we can just be with everything, we stay in our pure form, which is energy, right? Which is the speed of light squared. That's what we vibrate at when we're in our pure form in this dimension but when there's something that we can't handle energy slows down dramatically right e equals mc squared so it slows down by the speed of light squared and becomes matter and then we identify with it just like i think i'm andy well i'm not andy and then I'm matter and I matter I'm you know living at the power of one but really who I am is an energetic that we can call

Andy and it's the same thing in our body so when there's something we can't handle in that moment a dense energy is born and it's just like me in that it's born in a moment, right? It has a life of its own, and it's come to share something just like I'm sharing with you. It's really the same. So, and so whenever there's something that can't be handled, there's some kind of sensation that's a dense energy that's born or energy and verbs turn into matter and nouns that we identify with unconsciously. So when our dear friend, you know, is on the floor having a panic attack and I say, what's happening in the body while you're, you know, having this panic attack on the floor? Let's say our person says, my heart's pounding fast. Then we can, of course, say to them, you know, it's not you that's having

a panic attack, whatever your name is, John. It's someone whose name, again, is heart pounding fast. It's not my heart's pounding fast. It's heart pounding fast. That's its name. The sensation is its proper name until it says,'m younger john or i'm a little green woman from alpha centauri or i'm someone from 2 000 years ago or whatever they will tell you who they are right because you would just ask them and i say what have you come to share with us and who are you and where did you begin and what's happening and what have you come to share about my panic and they'll say it's not your. It's me 20 years ago and whatever, right? So this dense energy is born in that moment called heart pounding fast. And of course,

we're going to say to John, look, John, it can't be you because your little toe is fine. It's not having any discomfort, but heart pounding fast is here. And heart pounding fast and panic attack are exactly the same thing. And heart pounding fast, something's happening to them and they are having a panic attack. So what are we going to do? We're going to ask them. We're not going to assume you know what it is, John, because if you knew what it was and you knew what to do about it, you wouldn't be coming to see me. So, but I can't ask you because you don't know.

But life knows. How does life know? You breathe, right? knows. How does life know? You breathe, right? And you bring your attention into your knowing, your gut knowing about what's true subjectively and whatever it is that they've come to share with a subjective being. And then you become heart pounding fast. And you say, you tell me, I don't know what's happening. You tell me, heart pounding fast, what's happening to you? Why are you so afraid of these loud sounds? And of course, what have you come to share about that? And heart pounding fast will tell you. And the first thing you need to know is when you find out what sensation is there, let's say I ask

what the sensation is again. Any answer you give me is a literal answer to the question. You can't step outside of the process. What do I mean by that? Let's suppose I ask you when, you know, you're on the floor there, right? And I say, well, I say, what are you feeling in the body? You say, I'm feeling nothing. Now, of course, you would be thinking you're saying something about in 2021, I'm not feeling anything. But in fact, I'm feeling nothing is the answer to the question. And if I

ask you, where in your body are you feeling I'm feeling nothing, you will be able to tell me. And all that will tell me is I'm feeling nothing is meaning that you've left your body and you're dissociated. So you'll become, you you know the sensation of i'm feeling nothing in and in gut and then we'll say okay sensation called i'm feeling nothing what have you come to share with us right so that's the first thing we need to know um and uh so every discomfort like i said it you were going to literally answer when we ask you what is the what what the discomfort is coming to share and you say i feel nothing well then you say well fine i feel nothing in the body and you'll say i feel nothing what have you come to share

and i feel nothing of course well then tell us what it's come to share so the key is you can't step outside of the process. You can't comment on it. And that's why most therapists think there's something called resistance. They'd say, well, this person is not letting themselves feel anything and they're resisting the process. I would say, no, they're just remembering. There is no such thing as a resistance. There is only remembering. And you can't step outside the process to comment on it because you're not even here in the first place. Someone else is here whose name is I'm feeling nothing or heart pounding fast or whatever they are.

So there's no such thing as resistance. And of course, there's no such thing as regression, right? We're not bringing you back to what happened 20 years ago or 2000 years ago. Whoever that is, they're here right now. So the key is remembering has nothing, zero to do with time because everything is here in the present moment. So of course, then we do not have to titrate the work or we don't have to prepare you or

resource you. So you're going to go back into something have to prepare you or resource you so you're going to go back into something horrific because all you're doing, all you're doing is choosing to be with someone who is here and saying, I'm here with you. Of course, I'm holding you. Of course, I'm bearing witness to what happened to you. And you get to share your story and I will be here with you. So you can't be re-traumatized because you're not identifying with the one who's in the story. You're identifying with the one who's choosing to be with the one who's in the story. And then saying, I'm here with you.

I accept you. All I want you to do is just share with me whatever you've come to share with me. And of course, whatever they share with you is the story, right? So if they say, you know, the person then says they're reporting to say, I see nothing, right? They may think they're saying, well, in the current moment, I'm not seeing anything, so I can't do the process. But in fact, they're in a story where they're not seeing anything why maybe they were blinded by these bombs going off or maybe it's nighttime or whatever it is so when they say i'm seeing nothing most therapists say well i don't know no i said i wasn't seeing anything the answer is you

say yes that's right you're not seeing anything and right and you just keep doing it because everything everything is literal and everything is part of the process and if you know that if you know that then you will automatically do greater healing work than if you ever talk about something because the work is to say i'm not going to talk about the experience. I'm going to have the immediacy of the experience while not identifying with the experience, but identifying with the one who says, I'm just here bearing witness to you and holding you with love and acceptance and compassion and understanding. And I'm fully here engaged with you. That's the whole point. That's everything. And you can do it with yourself, right? If you want to do your own work when you're suffering about something, whatever it is,

you're anxious. You say, what do you feel in the body? What am I feeling in the body when I'm feeling anxious or depressed or, you know, I have chronic fatigue or whatever it is, it doesn't matter. If you're suffering about it, which just means that you can't say yes, right? You have judgment or you're reactive. As opposed to, I just needed to rest or whatever it is, right? As soon as you can't do that, you're stuck. So you say, all right, I'm gonna just be here with you.

And the second you do that, you're free. So you can activate the sensation just by focusing on whatever's going on. And if you have chronic pain and no one knows why you have chronic pain, it's usually simply because it's not because someone hit you in the back, right? Yesterday. And so of course you have a physical problem at which point you should be going to a doctor. You're just energetically remembering something. And the best way for life to show you it is to give you back pain and it's just you're remembering something where someone stabbed you in the back or whatever the heck it is and when you bring all your attention there

back pain will share with you what it's come to share with you that you weren't aware of so it stays there it says look i'm not going to go away until you listen to me. So the invitation is before you take a pill and say, oh, I hate back pain. Say, oh, back pain. It's taking an awful lot of energy for you to show up. And you're trying to share something with me. And like, instead of shutting you up or hating you or trying to get rid of you, I will actually listen to you.

It's a radical concept. But nonetheless, life is always there. And if you just say, of course, I'm going to breathe and fully be present with you and viscerally know what it is you're coming to share with me by asking you and then just opening to whatever you've come to share, worlds open up, right? So we can activate sensations by focusing on what we're suffering about. But if we're already in physical pain, we don't know why, right? Then we just say, okay, back pain, what have you come to share? Or headache, what have you come to share? Oh my God, we're not going to take any kind of aspirin for headache. For a second, we're going to just say, what have

you come to share? And worlds will open to you. And if you get anything from all these podcasts, all I want to invite you to get is when there's something that feels uncomfortable, instead of hating it, or denying it or trying to get rid of it. Before you take the pill, before you take the pill, and you can take the pill. But before you take the pill, one second say, what did you come to share with me? Like you're a friend or a mentor or a wisdom being, or someone who like really, really has you come to share with me? Like you're a friend or a mentor or a wisdom being or someone who like really, really has been trying to get my attention, right? And, you know, even if it's a physical trauma, that's a useful thing. But of course, if it's a physical trauma,

you should go to the doctor, you know, because even if you're remembering something, you know, if someone hit you in the back, even if that's a reenactment, which I'm going to tell you about in a second, it's still helpful to go to the doctor, obviously, right? So, but the idea is that this sensation loves you, right? You may hate it, but it loves you. And it's inviting you.

It's like a gravitational pull what's gravity gravity is love you know it's saying i want to draw you to me i want us to relate with each other now of course not all sensations are trauma so let's suppose you're trying to ride a bicycle for the first time right well that just may be your anxiety because you've never done it before. And the way to know whether it's a trauma or not is just to bring all your attention to your gut. If I gave you one other thing I want you to do is don't assume your head knows the answer to the question because your head doesn't know anything about what's true for you and it doesn't know anything about what you want. It is here in service. It is a servant. It's a king, but it's a serving king. It's not a, I don't know what's going on king, because it doesn't know my language, but it doesn't. The part of you that knows the truth about something is your gut,

right? So you bring your attention down to your gut when you're feeling anxious about riding a bicycle and you say, okay, here's the story. Anxiety sensation. What have you come to share about riding this bicycle? And one of the few things will happen. It will just say, it's okay. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Or it will say, maybe someone's pushing you and it will say, here's what's true for you. Your father is pushing you to ride the bicycle before you're ready. So you have to tell them no, because it's not what's true for you. And if you do what your father is telling you right now, when it's not, you're not ready, you'll be denying your own truth and what you truly desire. So you have to speak your truth if you can. Of course,

the father is going to pulverize you, then you have a different problem. Then you're gonna have to protect yourself in some way, at which point you'll probably get sick and you can't ride the bicycle and the sickness will be a protector for you you say i can't ride the bike there because i have a tummy ache and of course tummy ache will not be the problem it'll be the way you're protecting yourself from having to get on that bicycle and it fell and got killed in 1932 and so you're remembering

and life is trying to remember a horrific death and so it's making you feel anxious and if you ask the sensation what have you come to share? Are you something in the here and now? Like your anxiety is like saying I'm trying to share? Are you something in the here and now? Like your anxiety is like saying, I'm trying to share something with you

right in the here and now. You know, it's okay. You can feel this anxiety and go forward. Or you have to speak up and say, it's not right for me to do this right now. I'm not ready. Or it might be saying, you're just reliving something.

And if you could be with this horrific death that happened, you know, 100 years ago while you're riding a bicycle, that you could really be living something. And if you could be with this horrific death that happened, you know, a hundred years ago while you're riding a bicycle, then you could really ride the bicycle and be free. Would you, it'll evolve, you know? So really all we're trying to do is move from reactivity to acceptance. And that's true with everybody's sensation.

So like, and if you listen carefully, it will tell you. Sometimes your body will be angry at you because it doesn't like the way you're treating it and at which point it will tell you that. And sometimes it's come to share something about the here and now, and sometimes it's come to share something when you're stuck at some other time, and it will tell you if you ask, right? you know judgmental you know or we're feeling you know depression and anxiety or whatever it is whenever we move from that to acceptance what happens is one of two things either the symptom

that we're suffering about goes away or our relationship to it changes to such degree that we no longer are reactive. And when you're not reactive, you don't have a problem. You might have pain, but you won't be suffering about it. You won't have pain about the pain. Let's suppose you're dying, right? And you can't accept it. Then you'll curse God and say, why have you done this to me? Right? I need to know why have you done this to me? Or you'll compare yourself to everybody else, right? You'll compare yourself or you'll be judgmental and righteously indignant or whatever it is, or like saying, I don't accept this situation. But when you really are with your anxiety about dying and you feel the sensation and ask it, then you come into a place of acceptance and compassion and courage and

grace and you say, I don't like that I'm dying, but I'm not reactive to the fact that I'm dying. And I can hold it with an open hand. And even if I'm sad about the loss, that's very different from I can't handle it. So we're trying to get to a place where we can say yes to all of life, including the changes that will naturally happen if we don't get in the way because of our reactivity and judgmentalism, right? So, and then, you know, the world changes because as soon as you can accept it,

either, like you said, the sensation will go away and either the symptom will go away, or your relationship to it will change to such degree that it won't be a problem anymore. And you'll move at that point from being someone who is distant from life to someone who's experiencing the immediacy of it. And when you do that, matter turns into energy. Particles turns into waves. So you know the two-slit slit experiment, you know that in physics. And you say, well, how is it that a particle wave could be the same thing? And the answer is, it's not that it's changing, it's our relationship to it is changing.

When we have to observe it and we can't say I'm here with you, it becomes matter. When we can fully, fully, fully engage it, it stays in its pure form, which is a verb, a way, an energy. And it's the same thing with us. When we can fully accept the particle called siddha stomach, it moves into its pure form and the sensation just goes away you'll know something's different and when we do that with everything we move into our pure form and we may look like we're

matter that we identify with but we're no longer that anymore we're no longer identifying and saying i am andy or i am my body or i am whatever we'll just say i'm andy or i'm body they're just experiences experiences that i'm experiencing it's all verbs there's no nouns and when we go from verbs to nouns life uh it's interesting because instead of going through an entrance life becomes entrancing. You can't point to entrancing, but you can point to an entrance. You go through the entrance from matter to spirit and to soul, and the world becomes magical again. Not just Monday of the world. There's nothing wrong with Monday, as long as we just don't identify with it.

I'm just experiencing mundane. I'm a window of experiencing the world, but it's not who I am. So my life isn't mundane, but I'm experiencing something that's mundane, which is fine, right? from matter to enchanting. And we move to a place of compassion and appreciation of all perspectives. We go from egocentricity and our own suffering to much broader perspectives, even if we can't fully understand them yet. We know there's something much larger that we're a part of.

And when we do that, world's open for us. And we're no longer stuck. Now, of course, we've told you the story, the first story in the book about a woman who came in because she had chronic back pain. And she told us it was because of an accident that she'd had seven years ago. We found out through our muscle testing that no one could understand why she was still feeling so much pain after that accident. When she got knocked over by a wave, when she was trying to, you know, race out and save children who were

swimming. Of course, we found out that she was stuck in a story that turned out that was 2000 years ago where she was trying, she as a general was fighting another general in order to try to save her men. But she wasn't paying enough attention attention just like she wasn't on the beach and she gets knocked over by a wave of sand and gets killed by this other general and feels like she's betrayed thousands of men and 2,000 years later she has this accident she's a victim of fate she wasn't paying enough attention to these kids who were swimming.

And suddenly she looks up and she says, oh, my God, they're in danger. And I have to race out and save them. But she had lost perspective. She wasn't paying enough attention just like 2,000 years ago. And she gets knocked over by a wave this time of water. And she hits her back. She hits herself on a rock in her back just in the same place that she got stabbed in the back by this general 2,000 years ago.

So we think we're victims of fate, but in fact, even things that seem like accidents, when we explore them, they may be profound synchronicities that are trying to invite us into something, but of course we don't ask the question. We don't say you know is that accident something that i unconsciously co-created with life in order to remember and

heal and evolve but of course when she did remember and heal and evolve magically her back pain went away that she had been with for seven years and nothing had touched them were the experts and everything because they were looking at it energetically and saying, oh my God, the story of a general who had been killed after betraying his men 2000 years ago. And so life helps us create echoes. And when we listen to life with a third ear, like you're always trying to share something with me, if I would only listen, the world's open up to us. And that's the invitation here, to have the freedom to say, I'm going to open to a much broader perspective.

stuck in my parochial, egocentric concerns, but to say, what are you trying to teach me for my own evolution, for the evolution of those who are around me, and for the evolution of life itself? And when we get there, life becomes truly meaningful, even when we're going through things that are so horrendous. And at these times when so much is so horrendous, and we have to really, really, really honor the human experience of such destruction

if we could just step back at the same time and say what are we trying to learn here that life is giving us an opportunity maybe we could both be holding our pain with grace, but also the opportunity for evolution. So again, this has been wonderful sharing this time with you. Truly wonderful. And again, you can reach me at ahon at lifesceptictherapy.com. I so appreciate your reflections,

your questions, even if you think I'm crazy, I love skeptics. And of course, if you ever want to do a session with me on the podcast, just ask, and I will say yes, and we can explore worlds together. But no matter what, it's been wonderful exploring worlds together today with you. And until we meet again, I wish you well, and I wish you what will soon be for all of us a happy new year.

At least that's where I am right now. You may be listening to this. Who knows? You will. Goodbye.