How pain, illness, and emotional trauma are related
In my last blog, I talked about the power of the subconscious mind and how we can use it to alter our experiences of love, happiness, safety, joy, and confidence in life. If you haven’t read it yet, I encourage you to read that first as this will make more sense to you if you are new to the world of neuroscience and the subconscious mind.
I was so excited to learn about methods and techniques that were available to help my clients on a deeper level beyond coaching and counseling. I noticed that even though my clients knew logically what actions they needed to take and how their thoughts and beliefs created their feelings and emotions, which impacted their actions (or inactions) and how they impacted the results they got in life, they kept sliding back to old ways, and they often felt frustrated.
To be honest, I was initially drawn to this new mind-body-brain topic for personal reasons. I’ve been doing the inner work on myself for the past 25 years to overcome my own personal experiences of childhood trauma, abuse, bullying, and family separation. Many people who know my story know that my dad cheated on my mom, had another child with my mom’s best friend and left us when I was just 9 years old. And although my parents did eventually reconcile, I realized many years later that I hadn’t fully healed from that experience. It slowly started to manifest itself into depression, back pain, and insomnia. I had seen every kind of doctor, alternative medicine, shaman, masseuse, chiropractor, acupuncturist, and naturopath, spending thousands of dollars hoping to rid my body of this pain. When I did the work on myself, I realized that I hadn’t allowed myself to feel the anger, feelings of betrayal, and sadness since I had always been the “good girl, people-pleaser” type. Needless to say, I finally allowed myself to release it as a puddle of tears.
I now know understand the relationship between physical ailments and unresolved emotions, and the mind-body connection. If you are someone who is experiencing severe pain or illness such as cancer, I invite you to be open and curious while reading this. It just might help you create a new relationship with your body and your mind. Since doing this training, I am happy to say that I am sleeping so much better! Best of all, I can now work on my own subconscious mind and prime it for maximum happiness and productivity. The best part is that the process to cause change on this deeper level is simple and quick, and there’s always stuff to tackle. I love it!!
So here’s what I learned:
Our subconscious mind (or our unconscious mind) uses physical pain to block emotion. Dr. Sarno, M.D. (Author of Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection) shares that it is not enough to deal with your emotions. You also have to realize that the pain is coming from repressed emotions, especially anger and rage. The beautiful part is that you don't have to relive your pain to deal with it emotionally. You just have to transform your perception of it. How would you prefer to feel about that person, situation, or event that is causing some disease in your system? Would you rather feel love and forgiveness and understanding and peace?
Only 5% of people are born with a disease. Our bodies are meant to heal when they are injured and they do. So why are there so many people sick and suffering? and why do almost all of us die of disease? It's due to our subconscious blocking emotions. Interestingly, it could be positive or negative emotions. Both can be overwhelming.
Some people are completely wrapped up in their problems, thus their problems become their identity. They may say they don't like their problems and they want out, but if offered a solution, they would probably give some excuse for why they can't change. Most of the time, the notion that they are wanting to hold on to their problems is completely subconscious.
Our system reacts with pain when it is trying to distract us from feeling strong emotions. The subconscious is timeless. Bruce Lipton, Ph.D., cellular biologist, and author of “The Biology of Belief” says our subconscious runs the show about 95 to 99% of the time and we are only consciously in charge between 1% to 4% of the time.
If you think you have no emotional stuff going on, I know how you feel. I thought that too. If you want to know what's going on in the subconscious, go meditate and listen to the chatter in your head, or when you're sitting at a traffic light. What limiting beliefs do you hear?
Maybe you're totally aware of your emotions and so why are you still in pain? Most likely you are still in pain because you have not made the connection between pain and your emotional issues.
Your pain is there to keep you from feeling your emotions. Connect the two dots, really believe it, and address the subconscious emotion if you can find it, and the pain should vanish.
THE AUTOMATIC PILOT
You know the saying," “it's like riding a bike”? Once your subconscious learns a new skill, and a new neural pathway has been created, you can run that program automatically. Remember how much concentration it took when you learn to drive? How much you used to focus, effort, and concentrate especially if you drove a stick shift? But once you had it down, you can talk on the phone, sing along to the radio, or plan something, all while driving. It’s because the subconscious is doing the driving. It's that powerful. Can you see how these autopilot programs in the subconscious could be detrimental as well as helpful?
What if your automatic subconscious program is stress fear worry, anxiety sickness, doubt depression unhappiness loneliness, offensiveness, anger, judgment, untruth, abandonment, rage, addiction failure grief? How do you think you'll automatically feel that those kinds of programs?
If you want something and are trying to get it done in conscious control, you will most likely be wondering why you can't seem to accomplish that goal. You might feel like you are always getting in your own way. That's because you are not purposely, of course, but subconsciously.
So where did all of this programming come from anyway? You got this when you were in utero to around seven years old. Your brain was in a theta state, which is like a hypnotic state. You're a sponge soaking up everything. You didn't judge good or bad. You just absorb the sights, sounds, feeling experiences and you even are programmed by your mother's feelings while you're in her uterus. So in other words, you had no choice in the programming that was embedded in your brain by the people you surrounded yourself with as a young infant and child.
Scientists have discovered that we function out of our subconscious mind 95 to 99% of the day. Truly we're acting, thinking, feeling, and responding, not based on what we want, but based on the old programs that are in our minds.
So the next time you have an ache or pain, or even if you have something chronic think of my story.
Close your eyes: what surprising thing pops into your mind when you are not expecting it? It just might be the key to unlocking your best life and letting go of old pain and trauma.
