Down the Rabbit Hole of Trauma Part III
To read Part I click here. To read Part II click here.
Many years ago I heard a quote from Dr. Gabor Mate that goes something like this, “Every decision we make is related to the traumas we have experienced as children…from the clothes we choose to wear, to the food we to eat, to the relationships we are in, to the job we end up with and so on”. How this plays out when deciding to grow or start a business or with regards to finding an ideal romantic relationship has been the focus of my private client work for over a decade. As familiar as all this is to me professionally, it still astounds me when the pattern blindsides me personally like it did this spring. I use this understanding and connection as a catalyst to do yet another layer of deep transformational personal work. My last trip to the magical world of Disney was the trigger for doing a deeper layer of this personal work.
Let me first give you a picture of where my head was at during this past winter and spring. Craig and I had been on a whirlwind training schedule. We had taught 9 sold out workshops in 9 different locations around the world between January and May. Sandwiched in between the live workshops we were still launching several online programs all while mentoring a significant number of new EFT practitioners. Did I feel burnt out? Was I aware of the insane superhuman pace I was going at? Sort of, but not really. After all, I am fulfilling my life’s purpose, I’m enjoying my life with the man I love, I’m helping others in richly rewarding ways, and the more we do the more we get requests for more from others seeking our services. What could possibly be wrong with that?
So I awoke on a beautiful May morning in my own bed and my body is in pain. I went into fear mode realizing that we’ve only just been back home for less than 24 hours from teaching in another country and I’ve got to go to the airport in a few hours to leave for another training. All sorts of fears come up about this trip and my body is reacting big time. I’m hearing a not so subtle voice in my head that’s saying, “Don’t go!” So I go into fix it mode and along with tapping on everything I can think of, Craig gives me an adjustment, I use ice packs, take over the counter pain meds, and homeopathic remedies. As we are on the ferry that takes us from our island to the mainland and on the way to the airport I start crying. Within 20 minutes of tapping and hearing Craig tell me that I don’t have to go on this trip, the pain subsides a bit. I decide that I’ll sleep at the airport hotel and decide in the morning before the early flight takes off to Orlando. We talk about the various options I have; from dropping off Craig in the morning and returning home to going to Orlando but skipping the conference we are supposed to present at. I wake up feeling well enough to take the trip but promise myself that I’ll use the time to take care of my body, participate only as much as I want to and if I feel better I’ll co-present as planned on the last day. The topic of our talk by the way happened to be the connection between emotional trauma and physical pain.
If you haven’t seen the Oscar nominated indie film, The Florida Project, I highly recommend it. The film centers on a 6 year-old girl who, as all children that age do, escapes the trauma of her real life situation by using her imagination, all while living on a stretch of highway just outside the imagined utopia of Disney World in a budget motel called the Magic Castle. Taken from the Google movie synopsis, “Despite her harsh surroundings, the precocious and ebullient Moonee has no trouble making each day a celebration of life, her endless afternoons overflowing with mischief and grand adventure as she and her ragtag playmates” During one of the short stints back at home in between trips I recalled really wanting to see this film and so we watched it on Amazon. I cried during most of the film, it stayed with me for days, and never made the connection to my own childhood.
My own childhood was nothing like Moonee’s. I didn’t have a rebellious living-on-the-edge mother who partied or lived on welfare. I say this because I want you to know that you too may be telling yourself that: you’ve worked on your childhood enough, that you didn’t experience any real trauma, that you’ve dealt with your past, that given the horrors you’ve heard about or seen, your childhood adversity amounts to nothing more than the kinds of occurrences that happens to everyone. I’m here to tell you that there’s always more to glean. Traumas (even the tiniest ones) shape you beyond what you are aware of and we must explore the significant ones again and again to be able to see the big beautiful picture.
One of biggest traumas of my life happened when I was about 6 years-old. It happened just after my parents took my brother and me to Disney World for the first time. The audio clip below is from a Matrix Reimprinting webinar series lead by Sasha Allenby who trained me as a Matrix trainer. She had asked for a volunteer to demonstrate working with Big T traumas using Matrix Reimprinting. Please note that the Big T protocols have since changed, you shouldn’t do Matrix on “Big T”s yourself, and you shouldn’t do them with others unless you are qualified to do so (Matrix Reimprinting training and follow up videos for certification).
After this was recorded I got verification from my parents about many of the details of what I saw during that Matrix session. I had not revisited that event since I went through it with Sasha many years ago. Rule #1 in working with events in Matrix Reimprinting: you must go back and revisit those Big T events again and again. The more you go in the more insight awareness and healing happens.
Getting back to that fateful trip in May, I arrived at the Magical Kingdom. The conference was held inside Disney World. I could see Cinderella’s Castle from where we were staying in the Contemporary Resort hotel. I was taking good care of myself and being diligent in being mindful in how much I participated that weekend I felt pretty good. My pain was almost completely gone. Unbeknownst to me the worst was yet to come. My pain starts back up full on and get worse by the minute the moment we start packing to go home. A few days later was when I had my 4 am download and I finally start seeing all the connections I know that the pain that started before the flight to Orlando was nothing but a foreshadowing. Not the foreshadowing about going to Orlando but about what was to come afterwards. One of the worst traumas of my life happened once I got home from my 1st trip to Disney in Orlando. You can hear about it in the audio clip above.
Stay tuned for Part IV when Mickey Mouse (my ECHOs resource in the audio clip above) makes a spectacular return to help me. One of the signs he was with me… I walk into a store in Massachusetts in the middle of this healing process and see this Mickey tapping mug!
