When going through trauma it is not unusual for your body to react to the stress. It has become common knowledge that the mind, body and spirit are not separate entities that respond in isolation to one another. Emotional trauma will strongly impact the body and spirit, just as trauma in the body or spirit will impact the others. When you take a fall and break a bone or have surgery, your emotions come along for the ride! One cannot have a baby and not have a profound emotional and spiritual experience along with the physical act of giving birth.

If you have been physically or sexually abused, you may have learned how to separate yourself from your physical feelings. You may hardly notice when you are tired or hungry or something is hurting. On the other hand, you may be intensely sensitive to physical changes. Being attentive to your body is an important step in self care. Learning to give your body what it needs is one way to honor yourself. Exercise is one of the most important needs your body has when dealing with trauma. Take a break and go for a walk when stress threatens to overwhelm you. Go to the gym and be part of a class. It may be hard to get up and move while you are dealing with trauma, but physical exercise actually helps release the trauma that is held in your body on a cellular level.

Business and life coach Malcom Avner writes, “When humans experience a traumatic situation, the body’s nervous system initiates an energetic infusion to fuel a genetically encoded physical defense response. If not expressed and released, the energy generated by traumatic experience is stored at the cellular level. The stored energy generates an ongoing loop of mind/body self-defense reactions. Trauma Release Exercises are a set of physical exercises designed to address and release deep-seated, unexpressed energy that originated in past experiences of physical or psychological trauma.”

For those who are avid exercisers, don’t be surprised if you need to slow your workouts down for a time. Your body needs energy to process your grief. Sometimes people avoid their feelings by driving themselves too hard physically. Be aware of your tendency to overwork, as well. Allowing yourself to exercise appropriately will help your process tremendously. Another area to be conscious of is rest.

When you are trying to avoid painful feelings or memories, it is easy to drive yourself hard. You can do that through work, studying, and even playing. Keeping your mind and body busy enables you to be disconnected from the heart that may contain things you don’t want to feel.

If you have decided that it is time to live fully and put to rest the thought patterns and relational dysfunctions that are keeping you from authentic living, then connecting with that heart is crucial. Giving yourself permission to rest is part of that picture. When you need rest, make some time for a nap, or just lay down for awhile even if you don’t go to sleep. Turn off the TV and computer and turn on some soothing music. Take a hot bath, read a book, or drink a cup of tea. Build a fire or light a candle. Tell yourself that you are worth taking care of!

Joyce O. Beckett writes in an article on Silver Planet, “You may need to determine what relaxes and re-energizes you. It may be an evening with friends, a long walk, a ball game, exercise, a religious service, sitting by a lake, or reading a good book…Whatever self-care activity you select, it is important to regularly schedule the time. Place it in your personal calendar and set alarms to remind you. Then, protect that time by telling yourself and others: “I have an important, standard appointment that I cannot cancel; I am unavailable for anything else.

Paying attention to the needs of your body is one way to communicate love and acceptance to yourself. Underneath your struggle with self-care may be a belief that you are not worth taking care of, or that your body is the enemy that betrayed you. Becoming aware of the emotional blocks that keep you from being connected to, and kind to, your body can help you move through your resistance to learning great self-care. Maybe it’s time to replace those beliefs with the truth: You deserve it. Really, you do.

Many in the Evangelical church have debated the question of self-esteem for decades. “We need to think less of ourselves, not more,” the argument goes. Some thought it preposterous that we would be telling people that they should love themselves. Self-love was seen as antithetical to loving God. I heard volumes of speech, some official and some just self-appointed, against the idea of loving oneself.

This caused me great conflict inside. I knew that I did not love myself enough. My self-hate kept me from being able to fully connect to God or anyone else and also disabled me from fulfilling the calling I had long known was on my life. It opened me up to the abuse pattern continuing as an adult and allowed many, many lies of the enemy to be perpetuated throughout every area of relationship with myself, others, and God.

 Abuse Begets Abuse

I grew up believing that I deserved to be treated the way all of my abusers treated me. I wouldn’t have said that consciously. But it was certainly how I acted. It was almost like I had a sticker on my forehead that said “Kick me.” And people did. Lots of people, both literally and figuratively.

I became a target for all the school bullies. I was constantly bullied at home and learned to respond to everyone in either obnoxious defensiveness, or cowering fear. It was the only way I knew to relate. And there were plenty of people who were willing to react true to the pattern I had learned. If I was fearful, they would tease me and beat me up. If I would try to defend myself, they would taunt me and beat me up. They knew that I couldn’t stick up for myself- I was emotionally incapable of it because I had always been torn to pieces in any attempt at doing so.

I was put down daily by my alcoholic father and brothers, and sometimes even by my little sisters. If I had owned a tail, I am quite sure it would usually have been between my legs. And like a dog who sends off the signals of submission, others know how to read it and are ready to assert their dominance.

Having no one to accurately reflect my worth to me, I didn’t have a fighting chance. I hated the cruel treatment I received at home and at school, but didn’t know that I could do anything about it. At 14 when my father and brothers both left the house after my parents’ divorce, I got a picture of what living in relative peace was like. That was when I actually hit back one of the playground bullies that had followed me into high school (she never tried to hit me again after that…oh that I had been able to do it a decade earlier!). It took me many decades beyond that to be able to set and keep boundaries with people who emotionally abused me, however. I even still can have struggles with that one.

RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network) says that poor self-esteem is the most universal symptom of abuse survivors. From my experience in my life and my work with other people, I would have to agree. While going through the Life Skills International program I learned that any act of abuse is an act of rejection. I also learned that the very hardest thing to heal from is rejection from one’s family of origin.

Every time I was belittled, hit, laughed at, left out, called names, looked down upon, and touched inappropriately, I was being rejected. One or more of those types of activities occurred in my life several times a day, for as long as I can remember. My life as a child, and even parts of it as an adult, was inundated with rejection.

There was one significant person in my life that mirrored my value to me. Her name was Mimi. She was a camp counselor at a church camp I attended in the California Sierra when I was 14. For one amazing week, she spoke truth into my life about who I really was. After that week was over, she sent me two letters that I kept in my journal. Those letters are well worn from being read over and over throughout the years. I’m sure that Mimi has little idea of the impact that her few words had in that short time that I knew her. But really, those words became a lifeline that kept me tied to the reality of God’s love for me and His purpose in my life. I can honestly say that, without Mimi’s brief influence, I would probably not be doing what I am doing today. It was through her words that I was able to hang onto any positive self image at all.

Self esteem, for me, is the ability to see myself clearly. That includes strengths and weaknesses, whole places and broken places. It means that I know that I am lovable and that I have struggles. But the weaknesses don’t disqualify me from being treated with honor and respect, just as others’ weaknesses don’t justify abusive treatment from me. Self esteem says that I can behold myself as made in the image of God and that it is good. Not perfect, but good. And that the God who made me takes delight in being close to me.

Without the ability to ascribe value to myself, I cannot receive love and I certainly cannot give it. If I believe that I am not worth loving, anyone else’s attempts at giving me something good will fail, like trying to put a sticker on Teflon. In fact, when we have low self esteem, we are more self-focused, not less. Individuals who know their own worth are the ones most able to take their eyes off themselves and be sensitive to others’ needs and pain. As we align our thinking about ourselves with how God sees us, we become free to forget about how we are perceived by others and can concern ourselves with being the hands and feet that exhibit God’s love for those around us who are hurting.

Every act of abuse communicates that a child is worthless except as they serve the twisted purpose of their abuser. We as a society are responsible both to stop the abusers and to bring the truth of each person’s value into clear view. As survivors battle the lies of the rejection they have experienced, those who claim to share God’s heart for the world should be the first to speak and act out the truth of each person’s great worth, and encourage those wounded souls to embrace their own beauty. Only then will they be set free to become all they were created to be.

Hope. It is the fuel for our lives. Without it we become depressed and lifeless. Have you ever been without hope? Even for a day, or for an hour or two? Maybe you have lost your retirement savings or maybe you have been through a divorce or even lost a child. Perhaps you have had one or both parents die.

There is a black tunnel where all hope seems gone. It feels like it will last forever, but eventually we may come out the other side and slowly find a new place to live, a place that can even be enriched because of what we have suffered.

I have spent over 25 years walking through my healing journey from childhood abuse. Throughout, I have always known inside that I ultimately had 2 choices. I could get bitter. Or I could get better.

Another woman shares some of her story in from the book called A Holy Longing. After she tells of being raped by her father at age 9, she says, “my whole life really ended then.” When her father died, she tried to make her peace but could not.

“The older I got the worse it got. I ended up getting angrier and angrier…I began to fight everyone… It’s unfair to have to live in a world that is so unfair… I’m so full of cancer inside. I’d like to scream, just shout to the world how unfair it all is, but I know that nobody would hear—or care! I want my life back! I wasn’t born this angry. I don’t want to die this angry.”

The author goes on to say that “some of the happiest people in the world have been abused and some of the most unhappy ones have been. The difference lies not so much in extent of the trauma of the original abuse,” but how we come to think about ourselves and the world around us as a result.

As I child, I had no one to talk to about the things that were happening to me. There was no relative, no neighbor, no teacher who could tell me that what was being done to me was not my fault. I had no idea that there was even such a thing as a safe person or safe place.

My healing path has been a challenging one. But for every tear I have cried and every bit of pain I have walked through, I have stored up a new inheritance for my children.

Every time I heal more I give them a gift. I tell them that the way my family did things was wrong, and my own anger and control did not bring life. I own my own pain and I apologize, and every time I do, I open the door to a new, better way to live for them. They still must choose to walk through it, but I give them a new option.

I can never reclaim what was stolen from me as a child, but I can make a bright future. Now, as a life coach and spiritual director, speaker and writer, I offer a safe place for others to heal. It is my passion to encourage and inspire others in their journeys. Not just abuse survivors, but everyone who suffers.

We have choices to make in the midst of our pain…everyone of us! We can become bitter, or we can get better. Avoiding our pain will make us bitter. Getting better means facing our pain -grieving our losses. Only then can we become free to thrive…free to be ALL we know we were made to be.

I am thriving, and I know you can too! As we choose to lay down the weapons of our self-protective control and embrace the reality of our pain, we can learn to let each other in and give and receive the love we all so deeply long for. And for that, I have a great hope!

It used to be that my senses were numb and my body was the enemy. I was in survival mode and I believed my senses would only get me into trouble. Now, all that has changed.

I like to garden barefoot. I feel the cool dirt under my feet and the warmth of the sun soaked grass as I step across the yard. I love to feel textures on my skin. I confess, I don’twant to dump the sand out of my shoes when I leave the beach…I like the sand between my toes!

When I am connected to my senses I feel alive. I love the smell of the dirt as I dig out the new pathway beside my house. I light up with delight when I see the bright pink of the Cosmos, yellow of the Black-eyed Susans, and purple of Bearded Iris outside my window. I go nuts when I smell Jasmine and cannot walk by it without burying my face in it for at least a moment.

Sounds, smells, touches, tastes, and sights all provide for me a smorgasbord of experience. Some days I feel like a sense-seeking missile. But this wasn’t always the case.

In response, to my childhood abuse, I shut down all receptors that would let anything from the outside in. I had to keep memories at bay and was unable to be connected to my body. My unconscious belief was that my body had betrayed me and I didn’t trust it.

Our senses are what connect us to ourselves and to the outside world; but if we are trying to keep certain memories at bay and do not trust the outside world, the senses cannot be allowed to function fully.We may believe that being disconnected from our senses keeps us safe, but it also keeps us from living from our authentic selves, from the heart.

I believe that most of us carry within ourselves at least two parts: our survival selves and our authentic selves. Some people call these the “Authentic Self” and the “Inauthentic Self.” Carol Adrienne, Ph.D, writes in an article entitledAuthenticity, “The voice of the authentic self seems to be the same as the intuitive voice, that quiet, but persistent voice that whispers new ideas to us in the middle of the night, on vacation, or after meditating. Intuition speaks in short, clear messages that are qualitatively different from the repetitive mind chatter that makes us feel anxious.”

Our authentic selves are connected to the core of heart and body. They feel deeply and experience things through all of our senses. “Rediscovering freedom involves regaining a feeling of comfort in your own skin. The awkward layers that have been assumed to please others are shed, and the real person is revealed – an authentic person… The fake person has lost their connection to the real person inside” (author unknown).

Dr. Phil writes about an authentic self and a “fictional self.” He defines the authentic self as “ the you that can be found at your absolute core. It is the part of you not defined by your job, function or role. It is the composite of all your skills, talents and wisdom. It is all of the things that are uniquely yours and need expression.” He goes on to say, “When you’re not living faithfully to your authentic self, you find yourself feeling incomplete, as if there is a hole in your soul…Living this way drains you of the critical life energy you need to pursue the things you truly value.”

The Senses and Trauma

We all probably remember the excitement as a child of going to the beach or the snow for the first time, or laying awake in bed with great anticipation of tomorrow’s birthday party. As children, prior to abuse, we are open to life and we respond fully to it, engaging all of our selves. When a child goes to the beach, they have to feel the salt water on their skin and cover themselves in the sand. Playing is not a spectator sport. It involves all of their senses. They don’t wait for the sun to come out to go outside. Puddle jumping is the first order of business when it rains.

What happens to a child’s sensory faculties when he/she is abused? When senses are used to bring things that are confusing and painful, feeling, seeing, hearing, smelling, and perhaps even tasting become openings for negative sensations. Perhaps something being done to a child physically feels pleasant, but those very pleasant feelings bring mental and emotional trauma. Even feeling good, then, often becomes connected to trauma and must be kept at bay at all costs.

Our bodies don’t forget what happened to us, even if our minds do for a time. Every act of abuse is stored on a cellular level in the body. The body is often one of the most accurate storage devices of memory. It may not remember all the specific details, but it will remember with great accuracy how we felt when something happened to us. Have you ever smelled a certain scent and been immediately transported in your mind to the time and place that smell entered your senses?

We have all heard the first three notes of a song and been flooded with the body sensations of where we were and what we were doing when that song became significant to us. I remember where I was, who I was with, and what the room smelled like when I first heard about the Challenger crash. We all have the details of the smells, sights, and sounds of our environment when our stomachs sank with the news of 9-11. That’s trauma, and the brain stores those memories differently than other memories. They are so real that you may think you are reliving it when you think about them.

Our bodies are much like a hard drive connected to our computer brains. If there is something in that hard drive that we are unconsciously trying to avoid remembering and feeling, we learn to dull everything that touches it. When someone hugs us, we don’t really let the hug get inside us. When we feel the sand or dirt beneath our feet, we walk on without letting the sensation affect us. The older we get, the more dulled our senses may become.

Unless, that is, we make a conscious decision to reconnect with our bodies and learn to live from our authentic selves.

Our survival selves play an important role for us. They, indeed, have helped us survive! Perhaps both you and I are here today because our survival selves did what they needed to do to get us here. We can develop an appreciation for that part of our selves that did the dirty work—they did what needed to be done to keep us alive. It is important to honor that part and the role he/she has played. Now, we can choose how we want to move forward from here. Maybe some of our survival ways have worked well and are still working for us. Others, perhaps, are not.

One of my survival skills was to become very organized. I call on that skill almost daily, but now I can also choose to set it aside and abide some amount of disorder when that serves me too. I learned to live in my head and I became a great administrator. I have since discovered that I really don’t like doing administrative work. When I was able to let go of almost obsessively organizing my surroundings, I found inside of myself a very creative person. When I am able to let go of my control over my environment, I create an opening for that creative part of me to paint and dig in the dirt.

Letting go of control takes courage. It has meant opening myself up to remember. Along with painting and digging in the dirt have come some things I would rather have avoided. Body memories have come to the surface that are challenging to deal with. I have become aware of at least one of the reasons that my digestive system has such a difficult time working correctly. My body learned that what is put inside it can make me very sick and decided very early on to fight anything that came down my throat. The memory surfacing was painful. It requires noticing, minimizing (yes, part of the process!), feeling, accepting, and then fully grieving a terrible thing that happened to me. But on the other side of that dark tunnel comes life.

My body slowly loosens its death grip over my digestive system as it is able to learn that not everything that goes down my throat is going to hurt me. In the place that my mind and body and heart held this dark secret, I experience a new freedom and peace. Previously unknown options begin to open up for me to see and do things in new ways. In the midst of this challenging process, I learn how to listen to my body and give it what it really needs. I shed the protective skin of blocking out the pain and develop the ability to allow life to touch me and I begin to touch it back.

When we take our gardening gloves, or shoes, off and come into direct contact with the earth, we will find things that bring us delight and things that have potential to cause us pain. When we choose to open our bodies, minds, and hearts and allow ourselves to be touched by the outside world and connected to our authentic selves, we take a risk. We will feel positive things and negative things, joy and sorrow. Our choice is to feel both or feel neither. As for me, I choose to shed my gloves and my shoes, to get dirt underneath my fingernails, and fully experience the world underneath my feet. I choose life.