Throughout this Gratitude Blog process I have been noticing blissful memories from my early childhood are returning to me. I’ve been in a practice for awhile of recovering past traumatic memories. But not enough people talk about the childhood blissful memories that are returned in the process, as well.
I remembered what the festivity of Christmas morning felt like. But I recall various points throughout my life where that magic felt like it was harder and harder to reach. Even when the holidays would come, I couldn’t access that same height of bliss I would when I was a child.
When you experience trauma you dissociate from an entire function of your being. There is a feedback loop from your body to a part of the brain called the hippocampus. If that is disrupted through high emotional distress, you can be stuck in a constant state of duress. This can cause you to completely forget or dissociate from pieces of your memory as a result.
You can often feel as though you are perpetually reliving your trauma, as the amygdala is triggered into overdrive. This prompts the PTSD symptoms. Impacting the prefrontal cortex whereby you to still believe there are active threats even when they are not there anymore. Stress stimuli is triggered even when there is nothing there to be afraid of. This is why you will see people with depression or anxiety constantly walk with hyper-vigilance. Nervous body language, heads down, almost apologizing in their demeanor and speech. They are stuck in a loop and their amygdala and frontal cortex is not aware that that experience has been over since they were a kid.
It’s not just the act itself that is traumatic but it is what you made it mean about yourself that is the most imprinting lasting element/feature.
I think I was guided to become a trauma practitioner because I had to learn these mechanics. I had to learn the mechanics and composition of the mind in relation to spirit. It is a prerequisite for a healer. Because we are human beings and the most primal dense things we experience are things that activate the mind. In order to understand the spiritual human life you do need to understand the nature of the psyche. Understanding how experiences both positive and negative imprint on the brain. And thus, the scope of your life. And how all of that sort of funnels into the whole nature of your spiritual healing and teaching lifestyle.
There are a multitude of aspects of your personality and self-concept that are compromised/modified after one dissociates after trauma. Some parts you may have forgotten about.
I challenge you to recall a time in your early childhood where you felt weightless. Not a care in the world. That type of peace you feel when you are going for a walk and your heart detects new dimensions in its environment, your head feels clear, and there is a gentle optimism, and quiet confidence sprinkled throughout.
Most of us have forgot about that version of us.
I have been having a number of these memories return to me through this challenge and it is one of the the warmest, most revitalizing and cleansing feelings I’ve felt.
But when pain becomes more familiar to us than pleasure, what is shocking to me is how these POSITIVE memories can be completely wiped from your brain, as well. It is a coping mechanism when pain becomes more recurrent than pleasure in life that we lose sight of much of life’s beauty in the process, too.
The gratitude challenge has not only brought back really innocent yet influential, positive childhood memories. Memories that are crucial for me to remember my truth and who I am. Memories that are crucial for me to remember what it feels like to be completely free in my skin and in my being.
You have to see it and recognize it in your consciousness before it becomes real. There has to be a sight in your consciousness in which you foresee your structural concept of peace and freedom for it to come. And even if you’ve never reached that a state of being in life, you have accessed MOMENTS of it in the past. Whether it was falling in love, or going for a bike ride when you were seven, or having your dad read you a bedtime story in childhood.
There is a sensation that rises from your core right at the place where your heart sits. Grace, harmony, peace, content. This is what we are all after. Through all the elaborate means to reach that goal, all of the jobs you’ve taken on, all the stress you’ve endured, all of the pressure from society or your family. Ultimately we seek out to achieve things because we believe it will make us FEEL good. To feel that exact way we felt cocooned in the freedom Bliss.
With Love,
Cody
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