10 years ago I realized that I had a few problems. I knew couldn’t do it alone any more. Every day I thought about death and dying and how I might accomplish it. I walked into a therapists office, heart pounding. I told the therapist, who was very sweet, “I feel like I am in a bubble and the world outside is full of fog. I can’t concentrate and I have trouble connecting with people. It feels like I am walking through mud. I want to die. It’s really strange and I don’t know if I’m making any sense at all.”
To my surprise, she replied, “That’s actually a fairly common experience.”
I was feeling trapped in a bubble
She told me my symptoms sounded similar to a condition whose clinical name was “Dissociation.” The word meant little to me and I didn’t pay much attention when she said that. Dissociation is when you feel far removed from your body and surroundings – your brain feels on overload, that there is too much pain to process, and so you “go far, far away.” Thus, the feeling of being in a fog and feeling distant.
She kept asking me if I had gone through any trauma. I racked my brain and couldn’t think of anything except for being punished as a child. It didn’t seem like that would cause me to feel this way now.
She suggested I get a pelvic exam, and the doctor asked me if I had been raped because there was some tearing and scar tissue down there. I couldn’t remember anything like that and said “no.”
Dissociation is when you feel far away from your physical body - when you are in pain or shock. If you've been through trauma it can repeat itself randomly, but especially if you receive an emotional shock.
3 years later, after I broke up with a boyfriend, I felt the suicidal again. The thoughts seemed to take over my body, and drain my strength. I sought therapy again, and a new therapist suggested, again, that I might be experiencing Dissociation and also Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. But I couldn’t recall anything serious happening to me.
One evening, as I lay in bed feeling emotional pain that made my bones ache, I noticed that I was fighting my feelings. I’d been reading a lot of spiritual books in my spare time, including Jung’s autobiography, and it occurred to me to apply some of what I’d learned. I asked myself, “What would happen if I dived into my shadow?” So I allowed myself to become completely submerged in the pain – I did not try to block it out with anger at others in my life, or anger that I felt it in the first place. I stopped blocking it with thoughts of “I want to be dead.” I just felt it.
My body began speaking to me. I had a distinct impression of having someone’s hand over my mouth, trapping my scream, the room being pitch dark, and experiencing severe pain that came in a rhythmic action. I was remembering things. I remembered being sexually assaulted. I started shaking and hyperventilating. My body was finally processing some emotions I had repressed. I realized I was not depressed because I had experienced a break-up. I was not exhausted because of the difficulties of my job. I was depressed because I had been pushing down pain that went too deep. That is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder – when you keep experiencing the pain of a past trauma over and over. My problem had been that I didn’t even know what I was re-experiencing because I didn’t have the strength to face it – I had pushed the memory down and clamped it – until this moment. How confusing it had been. And yet, how liberating to discover the root.
I know that many women have experienced similar things, and I feel for you.
The next 10 years involved unraveling the source of my pains and resolving them.
For anyone else who has experienced this sort of thing, know that it is possible to recover. I have not felt suicidal for 5 or 6 years. I have had bouts of panic. I have acted like a victim, and been angry at others for not understanding my tender emotional wounds. Imagine that you have a severe sunburn. People you love pat you roughly on the back and you scream. They then ask you, “What’s the matter with you??” Those who are perceptive will comprehend you when you say, “I am burned and your rough handling hurts me.” Those who have fewer skills in empathy will probably say, “But I barely touched you,” and will not understand.
When someone is in pain, the lens through which they view the world can appear distorted. The next phase involved understanding and healing the distortions that were affecting my views of myself and others.
I made friends with someone who had Bi-Polar Disorder and also Post-Traumatic Stress. I dealt with being accused of things that baffled me, began trying really hard to prevent hurt feelings and anger that felt random. I tried so hard that I actually did more harm than good. I began resenting this person, even though because of our shared history we were very close. The combination of needing the understanding I felt from her, with trying hard not to get emotionally involved in the drama, created a tangle of heart energy. In clinical terms, this could be called “co-dependence,” which is when one person agrees to enable another person’s negativity or coping behaviors in exchange for attention and love, and vice versa. In other words, trying to prop up someone even when they are negatively affecting you, whether they know they are abusing you or not. It can involve taking too much responsibility for things you’re not responsible for, and not taking responsibility for what you ARE responsible for…you get the picture.
For me, recovery from this particular pattern involved distancing myself from relationships that brought out this pattern, and start owning up to my responsibility for myself and knowing I can choose to keep company with people who do the same.
What I’ve Learned After 10+ Years of Healing
* I am responsible for my own feelings and dealing with them. If I need therapy to handle myself and cope with life, I need to get it.
* Others will not always be there for me. Sometimes family and friends can’t be there. I need to accept that and love them for who they are and appreciate what they do give.
* I deserve to be helped because of what happened to me. However, the world does not owe me anything (this is a hard truth). I will stumble at times but I can find what I need and forgive myself and the world if my needs are not met.
* I have been a victim and the effects of that may have lingered. However, I choose whether to perpetuate the feeling of victimhood or to rise above it. (I also recognize staying in victim-mode is very annoying to others and disables me).
* Trauma, especially as it occurs during years of development, can cause mental, emotional, social, identity, and astral/spiritual distortions. It’s important to address all of them, through therapy, spiritual counseling, group processing, getting into the body, opening up to friends, getting energy healing, etc.
* And because I am so open to the realm of energy, I have learned a lot about how to heal on that level as well (which is why I do what I do 
I have learned that sometimes chronic symptoms of pain and distorted thinking/perception has a root cause in the energy field – in the form of astral implants, low-vibrational entities, rips in the aura and other things. When your vibration drops, these things can affect you. It is a natural phenomenon, just as germs are a natural phenomenon to the physical body, and nobody likes to think of bacteria bugs inside your body – but best to be solution-oriented and take antibiotics rather than remain in denial and suffer. Similarly, if you have an astral “bug,” you ask a healer to remove it. I have found this to be helpful.
Then, you can begin to feel your Angels more.
High-Vibrational Entities are Reflections of Your Divine Heart
*Getting into the body is very healing and restorative. I made the error of going so much into the ethers to correct my energy field, that I actually forgot the joy of being in a body. It makes sense, if the body feels pain, to want to escape it – but, once I came back into “this world,” my joy opened up so much more. Getting physical reminds me of how much I love being alive.
Everyone is on a healing journey, or more accurately, a journey of discovery. I don’t actually favor the word, “healing,” because it implies that something is wrong with you that needs to be fixed.
What has occured to me today, as I was thinking about all of these things, is that nobody needs fixing. We are all ok just as we are, human foibles and all, pain and all. We all have strength and weakness. We are all human.
And it’s all ok.
We just need to keep refining ourselves. Keep discovering, opening, learning.
This is what makes life fulfilling.
Thanks for listening to my story!
Many Blessings to you~*~
