Fulfill the Higher Plan for Healing Whatever Pains You

I expected Sutapa to reprimand them, but he stayed quiet. After class, I asked him why he tolerated their behavior. You're looking at how they're behaving today, he said. I'm looking at how far they've come. The monk was remembering the good they'd done and forgetting the bad. Taking everything into account, adults generally applaud the regular saving of a proportion of income. We need to save in order to afford a deposit on a home. It's a form of insurance for spells of unemployment or a bout of illness. And of course, we have to think about retirement. I'll come back to how adults can trick themselves into saving more in article 13. But children struggle with the concept of a `rainy day' - the umbrella in these situations is provided by their parents, their very own `nanny state'. And the self-restraint that saving requires is a real trial for children who live much more in the moment. This was nicely demonstrated in a study that created a so-called `play economy'. Then they were told that time in this imagined world was speeded up. Each `day' lasted just 10 minutes and every `day' they'd be given an additional 10 tokens. I help them lift their heads and look directly and carefully at the walls of resistance engineered and constructed by fear. I help them, when they are ready, to speak the words No Fear. I help them place their palms firmly on those walls, and I help them push. Many people along the way--friends, teachers, colleagues, and my own therapists--have helped me to do the same. For this, I am eternally grateful.

Over the past twenty years, I have accompanied men and women as they faced fears of all sizes--small, medium, and large. The life circumstances associated with the fears come in many forms as well, from the young man who came to see me to bolster his confidence after receiving a significant promotion at work, to clients who have endured terrible abuse as children, to those who face tremendous losses as adults. Many, if not most, express some judgment of themselves, something to the effect that their problems are not as important as others'. Although it is true that battling a persistent case of Sunday night anxiety or Monday morning depression is a less severe problem than posttraumatic stress disorder stemming from childhood sexual abuse, the consequences are just as real. Here is something else to consider when you find yourself comparing your problems with others': a fear manifesting as a low-intensity but chronic anxiety is probably only the tip of the iceberg. The therapeutic methods most commonly used by mental health professionals when treating people suffering from PTSD, C-PTSD and other trauma-based syndromes are: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Group Therapy Prolonged Exposure Therapy Classes of medications called Seratonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRI) have also been proven very effective in treating symptoms. Following are two non-traditional treatment methods that many sufferers have found relieve and resolve the painful, life altering effects of these disorders. You may want to further explore them: TRE consists of six simple exercises that help individuals release tension from the muscles, which in turn relaxes the anxiety of our minds, by evoking a muscular shaking process in the body. To learn more about TRE(R) and to find a provider who specializes in it, please visit: Bercelifoundation. He didn't take their behavior as a reflection of himself, or of their respect for him. He took a longer view that had nothing to do with himself. If someone is treating you badly, I'm not advising you to tolerate it like the monk. Some mistreatment is unacceptable. But it's useful to look beyond the moment, at the bigger picture of the person's experience--Are they exhausted?

Frustrated? Making improvements from where they once were? Everyone has a story, and sometimes our egos choose to ignore that. Don't take everything personally--it is usually not about you. DETACH FROM YOUR EGO So, for instance, after the first hour - `6 days' - if they'd spent none of the tokens in the meantime, they would have `saved' 90 tokens. Next, the children were shown around a set of rooms. Some activities were free. Others cost tokens. In the library, there was no charge for reading articles, but they had to pay if they wanted to watch a film. In the room next door, video games attracted a charge, as did items in the cafe and the sweetshop, but borrowing pencils and paper for drawing was free. The decisions the children made about their spending would affect their activity in the final room - the toyshop - where they could buy real toys to take home, but only if a child still had 70 tokens left. You can see the excruciating calculations the children had to make. In order to get a toy in the toyshop, they would have to spend time, but very little money in the different rooms. It would mean forgoing computer games, food, drink and sweets for 40 minutes in order to accumulate those 70 tokens. With exploration, that Sunday anxiety or Monday depression usually leads to deeper fears about who you are, what you are doing with your life, and even the ultimate meaning of life. If you judge yourself too quickly, you may interfere with an opportunity to discover those bigger fears beneath the consistent worry for which you have built a tolerance. Using our acronym map, once we are facing a fear, the next important step is to explore it. It is part of my job to be sure we dive beneath the surface, so we can genuinely heal from the inside out, rather than slap one more Band-Aid on a broken leg. One of the Nutshells on my wall reminds us: Growth always moves from the inside out.

I use a simple technique to help people quickly discover their bigger fears. It's a real time-saver. I call it climbing down the ladder; Here is how it works. I asked Matthew, who was expressing his fear about pursuing a change of careers, What are you afraid of? Levine, Ph. To learn more about SE and to find a practitioner who specializes in it, please visit: Traumahealing. Listen to the interview in its entirety at: http://www. LEARNED HELPLESSNESS As you learned in the previous article, there are complex reasons why abuse victims have difficulty leaving their abusers. The decision to stay is not a result of conscious choice. It is a result of psychological conditioning. In yet another effort to explain why abuse victims remain in abusive environments, the theory of learned helplessness was formed. The original theory of learned helplessness was accidentally discovered in 1965, when a psychologist named Martin Seligman and his colleagues were studying dogs to determine the relationship between learning and fear. Dogs were conditioned to associate a bell-tone with an uncomfortable sensation. The monk and I both used the same approach to quiet our egos. We detached from the reaction and became objective observers. We think we're everything we've achieved. We think we're our job. We think we are our home.

We think we are our youth and beauty. Recognize that whatever you have--a skill, a lesson, a possession, or a principle--was given to you, and whoever gave it to you received it from someone else. This isn't directly from the Bhagavad Gita, but to summarize how it sees detachment, people often say, What belongs to you today, belonged to someone yesterday and will be someone else's tomorrow. No matter what you believe in spiritually, when you recognize this, then you see that you're a vessel, an instrument, a caretaker, a channel for the greatest powers in the world. You can thank your teacher and use the gift for a higher purpose. They would be left with nothing to do but boring old reading or drawing. Children tend to take experiments like this very seriously, but find them hard. Part of the reason is that for children such tests involve real sacrifice. This was demonstrated by Walter Mischel, the psychologist who invented the famous marshmallow test. An adult taking part would know they could show restraint during the test because they could always buy a whole bagful of marshmallows on the way home if they felt like it. The small child has no such get-out. The children in the `play economy' faced the same struggles, and very few had the willpower to save up enough tokens for a toy, however much they wanted it. They had already learnt that savings were a good thing, but when faced with more immediate temptations in the other rooms, they couldn't restrain themselves. By the end of the experiment, only half the children had saved enough tokens for a toy and a quarter hadn't saved any tokens at all. For those who worked out quite early on they were going to be a long way short of being able to `buy' the toy, their overall behaviour was actually very rational. Matthew answered, I'm afraid of failing, especially since I would be giving up a successful and stable career to do this. I bring out the ladder so Matthew can climb down and discover more about his fear. I want you to respond with the first thoughts that come to your mind: If I change careers and fail, then. I will feel terrible, Matthew says. I guide him to the next rung: If I fail and feel terrible.