​How many Christmas presents have you bought this year? How many have you received?
The best present we can give to anyone who has been abused is presence. Yes, presence. Presence, or being present, is about putting our attention onto what is happening right here, right now.
Those of us who have been abused have trained ourselves to not be present. When we were being traumatized, the present moment was very uncomfortable, so we taught ourselves to focus on our imaginations, or on nothing at all, in order to survive.
Now, hopefully we are in a safe environment, and we have the opportunity to relearn enjoying being present to what is happening in the moment.
The present wasn’t pleasant. Our smart younger selves found some pretty effective ways to change our thoughts from the hurt, to thoughts that were more comfortable. When no one was taking care of us, we discovered techniques that assisted us to pay attention to something more pleasant.            
One of my techniques was counting. I often paid attention to numbers during the trauma because numbers were safe. I was never hurt by numbers and they were always there for me to “count” on. Some times I saw them in my head rushing one after the other, tumbling and crowding each other out. I would count faster and faster to keep myself from paying attention to the abuse that was happening. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,25,26,27,28,40,41,41,43,80,81,82,83,84,…
The counting became a habit. For example, I counted stairs as I ascended or descended, electric poles when I rode to school on the school bus, and cars we met on the road.
We can learn to be present. When we are present we are emotionally available to ourselves and others. We aren’t regretting the past of worrying about the future. Instead of preoccupation with past and future, we can be fully engaged in the immediate moment, and therefore improve our relationships by being engaged in the current events of our lives.
Being present to someone else means making them the focus of our attention.  We may or may not agree with them, but we give them one hundred percent of our attention. When we have healed our old fear based beliefs and created new empowering ones, we can be present to our life situations. The present of presence is closer relationships with ourselves and our loved ones.
Some quotes from my therapist as reported in my book,  Kathy Said, You’re Not Lost to Me:
Page 91: When I felt hopeless, believing I would never live peacefully,
Kathy said, “You are feeling hopeless today because you felt hopeless as a child and something has triggered those feelings now. Your life is not hopeless, and letting yourself feel those feelings today will reduce the reservoir of old hopeless feelings. They are just feelings, they are not reality.”
Page 111: I was constantly struggling to think, to put two thoughts together.
Kathy said, “Your brain works perfectly fine, there is just a lot of old pain in the way right now.”
 
I still get triggers. Recently, I made a mistake and was embarrassed to admit it, so I checked in with a friend and did healing technique, an Option Dialogue, to help me discover my beliefs that were causing my discomfort. I was still holding some feelings from being seven or eight years old, when I made the mistake of throwing another child’s homework away, thinking it was trash. When the teacher found it, and asked who had thrown it in there, I said I had, she called me in front of the room and told me how ashamed of me she was. I was too afraid to tell her I had thought it was trash and was just trying to be a “good girl.” Then my teacher called my mother who, when I got home, also berated me and punished me for throwing the boy’s homework away, and I was too afraid to tell her the reality of it because I believed she wouldn’t listen to me anyway. In the dialogue session I was able to feel the feelings that I had not given myself permission to feel as a child, and heal from the incident. Now, when I think of that incident, I think of two innocent children at school; instead of seeing it with fear and pain, I see us as open, happy seven year olds who made a mistake and can laugh about it and love each other. There is such freedom in that!
We give a present to ourselves and the world when we heal our past trauma, discover the beliefs that are keeping us stuck, and live openly, lovingly in the now. Eckhart Tolle wrote a book entitled, The Power of Now. That is where our power is, and what a gift, present, that is to the entire world.
 

Nobody told us no one can hurt our feelings. In fact, my mother often told me and my siblings that we had hurt each other’s feelings. “Don’t take the extra cookie, your sister will feel bad because she had only one.” Or “If you don’t wait for your brother to go to the store with you, you will make him feel bad.”
 
We are responsible for the way we feel. If somebody does something we don’t like and we feel angry, sad, discouraged, etc. it is because of some belief that we have, not because of what the other person does. When we take responsibility for your feelings, we are in the driver’s seat of our lives.
 
Often, people or circumstances in our lives aren’t the way we want them, but blaming the people or circumstances (the stimulus) doesn’t rectify the situation and we feel bad. We can decide to feel comfortable, and decide what we want to do in the situation and make that decision with much more clarity when we aren’t stuck in uncomfortable feelings.
 
We can’t hurt anyone else’s feelings and they can’t hurt ours. It is only our beliefs that create uncomfortable feelings – every time.

This path into the woods reminds me of my journey into emotional healing. We can’t see where it is going, but we know it is going somewhere. See how the sun shines through the trees to light the way? There are way-showers lighting our way. You put one foot in front of the other and walk the path because the opportunity exists to be well and feel love, peace and joy for the rest of your life. I thank God every day for my path to healing.

My book, Kathy Said, You’re Not Lost to Me offers some sign posts along the path.

Is it possible that we can just choose happiness?

Happiness is really a choice. We are making choices about how we are going to feel all day long, every day.

Now that I am aware that my thoughts and beliefs are what create my feelings, I have more control over myself and my life. I always believed that my feelings of distress, fear, depression, etc. just happened to me and I had no control over them. I also believed that joy, love, and happiness just happened when things were going the way I wanted them to.

I believed if things didn’t go my way, it was cause for unhappiness because “Maybe if I’m not unhappy about this, I didn’t want it enough.” I had to be really unhappy to show how much I had wanted something that didn’t come about.

Reality is, we can choose happiness no matter what is going on around us. Then we have more energy left to go for what we want, instead of wasting it on anxiety, worry, fear, etc.

Choose Happiness today!

Recalculate

Do you ever miss a turn or take a wrong turn while driving, even though Gertrude Power Spinster (GPS) has plainly told you the way to go? As soon as Gertrude realizes our mistake (or sometimes our conscious decision) of going a different way she says, “Recalculate.”

Gertrude never says, “Why did you go that way, Stupid?” or “What’s wrong with you for doing that?” or “Who taught you how to drive?”

Reliable gracious Gertrude Power Spinster just says, “Recalculate.” No judgment, no recrimination – she just starts over from where we are and goes on.

When we make a decision and decide it isn’t going to turn out the way we had hoped, we can take a lesson Gertrude (GPS). Rather than spend time and energy punishing ourselves as bad or wrong for making that decision, we can just recalculate and go from there. No need to berate ourselves for our decisions, just recalculate and choose the route that seems best from where we are.

I am excited about my newly published book, Kathy Said, You’re Not Lost to Me!

This is a self-help book that gives insight, hope, and
 healing from fear, anxiety, depression, and childhood trauma. 

When family, friends, and even God feel too far away to
reach and emotional pain seems to take over, Kathy
Said: You’re Not Lost to Me is a book to be read, and then referred to again
and again, for solid guidance and inspiration. Readers will be validated, calmed
and inspired, reading the words and experiences of someone like themselves, who
triumphed over extreme emotional upheavals, hopelessness, and
depression.

This small, succinct, and healing book is formatted with
one page for each bit of wisdom that Kathy, my therapist, said, and a situation
in which it helped me. 

Having healed from a “fragmented psyche” and
post-traumatic stress disorder (resulting from a childhood of violence and
abuse) I now lead a peaceful, happy, joy filled life every day. Kathy’s advice
seemed to run through many of my conversations with other people. I often heard
myself saying, “Kathy said this” or “Kathy said that.” 
My clients, as well as friends and associates, find these bits of wisdom
helpful, and I believe others will also.  



Wishing you love, joy and Peace.