trauma

Why Am I So Anxious All The Time?

Journaling is a great way to release unexpressed emotions that can otherwise accumulate and make us feel anxious. Here is an example of some free-flow journaling that I did last year at a time when I was feeling particularly anxious. It helped me identify and release how I was feeling, so writing it felt very cathartic.

I am so anxious sometimes that it’s literally hard to breathe. Why, why, why, why, why? Or more importantly, what can I do about it? Where is it coming from? I’ve been contemplating this recently, and here are my thoughts: (more…)

By Graham Stoney, ago

Does The Secret and The Law Of Attraction Really Work?

Rhonda Byrne’s book The Secret is a follow-up to the phenomenally successful movie of the same name, both of which describe the so-called Law of Attraction and how to make it work for you in your life. I am a strong believer that we get more of whatever we focus on in life, even though I don’t go along with much of the new-age mumbo-jumbo in the book and movie; and there’s a major catch they barely mention.

We naturally attract more of what we focus on because of the way our brains work. The universe doesn’t just magically provide it to us, nor do our thoughts broadcast or receive information, nor can we just sit back and wait for whatever we think of to manifest themselves in our reality. Yet I still believe The Law of Attraction works when it comes to improving our experience of life; so let me explain why. (more…)

By Graham Stoney, ago

12 Adult Signs That You Experienced Emotional Abandonment In Childhood

If we were surrounded by emotionally available adult caregivers as an infant, our developing brain and nervous system learned to regulate our emotions via a healthy emotional attachment to the adults around us. However if we were surrounded by emotionally unavailable adults who routinely dismissed, minimised or suppressed both their own emotions and ours, we experienced emotional abandonment.

Being denied the emotional connection we needed as an infant can have a traumatic effect on our developing brain. Emotional abandonment can lead to Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) or what Susan Anderson calls PTSD of Abandonment in adults. The primary result is that we fail to develop healthy adult emotional regulation and can often end up feeling overwhelmed by our own emotions. This effect can last long into adulthood until we find a way to address it.

Emotional abandonment is a massive problem even in communities and families that are otherwise free of overt abuse. It’s fairly easy to recognise when you’ve been on the receiving end of physical, sexual or emotional abuse as a child and most adults recognise that reaching out for help is the appropriate, responsible and shameless thing to do.

However, with emotional abandonment the problem is fundamentally one of neglect and this is more difficult to recognise. We typically only have our own experience of childhood to compare against in identifying what is and isn’t normal or healthy. When you’re just a kid and everyone around you is avoiding emotional connection, it’s hard not to conclude that this is how to live. (more…)

By Graham Stoney, ago

How I Healed My Boys High School Choir Bullying Trauma

I went to an all-boys high school where the first grade rugby team enjoyed the highest social status. Anyone who wasn’t into aggressive body-contact sports got their head kicked in other ways, and boys on each level of the social hierarchy boosted their flagging self-esteem by bullying the boys on the level below. Any innate sensitivity in a boy was crushed both in the classroom and in the play/battle-ground.

Although I was highly intelligent and generally got good grades, this wasn’t valued as highly as sporting prowess at my high school and being a thin, nerdy kid who was the youngest in my year, I didn’t do so well at school socially.

I spent my lunch times singing in the school choir or hanging out in the computer room learning to use the new machines that the teachers didn’t know what to do with. This was a couple of years before the computer revolution went mainstream and decades before Big Bang Theory made nerds hot prime-time-viewing commodities.

Childhood bullying can leave our adult selves feeling self-conscious and hyper-vigilant to criticism from others.

Since I was a late developer my voice didn’t break until well after high school. It was embarrassing still being in the alto section of the all-boy choir as I headed into Year 11 so I quit and joined the lighting crew in the hall instead where I could feel good about solving technical problems backstage and wouldn’t have to perform in front of people and end up feeling so self-conscious.

Fast-forward 30 years to 2017 and I’m studying music full-time at a local tertiary college. My dream is to use a combination of music and comedy to teach the principles of trauma awareness and emotional intelligence to the masses. I think that would be great fun for me because along the way I’ll get to overcome my remaining insecurities in terms of freedom of self-expression, and it would also give an extra dimension of meaning and purpose to what I’m doing. (more…)

By Graham Stoney, ago

How To Deal With People Who Offend You

I’ve woken up this morning, and the world’s gone crazy again. Men with guns have killed people who offended them, plus a few other random people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Last month it was my own hometown of Sydney, this month it’s another city I love, Paris.

I am Charlie. So are you.

I am Charlie. So are you.

Social media and the newspapers are abuzz with political leaders and lay people saying they won’t cave in to “terrorists” by giving in to fear. Police and military forces have responded, and most of the gunmen and their accomplices are now dead. So are some of the hostages.

I feel deeply saddened for the people who have lost their lives, and the families they leave behind. Yet I don’t buy the rhetoric that says we won’t feel fear because that would just be giving the “terrorists” what they want. To be honest, I feel frightened and powerless when I see people much like myself caught up in hostage dramas and ending up dying at the hands of men with guns who believe their martyrdom will earn them rewards in an afterlife I don’t even believe exists.

How can I possibly hope to influence the behaviour of people who subscribe to an ideology I don’t agree with, following a religion I don’t know much about, with a spiritual leader who appears above criticism in their minds? Even within Islam, different sects have a history of killing each other over what appear to me to be relatively minor doctrinal differences (or more likely because they just wanted their land and/or possessions), so the answer doesn’t appear to lie there.

That said, if the pen really is mightier than the sword, I’m willing to give it a go.

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By Graham Stoney, ago

How To Heal Deep Emotional Wounds

Peter Saxon

Holistic Counsellor Peter Saxon

Emotional wounds from early life can have a profoundly detrimental effect on our self confidence and our ability to be successful in life.

Even wounds that we’re unaware of or reluctant to acknowledge can still strongly effect us because they operate on the unconscious or subconscious level. These wounds can lead to self-sabotaging behaviour that may be obvious to other people, while we remain oblivious to what’s going on. Yet we keep encountering similar painful experiences in life over and over, unable to pinpoint what’s causing this pattern or how to break out of it.

Often deep emotional wounds that we may be unaware of are at the heart of our ongoing suffering. Fortunately my good friend Peter Saxon is an expert on dealing with exactly this problem in men’s lives, and I recently seized the opportunity to interview him on the topic.

My favourite quote from this interview is:

“When we really get to experience our feelings directly without avoiding or grasping or going to the emotional drama of the feeling, and are actually be able to sit with it, and then look to identify what the need is underneath that feeling, and getting help to meet that need: life changes dramatically.”

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By Graham Stoney, ago