Getting Past the Past

Our lives are an endless series of events - life lessons - that are experiences we file away and from which we hopefully learn. We tend to repeat the steps of those events because it is familiar to us (whether it was a good or bad experience). We make crucial decisions as a result of these events and how we handle the experience. Decisions about who we are and what we expect from the world around us.

Experiences make up our Life’s Knowledge

Some of our events are positive and we experience love, support, success, closeness. These positive events (which is a totally subjective analysis by each of us as we experience the event) are important for making us feel safe and capable. When these events happen early in life (up to say 5 or 6 years old) they usually involve our family members so they also help us form our vision of our primary relationships - first with parents and siblings and later with our love relationships and friendships.

We have other experiences that most would label negative. These incidents can run the gamut from mistakes, accidents, hurt, and loss to abuse and trauma. When these kind of experiences occur, we tend to remember the pain (keeping the wound open) or try to avoid the feelings by blocking the experience from our consciousness. Either way, we ultimately turn over much of the control of our life to experiences we won’t allow to heal or try to avoid.

The Path to Wholeness

The path to wholeness then becomes not to ignore the past but to incorporate those lessons learned into our present.

Our world understanding is different as adults than when we were kindergarteners. Our skills and abilities are much more advanced than when we were toddlers. The outcome of challenging situations can be different too.

Early Recollections

Skip and I used to facilitate 3-day intensive personal growth weekends. We illustrated the negative side of an early childhood experience above with this simplified idea.

A child is going along through his life and something happens. He hits a brick wall. He experiences a negative event, has a uncomfortable response and makes a decision about the incident - “it’s hurts too much” or “I’m bad” or maybe “I can’t handle it” and probably “I don’t want to feel this ever again!” He has decided he can’t get past the brick wall.

Now the little boy has grown up and something else happens. He runs into another wall that feels like the brick wall when he was young. He remains stuck in the idea that it hurts too much and he can’t handle it. He’s not in the present moment enough to realize he has new skills and abilities so he can simply step over the brick wall.

As a child, we can run into painful situations. We have limited abilities to have those negative events. But we often fail to notice how capable we are as adults. We have additional tools:

• our learning from the past

• our physical strength

• our words

• our cunning

• our ability to heal

All these skills can help us handle life’s worse and heal.

Dealing with Severe Trauma

Let’s be clear. I am NOT saying that we should soldier through every challenging situation. Nor am I saying we should remain unaffected by life’s worse. Indeed there are experiences that become survival events either for our bodies or our soul (or both). If you have experienced an extreme event, chronic abuse or sexual assault, for example, you may need help unwinding that experience and I encourage you to seek a counselor to help you work through this trauma. All trauma victims deserve a voice, deserve to take their power back, and deserve to heal. Call us, call a help line, call someone - take back your power!

All of us have had experiences and made decisions about ourselves and about our world. These decisions will form our beliefs and expectations about how our world is likely to be. And unfortunately they also an internal list of “things we can’t handle or should avoid at all costs”. Sort of the world’s worst “to-don’t list”.

We help clients move through these obstacles every day. We have a wonderful process that helps people unpack this original experience and deal with it in a new way. And to take back your power so you can create more joy in your life!

Are you ready for more joy in your life?

Healing Warrior Hearts

The Milwaukee-based Healing Warrior Hearts organization guides our wounded military veterans to a new place that heals and strengthens their hearts. Whether their wounds are physical, mental or spiritual, the gathering of a supportive community, unconditional love and the absence of judgment create the safety required for healing to occur.

Veterans will experience support from fellow veterans as well as civilians who are committed to providing the safety and space needed to complete their work and begin their healing. The vets tell their stories to compassionate staff and fellow participants knowing there is compassion and confidentiality. The local support continues after the weekend retreat providing a bond for all the participants as they continue to allow their hearts to heal.

Photo by Unsplash

The weekend experience is free of charge for the veteran participants. The retreats are currently being held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (healingwarriorhearts.org) and Katy, Texas (texasforheroes.org). There is a similar weekend for veteran couples. One or both members of the pair can be a veteran. Both versions of the weekend are free of charge for the participants including food and lodging.

The program is designed, led by compassionate and empathetic certified instructors supported by a volunteer staff dedicated to the veterans’ healing. For years, Skip has proudly been one of the certified instructors for the couples’ retreats.

Please consider attending a retreat or recommending it to a veteran friend or family member.

Contact the Milwaukee or Katy organizations to find out more information or to enroll in an upcoming weekend.

Katy, TX texasforheroes.org 281.395.9152

Milwaukee, WI www.healingwarriorhearts.org 414.374.5433