Focus:
Evaluating our needs for the future and applying the most supportive steps needed for our personal needs.
Repetition:
I trust God (or intuition) to lead me to the answers that I need for my present and my future health.
Self-Diagnosis of Mind, Heart, and Soul
Self-diagnosis extends to matters of the mind, heart and soul. As a result of our modern human existence, we find ourselves in a space where almost all, if not all, humans have trauma. Again, we do not need a diagnosis. There is absolutely nothing wrong with going in for a diagnosis and seeking support. Chances are, you already know within yourself what the diagnosis is, or at least that something needs attention and support.
We have already built a beautiful foundation of nutrition and are in ketosis at this point, both of which are incredible for what is casually called “mental health.” We are also now forming a plan for finding our nutrient deficiencies at the cellular level, doing cleanses, and seeking any other testing needed.
Although we have focused a lot on the nervous system and trauma, I want to address some things we often overlook.
Self-Image
Your self-image is created by your past experiences and your reactions to those experiences. Pause and think of this for just a moment. Everything you believe about yourself comes from your childhood, your experiences in education, how your parents interacted with you, your friendships and relationships, your work thus far, your successes and failures, etc.
The human memory is not flawless. If you revisit a positive memory repeatedly, it can become enhanced, and you may see the moment as cinematic. This is also true for trauma memories, and we tend to revisit those many more times than the pleasant memories. There is great value in bringing up good memories occasionally for the sweetness of them, while being sure not to live in them or compare your present to them. There is also great value in rewriting traumatic memories and forgetting them.
Our self-image should be one that we believe we have right now, and we can believe anything we choose. For example, someone with a drug problem is not helped in any way by identifying as a drug addict. They could be served greatly by telling themselves a thousand times a day, “I am grateful to be healed from drug addiction.” Maybe it is not the only tool, but it is an incredibly powerful one.
Let us radically remove the lens through which we view ourselves, the lens of past experiences, and begin to build a new self-image. Self-image is such a tiny part of us in the grand story of our creation and life. It is not who we really are, it is only how we view ourselves.
The Cell Danger Response
When we are in fight, flight, freeze or fawn, our cell danger response shuts down our detoxification pathways. If we are often revisiting trauma, our body does not actually know we are not in the trauma, because our brain has yet to process it and store the memories properly. We want to teach the body that we are safe, so we have to believe we are! Having an incorrect self-image can certainly be a missing piece of our healing journey.
For Catholics and Orthodox
For Catholics and Orthodox, we want to look to the Saints as examples to guide us in understanding who we are. Many of the Saints did not lead saintly lives before being rescued by Christ and had to work hard to right their self-image. Our identity is in Christ, and that can only be pure, charitable, patient, modest, gentle, moving slowly and purposefully through life as we love God and others. We are not our sin, our illness, or our past experiences. Those are outside of who we are.
Search through the Sacred Scriptures to see how God sees you, how He views His precious flock. Think about the holy family members we have in Scripture. Imagine how they viewed themselves, compare it to how you see them, and then to how you know God sees them.
The Desert Fathers and Mothers, the Ancient Fathers and Mothers of the Church, used amazing nervous system regulation techniques, including what we would now call limbic retraining! This is why we have the beautiful prayers and meditations handed down from the Apostles, from the Early Church, and continuing until very recently.
We can ask Our Lady/Theotokos to reveal who we really are. We can pray for this and journal, draw, or simply sit and listen to Her answers. We can ask our Guardian Angel to reveal what our true image is. We can ask Saints to pray for these things to be revealed to us. We have the Holy Rosary and the Holy Prayer Rope to meditate on the Life of Christ, and that tells us who we really are!
We have so many ancient prayers: to bind evil spirits, for consecration, for illumination of the mind, to help us remember the things we should and forget the things we should not, etc. We have the graces that allow us to offer up every suffering as a gift, holy and unto the Lord. If we do not already, we can learn to actually see the beauty in suffering from a heavenly perspective. We can offer our past, present and future sufferings to save the souls of others, or we can ask Our Lady to disperse them as She wills.
Keep a journal or sketchbook, write poems or songs about this part of your journey.
For Protestant Christians
Protestant Christians can search the Holy Scriptures to keep passages close to their hearts, write them down, memorise them, and find songs that are purely Scripture. Immerse yourself in prayer and meditation, especially in the Psalms. Take 15 to 30 minutes per day to visualise scenes of the Life of Christ while saying, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here,” or any verse that reminds you of your true identity. You can create a time of meditation where you nail each of your past sufferings to the Holy Cross, lay them at the feet of Jesus, or use any preferred way of offering them as a gift. Journal, draw, sing about who you are, and build the new self-image that God wishes for you to see.
For Non-Religious People
For non-religious people, spend 15 to 30 minutes a day imagining who you want to be. Create a new lens and only see yourself through this! Some may find it helpful to build a whimsical storybook character and narrate their day as this character. Meditate on the hibernation of bears, the slumbering of trees, and connect it to your time of healing, your releasing of trauma and the things you should allow to pass. Journal about this identity, draw your new self, write poems about this transformation.
We Are Not Our Experiences
Let us all think of something we find incredible in nature. We will use a horse in this example. A horse is beautiful and powerful, intelligent, and fills us with awe to watch. Imagine a horse running as fast as it can across an open field, nurturing its young, or a stallion rearing and whinnying its call on a misty morning.
Now think of all the things we do not even understand about the horse. It too has a microbiome, a nervous system, past experiences, a “personality,” communication abilities with its own species and those outside, an animal spirit, memories and curiosities. We cannot ever fully understand the vast mysteries of just one horse. Our view of ourselves is limited in this way, and even further limited when we only see ourselves as a patchwork quilt of the past.
Trauma is a very real part of the time in which we live. We do not have to keep it with us. We can see ourselves differently, not to focus on self, but to release the focus of self. It is easy to be insecure (which is actually a form of pride, because the focus is still on self) when we have experienced trauma or illness.
But we are not our experiences or our bodies! We are something mystical, whole and beautiful, made by our Creator, and realising this frees us to do the real work here on earth until our work is done.
The real work is to have great reverence for God, for Creation (which includes one another), to serve one another with joy, peace and charity. We have the great privilege of being beneath the sun, eating real food, feeling the grass beneath our wiggly toes (or other bits, even if we have no toes!), to view the bird in flight, to cry with one another, to laugh, to rest, to pray, to explore, and to find solace in suffering.
We gain humility and the understanding that we simply do not understand everything, and we do not need to. We are earth-children with many daily needs, and there is much mystery to this life. Let us lean into it, all together.