ptsd | David M Masters

Overwhelmed When Memories Come Rushing Back

Life is overwhelming and who of us does not have serious PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) from negative experiences we’ve suffered throughout life? And you are overwhelmed when memories come rucking back potentially crippling your otherwise normal day to day life.

You’re doing the best you can, going about your business of just getting by and trying to responsible and “normal,” when all of a sudden you are triggered and, BAM! Your world is suddenly rocked, and you find yourself emotionally disempowered as you’re transported through space and time to the moment when the crisis or trauma occurred.

PTSD is a spectrum which includes everything from watching your best friend get blown to pieces in Afghanistan to being punished for something you didn’t do as an innocent two-year-old and potentially anything in between.

You do your best to push those events out of your mind, bury them down somewhere in the dark recesses of your soul, and no matter how diligent you are, you can be instantly triggered without warning, and there you are again. You may have all the emotional overwhelm, either accompanied by an outburst or not, and not even be cognizant of the original source of the trauma.

You may even wonder if your sanity, or ability to cope, is at risk of being lost forever.
Not to worry, you’re not losing your mind or going crazy. Unfortunately, you’re starting to realize that you’re not that much unlike the rest of us. We’re all doing the best to get through life the best we can without making too much of a scene, and periodically, we all stumble and fall, for none of us is perfect, no matter how hard we try to project the image of perfection to those who are watching us.

Those people that you think have it all together? Believe me, they, too, are just doing the best they can. It’s just that some of us are better at it than others. And the ones who appear to be better at it, have ways to deal with being utterly overwhelmed when memories come rucking back in their life.

If you knew a little more about them, you might find out that these people who seem to have it so together are practicing methods of self-care which enable them to deal with these issues a little better when they come up, such as seeing a coach, counselor, or consultant who specializes in disseminating the skills to deal with such past trauma.

It takes a certain skill set to deal with traumatizing events from the past including effectively processing grief from the death of a loved one, the loss of a deep romantic love, a friend, companion, pet, or even a job that was an important part of your life.

These negative life events leave wounds and scars which can haunt you throughout life, if not dealt with in a positive manner.

There is no doubt that certain things happen in life that causes you to be triggered as the flood of emotions suck you into a whirlpool of helplessness and despair. So be attentive. Become the detective charged with identifying all your triggers, so that next time, you can be better prepared and have a diffusing action plan in place for the next time you’re in a situation when you start to see events line up which could potentially move you into such a state (of being triggered).

These coping skills can help you take control of your life in a safe, sane, positive, and productive manner.

Triggers instantly transport you back in time throwing you into a state of fight or flight in an order to preserve and sustain your life, even though your life may not really be at risk in the present moment. You may tend to isolate yourself from others, retreat and stop communicating, strike out in irrational rage, or turn and run. As you may have noticed, nothing good comes from running away from anything that does not impose a violent threat to your very existence either.

Therapy, getting your frustrations up and out, discovering the root causes of your angst, and dealing with them, is the best way we know of to put you back in the driver’s seat of your life, besides an instantaneous healing miracle (which has been known to happen). By eliminating all those pent up fears, frustrations, and anger which has accumulated, creating emotional wounds and scars, there is hope of a bright future for you, filled with peace, fulfillment, happiness, and joy.

Many alternative healing modalities exist and are available to you, if you only look for them, and are open to the other possibilities beyond the limited resources which available to you via traditional psychology or psychotherapy. Feel free to examine what ancient or non-traditional therapeutic models may be available and continue to use those which resonate and are effective for you and your circumstance.

If you are not spiritually-inclined, don’t be afraid to seek out more spiritually-sensitive treatment models when you feel like you are becoming overwhelmed when memories come rucking back. You might be surprised at how many spiritual methods require no religious preference or belief at all. While religion may profess a set of prerequisites to comply with prior to treatment, God does not.

Invisible Ties that Bind

The invisible ties that bind us together are unseen shackles which keep us tethered together. These energetic cords are like umbilical cords through which the person or people that to whom we are connected draws energy, our very life force, from us.

You become connected to so many people throughout your course of life, and if you continue through life without doing a bit of spiritual and emotional cord-cutting, you remain deeply connected to the people whom you’d be better off freeing yourself from.

The first cords you establish are those that connect you to your parents, good or bad, loving or hateful, these cords connect you to your parents for life, unless you can go through the process of freeing yourself from their energy drain.

You are also energetically corded to people you admired, loved, cared for, people who have befriended you, done a favor for you, have had sex with you, or abused you. You can feel the connection when you think about any of these people. That energetic charge is very active because you are still connected to these people, and they are draining your energy, not unlike energy vampires, even though they may not be currently actively participating in your life today.

Whenever you make a promise, vow, or are indebted to someone, an energetic cord is connected. The connection remains, even long after the situation is rectified, expired, or the debt has been paid, unless you go about the work of disconnecting this invisible energetic connection.

You may have gone about the work of severing your relationship with a person from your past, yet, the invisible ties that bind remain keeping you connected to a person whose energy you would be better off without. As long as you are still connected to this person (these people) you will be unable to focus your energies and abilities to achieve your highest and best.

You will still be able to maintain a better life, but while these cords remain and persist in draining your precious energy, you may be prevented from realizing your best life.

Especially in past relationships, when you have pledged your love to someone, even long after that relationship has run its course, the connection and the energy drain persists as you continue to be haunted by the person you promised to love.

Traumatic energy connections also keep you connected to individuals and incidents which you would much rather be free from, holding you back and restraining your full potential in the present moment. These negative energetic cords are a leading contributor to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

While you remain connected, you will continue to attract these people to whom you are connected or other people who share a similar vibration, life, lifestyle, negative energy, or psychological profile.

When this energy remains connected to you, it clouds your vision and will project itself onto those new people, relationships, situations, and circumstances, triggering false cues or suspicions as the energy of the connection is projected onto your viewscreen of the present.

As unfair as it might seem, it remains a matter of fact, that unless these cords are cut, and you are free from these energetic drains from the past, it will hinder your potential to live your best life, free from these shadows and connections, and it may lead to physiological decline in health, wellness, and may promote a sensitivity to disease.

Psychotherapy might suggest a violent attempt to dig down into the recesses of your mind, having to drag you through each detail of the past, which is a traumatic process in itself, and though it may be effective, can take months or years of therapy (which works incredibly well for the therapists bottom-line).

For this reason, I prefer more modern (or ancient) methods of cutting cords from the past which are far less invasive, instantaneous, and have lasting results.

Think about how you know this to be true and ask yourself if you think now is a good time to sever the invisible ties that bind you to the past, so you can live a better life, your best life, and make the world a better place.

Hit me up, if you need a referral.

Unconditional Love Makes You Angry

You’re not alone if the idea of unconditional love makes you angry.

You’ve been trained to desire unconditional love. You want to be loved for who you are, everything, the good, the bad, your adorable traits and the mistakes you have made and may make from this day forward. To feel as though you could be accepted and loved no matter what is what you long for.

You can look back on decisions and actions you’ve initiated in your past didn’t turn out the way you planned and may have turned out badly, possibly making you look and feel stupid. You know you could have done better if given a second chance. After all, your intentions were pure when you did it or allowed it to happen.

To be loved, regardless of the stupid things you’ve done in the past, not judged for those things you could have done better and understood as if anyone in the same situation might have done the same thing seems reasonable. And this is what you long for.

While this kind of unconditional love is what you desire, to imagine the offering of such a love to another feels like a preposterous proposition. This is when the idea of unconditional love makes you angry.

What? Love someone no matter what? Do you think I’ve learned nothing from all the pain I’ve endured throughout the course of my life? Have you lost your mind?

If I’ve learned anything, I know you can’t trust anyone, particularly someone you care about, and the more you care about them, the more they will hurt you, and the less you can trust them.

You have surrounded yourself with a protective forcefield in an effort to keep yourself safe from disappointment or risk of being hurt.

Congratulations. You’ve built for yourself and voluntarily checked-in to your hospital fortress where you can find the love you seek from within and heal, because life has been hard, and you need this time to focus on you, isolated from potential harm.

No one would blame you for feeling bad, sad, or mad while suffering from your wounds in your love hospital for recovery. While recovering from these wounds, of course, the idea of unconditional love makes you angry, anyone else in the same situation would feel the same way.

You are suffering from a form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), not unlike any other form of PTSD.

If it weren’t for the support of others in their own various stages of love wound recovery, you would be totally alone and isolated in your fortress hospital, and with others who have are also suffering from love’s wounds you develop a supportive camaraderie. This kind of support can prolong your healing as you feel more comfortable in treatment than taking the risk of re-engaging in life outside the walls.

Isn’t the idea of checking one’s self into an isolated healing environment to become well enough to leave the facility and start to live your life again? To not do so transforms your hospital into a prison of your own making to serve out our own self-imposed life sentence. You needn’t suffer the extreme self-abuse of exercising your own love death penalty.

You’re better than that.

You can heal. In fact, you may be far more healed than you believe yourself to be. How many completely healthy people are in hospitals or recovery programs far past their healing because it’s safer to be in the hospital than to face your fears outside in the real world?

It’s time to get up and ambulate. Get outside and exercise your ability to love.

You can still exercise love when the idea of unconditional love makes you angry. No need to push through to unconditional love, but to start loving a little at a time would be highly beneficial.

You might find it helpful to see others as just like you.

You understand yourself so well and you would never intentionally do anything to hurt anyone else, unless in that moment, you felt like you had no other choice, as you were in fully engulfed in the fight-or-flight response. You felt like you had no other option(s).

You don’t have to love what someone else does, but you can still love the person.

Isn’t that what you want?

That is not to say that you allow anyone to abuse you. You have the right and obligation to separate yourself from dangerous situations, but let those situations be an authentic potential risk to you, your body, your mind, or your spirit. Don’t let your fear-inspired imagination to override your ability to find potential danger everywhere you look.

Instead, look to understand and realize that the person with whom you are feeling conflict is looking back at you in the mirror. If you were that person, having lived the same life, you would have done the same thing.

You can feel compassion for that person (not feeling “sorry” for them because that insinuates your superiority), trying to understand what it might like to be like to have to feel as though you might feel like you have to live life, like that. It could make you sad, and even react in a less defensive manner.

Even if the idea of unconditional love makes you angry, don’t let it stop you. Find ways to exercise your love. Start with letting friends in a little deeper. Find a child to love. Make occasions for you to engage in activities that you love, and allow your activities to grow to include more people to participate in those things that you love in public.

Get up. Get out of your love hospital, even if only briefly at first, and one day you will find you no longer rely on your self-restraint and self-imposed love prison sentence.

You have complete control of your release date. You get to leave early based on your healing and good behavior if you want to.

Maybe today is the day.

Write down today’s date, mark it on the calendar, and walk out on your own accord.

Set yourself free.

The greatest love is waiting for you.

See you at the Soulmate Wizardry event.

Trauma-Inspired Programming

How Does Past Trauma Affect Your Life Today?

Not unlike an Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithm, throughout our whole life, we collect data and develop programs that run in the background in an effort to understand and allow us to perform better as we encounter new situations and circumstances.

We run thousands of tiered If-Then-Else programs in the background, our subconscious, in an effort to have better experiences as we go forth into an unknown future. This is how we learn. This is how we grow, and this is how we limit our potential and quality of life.

At the moment in time that a program was initiated, it may have been appropriate and fit for the situation at hand, but now in the present day, the old program is still running, and it may not be serving you in the now. In fact, it may be hindering your potential for living a better life.

Let’s say you had a parent that would leave you unexpectedly alone when all you really wanted was a little love and attention. At first, you would desire of cry for attention to no avail. You never received the love and attention you sought. After a while you wrote a program to help you to deal with the situation, so you could go on with life.

IF your parent left,

THEN you would change your expectation, assuming they would not return at all.

“Fine,” you might think, “I will just find comfort in my time alone with myself. I don’t need anyone.”

ELSE the parent returns, you have already asserted confidence in your own independence, you might reject their presence, encouraging them to leave,

“Why don’t you just go enjoy yourself elsewhere? I don’t really need you here.”

You reason its better to reject than be rejected, plus the pain is far less severe by lowering your expectations, creating boundaries, and enforcing them. All at the young, tenderest of ages.

Even at such an early age, when you may not have been able to form the words, you were a survivor. You developed a program that made you stronger, more independent.

If you never recognize it, delete, or reprogram it, that program continues to run in the background to protect you and keep you safe, even if it no longer serves your best interests. Left to run on its own, it will affect all areas of your life, from career to social interactions, and the quest for love.

That’s just one program among thousands, or more likely millions, of programs accumulating in your subconscious machine code.

Hopefully, by now, your starting to realize that you are the Master Programmer (MP). By taking the time to go back and check your old programming codes, you can delete old programs which no longer serve you, and/or replace them with newer, more useful programs which will empower you to live your best life.

SOURCE CODE SEARCH

Search for the programs by reviewing the traumas of your life, year by year.

Make a T-Chart for every year of your life. Title it by your year of age and the calendar year.

On the left side of the page, list any traumatic event you can think of.

On the right side of the page, across from each traumatic event, detail how the trauma affected your life. This will help to identify the program which needs to either be deleted or replaced.

This process is never complete because as you start to look for trauma and either delete or reprogram the subroutines, more data becomes accessible.

I’m About to Explode!

Everyone deals with trauma and crisis differently. With me, and people like me, no one on the outside will ever know what we are going through. People like us, put on our happy face and keep going, regardless of the inner struggles we may be dealing with.

Why?

Because we would never concern others with our problems, when there are so many who depend on us for strength and our ability to deliver, follow through and execute, no matter what; and this is where we shine. We excel at being dependable and demonstrate relentless integrity.

I'm about to explode and you don't even know. — I’m about to explode and you don’t even know.

This requires mountainous internal work behind the scenes, if there is any hope of continuing our pace of service to others, our communities, or the world at large.

Our inner struggles could be enormous, but we maintain an even keel for the greater good, even though inside,

I’m About to Explode!

And you don’t even know.

Thank God for those of us who are highly committed, dedicated to serving the greater good and on a higher personal spiritual path because we connect to (or create) resources for ourselves that enable us to push through life’s adversities, making our way safely to the other side. And no one is the wiser.

No one has any idea the deep inner work we go through, often alone, to make it to the next level, and this is the greatest gift of enlightenment and self-empowerment. We do this, and the greatest honor in maintaining this most personal sacred space, is finding that one person who wants to do likewise.

In our society, this attitude of individualized deep inner self-work is shunned.

Granted, their surface rationalization is a good one. They say, while solo inner work might be highly effective, so many people do not have the strength to survive the process; they end up more broken than when they started the process, may realize rapid decline in health, an increase of disease, and potential for committing suicide; all valid points.

Underneath this rationale exists a more sinister plot to control the mental health of individuals and the population en masse. Individuality is discouraged, and taking an individualized approach for one’s personal expansion or evolution is clearly a rejected concept due to the impossibility of being able to control one of these radicals, not to mention a world full of them.

The answer? Create social structures where we can contain them in their prisons, some with walls and others with invisible walls of containment, which we secretly control (or at least monitor and influence). This keeps us “in charge,” and we’ll use a bit of sleight-of-hand to make them think it’s their idea, and we’ll provide enough variety, diversity and opposing ideas to keep them polarized against each other to keep them from uniting, greatly reducing the threat it would create for our control, if they could unify, potentially taking down the entire system.

So, they let us have our own boxes of clinics, social programs, clubs, organizations, societies and religions to keep us moving in separate directions in groups, adding to the confusion. Only they are not confused, we are. They look at all of this as a perfect construct to keep us distracted in groups, focused and polarized against some other group.

They sit back in their easy chairs made of power, money and gold, and smile, high-fiving each other for a job well done.

But then there is me, and you, and others like us, who are seeing things from a different point of view for a change, and “change” is the name of the game.

We are willing to let it look like they’re controlling us, but they’re not.

We are on our own, individualized, highly personal path, and there’s nothing they can do about it.

Sure, they can try to extricate, exorcise or diagnose us with an incurable mental illness, such as individuality psychosis, and threaten us with mandatory medication, hospitalization, imprisonment or death, but we cannot and will not be stopped.

I can already hear the clamoring of those in opposition of this expanded, illusive, yet true freedom, and there are those who would ask questions, like,

“Aren’t you just trying to develop another ‘group’ not unlike those other groups you say are part of the problem?”

The answer is, both “Yes” and “No.” Yes, we are a group. No, we are not a group that sees ourselves (collectively or any single one of us) as separate from any other group(s), but a group of individuals including and transcending all members and all groups in an effort to be uniquely “one,” each of us as individuals, and “one,” together as a whole, which cannot and will not be confined, once critical mass is achieved.

There is a revolution coming and it is powered by the evolutionary power of individual hearts set ablaze for a better world.

Things are changing, and we are that change; one heart at a time.

Carpe diem!

The Past is the Past

One of the most debilitating conditions humans can encounter is that of emotional pain, from loss, abuse or regret. Interestingly, we suffer this pain independently of any physical condition, yet the physiological distress can be as serious as the psychological discomfort.

Indeed our thoughts control our emotions, and our physiological wellbeing. When the past haunts us in our present state of mind, the past is not in the past as it keeps impeding on the present becoming a component of “now,” instead of being safely stored in the past where it belongs.

When one has suffered a psychological trauma (which can be demonstrated physiologically as illness or disease) as a result of something that has happened in the past (like, post traumatic stress disorder, for instance), the standard response from someone who hasn’t walked a mile in your shoes is, “Just get over it. The past is the past.”

Ah, “the past is the past;” the mantra of the psychopath. That’s what a psychopath says when he or she has committed a significant transgression, and expects you to disregard the past because it cannot be changed (here’s where they insert assertions about how much they’ve changed, assuring you that you would never be at-risk again) all in an effort to set you up for the next unexpected blow.

In general, psychopaths are unique in that they have no feelings, no feeling of love, remorse, guilt… they are psychologically bullet-proof (or bankrupt)… they have no need to seek forgiveness, nor do they accept responsibility for their missteps… To those of us who suffer emotionally from being abused, wronged or traumatized, this would be considered a superpower… and in some ways, it is.

Bottling up suppressed emotional trauma related to the past weighs heavily on the normal operating condition of the human body and is not an effective approach to dealing with PTSD.

Thankfully, there are therapeutic models that help people deal with traumatic incidents that have been experienced in the past that continue to thwart our sense of well-being. Enter what I refer to as, “Time Machine Therapy.”

I know that the idea of a time machine seems like a bit too much science fiction for the average person… but time travel has been accomplished using the power of the mind for thousands of years, though some intellectuals insist that it’s only been about 150 years… It doesn’t really matter how long it’s been, what does matter is that it is an effective process that can have valuable healing power today.

With access to this potent therapeutic modality we have challenged that famous catch-all phrase, “the past is the past,” because now, we have a method not only to access the past, but to manipulate or even change the past.

It’s also important to have access to the skills that it takes to let go of the past, to disconnect the physiological connection that leads to discomfort and stress. There are many methods available to help you overcomes traumatic loss or change in your life, and to put you back in the driver’s seat of your life.

Being distracted by the concerns about one’s past makes it difficult to navigate one’s present. That is why it is imperative to deal with the issues of the past for a normal person (does not apply to psychopaths or sociopaths) in order to not have your cognitive resources bogged-down with the burden of yesterday.

It is imperative to begin to live in the present, and you can get you from there to here and powerfully empowered to be the best that you can be.

You might ask, “When accessing or altering the past, do we still retain the lessons learned?”

That’s a good question; and the answer depends on the client. In most cases, we can retain the memories, disconnecting the feelings connected to them. In rare cases, entire memories need to be altered or erased in order to preserve a healthy perspective of the client.

A common response to that is, “That sounds like brainwashing!”

You may associate a lot of negative associations to the idea of tampering with one’s memories, but this is done at the request – and with the full cooperation and consciousness – of the client; and in times of emotional crises time machine therapy is a healthy alternative to a condition that might otherwise be unmanageable.

In the event that wiping the slate clean is necessary, the client is always equipped with the combination to the mental safe that keeps those memories locked safely away, if it becomes important to access them once again.

Once you are in charge of your life again, you will find yourself making positive progress, changing your future and the world for a better life, your best life and make the world a better place. You may feel regret from opportunities that were lost as a result of your previous struggles with issues from your past – as though you have lost a piece of your past that may have been better spent – and may have thought that you lost your chance for this or that… Not true. Once you are back in the present you can be and do more than you may have ever imagined because you are more empowered and aware than ever before.

You will no longer be limited by false inhibitions or past burdens. Everyone deals with the issues of their past in different ways, and there are a quantity of tools and techniques that ensure that you can have a positive outlook for you and those whom you care about.