Elephants ambling along the path they created (South Africa).
Wow, I can't believe it's already November! I hope you've had a restful weekend and your week is going well. If you live in the U.S. I hope you'll take some time today to vote!
Today I want to share a poignant healing experience I had over the weekend when I attended a two-day workshop called, "Essential Skills in Comprehensive Energy Psychology: Level 1" taught by Kristin Holthuis, MD, DCEP, ACEP Consultant and Trainer.
Take good care of yourself!
The Untold Story Behind Being Late
Revealing the Root Causes of Trauma
"Who would like to volunteer to come up and work on an issue?" asked Dr. Kristin Holthuis, the teacher of "Essential Skills in Comprehensive Energy Psychology: Level 1."
I doubted that Kristin could resolve my issue, yet I still hoped and raised my arm to volunteer anyway.
As I stood beside her facing 50 students, she asked, "What issue would you like to work on?"
"Well," I said, deeply embarrassed, "I have a problem with being 15 minutes late to everything. The more stressed I am about something, the later I will be. For example, sometimes I can be an hour late to a party."
"How do you feel when you're late?" She asked.
"I feel bad." I answered, not wanting to reveal or deal with my issue.
"And what else do you feel?"
"I feel embarrassed and 'not good enough.'" I admitted.
When did this problem start?" Kristin asked me.
"I think it started during residency training. I was so busy with work, being on call, and raising my daughter (less than 1 y.o.), I ended up being late all the time to morning rounds. After that, it became more and more of a habit. Maybe it had to do with the feeling that time was something I owned, and I wanted to keep some of it for myself. Maybe it had something to do with being angry and tired of being bossed around during training. I've tried everything to heal it, but nothing has worked. It's probably some kind of PTSD thing," I admitted.
Kristin picked up on PTSD (Posttraumatic stress disorder) and emphasized to the class the importance of trauma as an underlying cause for my tardiness. She used the techniques we learned in class to "unblock" the resistance to healing from the trauma of being bossed around, and wanting to keep some time to myself by being late. Then, she tapped on the acupressure points related to healing the actual trauma of being bossed around.
Then, she rechecked for any remaining blockages to healing my problem with being late and found that there was at least one more. But this one was hard to find. So, she asked me where I thought the blockage came from.
I told her that being late may have something to do with how medical training made me feel "not good enough." I shared how Dr. W---, the cardiologist for my first clinical rotation, was mean and denigrating. I was paired with another medical student who had a Ph.D. in pharmacology, and Dr. W---, who was a sadist if I ever met one, generally called on me first because the other medical student always knew the answers.
His questions were so obscure (stuff that he had never taught, and if I ever learned it, I've long forgotten) that I would have to study for hours the night before to prepare. Medical students call it "pimping" during morning rounds. A lot of times, I wouldn't know the right answer. It was totally humiliating.
"I went into med school feeling on top of the world, feeling confident about myself because I had good grades and did well in class. But by the time I left medical school, I felt stupid and "not good enough."
As I talked about the "pimping" done by Dr. W---, my voice trembled and fresh tears fell. Brusquely, I wiped them from my eyes with both hands. To my surprise, I heard the class breathe a soft sound in unison at my gesture--a sound so filled with compassion and empathy I felt accepted and loved in spite of what I had shared about my inadequacies.
Kristin cleared the blockage that kept the trauma from healing and then she asked me to tap on the acupressure points for resolving the trauma, shame, and anger. We used muscle testing to retest if the trauma had been reduced in intensity. It showed significant reduction.
Afterward, Kristin shared that she totally related to my experiences as a medical student. Student after student came over to thank me. I felt like a minor celebrity.
Things shifted after that. I stopped being late to things. Today, I arrived ten minutes early to a weekly appointment that I had been late to 99.9% of the time for the past two years. My mentor was quite surprised, and we talked about what I learned at the workshop.
In a profound and deeply moving way, I learned as a healer that trauma does get stuck in our lives and end up repeating itself in symbolic ways through our actions and choices. The same feelings are brought up over and over again. As we recognize and heal these traumas at a subconscious energy level, these symbols of our past suffering disappear, and we are free to move on.
I hope that my story will motivate you to explore the world of energy medicine and learn some of the techniques in Thought Field Therapy, Emotional Freedom Technique, Tapas Acupressure Technique, Logosynthesis, and my own technique, Empower Energy Technique, to help you heal from the hidden, subconscious root causes of your problems.