This blog post traverses some deep and tender edges that are quite common for those with persistent bodily sensations. The very edges of darkness where we feel like life is not worth living anymore. Let’s talk about it.
Please read this knowing that you are not alone, and feeling the intense parts of life is part of reconnecting with ourselves, our body, and our purpose. It all belongs. For 1:1 support with me, you can reach out to me here if you are feeling like co-exploring any of your own edges. There is nothing wrong with you, you do not need fixing and I can support you to feel more equipped and confident with your own inner darkness.
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Imagine me walking through an arid featureless landscape, alone, no water or food. There is thunder rumbling and lightning bolts shooting closer by the second. The noise is exquisitely chaotic. There is no shelter.
I’m parched, sunburnt and despite pitch-perfect efforting, I’m out of ideas. Lost.
I have no map, no compass, no phone and nowhere else to be except right here, deserted. The darkness closes in. There are no stars, no moon. There is no shape or form at all, anywhere. The atmosphere is thick, dense, and black.
I rest into my breath and body. Heart pounding and every tiny strand of hair raised. I’m naked to the dark world.
I search for a clue, a foothold, a rock, a sign of light, but there is nothing and no one.
The seduction of death sings to me with her lovely hummingbird voice. I want to die and return to the atomic song of oneness; it feels so lovely to rest in the idea of dying.
But I do not die, I keep breathing. Life thrums through me. Sigh.
I’m at another Sacred threshold. I’m asked to choose life, over and over. Again and again.
So I keep doing that. This life gig. It keeps rolling. And I question everything including my own purpose.
Why am I here? What am I contributing to our collective? How can I honour my sense of interconnectedness and live in a world with so many fractures?
It’s hard. It is tremendously lonely in the deep, arid places. And it cycles, over and over. Returning again, to more darkness, year after year.
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First, suicidal moods are within the healthy scope being human (attempting suicide is an entirely different situation and conversation).
If you experience suicidal thoughts, you are not alone. You, like me, are a deep feeler, exploring the edges of life within your human body. It’s extremely uncomfortable yet safe to feel intensity and to traverse big inner experiences. Your body may be asking something of you at this chapter of life; perhaps there are core needs yearning to be touched, nurtured and shared. This is Sacred.
I’m sharing this post here because many of my ROCK STEADY members have said how supportive and helpful it is to air these suicide conversations and to connect with our deeper sense of shared humanity. I’m widening the reach to whoever wants to join us, to share here. Put on the kettle, sit with me.
Life is hard at times and moving these dark-dark nights out of taboo helps to bring some hint of light; that we are not alone in it.
Like joyful moods and peaceful moods, these existential dark moods are part of our human handbag. It all belongs.
When I was younger, I thought that everyone experienced suicidal ideation.
As the waves of darkness washed over me, I felt through it, noticed it, observed myself and my thoughts, and I journaled. It never occurred to me to call a friend or talk about it. It just seemed like my Sacred process.
I would venture deep into the rigid locked boxes of my psyche and after the labour of pain, I’d retrieve a little gift of knowing—something made sense to me, and I would return to the living.
It felt like a profound touching into of my own Soul. A crossing of thresholds and a seeing beyond the veils of the known.
As I reached my late 20s or early 30s I started sharing with my friends about these suicidal thoughts. I was met with judgment, shock, disbelief, advice, pathology, laughter, and recommendations to go shopping, get drunk or hook up with a guy. I was questioned.
Or told to cheer up, it’ll pass. Be grateful! Life’s a gift!
I learned not to talk about it.
I learned that it was unusual to meet death and hang out in its lair.
I learned that people of all ages are not generally understanding or supportive when it comes to deep, meaningful inquiry about life, and death.
It felt strange to be sent to a therapist, to walk away feeling extra complicated and abnormal. Why pay someone to talk about things I already know about myself? To be seen through the lens of pathology instead of seen in my wholeness: of which death is a part.
When my kids ask questions about dying, I light up: finally, some good conversation.
Them: “Are we going to die mum?”
Me: “Yes. Just, probably not today.”
Them: “Oh… we want to die now! Please!!”
Me: “Wait your turn. We all take our turn at dying. It usually only happens once.”
Them: “Okay”.
The truth is, it’s hard to experience walls of silence, shame and fear when it comes to conversation around death and dying. It is a valid part of life. But hardly anyone talks about it, or wants to explore it.
We have had far too many young suicides in our local area. I understand how they felt and why they chose as they did.
It’s real.
I have danced with the idea of dying often enough throughout my life.
Becoming a mother did not stop it. My desire to explore the darkness only increased. My yearning for a world that honours life, the living, and individuality soared. And, the very real expression of daily harm, dying ecosystems, wars and political corruption surround us. It’s everywhere. And I feel my part in it.
I believe that collectively we need to feel it all, so that we can learn how to do things differently here on earth.
To let our somatic intelligence offer us strength, clarity and new ideas for collective gentle living. To follow the body’s lead and let it guide us through the dark.How can we each become more honest, more connected and more true to our Soul’s calling?
Can we descend into the desert of our own psyche and sit through the storms of our own becoming until we capture the threads of who we are and what we are here to contribute?
Can we hold each other’s hands and talk about it?
I support people living with persistent pains to trust their bodily sensations and explore their inner landscapes.
I teach them how to use their body as a compass and how to read their inner terrain with their own inner map.
I invite everyone who encounters me to digest the Paradigm of Fear and Separation, transforming it with love into the Paradigm of Sensuality and Connection. The body knows who we are when we feel sensation and connect to it. Insights are born, intuition flows from here. Instincts kick in.
I believe we are here on earth to feel the sensations that our bodies create. We are a mirror of the world that we live in. Our bodies hold vital information for understanding ourselves, each other, our planet.
Even when it hurts. Perhaps, especially when it hurts.
I believe we feel it, to make sense of it, to know who we are, to liberate ourselves from the illusion of separation.
We come home to unity and togetherness. We arrive at a collective place where pain and darkness is shared with song, stories and laughter—in ritual with bare feet and thumping drums.
Where we all belong and existential moods are celebrated.
Suicidal lows are real, painful and they belong. You are not alone.
What is the Soul anyway?
A useful inquiry for us all to ponder and come to our own conclusions about.
Life can feel like a very long, dark tunnel with no end in sight.
I struggle too. With my human aches and deep pain.
It grips tight, sucks inwards. My thoughts circle around thin air grappling to make sense of the emotional ache.
I sigh heavily — often during this struggle. An exasperated sigh as though my insides are reaching deep for more juice.
At times like this I feel like I’m doing life wrong, I’ve missed the memo and there’s no turning back. I feel alone.
Only more of this human heart ache again and again.
To love is to know this ache. This yearning for intimate connection with some part of the outer world.
My inner world is crying for the outer world. To weave the two together in a union that makes sense.
That’s the mystery unfolding. The unknown.
Sometimes there is no voice to soothe the pain.
Sometimes there is no silver lining or happy ending.
Sometimes there is a chasm that nobody sees, so it’s not there.
Except it is there, because I feel it. The chasm exists inside of me.
And, I know that it’s real, and it belongs. Even if nobody else can feel it too.
The chasm brings me a message, a dirge-like song. A whisper. A hushed tone. I hear it.
It begs me to share my story. It tells me that our human aches and pains are meant for art. To be shared in creative ways. To be heard. To be felt. To be recognised despite their invisible nature.
It’s not easy to share our stories.
Writing my next book, Sensing Ground, has challenged me to share my story in ways that I’ve never shared it.
It’s taking me to new edges. To pause and breathe. To question who I am and who I am not.
It’s making me question why bother? Does my story matter? I could wrap it up tight and hide it inside of me. Keep my pains to myself and silently suffer. I could pretend that there is no pain.
My prayer for us all is that we own our personal story and share it somewhere safe. Not a shopping list of symptoms, but our deeper stories. The stories that are Sacred. The stories that move us to tears.
Years ago, I began to notice trauma patterns in my ROCK STEADY community members.
I could see this in their use of language, their relationship toward their bodies, in their body language and in their symptomatology.
Twenty years ago, trauma was quietly spoken about in whispered tones amongst my medical peers in hospital settings. It was something that nobody felt too confident talking about, yet, with time has come many new options and a rich understanding of how our body and brain can heal unhelpful trauma patterns.
So over the years, I began to get curious about the links between unprocessed trauma and chronic symptoms.
It is truly fascinating what I learnt. Both personally and professionally.
First, as I began to get curious and study trauma, a heap of my own unprocessed trauma arose (how clever, thanks body!) and I was fortunate enough to process this using my ROCK STEADY tools. This led me to develop a short course called Integrating Trauma based on neuroplasticity skills and how they can be useful in healing trauma patterns.
Much of trauma is held in our body as fight, flight, or freeze patterns. There is also talk of fawning patterns which look like people-pleasing and ignoring one’s own body, in order to appease others as a survival mechanism.
Fight patterns could look like anger, and attack either toward other people or towards one’s self. It may result in muscle tension as the muscles of our body grip and tense ready for combat. It may look like fighting what we feel in our body and fighting symptoms.
Flight could look like withdrawal, trying to run away from conversations, situations, events or relationships. It may look like avoidance and distraction of the present moment, via social media, drugs, alcohol, sex or whatever can numb us from feeling whatever it is that we don’t want to feel.
Freeze can look like emotional absence, an inability to feel, or difficulty to sense emotions. A sense of dissociation or out-of-body disorientation for no known reason. Or perhaps feeling unsure of what one is feeling. A sense of ongoing confusion around emotions, feelings and felt sense. A constant sense of waiting for external approval or for somebody else to validate us or tell us how we should be feeling.
So what is trauma and what are we overcoming?
A big ‘T’ trauma could be surviving a car accident, sexual assault or a war. It is usually an acute event that can be easily identified. It may be suppressed and forgotten for many years, and remembered when we are emotionally ready to process it.
A small ‘t’ trauma is usually a subtle, repeated interaction that may never be identified and therefore can easily go overlooked and remain unresolved.
A small ‘t’ trauma could be a childhood of feeling invalidated, dismissed or having your emotional world minimized by the caretakers around you. It could be thousands of acts of racism or sexism that were never acknowledged and lodged deep into our sense of self. These micro events alter the development of the brain and teach us to invalidate, dismiss and minimize ourselves, ongoing, as a way of life. This can result in a disconnection to our felt sense, our inner world and our emotional body. This sort of trauma can be more difficult to identify and can result in trauma patterns that seem to come from nowhere, because it feels like ‘nothing happened’. The trauma itself can be minimized, ignored, or distorted making it difficult to get support or resolution.
Essentially these fight, flight, freeze and fawn patterns are normal, healthy and vital neurological reflex patterns that help us cope with life threatening situations. Sometimes, we genuinely do need these fight, flight, freeze and fawn reflexes and behaviours, but not always, certainly not 24/7.
The problems occur when our neurological system becomes locked in trauma patterns as a way of life, instead of as a response to actual life threatening stimuli. This can lead to flashbacks, distracting thoughts, persistent worries, doubts and difficulties finding joy.
Unresolved trauma can show up as:
— difficulty being alone, still, or quiet
— feeling chronic symptoms of pain, discomfort or unease
— distorted thinking, ongoing worries, low mood
— trust issues, relationship breakdowns, difficulty in intimacy
— eating disorders, addictions
— avoidance behaviours
— volatile moods and frequent emotional triggers in daily life
— feeling trapped, contracted, tight, tense, or Not-Quite-Right (NQR) often
— low self esteem, feelings of shame
Resolved trauma can look like:
— awareness of and tools to regulate a fight/flight/freeze/fawn pattern
— feelings of choice, agency and a sense of control to override unwanted patterns
— expanded, soft, relaxed body language most of the time
— slower thoughts and a capacity to befriend one’s self, regardless of our passing sensations or emotions
— feelings of love, compassion, kindness and understanding toward our own lived experience and the sensations in our mind or body
— capacity to remain present with ourselves during discomfort, unrest, or NQR so that these moments can pass without drama or unnecessary resistance
— an understanding of our shared human experience and an ability to be an empathic witness to ourselves and to others during difficult times
— a sense of freedom, power, centre and groundedness in daily life
Peter Levine, an authority on the topic of trauma healing, describes trauma as:
“Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.”
If you would like to learn more about overcoming trauma and how to befriend your own inner fight/flight/freeze patterns, take a look at my Overcoming Trauma Program.
Watch this short video below of me speaking about the program.
I would love to see the word trauma become a friendly word that invites curiosity instead of fear. We humans are born to move through trauma and to build resilience. It is a great part of our shared humanity, and trauma patterns, in my opinion, are nothing to fear and everything to get curious about.
This doesn’t make the path to healing trauma an easy one. It is courageous and most likely tender.
Many of my participants have shared that in hindsight, living with unresolved trauma was harder than learning to feel it through and bring a resolution to it.
Wherever you are on your own path, I feel it is fair to say that we are all impacted by trauma in some way. Whether it is collective trauma, generational trauma, environmental trauma, or a direct experience of trauma.
It feels to me that we are swimming in an ocean of unresolved trauma globally, resulting in collective beliefs that have been formed from traumatised perspectives and leave us jumping from fry pan to fry pan as a human species. Buy more! Build more! Do more! Run! Avoid! Hide! Fear! Disconnect! Shut down! Numb out!
Imagine a world where we slow down, pause, feel, reflect and choose wisely.
May we let the genius of our body resolve what is ready to heal, so that we can listen to our inner wisdom, take back control of our lives, and take better care of our planet earth.
First up, I describe this in detail in chapter four of my book, Rock Steady, so I highly recommend you take a read.
And second up, it’s both. So tinnitus can come from the ear system, from the outer ear, middle ear, or inner ear where there’s mechanical movements and there’s neural signals being processed and sent along our auditory nerve through the brain stem and to the brain auditory processing areas, the auditory cortex. And anywhere between the inner ear and the brain, we can have perception and tinnitus sounds that come and go. So it’s really happening through the body and through the brain. Anywhere that the nerves are firing.
My tinnitus sounds like a computer in my head. It’s hard to describe. It doesn’t sound like the descriptions I’ve heard. Could this still be tinnitus? MRI shows nothing wrong or abnormal.
First of all, and I explain this in my book, Rock Steady, every person could describe the sounds in their body differently and it’s all still tinnitus. Tinnitus describes any sound that nobody else can perceive but you. It’s sound coming from within your body. It’s sound that only you hear. So any description is a good description and it’s a little bit like describing wine. 100 people could describe a wine in 100 different ways, even though it’s the same wine. The way you describe it is your way and it’s perfectly fine. I’ve actually heard that tinnitus sounds like a computer sounds so there are other people out there who would describe it that way too and it’s all tinnitus. So, that’s the first thing.
Yes, sometimes it is hard to describe and that’s okay. And I wouldn’t get bogged down in trying to describe it because probably really what you want to do is to celebrate the fact that they’ve found nothing wrong with your brain, that sounds like you’ve got medical clearance. That there’s nothing wrong with you. So that’s good. We want to take an exhale and relax into that information. That’s where we want to prioritize. The sound can come and go, you can reverse the neural emphasis on it. And if you follow the Rock Steady path, you can retrain the maps of your brain to return back to or to really rebuild a whole new normal where tinnitus is no longer central. So I think it’s important to acknowledge what you’re hearing and also acknowledge that it’s safe. It’s allowed to be there. And it’s great that you’ve got a normal MRI.
It’s been 13 months and I have PPPD, but should I continue to do vestibular exercises? I don’t feel they’re helping and they may be even making it worse.
So PPPD is not a condition that generally thrives on or needs vestibular exercises. Most people with PPPD have incredible balance and normal balance function and the vestibular exercises can certainly be aggravating and not needed — not necessary. By all means, try them. But, if you’re not feeling benefit probably within about six weeks, I would happily encourage my clients to let that go.
But where PPPD can benefit from is quiet stillness and also the mental, emotional, spiritual exercises that are offered and the tools and supports that are offered in the Rock Steady program. So it’s not about repeating mechanical, physical, vestibular exercises anymore. It’s about teaching the brain how to find safety and how to self-regulate, how to co-regulate and how to repair any broken trust within the body. Because to a certain extent, the fight, flight, freeze nervous system dysregulation is happening when we feel the symptoms within our body. So the trigger can be coming from within us. So we have to repair that relationship within ourselves. So the mental, emotional, spiritual aspects will probably need a lot more attention and the vestibular exercises may be less so.
