The Power and magic of anniversaries

Anniversaries are incredibly powerful and if utilized in the right way can catapult you forwards like nothing else. There are so many anniversaries in our lives: our own birth, our children’s birth, a wedding, a traumatic or even a joyous experience, an adoption loss, a serious diagnosis and of course death and funerals - this list can go on endlessly. What was too overwhelming and hence dissociated at the time of an experience will come up again a year later for you to process and digest. A year of new learning and the healing of time itself hopefully means that you are a bit more resourced.

It really helps to be aware of the power of anniversaries so you can be prepared for the big feelings that will arise out of nowhere. If you see them in the right context, you will be able to navigate and ride the waves much easier. And you can then call in the help you need to go through it with a bit more ease and gentleness. If you let yourself be guided in this process, magical things can happen to you and the spiritual gifts you will receive can be huge. Personal growth, more embodiment and resiliency, better boundaries and increased inner strength, clearer intuition and psychic abilities can all be the positive side effects of anniversaries.

I hope this article will encourage you to give the power of anniversaries more room in your life so their healing will fully embrace you. This big process will be easier to manage with preparation and support. I am sharing my experience to inspire you for your next journey inwards.

The second year of my husband’s passing anniversary was a big one and I learnt so much in a very condensed time frame. I made another quantum leap forward. The anniversary labour was intensified by arriving back home in the freezing cold with a completely empty fridge and still sick with Covid after travelling. It was the perfect storm.

I had first travelled into the warmth to give myself space from the everyday responsibilities of living on a big block of land and to help my nervous system replenish. It was the best possible preparation for this year’s anniversary. Forced to make decisions around life and death while caring for Digby and witnessing him in constant pain had left me with PTSD like symptoms I had to recover from first. My travel diary reads:
“It has been nice to be reminded how much fun reading a book, just sitting for ages on the beach, skinny dipping in the morning, snorkelling every day in the coral reef, paddle boarding and even cooking is. When I am snorkelling I can take in the beauty around me when at the beginning I was just stressing ridiculously easily. I am surprised by the kindness of people around me and it is so nice noticing how my nervous system has switched from constant cortisol stress reactions to more ease.”

My travels up north were pretty special with magical experiences and soul touching events along the way. Travelling had its own new theme, it helped me to love myself, to begin to trust life and to come back into my own flow again. I again met up with indigenous Ningaloo elder and soul sister Hazel Walga who understands the spirit world and shared very private and profound spirit messages with me. I did a sound healing offering in Exmouth, swam, hiked and snorkeled while roughing it and living out of my tiny car for a month.
Even though I had planned to go travelling for a three months I all of a sudden knew it was time to go back again after only four weeks. My land was calling me and I followed its call even though I was scared of facing the anniversary at home instead of being on the road like the year before.

The intense loneliness that first hit me after travelling up north and returning to my remote house was excruciatingly painful, I did not know how to get through it and everything on my land overwhelmed me. In a clumsy way I reached out via text to a few people, that’s all I could do. Some ignored me, some responded. What I really should have written is: “Please bring me some cooked food, I am at that grieving stage where I can’t cook for myself. I need real human contact, not text messages, give me a hug, let’s eat together, go for a walk, listen to me and just know that I am going through the anniversary time”.

It is so interesting how the grief is tied in with food and the lack of family and community around me. It is not ideal that I live on my own too far out of town. Grief needs a village, it needs being held by a bigger container. We cannot do grief alone as biologically we are herd animals and it is wired into us to need one another.

After one visit from a friend who could hang out with me half the day and truly meet me in my grief in a relaxed way, I was able to be alone again without feeling so intensely lonely. I could fully embrace and even love this deep and sacred space.
I needed a lot of silence. I went for walks around my block and cut down weed trees. I watched the flow of what wanted doing, instead of pushing myself to get things done. I signed up for qigong online classes that resonated and made me smile, they help me to reconnect with myself again, to the spirit world, to energy, to life.

I started inviting people to my place who have also lost someone unexpectedly. They had the deepest heart connection with that person and are facing the most unbearable loss.
I didn’t really understand grief fully even though I deeply grieved the death of my godmother who was the most important person in my life from a very young age. Without her in my life I wouldn’t have made it. But I am realizing that I was prepared for her death, the moment she told me that she had cancer I knew she would die and two years later I spent the week before she died with her without having to be her carer. It was the best week of my life, we talked and even laughed a lot about death, we both accepted it was coming and we were deeply connected. And as I didn’t live with her, my everyday life didn’t change after her death.

It is so important to be understood in one’s grief and I am only beginning to understand my own deep grief now.

It’s been a joy hanging out with people who also grieve like me, chatting for hours, exchanging stories, crying, laughing and swearing together, seeing the differences and at the same time being in awe of the sameness.
There is so much no one talks about, so much no one teaches, so many taboos that are silenced. I might just have to write this book.

I used to love talking about the spirit world with my husband. Like my indigenous friend Hazel he could see spirits and communicate with them, he knew things he couldn’t have possibly known if not connected to this reality. It has been so nice talking to with my new grieving friends about the spiritual gifts we have been receiving through this painful yet transformational process.

I will find a solution for this rural and isolated block of land with an off the grid tiny home. But right now I am grateful that I have this safe place that can hold me and my grief. Just as it was after Digby’s death I could not leave the block of land in the anniversary week.

I am so glad that I followed my intuition to come back early from travelling. Up north I would not have had the block of land holding me and I wouldn’t have been met by this cold and very painful loneliness.

There was no way I could have gone through this the last anniversary year. I am so much stronger this year round and it was time to face this harrowing loneliness I arrived with at birth. Anniversaries allow us to unpack what had to be dissociated, but a year later we get a chance to heal another layer with more resilience and support available to us.

Something magical made sure that I could not find the keys to my house and counselling office after my travels and so I had to cancel all my face to face clients – I was clearly not allowed to leave the block of land. For over two weeks I looked everywhere for these keys, suspecting that they would turn up when the time was right. And I did indeed find them without looking once the anniversary time was completed: They were in a dresser with my husband’s ashes on top, hidden behind a framed card my now dead godmother had painted for our wedding. Goosebumps!

The friends I lost in the time of grief, I can now let them go freely because I can embrace the huge loneliness as a big teacher. These gone friends played their role in my learning – and I do get that it is uncomfortable and not easy witnessing someone else in pain.
My deep thanks to the friends that stood by my side no matter what.
And now it is time to make new friends, to build a strong network around me so I can do the work I will be called to do.
My attention at present is on letting go of the things that don’t flow and being gentle with myself – it’s like falling in love with my own self. 

May we all be supported in our deep journeys on this planet with the stars surrounding and the oceans connecting us.

With love

Barbara

Barbara Schmidt

Counselling Somatic

Trauma and nervous system recovery 

If you want to find out more about your nervous system and the incredible healing from trauma I am inviting you to read the short articles on www.counsellingsomatic.com.au in my blog section  - you can subscribe to my newsletters via my website and receive all future blogs conveniently via email.
Feel free to forward my article to others, but please add my name to it for copyright reasons.     You can also find me on my Facebook page “Counselling Somatic Barbara Schmidt"

What I have learnt by offering Somatic Therapy – moments of grace

Most of you know that I am not a conventional therapist. As well as being trained in many interesting trauma treatment modalities I enrolled in a three year training in Somatic Experiencing  four years ago.

After finishing this training and quickly becoming booked out I did realize towards the end of last year that I needed to take a serious break and look after myself. I couldn’t really afford to take that step, but I deeply felt I had to follow my inner voice and respect my own nervous systems needs. It is of tremendous importance to me to role model what I teach my clients. It didn’t come easy saying “No” to clients, but I knew that I just had to do this.  I didn’t work for two months and then only continued with very few clients until recently when I felt I was ready to take on new clients once again.

It has been an important time caring for myself, letting three years of intense Somatic Experiencing training integrate naturally and giving myself this precious time to re-evaluate carefully how I work with clients. I became more and more aware of my own body sensations when working with clients and it often surprised me immensely what my body was able to pick up when working with another human being.  At times it felt a lot bigger than just myself,  kind of sacred, and I felt very humbled and honoured witnessing these moments of grace. I learnt to trust when something in myself didn’t feel quite right despite a client in front of me insisting they were okay and things looking truly fine on the outside. It has been such an interesting journey learning to completely trust my intuition – there were plenty of moments when I doubted it as it went so much against my mind’s judgment. But over and over again I found out that in the end it had been my intuition, my own body’s finetuned feedback system, that had been right!

Seeing a lot less clients gave me the space to notice reoccurring patterns: It is incredible how many clients don’t have either flight or fight available to them. They live being stuck in one survival mechanism or trapped in the freeze state and it makes their life so much more difficult. Often clients don’t have any healthy anger available to set boundaries and hence become door mats to others or turn all their rage against themselves, hence sabotaging their own healing and progress.

Trauma causes our boundary skin to break – and without boundaries we feel too much, are constantly overwhelmed and easily hurt, can’t set clear boundaries and lack assertiveness. As parents we then energetically merge with our children instead of helping them become their own empowered selves, which in return hinders our personal growth and ability to stay present. Everyone is so unique and what they need to heal their boundary skin is just as splendidly unique.

Sometimes it is like a detective story, following the bodies’ sensations and secret messages and hence finding out what needs repairing in the present caused by trauma of the past. It is amazing  discovering what the body wants to complete now (it couldn’t do so when in a stressful  and overwhelming situation). Working with the hurts of the ”inner child” and supplying it in the here and now with what was needed back then is another reoccurring topic in my sessions. Finding what resources and supports now has a tremendous healing effect and brings the cells in our body into a mindful present time state. Instead of being stuck in the past we can then truly move forward, making  more room for joy, kindness,  appreciation and gratefulness.

I love exploring with a client their own nervous system’s functioning. Every person’s nervous system is so different and it is a dance working out what nourishes each individual. Clients can sometimes learn for the very first time what really supports them (and what doesn’t!) and are empowered to regulate their affect. They are then no longer at the mercy of their emotions and overwhelming thoughts, instead they can pendulate to a more relaxed way of being.  For me it’s like going on a very exciting treasure hunt with great curiosity and gentleness while slowing down and noticing deeply.  

Through my training I learnt to understand my own nervous system better and better.  I became skilled at noticing what nourishes and resources, and, what overwhelms me. I finally understood why getting too excited and becoming ungrounded can have such a negative backlash for me. I also learnt that being great at making big brave decisions and jumping into cold water is a strength I will always have, but learning to make smaller steps between decisions instead is much more helpful for me in the long run.

I have been working closely together  with other therapists in this time and it has been interesting watching myself in the role of the client.  I became faster at realizing who was good for me and who wasn’t.  It sometimes was confusing when someone working with me was so nice and well meaning, but my body gave me signals that this wasn’t really going to help me move forward. I learnt that I always need to listen to my body. It knows best. Full stop. Even when it is against all rules, theories and expertise in another healing field. We are all unique and in the end only our own self can determine what is right for us.

I have had my break and lived through it with all its ups and downs (yes, there were plenty of downs as well!) and am now ready to go onto more of these detective treasure hunts with you.  I am taking on new clients! Since I know my nervous systems limitations I however will only take on a limited number of clients at a time.

If you want to find out more about your nervous system and the incredible healing of trauma I am inviting you to read the short articles on my blog under www.counsellingsomatic.com.au or on my Facebook page “Counselling Somatic Barbara Schmidt

Artwork by Meera Jacka (first left handed painting) meera.mazdamoo@gmail.com

Corrective experience creates a new imprint in cells of our body (Trauma education IV):

I used to love going into the deepest depth of trauma in sessions, but realized over the years, that trauma symptoms didn’t disappear that way and so I was on the lookout for a different approach. My supervisor pointed me into the direction of Peter Levine, who had developed a therapy model approaching trauma very differently and I started reading a book he wrote for therapists. Every page in this book resonated with me and I just knew I had to do this training, no matter what. I felt very lucky when this training was offered for the very first time in Australia a few years later.

Through my Somatic Experiencing training I have learnt how to carefully renegotiate the challenging past without re-traumatizing a client. As a therapist  I now go gently back to the edge of traumatic events with the intention of changing it. Visualizing the support we would have needed back then in an embodied way means shifting the past for good: Receiving the support of unconditionally loving people or beings around us, being caught tenderly by the softness of a mattress to catch our fall, being held soothingly by warm water, carried and embraced, a body hugging and hand wiping away our tears, a "lion" protecting us and an assertive person setting a clear boundary for us. It is important to let our body complete movements it held back for survivals sake – in the traumatic situation it might have been too dangerous or inappropriate for a person to follow these body impulses. But when these movements are not completed the massive energy that prepared for fight or flight will stay trapped, hence the body will perceive it is still under threat, even years later if the charge isn’t released.  Sometimes it takes the form of running away, shaking, biting, spitting out words, hands pushing or punching the imagined person away. All this happens in a slow, carefully titrated way and is very different from the emotional catharsis therapy work I used to do.

This of course doesn't change what happened to us in our past, but it does change how it is stored in the body! Instead of the body re-remembering over and over again what happened to it years ago it can now let go, arrive in the present time and become finally unstuck from the past. It is a great relief for the nervous system to no longer be in constant fight/flight/freeze when not required. Instead the whole system can now return to equilibrium and engage with the outside world in a relaxed way.

We can store this new imprint in our body on a cellular level so we know how to truly nurture ourselves and how to self regulate. Neuroplasticity means our brain can build new and better neural connections when receiving a new, good and corrective embodied experience. Clients then can make new and better choices, step into the world in a more embodied, empowered and assertive way. As a client recently said coming out of a deep corrective experience when gently working on her childhood sexual abuse: “I feel proud, enlightened and  empowered”. She left the office feeling at peace with herself and the world, experiencing a new joy which is lasting to this day.

If you like these posts, please share them. Information on trauma is something that needs to go viral. Everything I have written is copy righted and I am requesting to give me credit for information passed on and copied. Thanks.

Should you miss a post, just check out my Facebook page “Barbara Schmidt Counselling Somatic” or have a look under the blog section on my web site www.counsellingsomatic.com.au where you can subscribe to my newsletters so you won’t miss any future ones.

So far I covered “What is trauma?” ,“Freeze state that follows fight flight survival mechanis”, Reptilian, mammal and rational brain “speak” different languages” and “How the self soothing Parasympathetic Nerve develops and how patterns of worrying and over-thinking can be set up in childhood”

Next week I will write about: “When sympathetic and parasympathetic nerve go into chaos and trauma symptoms take over”

Have a great day,

Barbara

Counselling Somatic

Barbara Schmidt Mental Health Social Worker, 

EMDR & Somatic Experiencing Practitioner

Barbara Schmidt

Mental Health Social Worker

EMDR, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner

144 Stirling Terrace, Albany &

3/55 Strickland Street, Denmark

e: barbara@counsellingsomatic.com.au

w: www.counsellingsomatic.com.au

m: 0458 234 410