Mindfulness, Connecting and Pain by Kristi Saul-Post

Bryan teaches breathing and the 3 R’s, Reflect, Relate, Regulate, every day.  This is a direct path to mindfulness. By breathing, and searching inside, the path to finding your true self in any given moment unfolds.  Sometimes when I use these two key actions I can feel the effort of becoming aware, but there have been times when the process just happened, and,  I have experienced the magic of being fully present and connected in a way that miracles of growth have occurred.

During the days of the Post Therapeutic homes, I would help care for the children so the house parents could have a break.  One evening our daughter Marley, who was 3 at the time, and I were at the house with one of the girls.  Other Post trained staff were at the home preparing for the return home of the other four girls who were on an outing.  The young lady who was home, had a tragic history of neglect and abuse, some of which related to food, and resulted in her having juvenile diabetes which was a challenge to manage.  When she saw the dinner arriving to the table, she was immediately triggered.  She began to scream and cry, and tear around the house, throwing things, running to the large window in the living room pounding her fists.  I was afraid for her safety and could see that she was terrified.  I went to the living room and attempted to stop her by placing my hands on her.  This further escalated the situation.

She ran into the kitchen and continued to cry and scream and bang her head on the wall.  I was immediately struck by her terror.  I was mindful of every muscle in my body, every cell of my being could feel the terror that she was experiencing, and that we, the very people who were trying to help her feel safe, were the trigger to this terror.  I crumbled to the floor at her feet, and wept.

She looked down at me, and I up at her.  She had a question on her face, asking “why are you crying?”  I replied through tears, “I am so sorry you feel so scared. We don’t want to hurt you. We want to help you feel safe, and we just don’t know what to do.”  Her tears of terror shifted to tears of sadness, and in a few short seconds, she gave us instructions on how we could help her feel better.  The other staff, with whom she was more familiar with and more comfortable with, made her a special plate, and found a quiet place where the two of them shared their meal.

You might be wondering, where was Marley during all of this.  She was sitting at the table watching it all.  As the young lady and I righted ourselves from the floor, one of the other staff asked Marley how she was doing, she simply said, “mommy is feeling sad.”

During dinner I asked the Post staff how they were feeling.  They responded with feeling “amazed”.  They shared the story of the previous month when a similar situation had occurred with this young lady that resulted in her being placed for emergency care in an inpatient center for observation.  They shared how scared they had been and how all their previous training had given them only the tools to feel afraid and to try to control, the result of which was a broken chair, a broken window, and several broken dishes, and a trip to the hospital.  We talked about the difference between traditional thinking about kids versus the Post Stress Model perspective.

Most of the time when I think of mindfulness, an image of myself being in the present, seeing the beauty of a child’s smile, or the beauty of nature, appears in my mind,  but I have found that some of the most profound and life changing experiences of mindfulness have occurred when connecting with the pain of another.  As I write these words I realize that as much as connecting with the pain of another, these moments are marked with connecting to my own pain and feelings of helplessness. And somehow, that feels really good.

Kristi Saul-Post is the wife of Bryan Post and a great mom. She holds a Master’s degree in Community Counseling from Central State University in Edmond, OK and brings to the Post Institute 20 years of experience as a home based family therapist.

If you move into pure awareness in the midst of pain, even for the tiniest moment, your relationship with your pain is going to shift right in that very moment. It is impossible for it not to change because the gesture of holding it in awareness, even if sustained for only a second or two, already reveals its larger dimensionality. And that shift in your relationship with the experience gives you more degrees of freedom in your attitude and in your actions in a given situation, whatever it is… Even if you don’t know what to do. Awareness may not diminish the enormity of our pain in all circumstances. It does provide a bigger basket for tenderly holding and intimately knowing our suffering in any and all circumstances, and that, it turns out, is transformative— and healing.”  — Jon Kabat-Zinn, Arriving At Your Own Door

Always Choose Love,

Mrs B.

Have you read Bryan Post’s FREE e-Book How to End Lying Now: Why Kids Lie and What You Can Do to Stop It?

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On Love (and Fear) by Bryan Post

We at the POST Institute decided to spend time examining the very fleeting experience of Love. Why do I say fleeting? Truth is love is not that common. To really know love, experience it, share it, sit quietly within it, is something that I believe eludes most of us most of the time. We are familiar with the all too common “I love you” and the quick “love you too” response that is more of a knee jerk reaction than a truly heartfelt expression of what the words really mean. Truth be told, we all strive for it, hope to raise our children in it, and would like to be seen as very loving. In fact, in the day to day we probably even believe that for the most part we are loving. But let’s take a closer look shall we?

I believe that in order to truly understand something, we can best grasp it by understanding more fully its opposite. I was twenty-seven years old before I first realized that I was fearful. Not fearful on a moment to moment basis, but fearful in a way that it was a controlling factor throughout my life. Within a flash I looked back on my earliest experiences, the anxiety, the shyness, the vigilance, all rooted in fear. I have started this year off with a resolution of getting fit. The other day, as I was exercising, a flash of stress trigger entered my body. At first I could not place the source of my stress and anxiety. When I sat with it for a moment I realized the history of the stress trigger was in my fear of failure. You see, I played college football for a couple of years until I finally came to the realization that my dream of becoming a professional football player was more to get me to college than it was to become a reality. My first college football exercise was to run a mile in under twelve minutes. I was young, strong and in shape. Not really a big deal until I started running. I became filled with anxiety. I couldn’t catch my breath, my heart was beating fast, soon I started to fear that I wouldn’t make it and would have to run extra during the rest of the season. After a few laps I noticed that several teammates had finished and being a freshman, I wasn’t particularly worried about anyone watching me, so somewhere in the mix of things I feigned completion and stopped alongside the rest of the guys. I never finished my mile; my fear got the best of me.

Such experiences were a significant part of my athletic life throughout school. Though I was by most accounts a dominate athlete, occasionally my fear would takeover and I would be almost helpless. I didn’t realize this until years later while in therapy. Though the therapist was not particularly impressive she did point out to me that I seemed to have a tremendous amount of fear. It did not become fully conscious until another year or so passed and a client asked me what I was afraid of and I was about to reply, “I’m not afraid of anything,” when suddenly it hit me like a lightening bolt, “I was afraid of everything and had been so for much of my life.” After sharing with my client the light bulb she had just turned on for me, I began another round of therapy to examine deeper the fear that I had been carrying throughout my life.

Now you might ask, “Well Bryan, if you are writing on love why exactly are you going into this diatribe on fear?” The point is that if you don’t know what you are afraid of, you will never become conscious of whether the space you are standing in is one of love or one of fear. It is imperative and much easier to be honest with our fear, more so than our love, because our fear is much more pervasive in our lives. Now if you find yourself taking offense to that last statement, ask yourself why? Why is it that we become immediately defensive with things we do not like, rather than just opening and accepting?

It’s because of fear. We are always fearful of encountering new things. It’s actually a scientific finding that when we encounter new things we perceive them as threatening and fearful until we deem them otherwise. If we were holding a space of love we wouldn’t judge, wouldn’t become so reactive, and defensive. We might laugh in our observance of the statement, find it amusing and then move on to the rest of life. But, we don’t. Just like our children’s behaviors. We are so fearful of our children doing wrong, we seldom see the right. It is much easier to see fearful behaviors or actions because our brains are always looking for a threat, as opposed to seeing attempts to survive, or to do better, or perhaps to just do as we’ve been conditioned. (Take a moment to read that last sentence again. I think there is something significant there, which probably deserves another article at some point.)

Love is simple. There have been songs, poems, books, and monuments built to honor it. However, love requires none of these things. Because it just is. My most sincere suggestion regarding love is that you look closer at the roots of your fear. If you can find it, connect to it, understand it, and don’t judge it, but seek to really see it and how it plays out in your day to day experiences, you will then find the space of love. Remember love and fear cannot co-exist. Where one is the other is not. Your ability to see your fear makes it possible to then put it aside and return to love.

Bryan Post
“A humble seeker of love.”

If you have children – adopted, biological or foster – and would like to learn more about how to love more and fear less and help your child do the same, visit From Fear to Love: Parenting Difficult Adopted Children by Bryan Post.

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There are FREE resources, videos and articles available for helping families with children with RAD, Reactive Attachment Disorder, Attachment Disorders, ASD, Autism Spectrum Disorder and more at www.postinstitute.com.
There is hope. There is help.