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.

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On Healing

I recall as a teen being injured during basketball practice, actually knocked unconscious, and lying in bed when my mother got home from work. When she asked me what had happened I explained the best I could through my tears. My mom listened, turned my light off and then walked back out. Honestly I can’t recall if I was that injured or not, but when that happened it injured me worse. I moaned and cried out loud, begged and pleaded to go to the doctor, finally out of frustration she relented. I left the hospital in a neck brace and on crutches. I had sprained my neck, had a concussion, and torn ligaments in my knee.

Trauma is defined as any stressful event which is prolonged, overwhelming, or unpredictable. That means any stressful event, and stress can occur in more situations than we can possibly imagine. From pre-birth trauma to medical trauma, adoption, automobile accidents, witnessing a crime or murder, living in a stressful environment and everything else before, in between, and beyond, trauma can rear its very silent yet devastating impact.

In his seminal text, Affect Dysregulation and the Repair of the Self, author Allan Schore cites the findings of a meta-analysis of societal trauma: 50% of men in our society have experienced severe trauma and 60% of women. If you consider trauma as occurring on a spectrum of mild, moderate, severe, then essentially every member of our society has experienced some degree of trauma at some point during their lifetime. It is also important in understanding that when traumatic events continue on unexpressed, unprocessed, and misunderstood, it has the potential to impact the person for the rest of their lives.

There are so many levels from which we are impacted by trauma. Yet, it is in our immediate past and present day experiences that we most often look at trauma. I am convinced that this is merely the tip of the iceberg especially when it comes to parents and children who have been impacted by traumatic experiences. First of all, most parents are unaware, in denial, and flat out resistant to considering the impact of highly stressful past events on their current life circumstances. We tend to want to take a very puritanical approach to our pain, thus not surprisingly this carries over to our child-rearing.

Did my mother approach me this way because she was uncaring? Absolutely not, my mother is one of the most caring people that I know. However, when it comes to us and our family it is very easy to rely on past imprinting of just “tough it out”. As much as the trauma we may have directly experienced in our past or present is the impact of the generational trauma that has impacted all most all of us. I always encourage the parents and therapists that come to my camps to think not current generation pain, but go back a generation, two generations and see what you find. In the 1960’s the pioneering psychologist Bowen coined the term “generational transmission of stress” implying that stress and trauma are actually transmitted from one generation to the next. Forty years later science has confirmed this beyond a shadow of a doubt.
A passionate and concerned mother asked me the other day, “How long will it take for our family to find peace in our home. For our children to be more normal and just have the day to day challenges of normal children?” She didn’t like my answer, “Find peace now, today. This is when you will find peace. Not in the next moment or year, but today. Accept that your children are who they are and love them as they are, this will bring peace. If you are waiting for some magical moment when peace and normalcy will arrive, or come knocking at your door, then you have an expectation for the way things should be as opposed to an acceptance of the way things are. The problem with this line of thinking is that when peace and normalcy finally arrive, because we are too busy waiting for what we expect to show up, we don’t welcome what does. When this happens then peace and normalcy leaves our home as unwelcomed guest because we were too busy waiting for what we thought was going to show up.”

Healing is a process. It is a journey through repairing damage that has been done long ago. When a child has been mistreated, abused, deprived, or neglected during their most critical brain stages, then their brain has been shaped differently. In many ways he becomes a stranger in a strange world of expectations and demands, like a foreigner speaking a foreign language when everyone else speaks in the native tongue.

Additionally, what of the imprints we carry from a generational perspective? To have been witness to an adult treating a child in a manner of abuse, neglect, or maltreatment, is a reflection of how that adult was inevitably treated at some point in their own life. Not only is the child therefore victim to the adult, but also to the generations of mistreatment, abuse, deprivation, and neglect that came many generations before. Healing is therefore not merely about bringing one child or family into a sense of peace and normalcy, it is about changing the very fabric and imprinting of life. It is about what will be passed down through the DNA to the next generation of children. Healing trauma is a very big deal.

Let us not forget that life and love in and of themselves have the potential to heal. How many of us who have come from traumatic environments, circumstances, and relationships have been able to rebound and move forward? Maybe not finding perfect peace and harmony, who ever truly does, but able to experience the joys and wonders of the world, along with the sadness and grief that it offers, without ending up in jail, broken down, and alone. Many more have attained this than not. And what of the ones who have not? My personal belief is that as long as there is breath there is hope and everyone has a purpose and the value of that purpose cannot always be determined as it relates to the fabric of our lives.

Choose Love,
B.

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