PTSD and I thought I was over that crap!

 The past few days I'm being challenged.

It's not as though I said come n get me I am ready for you!

It's not really as though I had any consciousness at all

about myself and what lurks in my subconscious mind.

This girl

 I really really love her.

I have spent years giving only so much to the lovers in my life.

Never fully committing,

never fully trusting, never fully believing.

But How was I to know that last year I would meet

the love of my life?

How was I to know that this beautiful girl would challenge

the things that I had forgotten about that are now screaming for healing?

I've had PTSD for most of my life... 

I didn't understand that until I was a grown woman.

Never the less, it is something that although I have worked through anxiety and panic for years

due to that diagnosis... it is rearing it's ugly head.

And UGLY it is.

I have been hiding.

Secrets were a large part of my life growing up.

Secrets make me very uncomfortable.

Right now I am very uncomfortable, and it is because the things that trigger me

have reared their ugly head.

And I'm just about the luckiest girl in the world because this wonderful lady that has entered into

the center of my heart has shown me understanding and encouragement

and has given me the space to feel what I have to feel and to move through it at my own pace.

It's the thing I would encourage anyone in the same position to do.

My lovely partner has gone off to attend a cruise.

I think this is great in theory.

The unconscious of me isn't so certain.

It brings up abandonment, fear, pain, and more fear.

AND IT MAKES NO SENSE.

I can wake up in the morning and feel as though I'm being left alone and

I'll never see her again.

There is no reason for me to feel that way, nothing has occurred...

But I'm grumpy, stand offish, and feeling alone.

So one of my triggers is when the people I love go away from me.

Not because I dont trust them, not because they are getting to do something I'm not, not because I believe somehow I should be in a different place.

Honestly, there is no thought, there is just this feeling.

This feeling that everything I love will be taken from me.

It makes me breathless, anxious, sleepless, and confused.

I dislike feeling out of control.

I work to not feel embarrassed because I feel out of control with these feelings.

These are my issues. These are the secrets I keep from myself,

I'm not always so great at keeping it from my loved ones.

I am the one that my family comes to when they need help.

I am the one my friends come to when they need help.

I have played things so close to the vest for so many years I dont always know when it is me that needs the help.

The other morning I had to admit to my fiance that

I was in the midst of emotional turmoil because of PTSD.

I felt ashamed and lost because I couldn't make it stop.

In that moment I was told that everything would be ok, that I was loved,

and that it would pass.

All of those things are true, and yet those out of control feelings

seem to sneak up on me when I least expect it.

All I can hope is that there are enough art projects to last me this next week,

that my love and my friends have patience and compassion for my 

moments when I forget that I am ok.

AND 

what I expect of myself is to keep up with my daily Reiki,

to take the walks that I yearn for,

to smile when I can smile and to cry if I need to cry.

To give myself compassion for having weak parts of me that still need healing even

after all of this time.

I just want to say Thank You to my lovely partner and to my friends.

Thank you to my life,

and thank you to God.

These are the things that help me remember that it's always

worth putting on foot in front of the other.

Stop! Don't move!

I've been gifted with a couple days to spend with a friend.

It's amazing how being away from your normal environment

can make things feel more clear.

I have never been very good at making sure that

I am balanced with healing, working, cleaning, and relationships.
That is why I am such a planner.
Plus I need to plan things into my life to look forward to.

Opening my eyes this morning was a pleasure.
There was no where to go and nothing to do...
A sentence I often have used with my hypnosis clients. 
The reality for someone like me is that I
do need quiet solitude to get my thoughts
together and to claim the center of myself.

Always being in action and "doing" something is not
a completely healthy way to be for me.
Some people can not function in silence and stillness,
they just have to move and have to be doing something.

That is not the kind of girl I am.
For me to be healthy I need ample recharge time.

I spent 30 minutes this morning doing my self Reiki in utter silence.
I love that my heart center opened up wide and
just drank in the energy.
I also know that my friends will have breakfast ready at some point
and coffee that will taste spectacular.
The incredible thing about being able
to have time in a quiet space like this is how much insight
it gives me into my friends and their relationship with
eachother and with me.


It also gives me space around my head.
I know that sounds silly but empathic people have a habit
of hearing the thoughts and feelings of those closest
to them. 
So the actual air feels loud. 
It can also feel thick.
And it can feel confusing because the mistake can be made
that everything we feel is our own feeling.

So going away is like a re-boot to the system.
It puts things in perspective and
I get to hang out with some pretty incredible people.

I guess this is my way of saying
hey everyone slow down.
When you have a chance, stop creating things
to keep you busy.
Stop moving so much and be quiet.
Be slow and be deliberate.

Recently there was a murder of someone that
was a part of the Qi Gong foundation that I love
so much.  Someone put together a tribute video to her
life.
Every photo was a reminder of her vibrance and her
dedication to her family and the people she worked with.
She really was beautiful inside and out.
Her life was taken at the tender age of 34.
The point is...
Stopping to smell the roses and enjoy them is
the only way to really get something out of my life.
Time to purposely plan some rest breaks in my life.
If I dont take care of me that way
I probably wont be much fun to be around!

When a heart breaks and lessons are learned

 It is always interesting to me the way we learn things in life.  Some of the most powerful messages are the ones that hurt so terribly.

This is Jada, I was very happy to rescue her.  She had an incredibly sweet energy about her and my hopes were to bring that energy out in her through PTSD training.  While she resided here with us I learned some things about myself that I didn't really know.

I prefer Pit bulls to all other breeds.  

They are survivors.

They have a gameness about them that most people mistakenly think is aggression.

Gameness is just a term for a self confident dog.

Because of my fibromyalgia a pit is a good choice for me, they need exercise and they are sturdy so if If I fell I knew I wouldn't break her.  

Also larger dogs can help people get up from falls if they happen and 

give a feeling of safety that I didn't know I was missing until working with her.

The energy and need for exercise helped to get me up and moving each day, it was like having a partner that didn't judge the pain or the slow motion or slow brain,

just a patient partner meeting me wherever I was whatever day it was.

Jada had energy but she also was a bit on the lazy side. 

She liked to play and she liked to cuddle, 

and she loved playing with other dogs.

It was amazing to watch her joy in using her body and she tussled and ran with other dogs in the dog park.

It was incredibly satisfying to work with her and watch her win again and again

as she started to let go of her fear of noises, brooms, and hands being raised over her head,

yup she is a survivor!

The thing I loved about Jada was her incredible awareness of energy.

Dogs understand energy.

People make the mistake of treating dogs like humans,

dogs don't think like humans so most accidents with dogs are 

human error, which is sad; yet even sadder in a breed like a pit because then the breed is blamed

and they are tagged as dangerous dogs when really they are operating

from the mentality of dog thinking which is pack mentality.

My nephew and I recently had a small chat on facebook regarding 

Breed specific legislation. 

Being a Reiki practitioner in the state of Florida

Reiki is governed under the massage board.

This happened due to people mismanaging and abusing the term Reiki, so to

protect the mass public it became a regulated modality.

Some people agree with this and some people don't.

I understand why it happened.

People were hurt.

BSL for American Pit Bulls

is a hard topic for pit bull lovers.

No one wants to be told that their beloved animal is not welcome in their city and or state.

Yet no one wants these animals victim to the dog fighting

rings of unscrupulous people either.

Its a sore topic.

What I do know is that people that do not understand gameness, pack energy, and that are lazy dog owners should never ever think to own a pit bull.

Pits require responsible, active, loving, and breed specific understanding owners.

The ingredients then for a terrible accident happened when I was out of town.

Jada had been spayed 4 days prior so her hormones were out of control.

I had lined up a behaviorist to come in and view the behaviors of the other two dogs

with Jada because I was witnessing some unbalanced behavior in all three dogs that was really starting to surface when I started her training and the training of the other two as I was working with her.

The first human error was absolutely that I left her at the house

instead of taking her with me.

My gut wanted her to go visiting my friend with me,

but due to their dogs I didn't want her to hurt her operation site, they would have played hard.

I thought I was protecting her.

Tragedy struck late that night when indeed one of the behaviors

I was concerned about caused Jada to "protect" her space.

Another dog was hurt badly and in all honesty is lucky to be alive.

There were many things that went into the perfect recipe for disaster and it

still makes me sick to think about it.

The reality is that this was a tragic accident, but I had to return 

Jada to the rescue that I got her from.

I almost couldn't do it,

I had become so attached to her.

The reality is that Jada isn't to blame any more than the hurt dog.

When humans make decisions sometimes those decisions just aren't the right ones.

We can't Blame the dogs, or the breeds, nor can we blame eachother for a terrible accident.

The hardest part is that the behaviorist was coming only 4 days later,

just 4 little days.

Tragedy.

My point in sharing this is that I learned that

I absolutely function far better with a doggy friend that is of the larger

variety.  Whether that is because they are able to hold more energy

or because of my past of being abused I am not sure.

I believe in fate and I believe that everything

happens for a reason.

I know for a fact that Jada is not dangerous, if she was both smaller dogs here would

have been attacked.

I have really done the work to release the sadness here, sometimes it

grips my heart and I think I wont breathe again,

but all in all I am ok.

When the time comes again for me to venture into the world of canine companion the behaviorist will be inline first, I will be working with a female and a puppy

from the beginning to be sure that everyone in the family is on the same page.

All dogs same rules is pack mentality,

humans have to understand that for harmony.

Dogs don't see size.

They see energy.

They look for balance.

In a pack a sick dog will be killed because it is out of balance,

there is no remorse, its done for the good of the pack.

If a dog is anxious, nippy, or nervous a pack will

correct it, if it can not correct it, they will kill it.

That is how dogs see the world.

Balance or lack of balance.

We humans need to remember that so that all of our dogs

in every city and state and park can be together

in peace and fun.

That is how energy works.

Our dogs are our mirrors.

When we understand that we can come a long way in dealing with our own

issues.