Learning to Live by Faith

There are 3 parts to today’s voice note.

Voice Note Part 1:

Voice Note Part 2:

Voice Note Part 3:

Transcript: Okay, so in my last voice note, I was talking about this flare-up that I’m having of EOE and the Shut down the freeze that I’m trying to get out of. I was going to talk some more about that today in another post. I was talking about how I’m having trouble updating my mind. after COVID and like realizing that that’s over now because when you start updating from that you kind of connect to that energy where people are feeling like the world is closer to ending and So that creates a panic, so you’re trying to update from that panic of COVID If I update from that, then you’re in another panic about the end of the world. It’s that feeling that you’re running out of time. And as I was, it helped me to post the voice notes. It’s helping me to think through things. I hope it’s helping you. After I posted that other one, then I was remembering another thing for me where you start feeling like you’re running out of time is after you turn 40 years old. So, I just turned 43 years old in December. And

the imagery for that is like, just everything just changes after or a lot of things change after you turn 40. A lot of things change after you turn 40. I shouldn’t say everything. The way you feel changes. It’s like if you were…swimming in a pool of, like, you know, really pleasant water, and then it just starts turning thicker or something, like, and you’re struggling. everything feels like more of a struggle and you feel like you’re running out of time. So I was gonna talk through Some things about that.

Guess I should start by talking about when I started shutting down. Again, that’s the flight, flight, no, fight, flight freeze thing.

So, as I said, I started getting sick towards the end of my sophomore year of high school. So that was 1999. And actually, I was hoping over the summer I would start feeling better, but I wasn’t. And I actually had to homeschool for the last two years of high school, so I had to leave school. And When I left school, I was hoping I would only miss one semester, this is just temporary. I’m going to get this worked out and I’m going to be able to go to school again and go to college. And I was just really sick and it took a long time to get a diagnosis. EOE is a rare disease and it wasn’t really being diagnosed as much in 1999. People were not as aware of my body’s central nervous system processing problems. So… When I…I’m trying to get out of this flare-up that I’ve been having now. I’m trying to get out of that. It’s still a shock to my mind that I’m not still 16 years old and I’m not going to be able to get up and go finish school, I’m going to get my life back, you know. I have to process all these years of illness have happened and I’ve got chronic conditions that I’m always going to have to be managing.

I was going to talk some about fight, flight, or freeze. Things that go along with that. I’m not a practitioner of any of these techniques, so I’m not getting scientific explanations. I’m just talking about my experience as a patient and what I’ve learned about how my mind and body work as a patient my experiences with trying to learn the language of my mind. One thing.

The books that are really helpful are Peter Levine’s books.

He works with somatic experiencing and that’s a really helpful technique. So And if you’re familiar with the polyvagal theory, what they’re talking about is that we have an animal mind that has this…we have a fight, flight, or freeze defensive system.

[05:00] So, because it’s our animal mind, they’ll give examples of animals to help understand it. So if you see, if you were watching and you saw like a rabbit, a little rabbit was outside and it’s just going along through its day and hears something or sees something and sees a larger animal that’s going to be chasing it, and so…the rabbit goes into fight or flight you know it takes off running his heart’s gonna beat faster his body’s gonna be working differently getting it out of danger. And then once the rabbit gets out of danger, gets to safety, Then it calms down really quickly. That’s the thing you’ll notice is that animals, is their brains work differently than ours they’re able to calm down from that really quickly and transition back into daily living mode where a short amount of time later, if you saw that rabbit, it would be so calm again that you wouldn’t even know that that had just happened…of an animal chasing him. And again it’s because their brains work differently. But it’s beneficial to them to be able to process it that quickly because it’s going to be happening to them throughout their day. So they transition from that daily living mode where they’re just eating, you know, walking around, and they’re calm

to threat mode where they have to run to get away from something and then they calm down really quickly afterwards.

[00:00] Okay, so my recording cut off there, so I’m going to start another one so sorry about that. I think I was saying that animals process really quickly from being in daily living. They see a threat they take off running and then they’re able to calm down really quickly. The problem for people is when that information doesn’t process through, that the threat is resolved

my understanding of it is that we also have fight or flight triggered for It’s really there for threats like that. Like if something’s chasing you and it gets triggered by other things, it can be triggered It can be continually triggered and you’re getting stuck in that state and not able to transition back into daily living mode. One thing that Peter Levine talks about in his book is about immobility. And when that happens in animals, it’s like…Or like that little rabbit, if it realizes there’s a threat.

The rabbit would take off running as fast as it could if the other animal was able to catch up to it and then catch the rabbit. Like, pick it up in its mouth. The rabbit um would go limp. They usually actually use the example of something faster than that, like a cheetah or something chasing something or a gazelle like they’re running very very fast and one animal catches the other and the other one goes limp goes immobile hoping that the animal that caught it is going to take it back to its home and then lay it down and walk off. which would give that animal a chance to wake up and escape. So the animal was running at full speed when it was caught. Then it goes limp. Hoping that, you know, it’s waiting. For the sense that the other animal has walked off a long enough distance where that animal can wake up, and when that animal wakes up, they take off running again.

And some of that’s what’s going on with my nervous system.

That’s why we’re trying to learn how to work with these threat responses that are there to keep you safe, but may be triggered by things where it’s not, you know, we can work through it differently.

So again, I’m not giving scientific explanations here, I’m just trying to talk about how I’m what I’m trying to heal from here with the shutdown so for me it’s like connected to when I was getting sick you go into this uh another state, you know, where you’re waiting. I was waiting to get a diagnosis. And, waiting to get a treatment. It was very stressful, like feeling myself getting sicker but not knowing what I had or how to get better. If you, so for me, you’re starting to wake up out of that shutdown, even now in your That’s when you have all that energy, like, oh, I’ve got to catch up on everything that I missed, I’ve got to go back to school, I’ve got to finish school, and all that stuff.

And you’re trying to process that you’re in the present moment now and that’s What I’m struggling with is finding enough safety or like good energy here in the present moment to update to. Because you’ve either got COVID or…the end of the world or like I’m in my 40s now. so I know that the good energy is there we’ve just got to find it. everything you read about in the polyvagal theory is that your mind is on a quest for safety. So if you feel safe, you’re able to be in that daily living mode, like the little rabbit where you’re just eating and going through your day.

But if it’s perceiving a threat in the environment, you’re going to be in that, those defensive responses, threat mode. Fight or flight, and if…Fighting or running is not going to get you away from the threat then you freeze. so I’m stuck in the freeze, and I’m trying to wake up from that without having the energy of taking off running.

So that’s one thing I’m working on is trying to develop a walking pace energetically when I come out of that state, physiological state right here. in that mode where you’re walking rather than taking off running or freezing.

[05:00] and again it’s trying to in this place we’re trying to find that good like life energy to connect to I was just going to talk about it on here because sometimes just saying it out loud helps you process what you’re feeling.

I think other people would feel the same way about it, about turning 40. It’s… I keep… I’m trying to update from that high school mindset time where…um…You know, from the time you were born, it seemed like school was never going to end, like you were going to be in school forever. And You were in that high school environment that, you know, I went to a quiet school. It was the culture at large that you were still in that teenage environment everywhere else that you went. So I was looking forward to getting out of that time. But, you know, when you think so, you feel like it’s going to last forever. And then something changes energetically for you when you start turning 15 or 16. Really, when you get into your sophomore year, you start realizing, oh, now wait a minute, I’ve only got two more years of school. Okay, it’s this. The energy that’s available in your environment is, you actually feeling start to feel like you’re getting old when you’re only 16. And so, like, I think other people have experiences too, that the, like, it’s like driving on a road and then the road just, like, stops and there’s no…energy you can work with after that. it’s like this mindset it’s like you’re in high school and then all that’s after that is getting old and dying. You know, there’s that song, I hope I die before I get old. I don’t. I don’t hope that I die before I get old, but you don’t. It’s just like, it’s the strange things that happens where you start to feel old. And then it gets much more intense when you’re turning 40. So…People don’t really age anymore. Like when I was little, my grandparents’ generation or great-grandparents’ generation, People now really don’t age in the same way. We’re able to stay younger. Um, but there’s something about like the, just the energy that just everything starts working differently. I’m trying to get different imagery in my mind. I think that’s what I’m saying, like you can have imagery in your head for something it’s just what’s available from your environment that you didn’t realize you had in there. Something’s off in my head with turning 40 and I’m trying to…

I thought by saying it out loud, maybe we can think of something to go with your 40s, like life energy, vibrant energy.

In a lot of cultures, you know, you’re valued as you grow older. You’re growing in wisdom. So I know I’m still a valuable person. It’s this involuntary response to turning 40 that I’m still trying to work through. So I was just going to say that out loud. Because again, your mind is on a quest for safety. And if you feel safe it’s hard to have healing take place. So again, from like 2012 until, you know, more recently, so for like 12 or 13 years, I was doing really well. I’m just stuck in this flare-up. just trying to talk through these things to see if we can have some breakthroughs here on how to process things differently. I started posting maybe like in September or October I started posting on this website again as I’m trying again to I play the music for people. I’m trying to work through the stage fright. The hymns that I’ve written connect with all of that unconscious energy and all that stuff that you may not be aware that you think and feel.

[10:00] And I’m just trying to sort through some of that. When I started getting sick, I was hoping I was going to get better quickly and be able to…get back into my life. I’m in this flare-up, you know, trying to…Play again. These are things I’m going to have to be finding a way to talk about. Because I’ll need to be explaining to people that I’ve got to be careful about being over-scheduled and I’ve got to make sure to manage my health conditions. And so I’m trying to work through that now, hoping to get out of the flare-up, and, um, and be able to play this music again. So one thing it talks about when you’re reading about immobility is when that animal has gone limp and is just laying there it’s still scanning for safety, and once it sees it has an opportunity to get up and run, then there’s this mobilizing energy. And that’s what I’ve been trying to work with um and that it’s got too much energy. I’m not trying to wake up and take off running. I’m trying to wake up at like a walking pace.

So if you’ve heard people talking about, like, if the water’s been off, There’s going to be pressure built up in the pipes, so you’ve got to turn the faucet on slowly, just like slowly releasing that

the pressure in the pipes so that the water will just flow out slowly. That’s what I’ve been learning to work with because you feel the stress of it you feel the stress of being sick and you’re wanting to like dive in and work with this energy and get it all to stop right away. But slower is faster, is what they say. And if you’re just working on learning how, just try to let off some of the pressure. letting the pressure out and the water will start flowing again at a calm pace. instead of having too much force with it. So one thing I’ve been learning about is how to develop that daily living energy, you know, the time where the little rabbit’s just going through the day. doesn’t have all of that adrenaline and everything. And that’s unknown to me in a lot of ways. You know, you’ll hear a lot of times people say, oh, you need to get out of your comfort zone. And I always say…

I don’t have a comfort zone. I’m always uncomfortable. We’re trying to develop that that daily living like comfortable energy they always thought of me as just like a nervous child um But I was actually developing a pretty serious problem over the years. But it’s something that…trying to learn how to work with it now so it’s not like it. It helps to just kind of talk through things or things or things because Okay, what is it? What is daily living? Okay, when they’re talking in these books I do get confused by the terms, so that’s why I’m trying to talk through it. And I, again, I…I’m not giving a scientific explanation of it. I may say something that’s not quite right, but in general…

we’re learning how the body works and they talk about that you’re working with mobilizing or immobilizing energy. So…

And how your body does that, like how fast your heart’s going to be beating or the adrenaline is determined by whether you’re mobilizing or immobilizing in safety or in threat. So.

That would be the difference. Think about how your heart beat would be different, your heart rate, your breathing would be different. Think about the difference like if you’re if you go running the different experience for your autonomic nervous system if you’re just jogging Just because you’re wanting to go jog, so you’re running, you’re running. Or if you’re running because someone’s chasing you. So that would be a different experience. Your heart would be beating differently. You would have much more adrenaline if you were running to get away from something.

[15:00] And what can happen is if the pathways you got are if you get stuck in that threat mode, you can be running with all of that stress and your heart can be beating as if you’re under a great threat when you are safer than you’re realizing. So, that’s where we’re trying to learn how to regulate. There’s a really interesting book that I’ve been listening to. it’s called it didn’t start with you and he talks about how you can be living in a prison of sensations or feelings that are actually from the past or from a different moment. You’re reliving a different moment. And that’s what I’m trying to work through. That’s actually a really interesting book it talks about generational trauma and things that you have inherited from your family that may not be It’s stuff that you’ve got to work through, resolving these types of things to make sure you’re in the present moment, only reacting to what’s going on right now. And you might have threats in your environment right now, but you’d have to make sure you’re only reacting to those and not to everything that’s ever happened to you. That can be what happens with your brain. You’re reacting to everything that’s ever happened instead of, okay, what’s going on right this second. And for me, you know, I didn’t know that I had a processing problem until I was 29 years old, and it wasn’t until after I got sick that I learned how to meditate and I started learning how to process these things. So that’s why I’m wanting to work with people

with the healing effects of music and meditation, specifically how you can use Biblical imagery with meditation, because if I had learned how to do that when I was little and had been able to use that throughout life, I don’t think I would have gotten sick. And I did experience really tremendous healing, and I did well for as I said, about 12 or 13 years, and then something has connected with this unconscious energy. And I’m trying to work through that now. Part of what I think my mind is warning me about, there’s another book by Gabor Mate that’s called When the Body Says No. And he gives examples in here. There was somebody that had been sick and then was…getting better. It was something like that. And they started getting these warning signals from their mind because he was going to go right back into the life that he had before he got sick, and your mind’s trying to warn you, like, okay, no, you’ve got to do it differently this time, because the way you were doing things before led up to you getting sick. That’s part of what’s coming up for me with my mind. As I’m trying to get out there playing music again. Because in the last few years before I got sick, I was really pushing myself to get out on stage and was playing the flute for school, going to competitions, playing in the classical music world, which is really high stress. There’s a lot of pressure to play perfectly. You can’t make a mistake at a concert. It’s really beautiful music but it can be very stressful to be trying to play in that environment. What I had learned with stage fright was just to kind of suppress everything or just push everything down and try and get out there. And enjoy playing, enjoy connecting with people. But that stuff that you’re pushing down or just trying to, you know, brace and make it through. It catches up to you later. So. I think that was part of why I was getting sick and I’m working now and working through stage fright so that hopefully I’ll be able to play this music for people.

So again, as in the last few months here that I’ve been trying again to play the music that It was in starting to write music it really helped me. I experienced a lot of healing with it when I started writing in 2014. I would just play it where other people could not hear it, it really helped me to play it for myself.

[20:00] And it brings up a whole different energy when I’m trying to play it for someone else, and it’s bringing up all of these things for, um…that my mind works differently. I’ve talked about that before on here. I process information differently. And more recently, I’ve You know, I knew that I had my body syndrome more recently with all of this stuff that’s showing up in this flare-up and the difficulty I’m having in trying to play this music in front of people and looking into the, you know, Learning about neurodivergence. And it’s been mentioned some before. But I think that you know they’re talking about I know that my mind works differently. I know that I’m a highly sensitive person. And just wondering about the possibility of if there’s some autism there also. That I was having to mask when I was a child. Again, I was born in the early 80s, 1982, and people were not as…you know familiar with that or didn’t know how to help people as much. So I think you’re seeing a lot of people are late-diagnosed with that. They were masking when they were little, too. So that’s one thing. I haven’t started talking about that yet. I’ve mentioned it some, and it seems like something that…people are very accommodating to now so when I’ve mentioned it to someone they’ve said. Okay. So I thought I would mention it on here because, um, I will need people to know that that’s what’s going on with me. and so that I need, you know, different things in terms of, like, light and sound in my being. That just clicked with my mind now, too, of that. That’ part of the problem with stage fright is when you’re stepping out there, anytime you step out on stage, there’s all these really bright lights that are on you, and you’re trying to process the sound if you’re playing in a group. In an orchestra or a band you’ve got to be able to process the sounds that the other people are making so that you’re playing at the same time. If you’re playing, like playing the piano, you’ve got to process that noise also. And it was a real…struggle for me out there. I thought it was because I was getting so nervous that I couldn’t, you know, because I would be okay during rehearsal.

I find it very soothing. I enjoy hearing the music in rehearsal. If there’s that added stress of that you’re at of performance, you know, it’s much harder to take in the information. Also, you don’t have the bright lights when you’re rehearsing. So It’s all of those kinds of things that thankfully now, I think if I’m just talking about that, that I’ll need to play in different settings and be careful about not being over-scheduled then thankfully, people are more understanding of that now. So, the app that I use…It does like a 30-minute transcript, and I’ve been talking for about 23 minutes. I’ll talk for a few more minutes on here, and then I’ll have to start another recording. So again, this energy of the shutdown. One thing that always helped me growing up, you know, I talked about music. I also always had pets. So I always had cats and dogs. The way that they help is they bring you out of that. They’re on this different wavelength where they’re never…on the human stress wavelength. They’re very perceptive. They’re always watching over you. They’re aware of human stress, but they’re never on the exact same wavelength. So, like, I had Border Collie named Chloe that I’ve talked about before. I got her…Actually, I was in middle school when I got her, but I would get home from school. I would play the piano therapeutically. And also, you know, Chloe was always watching over me. If I was sitting there and I looked like I’d had a stressful day, she’d walk over to me, and she’d sit there looking at me like, We should throw the tennis ball. So those were the kinds of ideas the dogs suggested It did help. It was like she was suggesting what helped make her feel better. It also helped me too because what You know, you have those 10 or 15 minutes that you’re doing something that’s relaxing and it relaxes your mind. And it actually does help you.

[25:00] I always had pads that would help bring you out of your stress mode. And I had my…My golden retriever Libby, I got her in 2002. And she lived to be 11 and a half and she passed away 12 years ago it’ll be 12 years ago on the 20^th January 20^th.

So I’m remembering her this weekend, and I knew when I got her that I wasn’t going to be able to get any more pets. I had been…whenever one of my pets would get older, I would get another pet. And I knew when I got Libby, I was like, okay, I can’t keep doing this. It’s too sad. It goes by too quickly and then they’re old. So, it was January of 2014 when she passed away.

And I will probably have to start the new recording before I can tell you about Libby and how she’d always bring me out of that shutdown energy um, to a better place. So then after she passed away I was, uh, It’s that energy right there where you’re just in that shutdown and I’m not able to get myself out of it.

So it was only about six weeks after Libby passed away that I started writing the hymns. I had been really struggling with that energy and thinking, okay, I don’t know what to do. I know I can’t get another pet. And it was March of 2014. I was living in an apartment at that time. And I remember the moment I was either standing up or sitting down in my chair and I heard the chorus in my head to “We Will Walk Through the Fire.” That was the first hymn that I wrote. I haven’t posted it on here yet. And I knew what it was, I knew I was hearing music in my head. And other hymn writers have talked about that happening for them, but I knew I could hear a choir of angels singing in my head. And I was just stunned by that. And there was so much going on at that time that it was actually about two days before I could sit down and work on the music. And that song I was able to write out the words and the melody in one day. And I felt like that was God’s answer to me of saying, okay, he was going to be there with me. I was going to have this time with him. I was going to get to hear all of this you know beautiful music in my head, and I would get to be the one to write it down and work on it, write the hymns and then play them for other people so that they can have the same healing effect. So the music’s been very healing for me over the years, and I’m trying to get to where I can play it for other people. I have to start the new recording now, so thank you for listening and thank you for… Sorry about having to do these different recordings. Let me start that new one and we’ll keep going.

[00:00] Okay, so I have been talking about my golden retriever, Libby. I got her in 2002. So I had gotten sick in 1999. I had had to leave school and homeschool, and then I…I had gotten her in 2002, so it had only been about three years at that time.

And I didn’t realize how shut down I was until I got Libby. So I had…At that time I had two other dogs, an Australian Cattle Dog named Max and my Border Collie Chloe, and I had trained both of them. Max already had training before we got him.

We got him when he was a year old. But he had some behavioral problems and I worked with him with that. I trained him. I trained Chloe. We had had cats for a long time that I didn’t train them, but, you know, I had raised them. You know, they were…They took me seriously, you know, they listened, and…were well behaved overall and then it was like I got Libby as a puppy and I brought her home and so I had my dogs Chloe and Max. I had gotten Libby because our two cats had passed away. I was very sad about that. And I got Libby my puppy that summer. So, it was just the two dogs. I bring her home, and she’s a very very smart dog very perceptive she assessed the environment and she thought that like Chloe and Max had adopted me or had adopted a sick little animal and we’re taking care of it. So she was like, oh, that’s nice. They’re helping you. I’ll help you too. And she did not think of me as being in charge or that she needed to listen to me or anything like that. She just thought that I was this little sick person that they had adopted and they were caring for. And I remember looking at my other dogs thinking like, well, I guess I didn’t realize that I had not fully processed that that was what was going on now. But it was that shutdown that she picked up on, and so she was a golden retriever, and she just took it upon herself to help me and take care of me, and she was like…a service dog to me. She just took it upon herself to watch over me and take care of me. but she was not trained in it. So, um, that was the thing that like, um, I didn’t realize how shut down I was until I couldn’t play with her in the same way that I played with Chloe when I got her as a puppy. And again, I had gotten her because Max was getting older. He had been a very active dog, and he was starting to slow down, and that was really sad to me, so I got a puppy.

And you know, when I was telling people I was going to get a golden retriever, they were talking about oh those are such wonderful dogs. So I said ok. And I got Libby and she was a wonderful dog. She’s my beloved golden retriever. It turned out she was extremely hyperactive, and so before I got the golden retriever puppy, everybody was saying what a great breed it was. Afterwards, I was saying, you know, she actually she seems to be pretty hyperactive here. Then that was when people were saying, oh yes, they’re very hyperactive dogs. So I would joke with Libby like anytime I would get a disciplinary thing like a barking collar or some type of training tool, it would always have a picture of the golden retriever on it. So there’s your picture, you know, she was on all that disciplinary stuff but she was a very very sweet dog and she could somehow not listen to anything that you were telling her to do but she wasn’t being disobedient. It was just like, as I said, she thought that And she just didn’t… She did not think of me as being in charge. Um… So… I…I had to be very careful with Max with her, because Libby got really big really quickly. She wasn’t careful about…

not knocking him over. She wasn’t trying to hurt him, though.

[05:00] But she had so much more energy than we did that I would just get next. He would just lay down on the floor, and then I would stand there with him. And Libby would literally run circles around us to get her energy out when we were in the house. And Max and I would look at each other like…What happened to us? Like, how did we get here? Because only a few years before, he was younger and he would have been running through the house and been able to play with …http://cut%20out..

It’s like we were there. I was only about 20 years old at the time because this was 2002, and we were just kind of looking at each other like, well…but so that was that thing that…That’s that shutdown that I’m talking about, that after I got the diagnosis and got treatments for things started working with a counselor that used holistic techniques. I saw a lot of improvement with it, but that’s just that energy where you just can’t do what you would want to do. You’re not able to move around. You’re in this frozen state. It takes a lot of energy to stay in a freeze. You’re repressing a lot of energy. I think that’s the words to use. It takes a lot to keep that energy frozen. And so you’re tired.

And that’s what I’m trying to get out of now. And again, with my brain working differently I always connected to my pets because they’re very sensitive to stuff like that. They’ll pick up on that you know, something’s different with this person and they’ll be helpful to you with that. And that’s, again, like why Libby was like a service dog for me. And it was like…the way that those dogs work is they’re really connected to their human you know so she just like stared into my eyes and just went through my brain as a frame of reference. And um then um she did a lot of things the same way that I did and it was actually in that people would always ask me if she was autistic. Is she kind of autistic? Or something like that and That was when I was starting of me realizing something had really changed for me. Maybe I just wasn’t able to mask it as well. But once I got into that shutdown, it seemed that way. Things were just working differently, and that’s what I’ll need to be able to talk to people about, that I’ll just need different…some different things or different settings to be playing playing music in. I don’t know that Libby was autistic because she had a lot of other things that she, so she like used my brain as a frame of reference for the world but she had all this other stuff she did. She was not sensitive to noises or to lights or anything like that. So, I don’t know. I could talk about her for a long time, but she was…I really miss having her with me. She was the most joyful pet I ever had. She was just so excited about everything. If you’re struggling with a shutdown, with any type of depression or frustration with an illness or anything else going on in your life.

She had this positivity that would just bring you out of that. That’s why she was such a good service dog to me. She would wake up and just be so excited to go through the day. And she would just kind of pull you through the day, too. And that’s why, you know, it was really…feeling so much stress here after she passed away. I don’t know what to do here. I can’t get another pet. And then that’s when I got the music. Working with that. So. That’s just trying to give you an idea of the shutdown that music is another way that you can…Get out of that. Get onto a better wavelength. And that’s why I’m Really hoping to be able to work through this stage fright and get to where we can play the music and experience healing that way.

[10:00] Let me look at my notes here. So there’s one more thing I was going to talk about today. And again, I’m not a practitioner of any of the techniques. I’m talking about from the patient experience that I had with working with them and what I’ve learned about my mind. when you’re having a processing problem like with PTSD, things can get, well, my mind shuts down when I’m trying to think through it. An event can get.

held in the present moment like it’s still happening when it’s not happening in that present moment you can have it where um It’s not processed through into long-term storage where it doesn’t have that charge with it. So you can be reliving things that happened before. Or you can be triggered by something in your environment that’s associated with a memory. You’re just not processing things in present time. One…An example of how to think of it is your mind’s always referencing what’s in your environment. So I feel like what my mind does, it’s like it’s googling everything. So if it sees an object, or it can be anything, it can be…something that you’re seeing or just something, a sound or a smell or a taste of a food or Anything like your mind’s storing information and categorizing it to try and keep you safe. So part of keeping you safe is remembering times where something was dangerous and having that being really firm in your mind. When I started seeing that counselor in 2012, she told me a story about someone who I can’t think of his name right now, but there was a video where he was talking about it. He had gone hiking And he felt a little sting on his ankle, and it was actually a poisonous snake. So he started having all the symptoms of that. And thankfully he was able to be rescued and healed from that. So once he got better, he went to go out again and go hiking. And he felt a scrape on his ankle and he started having some of the same symptoms he had felt when it had been a snake bite.

But he looked down, and at that time it was just a stick. He had scraped his ankle on a stick. That’s an example of how your brain is storing information for you. It’s there for your safety.

But it can get confused where, you know, because that was such an intense event for him as soon as he felt that scrape his body went into trying to warn him you’ve got to address the poison from the snake but this time it was just a stick so it’s like you can have that going on based on how your mind has stored information well, if you’ve got a processing problem. So, in terms of Googling things…it’s like your mind is scanning everything in your environment and you know when you google something the top results that show up It’s all dramatic stuff, or really intense stuff, and so…That’s how your mind’s processing your environment with, like, the worst possible things that are associated with stuff can be what happens, and that’s why I experienced a lot of healing just reworking some of those things or a lot of those things so that, um, when you’re referencing a present moment environment you you still have stored in your memory something like that like that like for him, like the snakebite, if he processed through to his long-term storage, he could just have that as something to reference without reliving the snakebite. When something scraped his ankle, he would be able to just look down. He would say, oh, I need to check and see what that is. Okay, that time it’s a scrape without having his body reproducing the symptoms that he felt when he was bitten by the snake. So, it’s like if you’re You’re trying to, like, if you have something happen, your mind will get a really, really narrow focus.

[15:00] Block out everything else and just focus on the threat. And It’s part of healing is getting that expanded awareness and have the memory process through and then when you’re referencing the things in your environment. It’s not going to be all the worst case scenario stuff that’s going to show up when you’re googling something. I hope it’s making sense what I’m saying. Like, if you were just…referencing like if you’re looking around well let me just think of an example I can give for me you know I have I had trouble with eating food. So I didn’t know what I had. I didn’t know I had EOE for a long time. So I was getting sick from foods when I was eating. So this is one thing I had to rework. One of the first things I was learning to rework with that counselor was my associations with food. Because when my mind was googling any of these specific foods, I would see flashes in my mind of the 10 worst times that I got sick from that food. So when I was googling the different foods in my brain, oh, you can’t eat them, you’ve gotten sick from them before. And I was having to re-learn how to eat. I had gotten a diagnosis, and then…I had gotten really good results from NAET, the Nambudripad Allergy Elimination Technique, I would have to look it up to make sure I’m explaining it correctly. But I was able to eat foods and not get sick from them when for years I had gotten sick when I had eaten that food. So you were having to update the information and say Okay. This food used to not be safe for you to eat, but now you can eat it without getting sick. So, that’s what you’re working through of working through to resolve what you can so that when your mind is scanning the current environment you have the most of updated information so for me let’s see you right now. I’m having a really bad flare-up of EOE so that’s part of why my mind’s getting confused in terms of what’s safe and what’s not. Because I’ve been doing well for a really long time. But I’ll just …. by just explaining that.

analogy to googling what happened for a long time was you know you want to make sure you’re referencing just the present and moment information so once i had Cleared those memories of getting sick from food …?…. Didn’t have that charged energy with them anymore. Then, when my mind’s referencing…

And if I see a plate of food, and I Google what’s on the plate, well now in my mind are all these times that I’ve been able to eat the food without getting sick. So I know that it’s safe. And.

That’s what I’m trying to work through right now as all of this unconscious stuff has been brought up something that’s connected with that and I’m trying to sort through. I started out this voice note by talking about, you know, I’m feeling really sick, and so it’s hard to think when you don’t feel well. And.

If you’re getting sick from eating, I’ve got all this inflammation going on and everything, so it’s not really the time to be trying to think through things. But at the same time, I’ve got to have a breakthrough here to start seeing progress. So that’s why I was going to say it out loud. to see if our minds can connect and get some imagery going for life energy or you know being able to get that walking pace going where I can unfreeze and not have that energy of taking off running, just being at a good. and at the beginning of the voice note what I’m struggling with is, again, I’m not updated from COVID, and then if I update from COVID you’ve got that feeling that the end of the world, you’re running out of time. Like, if I try and not think about that, then I’m 40 and you’ve got a different energy going on with that. And at the same time, as I said, I know that good energy is there So that’s why I’m trying to post these things on the website and connect with people that are wanting to hear the music, get that life energy going again and hopefully I’ll start feeling better soon and can be going through a daily routine where I’m feeling well again and we can be sharing this music and just continuing to learn about how our minds and bodies work and continue to work with the healing effects of music. So thank you for listening to this voice note. And again it helps me to talk it through and I’ll post again sometime soon.