That moment with my enormous four-legged friend made me think of what I call “foxhole friends.” They’re the friends who rush to jump into the foxhole with you when the loss bombs are falling and the grief bullets are flying. Maybe you already have one of two of these godsends in your life. Maybe you ARE one of them. They’re the diamonds in the muck of life; the people who hold you up when you’re crying so hard you can’t stand, sustain you when you’re too despondent to take care of yourself.

Something inside me, though, knew that forcing myself to search for beauty again would be a life-sustaining quest, so I bought myself a camera. I figured it would give me a reason to actively look for beauty in the world and, if I could find it, capture that memory.

What I discovered was that the beauty I sought was looking down at me from above. That’s not a spiritual metaphor; I mean it literally.

“When fragments of past trauma play out inside us, these fragments leave behind clues in the form of emotionally charged words and sentences that often lead us back to unresolved traumas” (Wolynn, 2016).  Patterns that, although developmentally adaptive for survival, often create problems in the present. 

For many, the holiday season presents a challenge to be, well, festive and merry.   There is something about the holiday season – less hours of daylight, more time indoors, expectations of being social – that has a way of increasing depression symptoms.

I would like to suggest a gentle, self-compassionate approach.  Here are some ideas to do so:

I think it is safe to say, we all struggle with shame at times and the ‘shadow’ parts of our lives that we may not like to show to others, for fear of judgement and condemnation.   

If we each commit to speaking freely about our concerns, reach out for help, normalize and empathize with others’ experiences -- We can advance.  We can heal.  We can make meaningful impact on the lives of others.  We can change the course of history!  The Shaming Culture does not need to be our legacy.

A traumatic experience can be processed and stored in the brain in different places. If the event is stored in the pre-frontal cortex, the area responsible for rational adult thinking, the experience is unlikely to cause persistent trauma or injury. Problems occur when the traumatic experience is process and stored in the amygdala, the survival part of the brain responsible for fight-flight-freeze responses. When that happens, a seemingly mundane event like a firecracker on the 4th of July can trigger an overreactive response that is rooted in a past traumatic event, such as a landmine detonating. Or, you might experience a significant anxiety response in your body when anticipating a situation at work or argument with someone.

Beyond the therapeutic effect of EMDR, there are many added benefits that result from an overall increase in mindfulness and the mind-body connection. The reason for this is that EMDR treatment works at the level of mind/body connection:  the client thinks of an experience (mind) and integrates a bilateral body movement such as eye movement or tapping (body). This is where the healing begins, at the intersection of mind and body. Repeated exposure to EMDR results in an overall increase in mindfulness and the inner peace that mindfulness brings.

Every brain is equipped with a genetic threshold that can trigger addiction. The reason why some people can use drugs and alcohol without becoming addicted is that the genetic threshold is different for everyone. Once this threshold has been crossed, the neurochemistry in the brain changes, creating a “new normal,” or homeostasis. The brain essentially rewires itself for dependence on the substance.