I Am Afraid of the Pain

A friend wrote this comment on Facebook:

I have to go to bed. Why can't I act like a normal human being and go to bed at night? I know. I've had PTSD since my surgery. I'm afraid to go to sleep; afraid of the pain that will be there when I wake up.

My personal experience is that “trauma” is anything separates me from conscious contact with God, with myself, and with others. This loss of conscious contact – separation – separates my conscious cognitive reasoning and decision making abilities from my impulse driven primitive brain, and I am either unconscious and numb, or conscious and overwhelmed by waves of pain, fear, and horrible loneliness.

For me, there are “answers” which my cognitive brain can know and understand, but these answers are not solutions which can heal my woundedness and relieve my pain and fear. In my experience, the trauma was the loss of conscious contact by pain and fear, and the solution is a spiritual process of improving my conscious contact with my God, with myself, and with others.

Spirituality, for me, is about my conscious experience of intimate relations with my conscious Higher Power’s Presence.

In separation – trauma – my brain constricts neural energy in order to try to control the pain, and ends up creating an ongoing illness which inflicts more pain and fear – separation – even when the trauma is less or no longer occurring. For me, the following has become my daily, moment to moment process of dealing with post trauma and chronic separation:
1. Experience and admit my powerlessness over the pain and fear, and their causes. This, for me, is an improvement in conscious contact with myself, with the beginning of a conscious experience that I am not expected to – nor could I when I tried – control my perceptions, reactions, actions, and the outcomes of my life experiences.
2. Connect with a Presence greater than myself. “Abandonment”, separation, loss of conscious contact was ultimately the actual trauma. So the solution, treatment, medication for the “illness” is a restoring of conscious contact – intimately, personally and consciously. The major way that I have been able to do this is by self disclosing –expressing -- my pain and fear to others who have experienced and/or are consciously experiencing similar trauma, separation, and their results. Where two or more are “gathered” together in conscious contact with themselves, God will appear – intimately and personally – as an unseen but infinitely powerful Presence that can soothe our pain and restore healthy connection to the separation within our brains – and relationships.
3. Based on the Presence I have begun to experience, take actions of trust and confidence in my God. I was taught, “if you believed that your God were healing your life and taking away your pain, what would you be doing right now?” At times, it was as simple as taking conscious deep breaths. Other times it was giving a smile or a nod, or a listening ear to someone else. Other times it was having fun, or finding something humorous to enjoy.

I believe, from my experience, that you cannot change your situation and pain with thought, knowledge, or understanding. But I believe that there is hope – because you – we -- are Never Alone.

Where two or more come together in conscious powerlessness, God is allowed to consciously appear – to be intimately Present – and “things” change. Maybe you have been given this opportunity as a spiritual means of becoming even more than your have ever been. Experience and Presence will tell.