[//]:# (!pinmapple 18.804993 lat 98.922978 long Doi Suthep, Suthep, Mueang Chiang Mai District, Chiang Mai 50200, Thailand d3scr)
I had been on the mountain for three days already and my meditation sessions had become easier. Each time I sat on the mat I could access calm and quiet with increased ease but with the ease came the true difficulty...
Once I was able to quiet my mind, vivid memories started to float to the top of my consciousness these were the thoughts I had been suppressing all of my life with video games, TV, alcohol, and the pursuit of women, talking was not allowed and strictly enforced so I couldn't get lost in the act of build new friendships to distract from the relationship with myself
I couldn't hide from the things I had been self-medicating to avoid and slowly traumatic event after traumatic event would float to the surface of my mind.....I would note the memory but with beginner's meditation you acknowledge the feeling is there, then you simply let it go.
I felt like my mind was trying to let me know something important now that I was giving it the opportunity to be heard, I continued to take note of my feelings but then I began to sort each time I felt an emotion or relived a vivid memory into "boxes" to be explored later. The box I'd like to talk to you about is my trauma box and how meditation and mindfulness gave me the tools I needed to work through my trauma and address my personal growth which had been stunted by it.
I walked into the prayer hall during the fourth afternoon of my stay at the temple with a question. "How can I forgive those who hurt me and scared me in my youth?" His answer surprised me and helped me to work through a lot of the issues that I had built over the years. His advice: "Don't worry about forgiving the person, that person is dealing with their own existence and is on their own path, you need to make peace with your memory of that person and your attachment to it, find a way to confront the emotions that come up. After my ten days on the mountain, I spent a lot of time visualizing certain memories I had put in my trauma box, exploring past memories and accepting what exactly I feel that way, examining the feelings I had, and accepting that they were there.
I began to heal on what I call a closed-loop. I was no longer looking for someone outside of myself to help me, no longer looking to have some miraculous conversation with my father about painful often violent incidents in the past, I started to untangle my mental knots all on my own.
Here are my tips for dealing with trauma. Each of these tools takes time, patience, and skill to develop to the point that they are useful.
Try to get comfortable with spending time with your own thoughts. We overwork and overstimulate our minds trying to drown out the thoughts we have, especially if we have trauma, this wrecks a lot of things inside of us. Meditation is not the only way to do this but it is a good starting point
Try journaling, the letters that I wrote to my ex-girlfriend at the time that she never opened (before the vipassana retreat, slowly became letters that I wrote to my self about all kinds of things....as you write you will stumble upon your true feelings, I cannot begin to tell you how many times I would go into a frenzy of writing or typing my thoughts only to look down at the pages I wrote in disbelief like "Wow, I had no idea those thoughts were inside of me.
Find something simple that you enjoy doing, give your brain a chance to power down, it's okay to spend some time doing something relaxing with no real external goal. lots of people enjoy coloring mandala's and I have found it really relaxing.
4.See someone: after you can articulate what is going on inside of you take the time to speak to someone who has the training to facilitate a good therapy session. The more work you have done on your own to develop mindfulness and understanding of what is happening inside of you, the more fruitful those sessions will be.
Mindfulness/ meditation doesn't solve everything and it won't make you a new person but it can give you the tools and insight needed to move on from past hurts so they don't have such a fierce hold on you in the present.