When I was a child I used to pull my hairs out of my head one by one. I did it to calm me. I did not know it then, but it helped reduce the anxiety I felt in my little spirt.

Once my mother confronted me about the bald spot on my head, I started counting numbers obsessively in my mind. I would repeat the license plates of the cars that past me throughout the day. Or I would repeat the letters in the sentence someone spoke to me. I realize now, that that was the way I kept myself from feeling.

Because I absorbed my mothers and fathers anxiety, and because I internalized it, I needed a place to go with it. I was raised in a very religious home, keeping true to all the Holy Days of Obligation, Sunday masses and alike. I was a good soul, so I did not act out. I did not turn to drugs or alcohol or promiscuity. Instead I turned the anxiety on inside myself.

All of us react to anxiety and trauma differently. If I had observed my parents drink alcohol, chances are I may have begun sneaking alcohol in an attempt to relieve some of the pressure unexplained anxiety produces. If I watched my father hit my mother, maybe I would have been a bully at school. Because my parents were both uptight people themselves and oozed anxiety through their pores, I learned to control what I was feeling by example.

My house was full of anxiety although no one ever seemed to notice but me. Perhaps it was because my parents created a home that was so much better than each of their childhood homes, that they were blind to the fact that although our home looked better, it still felt sick.

My mother and father are both children of alcoholics. Raised in extreme chaos, they found one another through the law of attraction, and did a wonderful job trying to undo what had been done to them. The deeper truth is, each of them believed in the lies. They believed that alcohol was the only problem, so neither of them drank. However, the truer issue was that no one they knew, knew how to deal with their feelings in a healthy way. Their childhood told them that alcohol was the problem, so they did not drink. That was only the tip of the iceberg however.

When people operate at the survival level, it is necessary that the feeling part of us go away. Because we fear death, we seek to physically survive. We worry about food and shelter, or being hit. There is no time to feel. We learn to disown the need we have to feel and to express ourselves. Children who were raised in extreme chaos have no time to feel. They are too on guard. Their adrenaline is always flowing. They need to be alert. Their bodies learn to adapt by becoming anxious. Internally their alarms have been going on for so long, their cells keep them on, because they have been taught to do so. As adults, even when the need to operate at survival level is gone, our bodies don't know how to relax. We feel anxious and search for reasons to justify the crazy way we feel. Because what we manifest in our physical world we create in our minds, we always find reasons. Thus the reason for our chaotic adult lives.

In order to be able to live a healthy, enjoyable life, the need to process our thoughts is essential. Without a basic understanding of how our minds work, it is nearly impossible to escape the loops of thoughts we have created in our minds. If our belief systems have been built on chaotic foundations, with dysfunctional role models, we owe it to ourselves and to each other to learn to observe our own minds. If anxiety is to stop effecting our lives, we are going to need to become self aware.

If you were never taught that your feelings, whatever those feelings were good or bad, were acceptable, chances are you learned to disown yourself. If as a child you were shunned rather than hugged when you cried, or if you were ignored consistently and the sense you received in your little gut was that you were not valued, then you were not taught to think properly. You were taught to deny yourself, and you were also taught how to control others. When you wanted to cry but smiled instead, you were trying to control the reaction of the adult in your life. Process this information slowly, and you will begin to unravel the puzzle which is your mind.

Letting go does not imply one disowns the trauma that has been done. To the contrary, letting go means you get to attach yourself to nothing including the anxiety that your traumas created. Letting go means you open your mind to greater things. When you let go of a negative you make room for a positive. When you stop trying to control the people in your life, you finally get one. When you understand your faulty thought process you get to create a new one, a better one. When you learn that you may not process information correctly you find new ways to think and suddenly the world is a much warmer place.

Peace has always been with you. You do not have to walk in upset any longer. In each and every moment there exists choice. But one must be awake to see it. If you choose to become more self aware, you can choose peace rather than turmoil at every turn. In time your thoughts become healthier and your true self gets to finally emerge.

Quiet your mind, and let peace engulf you.

Have you ever felt the need to say something and you chose to not say it instead? Has anyone ever said anything to you, that in your spirit you knew was wrong, and instead of defending your self, you just stood there and accepted their opinion? Have you ever felt the urge to tell your child, "i love you", but didn't? Have you ever wanted to tell someone you thought they were a great person, but you chose not to?

How often do you share your feelings? Do you even know what your feelings are?

Think about this. If you don't value your own feelings, you won't have the esteem to share them. If you don't know how you think, you won't even know what you are truly feeling. Instead you will stay in a fog, run thousands of thoughts through your mind, feel angry, perhaps victimized, and get stuck. You won't be able to make a decision. You will complain rather than make a choice.


When I was a child, I was taught through non verbal ways, that the sharing of my feelings was unacceptable. My parents never told me not to tell them how I felt, but when I did, I was told I was being dramatic, feeling sorry for myself, or that I was selfish. When I was sad, I was shunned. I was ignored, and that sent a message straight to the bottom of my soul. I had no value.

Of course my parents valued me, but the silence in my home killed my tiny spirt.

Children rely primarily on their instincts and senses. A child knows just by the way her mother brushes her hair, whether or not she is happy about doing it, angry she is doing it, or is indifferent to doing it. She may not have the verbal ability to share that sense she is sensing, but she feels it and she integrates it into herself.

When parent argue in front of their children, and do not consider the tiny spirits witnessing the drama unfold, they absorb that scenario mind, body and soul. They take on the anxiety the argument is producing like a tiny boat with a hole in it fills up with water. Wether or not they want the anxiety to invade them, it does. If the parents keep silent to the children, and do not take responsibility for the trauma by talking to the children about what they witnessed, their souls will die, at least a little.

What is troubling about trauma is not the trauma itself. It is not being permitted to express the trauma that is murderous. If a child is molested at 3, she/he suffered a trauma. If the event lasted 3 minutes, still that child has been changed forever. In seconds a soul is forever altered. If that child is returned home, and no one knows of the trauma, the child is lost within itself. Unable to express the trauma, the child may disown his own self, in an attempt to shield his consciousness from re-experiencing the trauma. In an attempt to protect itself, the mind splits. A part of that child is lost forever, until the moment that soul is permitted to feel that trauma in a safe environment, integrate it into its consciousness, accept that it happened, know that it is safe now, and that it is okay to feel whatever he/she feels.

The Gap of Silence

The silence that to often exists between the mind, the body and the soul, kills. When our minds allow us to not know what we are doing fully, we find ourselves obese, angry, having affairs, taking drugs, stealing, gambling, and in all sorts of chaos. The gap that exists, where so many of us hide cloaked in veils of denial, allow us the ability to completely destroy our lives as well as the lives of others. When a man hits his wife, he goes to that space, that gap, and he hides. He finds silence their. There is no judgement, just silence. He can split from his rational mind, his body can act out and his soul can get shut off. The silence he chooses rather than the divine ability given to us all to think, becomes enticing. His ego gets inflated. His power has been restored, and his conscience gets silenced.

When a person eats so much more than he should, where is he? He is in that gap of silence. He has split himself off from his divinity and has chosen the weightlessness of space over the enormity of self responsibility. He gets to float for awhile, bathed in the seduction of silence. He is lost. He is killing his spirit, one moment at a time.

When a woman has an affair, how is it that she can still cook her husband a meal, smile at him when he gets home, and even have sex with him that night? She can because she visits the place of silence within herself. She runs to the place where there is only darkness. It is as if time does not exist in this gap. It is a hole in our mind somewhere that tempts us with its cries. We can slip into it thousands of times a day, without anyone ever even knowing we disappeared at all. We can buy groceries, but be in that gap, fantasizing about the other man, about calories, about gambling, about cocaine, about yelling at the neighbor, whatever. That gap is where chaos is created. That gap is nothing but silence.

In order to live a healthy life, it is imperative we talk. It is imperative we hear. It is imperative to know the pattern of thoughts our mind possesses. If you get high when you are lost in thoughts of your addiction, you must know that is what is happening inside of your head. You must know how your mind reacts to the thoughts it has. A brain can only hold images. It is up to the human mind to choose consciousness and to actually choose to accept or reject the thoughts the mind discovers. It is essential to be able to process information rather than to just react to information. Wanting to snort cocaine, does not mean you should. Wanting to have an affair does not mean you should. Wanting to hit your stubborn child does not mean you should. The silence we choose, over talking ourself through a dysfunctional dialogue in our minds, is what kills.

As children, many of us came from homes that did not permit the open expression of thoughts and feelings. Many of us came from very good homes, but they were homes infested with anxiety about money, or about what the neighbors thought. It doesn't matter what the root of anxiety was. What matters is this. If as a child, you needed to find that gap of silence, you did because you needed a place to go, that was safe. I found that gap when I was very young. It is where I developed the ability to think whimsical things. It is the place I went when the silence between my mother was so great I thought I would die. When I was a child, that space was my refuge. Unfortunately, it was a space I never closed up. As an adult, I visited that place many times unaware it was the resource pool of chaos I was drawing from. Whenever life got too difficult I went there. When I emerged, I was angry, hostile, ranting, self righteous, and even a victim. That place is where my ego hung out, whenl I somehow began to sense powerlessness. When I needed to regain my sense of control, I took a dip in its toxic pool.

When my ego went there, my mind shut off. It became silent. I could not be rational. I could not think. I was not conscious. The silence I created, the disconnect I created between my mind, my body and my soul nearly killed me. The refuge I created as a child as the result of a non-feeling home and excruciating bullying at school, had many times offered me the escape I needed. Unaware of how my mind reacted to chaos, I continued that pattern of thought as an adult.

I have counseled many people who run to the gap of silence themselves. So many of us do. Because we were raised in homes where the freedom of expression was not appreciated, we learned to shut our feelings down. In order to survive a world that refused us one of our basic rights to feel and express, we needed to learn to adapt. By learning to disown our feelings through repressing and denying them, we were able to survive.

A little girl of three, who feels like she is in the way, learns to not express her joy. She has been taught in various ways that her being happy or silly is troublesome to the caretakers in her life. Because she can not understand the adults in her life are dysfunctional and can not feel their joy either, she splits. She can talk, but only words she feels will be accepted. She becomes on guard, anxious and hypervigilant to her surroundings. Her sense of safety has been shaken. She is not safe, at least not emotionally or mentally. To survive she needs to feel somewhat accepted, so she learns to act. She monitors the moods of others and puts on a smile or takes one off on cue. The adults in her life are content, because now they have less of her to have to deal with.

Children find that space, and I thank God it exists. It saved me as I know it has saved many others. It is time however to choose not to visit that gap anymore. We are older now. We are wiser. We know we can think. We know it is okay to feel, and to make decisions even if that upsets the apple cart.

We are not that small child anymore, who was once crippled by the feeling of invisibility created. Today we can hear our own voice. We can think, and we can express. We know we are divine creatures, and that is what not our fault the adults in our life did not appreciate our divinity or their own. We can let that go, and begin living in the light of truth. Anxiety need not hold us bound any longer. We are and have always been free. All of our problems were illusions. They were created by the ego and our false self. Our truth is we can always choose peace.

Talk to your self. Hear your thoughts. Know them. Study them. Make choices, rather than react to the unobserved thoughts in your mind. Choose life rather than death.