DEEPER DIVE
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Health and Illness
The Process
The History of This Process
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Health and Illness
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You are 40,000,000,000,000 (40 trillion) cells.
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Each one of these cells—a tiny self—works, reproduces, and dies, as the others carry on.
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Those cells are busy living every moment of every day, communicating countless interactions with each other. In the time it takes to think, “what should I do?” trillions of profoundly intelligent actions have already happened to keep us alive.
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Those 40,000,000,000,000 cells are organized, and these organs work together for blood flow, breathing, digesting, moving, and thinking.
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This amazing body of cells is a group self.
This group self called “me,” this body of cells, is designed to be unified. When it is unified it is functional.
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When this group self is overwhelmed with stress and unresolved pain (trauma) it loses its unity—becomes dysfunctional. Then the cells and organs—including the thinking brain—work against one another, causing confusion, pain and illness.
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“I don't trust my body.”
“I don't know why I do this.”
“I'm anxious but I don't know why.”
“There's a pain but I don't know what it is.”
“I don't know what to do.”
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These types of thoughts are from a brain/body disconnection.
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This is a massive human epidemic.
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Feelingawareness​
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We often describe ourselves in parts, as a body with sensations, a “heart” with emotions, and a brain with thinking and awareness.
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Thinking this way is a symptom of the disunified self.
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Reality is more overlapping and interconnected. Even modern medical researchers have defined a “second brain” in the digestive system they call the Enteric Nervous System (ENS). It interacts with the “head” brain along what is now called the GBA, or "gut-brain axis.”
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We are not separate islands of body, heart, and brain. We have separate professions to cure body illness, others to treat emotional illness, and still others to fix thinking.
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We need a word that describes and engages the whole self.
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Feelingawareness is that word.
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Sam Turton uses the word feeling to cover the areas of body sensation and emotion, the word awareness to cover the areas of perception and thinking—and joined them.
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Feelingawareness is a word that describes our natural, unified state of being.
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Disconnection​
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When we experience unavoidable, painful situations, humans, like other animals, have the capacity to survive the overwhelming stimulus by disconnecting from it internally. This disconnect—if not immediately resolved through support and physical/emotional release—results in trauma.
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Trauma is not any pain, it is unexpressed pain held in the system.
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If this pain is not resolved and is compounded by more traumatic pain, it builds up in our tissues and nervous system. Our originally integrated system of feelingawareness becomes disconnected and broken.
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When we are disconnected from ourselves, we are often:
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• confused and doubtful
• unhappy and searching for the answer “out there”
• over- or under-emotional, with flatness, sadness, fear, anger, and shame
• unwell and not knowing why
• stuck in struggles and dramas
• empty and looking for relief
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We suffer because we carry pain inside.
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We are disconnected so we search for the solution outside.
We try everything—but nothing works.
We feel like something is missing.
Something is missing—our whole selves.
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The Causes
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The disconnection from feelingawareness is caused by three possible factors:
• trauma
• negative conditioning
• lack of positive conditioning
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TRAUMA
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Trauma begins with an event—or daily damaging situation—that cannot be managed or escaped and is so overwhelming that our system disconnects. Neglect, abuse, and injury are common causes. Disconnection occurs more easily when our systems are vulnerable, which is why the most traumatic damage often occurs earlier in childhood.
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Fainting during a stressful event is a simple example of the system shutting off overwhelming stimulus. Forgetting the actual impact of an accident is another.
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This disconnection mechanism is like a circuit breaker. The breaker protects the circuit from fire by switching off when electricity surges. The breaker trips to save the system.
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When the breaker trips, the circuit temporarily stops functioning. The intention is to remove the problem (such as an extra appliance), and switch the breaker back on. The circuit returns to its connected state so the lights and appliances function.
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The human system works the same way:
• an overwhelming event occurs
• parts of our brain disconnect to save us from the full load
• some or all of the experience is hidden/repressed
• the cause is removed
• safety is returned
• we reconnect, by feeling/releasing the hidden/repressed experience
• we return to feelingawareness
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THE KEY: For this process to work effectively, the overwhelming cause needs to be removed and replaced by a safe environment.
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THE PROBLEM: What if the cause is not removed? What if there is no safety?
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What if, as children, our parents are neglectful and don't know how to provide safety? What if our parents—the ones we need to protect us and provide safety—are the abusers?
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Then, tragically, our emotional “circuit breaker” never turns back on. Part of our “house”—our feelingawareness—remain “in the dark,” disconnected. The more times this happens the more disconnected and dysfunctional we become.
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Pain that remains buried—held pain—is called trauma.
Trauma is held inside, waiting for a safe place to be released and resolved.
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NEGATIVE CONDITIONING
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As children, if we live in a dysfunctional family, we suffer traumas of neglect and abuse, but are also overwhelmed by a flood of negative conditioning:
• confusing or poor communication
• aggravated conflict and/or denial of problems
• excess anger, depression, anxiety, and shame
• physical, emotional, and sexual abuse
• addictions to drugs, alcohol, food, gambling, etc.
• excessive control/authority and/or permissive unpredictability
• destructive life goals
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Like a fish swimming in toxic water, we can't stop these dysfunctional behaviours entering and poisoning the way we think, move and behave. This negative conditioning, from thousands of repetitions, hardens like concrete into the “character” we believe we are.
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These negative patterns are not hidden like traumas—they are front and centre in every thing we do. Unfortunately, over time, they become familiar—hidden in plain sight. Nonetheless, these negative patterns disrupt our feelingawareness.
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LACK OF POSITIVE CONDITIONING
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Every child needs to be surrounded by a constant modelling of healthy behaviours. This positive conditioning helps guide them into a feelingaware adulthood. If children grew up with no negative conditioning—but zero positive conditioning—they would become confused and adrift.
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Children need positive conditioning such as:
• confident female, male, and family role models
• clear and compassionate communication
• balanced exploration of problems and conflict resolution
• responsible expressions of emotion
• physical protection and safe affection
• healthy lifestyle
• balanced parental authority and family democracy
• inspiring and functional life goals and activities
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A lack of positive conditioning, as a monumental neglect, is often harder to notice than negative conditioning. A person who doesn't know who they are, what they want, how to respond, what to do—how to even be—does not experience the extreme pains of trauma or the dramas of bad conditioning. They often look for leaders and guides—parental substitutes—instead of realizing the solution lies within.
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The Basic Needs
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To become functional, feelingaware adults, children have 4 basic needs:
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1) physical
Safety and protection with sufficient food, clothing, and shelter
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2) emotional
Unconditional love, appreciation, respect, and affection
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3) family
Acceptance, stability, and guidance
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4) freedom
Explore perceptions, feelings, creativity, and boundaries
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Safety is the foundation for these needs. Safety is a protective shell within which a developing child is free to explore, grow, and develop at an optimal rate.
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When these basic needs are not met due to neglect and/or abuse, development is inhibited, trauma occurs, and the natural state of feelingawareness is disconnected.
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To reconnect and resolve this dysfunctional state, we need an environment with safety and as many of the 4 basic needs as possible.
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Reconnecting is Healing
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The words “heal,” “health,” and “healthy,” come from the Old English hal, and the Greek, holos: “to make whole or complete.” To reconnect is to heal, have health, and be fully healthy.
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Feelingawareness is health and wholeness.
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The natural process of healing begins with a safe and supportive, therapeutic environment.
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The ideal therapeutic environment provides:
• Safety—from harm, negative judgment, criticism, interruption, boundary violation • Acceptance—without judgment, coercion, or manipulation
• Respect—you are welcome and all of you is accepted as you are
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• Presence—you receive compassionate attention, are listened to and heard
• Stability—relationships that are constant and reliable over time
• Freedom—to explore, share and express whatever is necessary and true
• Choice—the power to say no, and choose without intimidation
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• Guidance—realistic presentations of options and outcomes
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These elements provide the essence of the 4 basic needs of physical support, emotional support, family support and freedom-within-structure that we needed as children.
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The childhood need for “sufficient food, clothing, and shelter” requires financial stability. For adults who seek solutions to their problems, this also needs to be addressed for their systems to feel safe enough to process difficult issues of trauma and conditioning.
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The Process
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When the right therapeutic environment is found, nature begins the return to feelingawareness.
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This involves the exploration and resolution of the three main causes of disconnection and dysfunction:
• trauma
• negative conditioning
• lack of positive conditioning
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The roots of these problems are always found in the discomfort and pain of present day issues that repeat and will not resolve.
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The elements of the therapeutic environment—safety, acceptance, respect, presence, stability, freedom, choice and guidance—provide the ideal container to explore these difficult situations and feelings.
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The dysfunction in each of us is a unique construction of thoughts, behaviours, feelings, and sensations that were laid down, event by event, day by day, through our life. The dismantling and replacing of that old structure with a new, healthy one is an organic process as unique as you are.
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For this reason, there is no specific order or set of techniques to follow—you follow you. The experienced facilitator you have chosen follows you as well, listening, asking questions, offering focus, and presenting options you can choose.
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Every confusing or unresolving problem in our life—if followed—will take us back to its origin. Every unresolving problem now connects to an unresolved problem then. There are many thoughts to be shared, many emotions to be felt, many patterns to be challenged, many insights to be seen, and many new, healthy steps to take.
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Consider this. If children hurt themselves in the playground alone and do not feel safe, they will often hold their tears and run home. If they can feel safe with their families, they will cry the pain out, get the love and care they need—and return to normal—with no held pain, no trauma. If however, there is no safe home or safe parents to turn to, they may hold their tears—frozen in traumatic time, forever—unless they can find a safe place to let them out.
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That safe, therapeutic space is where:
• every worry can be said
• every thought can be revealed
• every “should” can be questioned
• every shadow can be seen
• every tear can be cried
• every tension can be released
• every sound can be heard
• every movement can be made
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Where you can be you.
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The History of This Process
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Disconnection and dysfunction can be witnessed in the animals who experience trauma, in the legends of tribal cultures, and in the writings of early civilizations.
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Ancient stories and myths have many examples of losing something essential and regaining it, of living in paradise, being cast out, and then struggling to return. Various methods for regaining wholeness—feelingawareness—are the basis of every spiritual tradition, and are, in some way, a part of every culture.
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The process toward feelingawareness may be less noticeable in modern culture, but it exists in every cell, just waiting—like a seed for water—for the right opportunity to grow.
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This process, in its most simplified form, involves the development and expansion of awareness and the discovery and release of difficult feelings.
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The awareness portion grows with forms of mindfulness and cognitive insight, just as various spiritual traditions suggest. The feeling portion grows with recognition and expression—also a feature of religious traditions—and now a significant element in modern therapy. In too many cases, however, awareness has been sacrificed for feeling or feeling has been sacrificed for awareness.
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Our true nature is the union of both—feelingawareness.