Well, THAT was unexpected

🔥 Welcome to Self-Care Through Psychedelics! 🔥

So, you might be wondering what happened to the newsletter over the past few weeks!

Well, let me tell you about something really stupid that happened to me.

I was supposed to be traveling to Los Angeles a few weeks ago to see a friend for his 70th birthday! He’s one of my closest friends and I wasn’t about to miss that birthday celebration! 70 might seem old to a lot of people but trust me when I tell you that my friend may as well be 40 for everything that he does!

So, I was busy trying to figure out what to wear to the big event and while I was trying on an outfit for the event, I turned in one direction and found myself literally dropping to the floor in excruciating pain!

What had I done?

Well, it’s not about what I had done in that moment, not really.

It’s about what I’ve done my entire life that brought me to this very moment in time of getting up close and personal with the floor!

I’ve spent a lifetime as a competitive athlete, most recently as a competitive rower and one thing about rowing is that it’s probably the most difficult sport in the world!

So, as is the case with most rowers, you end up with back and rib problems a lot of the time and I’ve had my share of them BUT what happens over time is that you develop weakness in your lower back in a way that all it takes sometimes is to turn in a funny way and you find yourself on the ground. Alas, that’s what happened to me a few weeks ago!

Since then, I’ve been in and out of the chiropractor, physiotherapist and massage therapist offices each day just trying to get myself to a point where I could walk without grimacing.

Now, part of why I’m telling you this story is because of the way trauma hides in our bodies and then announces itself when we’re least expecting it!

I bet you weren’t expecting this story to take that particular turn, were you?!

Well, this story is much more about that than rowing and here’s why…

🔥 What I Never Knew or Understood About Trauma 🔥

I had no idea that I had been carrying trauma in my body for my entire life until I started dealing with what happened to me as a child.

How did the trauma manifest itself in ways I never recognized?

I had a very weak core.

I couldn’t do core exercises without feeling this overwhelming dread like something dangerous was approaching.

I would writhe in pain when I was massaged on certain parts of my body even though I hadn’t been doing anything that would have resulted in the kind of pain I was experiencing.

I couldn’t do certain things as part of having sex.

I would have intense panic attacks at the prospect of flying.

I would decompensate anytime I was in an elevator.

In every athletic endeavor, I could go so far in pushing my body but there was always a point where I couldn’t let go enough to get to the point of winning.

I fell down the stairs at one point and couldn’t get up. I was taken to the hospital where I became immobilized at the prospect of doing physical therapy.

Where I once prided myself on pushing through any amount of pain, I became unwilling to endure ANY level of pain lest it send me spiraling into despair.

What I didn’t know was happening was that my trauma was lodged deep in my body and I had developed very sophisticated coping mechanisms physically, ones that protected me from my trauma and allowed me to do all the things I was doing.

Problem was, the point at which my trauma start surfacing and I started experiencing injuries, much like I had in the past, I started experiencing a sense of dread like I’d never experienced before.

I felt like my life was in jeopardy with each injury.

I felt like there was a threat out there and my job was to do everything I could to keep my body safe.

I went so far as to stop doing everything physical in hopes that I’d never have to feel any physical pain.

I didn’t leave the house for months during the pandemic because I just felt safer inside.

And then, I fell down the stairs and that’s when it all came crashing down.

Waking The Sleeping Giant

I was screaming in pain when I hit the floor. I had twisted my back while in mid-air, trying to right myself and brace for impact but when I hit the floor the way I did, I thought I had broken my back.

I have never felt anything like it but what was worse was that I felt completely immobilized and in that moment, I felt all of the trauma of having been violated and trapped as a child.

I was reliving my childhood trauma in that moment.

It was terrifying.

It was the moment I realized the terror I experienced as a child.

I felt that terror.

I had spent a lifetime running from that terror and had been very successful at keeping it at bay.

But now, there was no escaping it. I was on the floor, unable to move, afraid I’d broken my back and realizing that there was nothing I could do to help myself.

What could be a more horrible feeling in the world?

I had an almost out of body experience in that moment because I was saying to myself “this is what it felt like”, the feeling was SO familiar and it was terrifying because I had so many coping mechanisms that had worked for me in the past but none of them were available to me in that moment.

I was helpless.

I was powerless.

This Is Trauma

It took months to recover from that fall down the stairs and more work on myself than I can even begin to tell you because I had to deal with the reality of what happened in the present AND the reality of what happened in the past. Talk about a mind f**k!

I was walking around carrying the trauma of the moment and all of the fully surfaced trauma from the past.

How does anyone manage such a thing and still get on with what they have to do each day like go to work or be in a relationship or deal with kids or any of the other responsibilities you have in your life?

It takes a HUGE amount of discipline and effort to deal with your trauma especially when it manifests in such complex ways and the reality is, working through trauma goes WAY beyond just talking about it in therapy.

Trauma affects how the brain works.

Trauma causes as rewiring of the brain.

Trauma creates a complex web of actions and reactions in us that we’re not even aware are happening.

And when you consider the complexity of what’s happening in the brain in response to trauma, you have to ask yourself, how can you possibly address your trauma unless you’re doing something that can interrupt what’s happening in the brain?

It’s Not In Your Mind, It’s In Your Brain!

Think about it for a moment…

When you take anti-depressants or anti-anxiety medication, you’re creating a condition in the brain that will enable you to feel better.

Going to the gym and doing a vigorous workout produces changes in the brain that produce a feeling in you that makes you feel better.

Doing meditation does the same thing, it affects the brain in a particular way and as a result, you feel better.

It works the same way with psychedelics.

When you use psychedelics, it has an effect on the brain that produces a feeling in you. Sure, some psychedelic experiences can be challenging but others are life changing. People who’ve had psychedelic experiences have said they were among the top 5 most important experiences in their lives.

Being in an altered state produced by psychedelics gives you a place to “work out” your trauma or whatever it is you’re struggling with.

Many people are afraid of the “altered state” but consider that when you take anti-depressants or anti-anxiety medication, you’re actually in an altered state because the drugs have produced a reaction in your brain that allows you to feel different. THAT is an altered state!

An altered state is nothing more than one that is different from the one you were in before you took the medication.

Regaining Your Power and Control as a Path to Freedom

The most common theme among people who do psychedelic experiences is that they are trying to work on a challenging issue in their life, resolve something they’ve been struggling with throughout their life, get at clarity around something they haven’t been able to work through, get rid of a feeling that has been dogging them, resolve the feelings they have about someone in their life or some aspect of their life.

What they want more than anything is to have a resolution that will enable them to move forward in and with their life more easily and freely.

In order to do this, you need an altered state that offers you a perspective that shows you a different path forward, that gives you the ability to experience a simulation of some aspect of your life that feels real but isn’t threatening, that allows you to go into a situation as if it were happening in real time and become the architect of that situation, where you decide the outcome, where you have all the power and control.

Ask yourself if you’ve ever experienced another method of self-care that offers you these things?

Regaining Your Power and Control as a Path to Freedom

Whether you ever decide to do a psychedelic experience, one thing is for sure: healing requires work and it requires an approach that can bypass all the defense mechanisms that interfere with your ability to do the work necessary to heal yourself.

It means taking control of your situation and deciding that you’re going to go big or go home.

It means deciding you’re in charge of your trauma and you are going to bend it to your will instead of the other way around.

It means saying you’re not willing to continue living the way you have been and that you are going to do something about it, whether it’s through psychedelics or some other method but that what you WON’T do, is continue doing what you’ve been doing that hasn’t work for you.

The bottom line is: are you at a point where you are sick of living how you’ve been living and are willing to do whatever is necessary to change how you’re feeling?

When you answer “YES!” to that question, everything else will fall into place and you’ll discover what the right path is for you.

Having conviction about the need to take action is going to propel you in a direction of changing your life for the better, of feeling better than you’ve felt in a LONG time and of having the life you want instead of the one you have.

Are you ready?

Your Options

If you’re looking for a psychedelic experience, there are really only two ways you want to consider doing it:

1) a psychedelic retreat,

2) an assisted private psychedelic experience with an experienced guide.

If you want more information about either, please send me an email at [email protected] and I’ll send you information.

If you’re looking for psychedelic products, I would recommend SoulCybin as they are the only company I know of that is set up to legally offer psychedelics.

As always, I am not advocating that you do psychedelics or buy them, I’m only providing information. You are the only one who knows whether it’s right for you.

OK, that’s it for today!

I’m going to go and do some gentle yoga and continue working on my back and then hopefully in four weeks I’ll be back out on the water rowing again!

And, for all the women who are receiving this newsletter, I’ll be hosting a free women’s-only session in about a week! Keep an eye out for the email that has information about this special session! Guys, don’t worry, your session is coming soon, too! :)

In the meantime, don’t forget to subscribe to my youtube channel so you can get more in depth information! Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/@PsychedelicsforSuccess

Warmly,

Arlene

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