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Staying Present as the Key to Healing from Child Abuse and Aftereffects

On my blog entry entitled Choosing Not to Dissociate the Pain, a reader posted the following comment:

Hi Faith, you wrote “It sounds like the key is learning how to live in the present and feel whatever comes up in the present moment.” This is what Mindfulness is about – have you done this before? My therapist recommends practicing mindfulness regularly so that it becomes an automatic thing that I can do when difficult / stressful times arise. There is heaps of info online if you are interested. You can buy things to help if you want, but it’s not necessary. I sometimes listen to CDs but most times I just choose to be mindful to regular daily things like washing my hands, eating or house cleaning, etc. It takes time to make a new habit, but I think it’s worth it! ~ Dawn

I tend to cycle around and “relearn” different areas of healing, and staying present is an area of healing that has become a central focus for me lately. This is due, in part, to reading Geneen Roth’s book Women Food and God, but this is actually not a new concept for me. With each pass, I seem to “get it” at a deeper and deeper level. It would be really great if staying present would just “stick” this time.

Like Dawn, I had a therapist who encouraged me to live in the present. He would say that the past has already happened and the future has not happened yet. The only moment I have right now is the present one. He would encourage me to engage in activities, such as playing the piano, that drew my focus to the present moment. His antidote to being trigged and dissociating was to focus on the present – on how the chair feel under my legs, how my breath feels in my body, etc.

My yoga instructor had the same advice. She would repeatedly remind me to stay present in this moment. She taught me tools, such as yoga and meditation, to help me with this. Without fail, doing yoga and meditation helps slow the internal chatter and relax me by bringing my focus back to the present.

I have not been ready to “hear” it yet, but from what I can tell from flipping through the book The Sexual Healing Journey by Wendy Maltz, the key to healing sexually is to pleasure your body (at first in non-sexual ways) and stay present during it, such as walking barefoot in the grass and experiencing in the present moment what it feels like.

I also had success in conquering my binge/compulsive eating for 11 months by staying present while I ate. Losing weight was effortless – the weight dropped off as I stayed present and paid attention to my body’s cues about when I was hungry and when I was not. I got derailed by being very triggered, and I never fully returned to that place.

So, now I am reading Women Food and God, and it is telling me the exact same thing, although I am in a better place to “hear” it. While her audience is people who want to overcome compulsive eating, she is clear that her advice to stay present is really about how to live your live in the present. How you eat is simply a reflection of how you live and what you believe about yourself and your life. More on this topic tomorrow…

Photo credit: Hekatekris

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