There's a secret to happiness that almost nobody knows and I'm gonna tell you what it is
it has to do not with getting everything you want not with having perfect relationships not
even with having perfect health although all of these things are very good in supporting the thing
that does lead to your ultimate happiness and fulfillment your real happiness depends on you
discovering and using your gifts and these are the things that you happen to be
maybe you're good at them already maybe you're not there yet but these are the
gifts and talents that you have that are given to you for the purpose
and benefit of serving the world I'm anna uncle also known as the crappy childhood fairy and I
teach people how to notice and heal the symptoms of childhood trauma including abuse and neglect
and the reason we heal from childhood trauma isn't just to feel better we do need to feel better
but we ultimately we need to become our real selves and becoming our real selves is the doorway
through which this fulfillment and happiness actually can happen and it's when you are
bringing your gifts into the world and so today I have a letter from someone named may
who is experiencing paralysis and disconnection from people and I think her situation is very
similar to what a lot of people are going through right now so I'm going to read it to you because
I i think her letter can help you too may says hyanna I'm struggling badly with low motivation
to do at least some of the things that will help the cptsd hello a lot of people have that I got
this diagnosis over two years ago after decades of thinking it was depression and anxiety and lots of
other issues learning about cvtsd has helped me to understand what's going on with me and that
alone has helped me feel a little bit better however I have been unable to move to the next
stage and do something about it I'm definitely a freeze type freeze I think she's referring to the
um fight flight freezer fawn those are the four things and Pete walker is the person
who advocates looking at it as four things fight flight freeze or fawn those are trauma reactions
I experience chronic loneliness which seems to cause a lot of depression but
I don't think I have clinical depression any longer as I can feel a lot better when I have
face to face contact with people aha good clue connecting with people is helping your happiness
I have had a deterioration since the start of the pandemic when we had to start working from
home yes you and me and a lot of us it's hard I'm now spending most of my time alone and feel
I am in survival mode I'm finding it hard to get out of the house especially this winter to cook
exercise etc. I now know what I need to do to help myself but I just can't do anything except
survive each day trying to cope with work I don't know how to create good routines and habits while
I'm finding life so lonely and hard I hope you can help with this question I relate so much to
almost all of your videos but I'm finding it impossible to get started with healing
so may I'm so glad you wrote this I think that this is going around big time in the world
and the lack of motivation I mean it you don't need a pandemic to be suffering with the lack of
motivation it's common living in a time in history when survival isn't the immediate threat usually
for most people I know when you say you're just in survival mode you mean just getting through the
day I remember times when I had minimum wage jobs and I was living in this tiny crappy apartment and
sharing a room and just barely getting by and I had one coat and one pair of shoes and you know
what I was never depressed back then I think that the purpose of trying to get enough money to get
by and just you know be able to make French toast for dinner and have some coffee in the morning
like just achieving that was keeping me happy actually keeping me motivated and so the irony
is that when we have choices and when we have leisure time and we have this thing called the
internet that's just so full of fun possibilities and entertainments and fake ways of connecting
with other people we can slide way down into into a loss of connection and a loss of motivation so
I'm going to give you a hypothesis you said that that that when you do connect with people it does
lift your spirits so you you indicate you have a history of clinical depression but it sounds like
what you're suffering from is a lack of connection and I realized that even as we come towards the
end of this pandemic please let this be the end very soon this year but as we come to the end
we've gotten rusty with connecting with people those of us who had trouble connecting with people
anyway maybe retreated a little too far away from others and now we gotta come back and
I'm one of those people I love people when I love them but when they're hard for me I just like
kind of can't deal with them at all I relate to that I'm just a really typical person with cptsd
and people are triggering for me and so the pandemic gave me the luxury of days on end of
not having to deal with anybody except the two people who live in the house with me and even
then you know it's like this incredible emotional intensity especially at the early part of lockdown
when that was all there was I have tons of zoom meetings every day many of us do but they're no
substitute for connecting with people in a real way and I think this has been a really hard period
of time on a lot of fronts there's been a lot of division a lot of people aren't speaking to each
other a lot of people are disillusioned and scared there's all this financial difficulty people feel
like they can't express themselves in the forums that we have because people are getting cancelled
and so there's this big negative shift going on there's a lot working against our reconnecting
with each other so what I'm going to suggest to you is that you work you just take all your
energy and you work against that disconnection and you reconnect now I mentioned at the beginning
of this that the key to happiness is finding what your gifts are and using them and believe me
most people don't know what they are just right off the bat they're not just you know we're not
given a golden tablet about it we discover them through taking little actions and so this for
you might be going out and getting a cup of coffee sometimes some days that's a big step right just
going out and get a cup of coffee or a cup of tea somewhere and go sit on a bench somewhere and have
it and smile at people all right for some people it might be a little more than that you might call
a relative who you haven't talked to in a while or an old friend who you owe a phone call to
you could call them you're going to think to yourself well how about if I reorganize the closet
you know organized closets are great but they're not going to keep you company in your old age
so what I'm exhorting you to do here is to go connect for real with people in a way at a higher
level than you have now if you're triggered by people that's going to mean probably titrating
a little bit titrating means doing a little at a time a little at a time a little at a time
and I don't know maybe maybe you're very good at connecting with people and you're just avoiding
it for some reason but if you get triggered by people to work with your own triggers and start
to toughen them up and get some muscles get some resilience muscles that help you be able to keep
connecting with people even when you're feeling triggered is to start noticing your triggers
to start getting more neutral to them and then to recover from them faster so so to do that what I
recommend to people is this titration so let's say you go get that cup of coffee you sit on a
bench and you smile at people now go home go lay down go do the whole introvert thing as much as
you want and make another plan for the a little later in the day you're going to call somebody
the second day you do a little more something that involves like a little more putting yourself out
there and trying a little harder then go home lay down do your introvert thing and be so triggered
now it just wouldn't be a crappy childhood fairy if I didn't say you know you can learn to calm
those triggers by using my daily practice and I'm just going to say it over and over again
you can go learn these techniques I always put links in the description section below
every video you can go down there and click on the link it's a free course you can learn and
try the techniques in an hour and just see it's a simple writing and then meditation technique
that helps calm the triggers you can sort of get them on paper and calm them down and if you start
doing this twice a day like I recommend you start to have less and less triggers and you're freer
you're less triggered and you can start to do deeper and more connected activities with people
I hate to say it like there are times when I my ptsd wants to believe that I don't need anybody
I don't need you I don't need anybody that's like that's whenever I'm thinking that I know it's my
cptsd talking I do need people and my healing can only happen in connection with other people
it involves a lot of alone time too there's a lot of reflection that can happen but the
reflection by itself without the connection does not turn into healing it's sort of like this
this like stone that starts rolling up the hill and then rolls back down
rolls up the hill and rolls back down it's the connection with other people that gets that stone
over the top of the hill that takes me over from working on myself to actually experiencing that
grace of healing that good feeling that comes that like hey this is easy for me now I like it
so I'm after the good feeling and regretfully for introverts and people who get triggered by
other people it it it just requires other people so anything that you're doing for your healing
I recommend that you just keep weaving in other people into the process in little bits titrated
and then just see what happens to your motivation I suspect that your motivation is drained because
of the lack of meaningful connection that is preventing your gifts from having anywhere to go
most people's gifts are designed for the benefit of other people and if they're not in your life
it's very hard to fulfill that my gifts probably have something to do with assisting others to heal
if you didn't come and watch my video I would just be sitting here talking to myself and can you see
how that would not be very fulfilling for me so I know that people are going to watch this video I'm
taping it all by myself but I know you're going to be watching it and so I feel connected to you
and my gift has somewhere to go and then you talk to me in the comments afterwards
and I'm fulfilled and I have that experience of like of my life being for something and
then I feel braver and then I feel a little more willing to do other things
that are that take courage for me and that's how it works it's a bunch of little steps of
caring for ourselves connecting with other people it's disconnection
dysregulation and self-defeating behavior those are the three things that the trauma manifests as
as that take us down where should you start anywhere you can to start anywhere you can
so if it's connection with people just start there if you can re-regulate yourself like with
the daily practice start there if you can tackle a self-defeating behavior like isolating start there
so there's many ways you can come at it but that's the general direction it goes in may thank you so
much for contributing your true story for the service of others that's a lovely thing you
did for us I hope you will get back to us let us know how it went let us know what you tried
what worked what didn't work and especially I'm really interested to hear as things open up again
in your world how do you interact with that how do you move forward with that and what happened
so if you like the subject of connection here's a video that will go a little deeper into that
and I encourage you to have a look at that and I will see you very soon you.