Sometimes it’s hard to think that the small painful events in our childhood can merit the term – “trauma”. It may be easier to consider events such as physical and sexual abuse, severe neglect, or the death of a parent or sibling to be traumatic. But there are also the smaller traumas in childhood that occur from circumstances in daily life…Like you make a mistake in a classroom and a mean teacher humiliates you or you are excluded by a set of the “popular” crowd and you’re feeling alone and left out, or you are teased and bullied by an older sibling or classmate. Any of these events from childhood can turn into traumas that stay stuck in your consciousness and have effects later in your adult life. Sometimes the more subtle experiences, like being neglected repeatedly by busy but well meaning parents, can be more difficult to heal because it is harder to recognize the experiences as being “traumatic”.

When a memory is traumatic, it stays with you. With that memory is the powerful emotional painful feeling you had at the time of the event along with negative beliefs about yourself that can persist in time. These thoughts, images and sensations can stay stuck in the body and mind and can affect you as an adult. Negative beliefs like ” It’s my fault” or I’m unlovable” or “I’m not good enough” can distort your present reality. Low self-esteem, shame, depression and anxiety are symptoms that can develop as a result of childhood trauma.

One of the first steps in the recovery of healing from childhood trauma is recognizing what has occurred. Whether the trauma is large or small, there is a tendency to minimize its effects or dismiss the feelings associated with it. We can retain old ideas that crying over something in the past makes us weak or that being vulnerable opens us to further humiliation. So it’s easier to stuff it down, deny what has happened and pretend that our feelings don’t matter.

When that occurs, these childhood injuries can stay stuck with our old perspective as a child who is limited by knowledge and experience. It is hard to accept that anything good can come of reliving or sharing our painful memories of past traumas. Yet it is through this first step of recognizing the trauma that the injured child within can have a chance to heal and to develop a new and fresh perspective that is grounded in the present reality.

A diagnosis of amputation can have a far reaching impact on your psychological state, much more in fact, than the actual physical loss itself. This might seem hard to imagine but because the operation to remove any limb could almost be considered routine these days, even the most difficult of amputations are invariably a success. Your emotional recovery takes much longer and this is because the stress of an amputation is inextricably entwined with your emotional state and this connection, can cause a myriad of emotions such as fear, grief, self-doubt and a lack of confidence afterwards.

Your body will heal quickly and you will adapt on a physical level but healing the emotional scars and rebuilding the image of self could take some months. Obviously, your recovery rate both emotional and physical will depend on the reasons as to why you needed an amputation in the first place, if the operation was life saving, then the overwhelming relief of having an extended lifetime may be all consuming and will set the precedent for your recovery. Similarly, if you have been living your life under the shadow of pain for a period of time, emerging from an operation and feeling a reduction in pain immediately will help you to come to terms with the loss of any limb and to feel more positive about your own future.

An amputation will undoubtedly force some life changes upon you and those closest to you. If you lose a leg for example, you may feel frustrated in that you need to rely on others and if independence has always been important, having to rely on others in everyday circumstances will be a difficult bridge to cross. It will take time to adapt mentally and physically to a loss of freedom of movement and even the most basic and everyday functions such as bathing or driving, may not be possible.

Recovering from an amputation is largely in the determination and power of your mindset. Steeling yourself to be positive against the challenges that you might yet have to face is important as is determining to face those challenges head on. Impaired physical conditions can bring a sense of frustration but sometimes it is the little things in life that will stir up a greater sense of loss, driving, walking to the shops, playing with your children in the park. Remember, any amputation, even a minor one, will affect some aspect of your life.

Commit to any amputation rehabilitation that will have been offered to you, it’s important to be guided and supported by those professionals who understand what you are going through and who genuinely want to help and share in your recovery. Talking to a professional counselor can help you to face this traumatic event in your life and recover from it as a whole person and not as an amputee. They will help you to re-evaluate your situation and look to the future.

It is widely accepted that there are at least two levels to the mind – the conscious and the subconscious. In actual fact, we can distinguish amongst at least five levels: the conscious, the subconscious, the sub-subconscious, the sub-superconscious and the superconscious mind. Here, we will examine the first three levels. They are related to the ego and can only access information confined to one’s personal experiences. (The last two levels of the mind have access to universal consciousness and all information that exists.)

As you go through life, you continue to add to your collection of experiences. Most of them are stored in the subconscious mind and that is perfectly fine. It allows your conscious mind to focus on the task at hand and forget about the rest. However, the subconscious mind can become overwhelmed with negative experiences. If that is the case, it will push them down into the sub-subconscious mind where they get bundled up into the so called “mind crystals”.

Mind crystals have a hybrid structure. They are formed from a bunch of negative experiences, all on a similar theme, with the result being a completely different vibration. Think of them this way: when you mix eggs with flour and sugar and bake the mixture, you get a cake. Once you have the cake, you can no longer distinguish between the flour and the egg. The combination has resulted into something with an entirely different vibration where the original ingredients can no longer be recognized and pulled apart. Mind crystals have the same property – once the bundle of negative experiences has crystallized, it can no longer be pulled apart and its ingredients can no longer be recognized by the conscious mind.

Mind crystals represent your deepest emotional baggage. They reside in the sub-subconscious mind and are totally inaccessible to the conscious mind, no matter what. They are the basis for self-sabotage for they tend to attract situations and recreate experiences on the same theme so the crystal can solidify and grow.

When you dream, especially when you are having strong, vivid dreams (sometimes even nightmares), this is very often your subconscious mind trying the break up and dissolve the crystals residing in the deep sub-subconscious mind. When you wake up, the worst thing you can do is to try to remember your dream and analyze it (ok, writing it down is even worse than that!). If you analyze your dream, you are engaging the conscious mind which can’t understand the dream anyway. Remember, your dream is a crystal come to the surface which your subconscious mind is trying to break down and dissolve. If you tried analyzing it, it would be equivalent to cutting your cake and analyzing the shape of the pieces. No matter what you conclude about the pieces of the cake, you will never be able to know anything about the structure of the original ingredients because the whole vibration has changed forever.

Analyzing strong, vivid dreams can have its place, but only when it is done under the guidance and supervision of highly skilled professionals. Otherwise, most dreams are best left alone. Often times if you tried analyzing your dream, the only thing your intellect can do is grab the pieces of the crystal and put them back together, thus solidifying your worst nightmares. The result of that will be persistent self-sabotage patterns.

If you have a disturbing dream, occupy your conscious mind with something else as soon as you wake up. Don’t well on the dream! The best way to heal your deep-seated emotional traumas is to forget the dream as quickly as you possibly can.

Dreaming is by far not the only way to dissolve mind crystals. The BodyTalk System – an integrative and holistic medical health care – offers some specific energy techniques for dissolving mind crystals. These techniques are taught at the PaRama College (which is the postgraduate qualification in BodyTalk) and prove very effective at accelerating what your body is already trying to do in dream state, namely clear up some very stubborn negative habit patterns and deep-seated emotional traumas.