Emotions and inner resources

- Every one of us has times in our life when we're caught in a storm of difficult emotions. When our feelings are so strong, that being mindful might not even be possible. This can happen with feelings of fear, or despair, and certainly with trauma or panic. When we've been traumatized, our coping strategies have been overwhelmed. We're unable to fight or flee, and that leaves us with feeling frozen, feeling powerless. The experience of trauma gets locked in our body. When it's triggered at a later time, we react just as we did at the initial trauma. We're frozen, and helpless, and often filled with fear or shame. In that state, we have no access to mindfulness. In fact, if we try to open directly to our raw experience, we might end up re-experiencing the feeling of being overwhelmed and helpless, which reinforces the trauma. Post-traumatic stress symptoms, such as feelings of panic, distress, anger, being startled…