By Daniel Benor, MD

Have you ever asked,

“Why do I do these silly things like snacking on junk food, when I really want to lose weight and keep it off?”

or

“Why do I explode in anger when my buttons are pushed, even after I’ve promised again and again that when I’m annoyed with someone I’ll take a deep breath, count to ten, and if I still feel the inner steam rising I’ll put off saying anything till I can say it calmly?”

or

“Why am I my own worst critic, picking at how I look, at the tiniest flaws in my work and in what I say, when everyone else says I’m pretty good looking and way above average in what I say and do?”

or

“Why can’t I let go of these old habits I’ve had for years, despite my annual New Year’s resolutions, and trying the best I can to stop [picking at myself/ criticizing others/ always worrying about the worst possibilities/ INSERT YOUR FAVORITE HABITS…?]”

My experience in 50 years of exploring various therapies – for my clients and myself – is that there are invisible inner walls that hide the answers to these gnawing questions from our conscious mind about such issues. We hide the reasons behind our troublesome issues for varieties of reasons. Primarily it is because the roots of our problems are traumas that were so uncomfortable to experience that we hid them behind these inner walls.

The memories and feelings generated by traumatic experiences are usually painful, frightening and overwhelming. We may be unable to resolve the trauma issues; may feel helpless to cope with the painful feelings and frightening thoughts; and may see no way to lessen or resolve the traumatic situations or our inner responses to them.

A very common way to lessen our inner stress and distress is to lock away the memories of the traumas and our feelings about them. This is an effective first aid for diminishing our distress. In childhood this is particularly helpful, because when we’re young we have limited coping mechanisms for dealing with traumas. However, while our conscious distress about what happened is lessened, we end up with burdens of trauma residues outside our conscious awareness that are locked inside ourselves.

This walling away of distressing and painful experiences and their residues becomes our default habit for dealing with traumas. We continue doing this throughout the rest of our lives.

Some of us build stronger walls or have greater tolerance for containing buried trauma residues inside ourselves. We live our whole lives this way.

If we have different personalities we may find that as we mature into adulthood, we have greater inner strengths to deal with distressing situations and don’t have to wall away the feelings and memories that distress us. We may be able to clarify our understandings of our relationships with other people and our responses to them so that the trauma residues are dissipated.

Even better, we may develop coping mechanisms to resolve our issues with other people and situations, so that we grow, mature, and become more capable at handling challenges in our lives. We then come away from traumas wiser and enriched by these experiences.

Many, however, continue to wall away our feelings and memories – to the point that our inner home becomes so cluttered, and we have to strengthen the walls where they crack from inner rooms that are so full to overflowing with trauma residues. We find ourselves with less and less inner space and energies to live a comfortable life. It takes ever-increasing psychological energy to keep our conscious mind unaware of the buried trauma residues. Having to stand constantly on guard and keep our inner doors to our storage rooms from popping open, and ultimately to keep our inner walls from cracking and crumbling drains our inner resources.

At some point, a wiser part of ourselves realizes we can probably do better than to continue the habits we developed as young children. This may be our inner observer of feelings and memories, our logical mind, our neglected fun-loving self, or our higher self – that part of us that guides us through the lessons of life. This part of ourself has the challenging task of waking us up to our bad habits that have been present and to some degree successful for years.

In the easiest case scenario, our wiser self nags at our conscious awareness until we wake up to new possibilities. Perhaps through the examples of others, perhaps through reading articles like this, or perhaps through the media, we come to see that we have more and better options for dealing with current and past traumas.

In other cases, our wiser self has to find stronger ways of getting our attention. It may lead us to create pains from muscle tensions; gut dysfunctions; allergies; asthma; arthritis; hypertension; or many other ‘telephone bells’ or ‘alarm bells’ to draw us into asking “What’s the matter with me?”

Many take this question to their family doctor, relying on an outside expert opinion and recommendations for treatments of the symptoms. In the vast majority of cases, the treatment will be medications that address the symptoms. Sadly, these medications do not resolve the underlying root causes of the problems.

Eventually, we come to ask, “Who’s the matter with me?” This is the start of realizing that we ourselves are creating many of the problems that are manifesting in our lives.

It is at this point that I often am invited to help. I am a Master Craftsman for Inner Renovations.

I will help you zero in on what most needs changing
My first step is to learn all about your life, focusing on issues from your earliest memories that may have given you the habit of stashing away your stress and distress.

Together we will identify what may be causing your symptoms. I will help you consider wholistic possibilities of body, emotions, mind, relationships and spirit that could be factors in your problems.

I will introduce DIY tools for dealing with your issues
I can offer you DIY tools for exploring and remodeling your inner walls and rooms that have served you well by keeping your trauma memories and distresses hidden outside your conscious awareness.  TWRapp.com is where you will find these tools.

Some people are naturally gifted at inner renovations and will be able to manage their inner remodeling and housecleaning with the help of the app user manuals at TWRapp.com

I can support you in using these tools
You may do better with a bit of instruction in how to use these tools. In just a few sessions I can get you up to speed (in person, in Guelph, Ontario; by phone; or by Skype).

You may do just fine on your own, but run into a difficult room or issue to clear. Your inner self may both want you to release the buried trauma but at the same time may have anxieties about letting your remember and feel what it locked away in an inner room. Again, I can help with a consultation .

I can guide you through a complete life makeover
You may decide that you want a major inner reconstruction, clearing all of the rooms you can identify. I can offer my expert advice and guidance in identifying the issues you can clear; in prioritizing which to address first; and in using many different tools that will help you dismantle your old, outdated inner walls.

Better yet, I can help you with these tools to install and strengthen positive thoughts and feelings in your life.

BOOK A SESSION WITH DR. BENOR NOW

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2015 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM   All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.