Over the weekend Terry, my husband, and I watched The Zookeeper’s Wife, a movie is set in Warsaw, Poland, during World War II. It tells the true story of how after animals at the Warsaw Zoo were bombed and shot, the couple that ran the zoo used the property to hide Jews from the Nazis until they could be transported to safety. It’s a good movie, but as you can imagine, it is tense and emotional.
My reaction to the film, plus the normal stress of daily life, made it difficult for me to sleep. Perhaps the connection I felt to the movie was a distant memory — if you’ve read my book, Love Fraud, you may remember that I describe how I learned about many of my past lives, including one related to the Holocaust.
Anyway, in the morning I had a knot in my chest. I knew I had to address it.
Energetic knot
I used to have these internal energetic knots all the time — during my marriage to the sociopath, and as I tried to pick up the pieces of my life after discovering his betrayal.
Perhaps you know what I mean. It feels like a rock next to or surrounding your heart. It’s difficult to breathe. It’s hard to focus on doing anything, because you just want the tension to go away.
Typically we just try to ignore how we feel. We bury the tension within ourselves. We go on with our day and fulfill our responsibilities. Eventually, we don’t notice the disturbance any more, although it is still lurking within us, just waiting to cause problems.
This emotional/energetic disturbance that needs to be addressed, not ignored. Whether the cause is a recent stressful incident or long-ago trauma, it’s important to resolve the feelings. But how?
Tapping
I use a mixture of energy processing techniques.
I usually start by tapping. I’ve written about Emotional Freedom Techniques “Tapping” many times on Lovefraud. In fact, Lovefraud offers a webinar on the topic, and we’re planning another one in the near future.
With tapping, you stimulate acupressure points on your body — mostly on your face — while bringing to mind a difficult memory or emotional trigger. This desensitizes you to the traumatic event and calms your fight/flight/freeze response. Here’s more on why it works:
Yes it looks silly, but scientific research shows EFT tapping relieves anxiety, depression and PTSD, on Lovefraud.com.
This technique is easy to learn. And it works even if you don’t believe it will work.
If you want to learn more about tapping, the Tapping World Summit starts today, February 26. This is an online summit where you can learn from 20 of the world’s leading experts on personal growth. It lasts for 10 days and it’s free.
Energy processing
Another strategy I use is meditating to try to figure out why I’m feeling the knot in the first place. Sometimes I can identify a trigger, but sometimes the cause is ambiguous.
I also work to move the energy out of my body. To do this, I lie on the floor, focus on the disturbance, and allow the energy to rise to my awareness. The sensation usually shifts to another part of my body. By allowing myself to experience the tension, eventually it moves and dissipates. It may take time, but once the energy has been processed out of my body I feel so much lighter. The knot is gone.
Again, I explain this approach more thoroughly in my book, Love Fraud.
You may find other strategies. Therapists talk about other “mindfulness” techniques for emotional recovery, including exercise and yoga. I suggest that you experiment to discover what works for you.
Facing the tension
Whether you’re working to recover from a sociopath or dealing with everyday stress, here’s the bottom line: When you feel emotional disturbances of any kind, the healthiest thing you can do for yourself is to pay attention to them. Those knots you feel in your chest, your stomach, or elsewhere don’t go away by themselves. You need to take action.
Failing to address them creates a hidden turmoil within us, which leads to vulnerability. Sociopaths seem to have radar for whatever vulnerabilities we may have. That’s why it is so important to work on our emotional healing. When we feel clear, centered and peaceful, sociopaths simply can find nothing within us to latch onto.
Red flags that a gold digger may have targeted your elderly parent or friend
Yes, Antonina, the Zoo Keeper’s wife was between a rock and a hard place when a child, hiding among the zoo’s secret refugees, made sounds that could have caused the visiting Nazi predator to discover them. To protect the innocent who depended upon her for their very lives, she grasped her predator’s head and covered his ears in desperate embrace – not because she loved him, but to distract him. Antonina knew what she had to do and she did it. She succeeded in diverting the attention of her lascivious predator but paid dearly for her collusion. A perfect example of the twisted nature between cruel oppression – and the will to live. Partners of sociopaths would be familiar with this theme.
Eleanor Cowan, Author of ‘A History of a Pedophile’s Wife’
This sounds like quite a movie. I find it hard to watch WWII movies because of the horrendous abuse.
I am not able to watch movies such as Zoo Keeper’s Wife..some years ago..I sat through Schindler’s List..and it was almost TOO much; too much emotion, tensions, deaths of Jews at the hands of Nazis..I still cannot watch movies themed to the Vietnam War, really any intensely emotional, violence oriented movies. I absorb whats going mentally, and then I cant sleep afterwards..the movie Helter Skelter (about the Manson murders)..was one of those.
Quite a story.