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lady-divine-writes · 3 years

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Good Omens one-shot - “When God Closes a Door, She Opens a Window, But It's Up to You to Find It” (Rated T)

Summary: Crowley goes through unconventional lengths to escape a bad blind date...

... and ends up finding an angel in an unexpected place. (2770 words)

Notes: This is a re-write of an older story, but I think I like this version better. Human au. Fluffy as heck. CW: If you get squicked out by being covered in food trash, proceed with caution.

Read on AO3.

"Bollocks... bollocks... bollocks... bollocks... " Crowley mutters as she paces back and forth, simmering behind her eyeballs with so much anxiety she's about to tear her hair out by the roots. The only plan she can come up with to solve her current dilemma grows hotly in her mind, but she's searching for something - ANYTHING! - to take its place.

Maybe something along the lines of acting like an adult, womaning up, and admitting this isn’t going to work? Be upfront about it and say it to the man’s face, for Heaven's sake! 'Go on, Crowley!' she thinks. 'Go ahead! One foot in front of the other. Steady on! You can do this!'

But she’s become so tired of the grind – going to bars, faithfully tending her online dating profile, endless blind dates set up by well-meaning friends, the rejecting and the rejections. She can’t face one more. It physically hurts, knots her stomach muscles until the pain turns her world monochromatic.

Crowley had had high hopes for this one, too. Her date Steven is the new doctor of the boy she nannies. He and Crowley have plenty in common – a love of theater and fine dining, and an appreciation for fashion. Crowley thought dating a pediatrician would be fascinating. After summarizing the pertinent details of her own life, perhaps her date would talk about getting through medical school, toss in a few whimsical stories about the joys (quote/unquote) of working with children - baby’s first shots where the parents cried more than the infant, or the tale of a precocious little girl who demanded he put a Band-Aid on her teddy before he helped her (the way Crowley's young charge had with his first doctor when he was around three). They could swap war stories, bond in that way.

But Steven’s favorite part of his profession is pediatric surgery, and, unfortunately, he loves to talk shop. Every morsel of conversation has been inappropriate for dinner and graphic in nature - appendectomy this and tonsillectomy that, abscesses and pus and untreated sores - until Crowley’s face turned as green as her salad and she couldn’t look at her steak anymore.

Neither could their neighbors, who flagged down a passing waiter and requested a new table. They've been sat near the kitchen, which most diners would loathe, but they look heaps happier.

Crowley excused herself as delicately as she could and raced to the loo, needing to escape any more gruesome talk.

That was over fifteen minutes ago.

She’s trapped with no way out.

She pictures the layout of the restaurant in her head. There has to be a back way in and out of this place. All restaurants have an exit through the kitchen, right? But the toilet, the kitchen, and the front door are all in full view of their table. Steven is sure to spot her sneaking out no matter how stealthy she is.

Crowley turns on the cold water and splashes her face, scolding herself to think, think, think! She’s an intelligent woman. She can come up with a way out of this. Could she phone someone to come down to the restaurant and make an excuse for her? Not likely, not on short notice. Her friends Anathema and Newt wouldn't be able to find a sitter - ironic, seeing as Crowley is a nanny, and if the tables were turned, she'd be more than willing to lend a hand.

Could she phone her employers, ask Mrs. Dowling to claim an emergency at home? No. She doesn't want to get them tangled up in her personal woes, especially when they concern a man they think of so highly.

She could look up one of those services that make fake calls to your cell phone to get you out of sticky situations, but that would mean going back out there to make the ruse believable. And from the way her hands lock around the lip of the basin every time she thinks about taking a step outside the door, she knows that isn’t happening.

Crowley looks at herself in the mirror, looks into her eyes, and reminds herself to calm down. Slow her breathing. She’ll find a solution.

And suddenly, there it is.

In the reflection of the mirror, she sees what might be her only way out.

A window.

The only window in there, propped open enough that she’d be able to fit through.

It’s kind of high, sort of narrow, and definitely a last resort. But what other choice does she have?

Loads, in reality. It just doesn't feel like it.

But does she really have to resort to jumping out a window? She’s already been in there for (she checks her watch and her eyes open wide) twenty-five minutes! And her date hasn’t come to check on her once. Maybe the man got the hint and left (hopefully after paying what should be close to a hundred-pound check).

Crowley tests her luck, opening the door a sliver, praying silently don’t be there, don’t be there, don’t be there...

But there is no God - not one on her side, anyway - because there sits Dr. Steven Malory, talking to the waiter, telling him about another fascinating surgical procedure. He makes an exaggerated cutting motion across his stomach with a butter knife. The poor waiter, weighed down by a tray of soup bowls, nods politely, but looks like he may vomit in the tureen.

She winces. That poor waiter. Who knows how many times he's been called upon to lend an ear since her absence, or how many more times he'll be forced to endure another gory tale before Dr. Malory realizes she's gone. She peeks over her shoulder at the window, then back to the table, where Steven has his phone out, Googling something to the waiter's dismay. She slowly closes the door and backs away.

Window it is.

Crowley shelves the nagging feeling that she's perpetuating the most pathetic trope in the dating world and starts constructing a platform. There’s not much available – a small stepstool underneath the sink; a short, square, plastic rubbish bin that looks less than steady; another taller rubbish bin, dented along one side, looking like someone else already used it to make a break for freedom; and the toilet and basin, both miles away and completely unmovable.

Crowley does some quick engineering in her head and figures that if she turns the small bin over onto the stepstool, she might gain the height she needs to grab the lip of the window and hoist herself up, which would eliminate using the dented bin. She doesn’t like the odds that she won’t slip, fall, and crack her head open. She’s not so much worried about doing any permanent damage, but of having to explain to her date why she’s lying on the floor, covered in trash, and bleeding profusely.

With her luck, he'll giddily insist on stitching up any gashes, drawing a crowd of bystanders around to watch.

Crowley pushes the stool up against the wall with her foot. She dumps the trash from the small bin into its larger counterpart and sets it on the stool, centering it as best she can to keep it from sliding. With a hand on the wall for support, she puts a foot on the bin and attempts to pull herself up. It wobbles back and forth, then gives one backward lurch that nearly sends Crowley flying.

She determines quickly that this isn’t going to work the way she had planned and makes a desperate leap for the window, using all her upper body strength to get her halfway through.

Crowley shudders when the cold air hits her skin, shocked by the drop in temperature, but mostly from fear of death. She looks down.

A huge mistake on her part.

A horribly placed streetlamp keeps her from seeing into the alley, but she’s pretty sure she remembers a dumpster underneath this window. She had parked her Bentley in the lot across the way and saw it on the walk in. She looks out into the rows of cars and spots her vehicle. She sighs with relief.

Now she’s a little more sure, but still not 100%.

Worst case scenario, she lands in food muck, probably not rotten since it’s still actively dinner, and ruins an expensive designer outfit.

Of course, that’s not actually the worst-case scenario, is it? Worst case scenario, she misses the dumpster altogether, hits the pavement, and breaks her leg, but she’s determined to remain optimistic. At this moment, when her anxiety-ridden brain has her convinced that the only logical route out is through this flippin' window, that’s a chance she’s willing to take.

She swings her right leg over, grateful that she chose slacks over a skirt tonight, till she’s straddling the narrow sill, bent in half by the metal lip of the window frame. She balances there, the dull edge digging into her sternum, her belly, and her crotch, but she can’t make herself jump.

She’ll need to trick herself into it.

She forces herself to relax, teeter-tottering back and forth, not dwelling on the possible outcome, just trying to work her way to the right far enough that she knocks herself off-kilter.

Fate lends a hand in the form of a drunken passerby yelling, “Oi! Oi, lookie there! There’s a big bird... human... thing hanging out that window!”

Crowley panics, afraid she's about to be mistaken for someone breaking into a busy restaurant and not out. She fumbles, flails, starts falling head first, scrambles to get a hold. She hears a distant, “No! No, wait!” as her fingers slip. There are three seconds of cold wind and a sinking feeling in her stomach before she lands on her bum, thankfully in the dumpster, surrounded by the smell of not-too-rank food, the squish of something under her body that she thinks might be mashed cauliflower...

... and a scream.

“Ouch!”

“Oh my God! I’m sorry!”

Crowley yelps when her body lifts, something extraordinarily strong underneath pushing her up. She reaches around the slippery mess and wet plastic bags, struggling to pull herself off whoever is in the rubbish under her while trying to ignore the gravy seeping into her slacks, or the rice pilaf embedding itself beneath her freshly glossed fingernails. She knows she's broken two at minimum.

How much worse could this evening get?

“I’m sorry!” Crowley scrambles to her knees, crawls away a few feet. “I’m so, so sorry!”

“It’s alright, my dear.” A voice underneath her chuckles, its owner emerging from a layer of poached fish and au gratin potatoes.

Crowley turns in time to catch a glimpse as they move into the light. A woman wearing a vintage-inspired emerald gown covered in Hollandaise sauce and ranch dressing smiles sheepishly at her. The white light overhead gives a halo effect to her silvery-blonde hair, and her blue eyes almost glow.

She's quite breathtaking.

“I thought I had reserved a private dumpster,” she jokes. “I’ll need to have a word with the maître de."

Crowley stares at her, stunned. “I… I don’t understand. What are you doing in here?”

“I suspect I might be here for the same reason as you,” she says, wiping mayonnaise off her hand before offering it to Crowley. “I’m Aziraphale.”

“Crowley. I’m sorry I landed on you.” She takes Aziraphale’s hand, forgetting to wipe hers off before and smushing creamed spinach between them. Crowley groans in embarrassment, but Aziraphale laughs.

“No worries.” Aziraphale doesn't let go immediately the way Crowley thought she would, her smile becoming brighter the longer she holds on. “It’s the most exciting thing that’s happened all evening.”

“So... I take it you’re running away from a bad date, too, huh?” Crowley asks, regretting when Aziraphale finally lets go.

“I'm afraid so.” Aziraphale glances down with a long sigh. “A friend set me up, but I swear, the only men she knows are unemployed, torpid, and skeevy.”

“Wow. That’s some A-plus word usage right there.”

“Yes, well, the written word is my passion."

“Does that mean you're the one who wrecked the silver rubbish bin?"

“Did I?” Aziraphale looks up at the window and grimaces. “I should probably offer to replace that then, shouldn't I? What about you?” Aziraphale turns her soft blue eyes back Crowley's way. “How bad was your date going?”

“I can now perform an appendectomy with my eyes shut.”

“Yikes. I take it that’s not a turn-on for you?”

“Not in the slightest. I appreciate medicine as much as the next gal, but I’d rather not know the gritty details." Crowley stares at Aziraphale until Aziraphale notices, then the two look away, blushing like giggly teenagers flirting in a coffee shop instead of two adults stuck in the trash. Crowley can't help herself. Regardless of the stench of curdled butter and cheese that will probably be with her for life, Aziraphale is a calming presence. And she looks like an angel. An honest-to-God angel!

And Crowley found her in the trash.

What are the odds?

“You know, we might want to get out of here before anyone else drops in,” Aziraphale suggests, rising to her feet and lending Crowley a hand.

“Yeah,” Crowley agrees. "Guess that's my night over. Though... " She looks down at her blouse and trousers, positively caked with sweet potatoes, chicken grease, tomato sauce, and chutney "... I’m not looking forward to driving home like this.”

"How far do you have to go?"

"I'm in Mayfair."

"Oh!" Aziraphale gasps. "Isn't that a lovely part of town?"

"I enjoy it," Crowley replies, never having felt quite so proud to live in Mayfair as she does in this moment. "And you?"

"I have a shop in SoHo."

"Lucky. You're just a hop, skip, and a jump, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am... " Aziraphale chews the inside of her cheek as her words hang, balanced in the air between stopping a thought or continuing it. “I hope you don’t think I’m being too forward, but if you come back to my shop, I have a shower. We could clean up there... " Aziraphale sputters when Crowley's eyebrow arcs sharply upward. "S-separately, of course! A-and order in some pie. I know a great spot nearby. I dare say they have the best pie in the world! And they deliver.”

“I don’t have a change of clothes,” Crowley says, wary of taking Aziraphale up on her invitation. Garbage notwithstanding, meeting her has definitely been an improvement to the way things were going.

"I might have something that would work for you." Aziraphale sizes Crowley up, but not in a creepy way. In a surprisingly nurturing way. "It would be nice to salvage the evening, don't you think?"

"It would." But one disastrous date is plenty for the night. Should Crowley jump straight to another with a woman she met in a dumpster? Then again, it would be wrong for her to assume that spending time with Aziraphale would be disastrous. Plus the story of how they met is way too fantastic to waste on self-doubt.

Crowley took a chance on jumping out a window with only hope to guide her. She’d be stupid not to take a chance on this.

“Sure,” Crowley says, confident with her decision. “Your car or mine?” The words slip out before she considers the fact that she's talking about her baby. A vintage car that she, due to an extreme case of sheer luck, has been the sole owner of. She won't even wear muddy shoes in her car. Or rayon! On top of her own ruined outfit, which will need to be dry cleaned twice and then set on fire, if she lets Aziraphale in her car, she'll have two sloppy, food-stained seats that she’ll need to have scoured.

Maybe Aziraphale will laugh her off and offer to take her own car. Why would she want to leave it behind, anyway?

“Oh, I didn't drive,” Aziraphale says, looking down sadly at her own destroyed dress. “I took the bus.”

Crowley's heart clenches. There's that decision made. There's no way she's going to suggest Aziraphale take the bus while Crowley drives her car. She just prays that, with time, her baby will forgive her.

“My car it is then.” Crowley loops her arm covered in soup through Aziraphale’s arm covered in whipped cream and leads the way. Aziraphale smiles, holds Crowley's arm a wee bit tighter, and Crowley becomes certain this new development will be worth the money she'll spend detailing her car in the morning.

#good omens #good omens fanfiction #ineffable wives #ineffable idiots #crowley x aziraphale #aziraphale x crowley

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lightningstormtc · 3 years

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Chapter 1: Haruto

“Monster!”

“Demon!”

“You’re a stain on this household!”

“Get out!”

Haruto woke up with a start. Just a dream, he thought to himself. Except it wasn’t. He’s been having the same dream the past couple weeks. A dream remembering his foster family throwing him out of their house on his twelfth birthday. Now he’s roaming the streets, trying his best to survive. How his old foster parents could throw out a child was beyond him, but dwelling on such things didn’t feed or clothe him.

Guess I have my work cut out for me, Haruto thought to himself. He lived in a small town where everybody knew each other. Although the townsfolk didn’t have the same opinion that his foster parents did, they did see him as the asshole kid who would pickpocket them. Lucky for him, he was usually fast enough to evade the wrath of the townspeople. If not… the amount of untreated bruises and marks speak for themselves.

Alright, let’s go, Haruto grunted, the bruises on his calves flaring as he stood up. Let’s start another monotonous day of “work.”

Whew, not bad, Haruto thought to himself, looking at the small wad of cash. He wasn’t as cruel as to keep the wallets. He’d usually leave them on park benches close to where he stole the wallet. He was relatively unharmed that day after stealing from a kid his age (he had no sympathy), a middle-aged businessman, and a woman with an obnoxious haircut who he saw shouting at a restaurant owner not long before he stole from her. He stuffed the cash in his pocket before looking for his next target. As he looked from behind a wall, he noticed a couple that he has never seen before. He knows he had never seen the couple before because he would have caught two people with such noticeable appearances.

The taller of the two was a woman with long, pink hair that flowed down her back. Contrasting her hair color, her outfit was completely black. How can someone wear so much black in the summer? Haruto wondered to himself. His gaze wandered to the shorter woman.

The shorter of the two had orange hair, wearing a white shirt and denim short shorts. For some reason, she reminded Haruto of KFP, the international food chain where he usually went out to eat. Since he didn’t have a lot of money most of the time, their affordable 4 for 4 deal was usually what he ate for most of his meals.

These two will be my next targets, Haruto steeled himself. Sometimes, pickpocketing wasn’t as simple as bumping into someone and taking their wallet. Sometimes, he had to stalk his target for a fair amount of time before finding the right time to strike.

“Ne Calli,” the shorter one looked at the taller lady. “Why did you want to come here for our vacation?”

“I dunno,” the taller woman, Calli, shrugged, turned to look at her partner, one of her crimson eyes revealing itself to Haruto. “I guess I just wanted to go somewhere a bit quieter.”

Vacation? Haruto thought to himself before stealthily moving to hide behind a tree. We don’t get vacationers every day. What an odd couple.

Haruto continued to follow the couple, listening in on their conversations. The two had very interesting conversations which tended to entertain Haruto more than anything he had done ever since he got kicked out. “Ne Calli, do you think there’s a love hotel here?” The shorter one, who Haruto learned, was named ‘Kusotori.’

Who names their kid Stupid Bird? Haruto thought to himself. They’re almost as bad as my old ones.

“For the last time, we’re both girls. How the hell are you going to knock me up?” Calli asked.

“Well I did read this interesting fanf-,”

“NO!” Calli shouted, causing some birds to fly away due to the noise. “Absolutely not.”

“Awh, it would be so much fun,” Kusotori pouted. “Maybe we can-, Calli? Where did you go?”

Haruto stiffened when he realized Calli was gone. Huh? She was right there, Haruto thought to himself. Where could she have gone?

“Mind explaining why you’ve been following us for the past half hour?” Haruto almost turned due to hearing Calli’s voice coming from behind him, but was frozen when he saw a curved blade make its way towards his throat.

“Calli!” Kusotori turned, running up to the two. “Why are you threatening a child with your scythe?!”

Haruto would normally correct her (as twelve years old is not the age of a child, at least according to himself), but the scythe to his throat kept him parylized with fear. “He’s been following us for the past half hour,” Calli explained. “I was just asking for him to explain himself.”

“The poor boy looks terrified,” Kusotori knelt down to Haruto’s level before looking up at Calli. “Put the weapon away. We can talk like civilized people.”

“You’re the farthest thing from civilized that I know of,” Calli grumbled, but Kusotori had succeeded in convincing the psychopath into putting away the scythe.

“So why were you following us?” Kusotori asked. Haruto turned his head shyly to look at Kusotori before looking away. Hey eyes were too inviting. It was most likely a trap. It had to be a trap. “Don’t worry. We won’t be mad. Right?”

“S-sure,” Calli stuttered. “We won’t be mad or anything.”

“Need… money,” Haruto muttered.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you,” Kusotori said. Her voice was just as inviting as her eyes. Haruto was convinced that she had nothing but ill will towards him. After all, that’s how his foster parents acted before…

“Needed money,” Haruto said a little louder.

“So you were going to pickpocket us?” Calli growled.

“Don’t assume things like that!” Kusotori looked slightly shocked at Calli’s accusation.

“‘M sorry,” to be fair, Haruto did feel slightly bad for attempting to rob the nice couple blind, but he mostly said it so Calli wouldn’t tear his throat out. He had a feeling that would happen if Calli caught him lying.

“What was that?” Kusotori asked gently.

“I’m sorry,” Haruto looked down, suddenly a lot more ashamed as he had to admit to his crime aloud. “S-she’s right. I don’t have any other way to make money.”

“Oh you poor thing,” Kusotori brushed her fingers along Haruto’s cheek but pulled her hand away when he flinched. Kusotori then glared at Calli, who ended up not saying anything. “Do you have a home where I can take you to? I’ll be sure to give your parents a stern talking to.”

The words ‘home’ and ‘parents’ caused Haruto to tear up a little bit. His expulsion from his old home was still fresh in his mind, considering he was only kicked out a couple weeks ago. “N-no… I don’t have a home. I’m sorry.”

“Why would you be sorry?” Kusotori asked. “There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

“I…” Haruto was about to apologize again, but decided better.

“Ne Calli, can we keep him?” Kiara looked up to Calli, a pleading look in her eyes.

“W-what?!” Calli exclaimed exactly what Haruto was thinking.

“Just think about it,” Kusotori said, a malicious yet playful smirk revealing itself on her face. “It’s definitely better than two people being after your milk-,”

“Fine! Fine! We can keep him!” Calli shouted, walking around to stand next to Kiara. “Just don’t regret it later.”

“W-what’s happening…?” Haruto thought aloud. This weird couple… was adopting him?!

“We’re adopting you!” Kusotori exclaimed. “My name is Takanashi Kiara and this is Mori Calliope. Feel free to call us Mama and Papa. What’s your name?”

“I…” Haruto’s throat hurt. He didn’t realize how unused to talking he was, considering that he barely said a word in the past two weeks.

“What was that, sweetie?” Kuso- Kiara asked.

“I thought your name was Kusotori…” Haruto admitted. Kiara fell over laughing while Calli looked away, covering her burning red face with her hands.

#takamori #takamori fanfiction #fanfiction #hololive #hololive fanfiction

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fyp-psychology · 7 years

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The Unmistakable Link Between Unhealed Trauma & Illness

Most of us experience trauma at some level, not just war veterans who witness and experience horrific terror, but simply by growing up as vulnerable children in a world where many parents are themselves traumatized and can’t always hold that vulnerability safe for a child.

You might mistakenly think that you must experience incest, child abuse, parental abandonment, or living in a war zone in order to be traumatized, but trauma can be much more subtle. Psychologist Dawson Church, PhD defines a traumatizing event as something that is:

Perceived as a threat to the person’s physical survival

Overwhelms their coping capacity, producing a sense of powerlessness

Produces a feeling of isolation and aloneness

Violates their expectations

In his book Psychological Trauma, Dawson gives the example of Martie’s traumatizing event, which could have lasting consequences but might be easily overlooked if you were not attuned to the kinds of events that can traumatize a child.

When I was growing up, I idolized my older brother Gary. But he was pretty rough with me. He was six years older than I was. One day when I was three and he was nine, he wanted to have a “wrestling match.” He “won” by lying on top of me. I couldn’t breathe and I began to panic. Gary just laughed when he saw me struggling. I almost passed out. When he rolled off me, I began to cry uncontrollably. My mother came in, and I tried to explain what happened. He told her it was nothing. I was just being a crybaby. Mom told me, “Big girls don’t cry.”

While it might be easily dismissed as just children tussling, this example meets all four criteria for a traumatizing event. Martie thought she was going to die when Gary lay on top of her, so she perceived a threat to her survival. She tried to cope by pushing him off, but he was too big so her coping attempt failed and she felt powerless. Being smothered by her brother violated her expectation that her family would keep her safe. When her mother failed to support and comfort her by dismissing her emotions with “Big girls don’t cry,” she was left feeling isolated and alone.

By this definition of trauma, almost all of us have experienced multiple traumatizing events in our lifetimes. In my case, I had a fairly benevolent childhood, but 12 years of medical training caused me to experience multiple events that meet this criteria for trauma. I also was held up at gunpoint by two masked gunmen in my twenties and had full on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder afterward. Most recently, I was attacked by a pit bull and started having PTSD-like flashbacks right afterward. Knowing what I know about the link between unresolved trauma and physical illness, I wanted to be proactive about healing the trauma right away. I am lucky to have at my fingertips a variety of gifted and ethical healers who treat trauma. I reached out right away and asked for help. The flashbacks stopped and haven’t come back.

Unhealed Trauma Predisposes to Disease

As I wrote about in Mind Over Medicine, there is a substantial amount of data linking mental health issues with physical disease. This is not to suggest “it’s all in your head.” It’s absolutely in your body! It’s simply that the physiological changes that occur in the body as the result of unhealed trauma and its associated stress, anxiety, and depression translates into conditions in the body that make you susceptible to physical ailments. In a landmark 1990 study of 17,421 patients, Kaiser Permanente and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) collaborated on the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, which has resulted in over 50 peer-reviewed scientific articles. Patients were interviewed to determine whether they had experienced any of ten traumatizing events in childhood:

Physical abuse

Sexual abuse

Emotional abuse

Physical neglect

Emotional neglect

Mother treated violently

Household substance abuse

Household mental illness

Parental separation or divorce

Incarcerated household member

The study revealed that traumatizing childhood events are commonplace. Two-thirds of individuals reported at least one traumatizing childhood event. 40% of the patients reported two or more traumatizing childhood events, and 12.5% reported four or more. These results were then correlated with the physical health of the interviewed patients, and researchers discovered a dose-response. Traumatizing events in childhood were linked to adult disease in all categories—cancer, heart disease, chronic pain, autoimmune diseases, bone fractures, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, depression, smoking, and suicide. The average age of patients in this study was 57 years old, which means that childhood trauma can have a delayed effect on the body, making it entirely possible that something that happened 50 years ago may be predisposing someone to illness in the here and now. The more Adverse Childhood Events an individual reported, the sicker and more resistant to treatment they were.

The Good News: Trauma Can Be Healed

If you’re someone who checks “yes” to these and many other traumatizing events, you might be feeling anxious right about now. Does this mean that if you’ve experienced trauma in your life, you’re now a ticking time bomb just waiting to get sick? Does it mean that you won’t be healed from your chronic illness? Does it mean the damage is done and it’s too late to undo it?

No no no. That’s not what I’m suggesting at all. The good news is that we now understand that unresolved trauma, whether from childhood or adulthood, can be treated and cured. Such treatment may also have direct effects on physical health.

Psychologists didn’t always know this. They used to believe that children who experienced severe trauma were sort of damaged goods, at risk for many other challenges in adulthood—such as physical and mental illness, addiction, criminal behavior, domestic violence, obesity, and suicide. Such trauma was believed to be largely untreatable. Now, thanks to evolving methodologies for treating trauma successfully, such as Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR), Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), Advanced Integrative Therapy (AIT).

Somatic Experiencing, and Psych-K, we know better. Trauma can be treated, and if you’ve experienced trauma, treatment can be not only preventive medicine but also treatment of disease.

These cutting edge treatments for trauma recognize that talk therapy is inadequate to treat trauma. In fact, it can actually be harmful and retraumatizing, not to mention ineffective. When traumatized people are asked to replay the trauma through talk therapy, they often dissociate from their bodies, escaping into a safe witness consciousness, where they discuss the trauma from this disembodied, numbed out witness position, since that’s what they had to do to cope during the initial trauma. The newer trauma treatments make use of the understanding that trauma can only be truly healed when you stay in your body while addressing the often overwhelming emotions that accompany trauma, titrating your exposure to the trauma in small doses so as not to disembody and dissociate. Newer techniques for treating trauma often require very little talking, are careful to avoid retraumatizing, and can be very effective, quick, and permanent—with surprising and exciting effects not just on mental health, but on physical health, especially for those recalcitrant conditions that fail to respond to even the best Western or alternative medical treatment.

To Treat Disease, We Must Normalize and Treat Trauma

We know from copious data studying war veterans with PTSD in VA hospitals that, without any doubt, trauma and illness are linked. Yet in spite of all the solid scientific data linking trauma and disease, conventional Western medicine still tends to turn a blind eye to this strong correlation, and many patients are also resistant to considering treatment of trauma as part of a prescription for a healthy body. When was the last time your doctor told you to get treatment for your trauma as part of your cancer therapy, autoimmune disease, or heart disease? If you were asked to get trauma treatment as part of comprehensive, integrative medical therapy, how would you react? In my experience, even very progressive integrative medicine doctors rarely bring this up. Instead of focusing on drugs or surgery, they point you to a healthier diet, an herbal supplement, or a whole bunch of expensive functional medicine laboratory tests that aren’t usually covered by insurance.

But what if no drug, surgery, diet, supplement, or fancy lab test can cover up the ongoing, toxic effects of unhealed trauma on the body?

What if everything else is merely a Band-Aid, perhaps providing temporary relief but never fully healing the root cause that makes you vulnerable to illness over and over?

What if trauma is at the root of many illnesses in many patients, and until we treat it, even the most cutting edge medical technologies may fail to fully work?

Perhaps the block around treating trauma as part of a comprehensive medical treatment plan lies in the stigma many attach to trauma, as if it’s some sort of weakness to have survived a traumatizing event. I suspect that much of the resistance stems from shame about the traumatizing events, which is why the work sociologist Brené Brown, PhD is doing around shame and vulnerability is so important. If shame causes us to bury our trauma in a trauma capsule that we never touch, that trauma can turn into cancer. But if we cultivate shame resilience and we’re brave enough to be vulnerable and get help entering the trauma capsule, miraculous effects are possible. After all, there is absolutely no rational reason to be ashamed if you were sexually abused or abandoned or beaten or neglected. There need not be any shame around getting attacked or bullied or shamed or surrounded by war. Yet shame spirals are common, especially among children who are traumatized. Young psyches somehow translate the trauma into a story that we’re not good enough, or we are weak or unlovable.

Yet children are innocent, as are most adults who are traumatized. At the most basic level, it is our innocence that suffers the brunt of the wound, which means that our innocence needs our compassion and our nurturing, not our inner bullying, shaming, or self-violation. Human life is hard. We have to feel our pain and own up to it in order to heal it and alchemize it into soul growth. But even the most awakened people cannot typically bear to enter into the trauma capsule without loving, supportive, masterful help.

What If Science Can’t Keep up with the Cutting Edge of Sacred Medicine

When I keynoted at the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology (ACEP) conference last month, I met a handful of cutting edge Energy Psychology practitioners, and after a series of synchronicities made it clear we were supposed to get to know each other better, I spent eight hours talking to one of these Energy Psychology practitioners in depth as part of my research for Sacred Medicine. Like many of the individuals I’ve interviewed for my upcoming Sacred Medicine book, Asha Clinton, PhD is a Jungian psychologist, mystic healer, and longtime spiritual practitioner of first Buddhism and then the Sufi tradition. Asha created Advanced Integrative Therapy (AIT) and has trained over 2000 practitioners in this Energy Psychology technique. What drew me to Asha and AIT was not only the vastness of her presence, but the fact that she is using AIT to treat cancer. Although the methodologies used in AIT appear to be quite cognitive, left brain, and rational, it was clear to me right away that something mystical was underlying this treatment. While most of the other Energy Psychology techniques are being used to treat trauma as it applies to mental health conditions, Asha created protocols that she and other health practitioners are using as part of the prescription for people with cancer—and the great news is that, for those who are ready for this kind of deep psycho-spiritual work, results are promising.

Part of what drew me to Asha was that she wasn’t trying to sell me with pseudo-science or earn my validation with muddy data. Although many people at this conference used a lot of scientific language to try to explain what happens when patients are treated with energy healing and energy psychology techniques, I often start to glaze over when people talk about quantum physics and use language that sounds like “pseudo-science” to try to gain acceptance in the world of science. Frankly, I am concluding that science is simply not advanced enough to keep up with the cutting edge of medicine, and no amount of trying to fit spiritual healing into a science box is going to satisfy the scientist in me. Perhaps science will catch up, and it’s important that we continue to try to study that which can be studied in order to protect us from the charlatans of the world. But to dismiss a particular phenomenology something simply because science can’t fully explain it seems irresponsibly ignorant. Holding this paradox of my desire for scientific proof and my openness to that which cannot yet be proven is a challenging edge for me, but one I am holding with greater fluidity as I continue this Sacred Medicine journey. From what I can garner, there is not yet scientific verification that AIT works to treat cancer, but there are a number of very compelling anecdotes, enough to hopefully attract the attention of scientists who might be able to track outcomes, much as Dawson Church and his colleagues are doing to validate the more mainstream Energy Psychology technique EFT.

The Healing Comes from the Divine

Part of my resistance around “energy healers” who try to use the language of energy to explain how their treatments work is that it feels almost disrespectful to that which is doing the healing. Is it really just yet another rational, scientific treatment? Or is it God? (Not that science-based, technologic treatments aren’t also God, but that’s a whole other blog post.) The reason I’m calling my book Sacred Medicine is because I don’t think it’s possible to separate energy healing modalities or traditional healing practices like shamanism from spirituality. I would even go so far as to say that Love Itself lies at the root of the healing.

Asha’s work felt like a good fit for this book because right from the get-go, Asha was blatant about saying that AIT is Divine work, that the protocols she has been mystically given in order to create AIT are a gift from God. She is fittingly humble in the way she gives credit where credit is due. The technique she has midwived into the world strikes me as very similar to the way some of the mystical healers who I’ve interviewed operate, but what attracts me to AIT is that Asha has learned how to teach this.

One of the challenges I’ve faced in researching my Sacred Medicine book is that many of these Sacred Medicine practitioners cultivate dependency. They don’t teach the patient how to heal themselves. Instead, they often leave the patient feeling like they need yet another hands on healing or yet another trip to John of God or yet another boost of Divine love as it flows through the healer. And often, the effects of the healing treatment don’t seem to last. What interests me is whether we can learn something from these healers that we can practice on ourselves when we are sick, such as the techniques I described here and used on myself when I was bitten by the pit bull.

After all, if the message is always, “You need to find something outside of yourself in order to heal,” I have to pause and wonder. Other than having fewer side effects, how is dependency on a mystical healer any different than depending on drugs and surgeries, or supplements and magic potions? I am more interested in learning from the healers who have reverse engineered what they do enough to teach others how to reproduce their results and ideally even teach the patient how to employ these methods at home. Is this possible? I don’t know. So far, I think it’s a paradox. The body is physiologically equipped to heal itself, but perhaps it can’t do it alone. Maybe this deep inner work is just too scary and painful to navigate alone. Maybe we are dependent, at least for a short while, on the loving presence of someone who can channel Divine Love, while facilitating and holding space so that the body can heal itself.What is Advanced Integrative Therapy?You can read the details about AIT here, but to summarize in my understanding, the technique Asha developed uses the scientifically controversial “muscle testing” (kinesiology) to run through very detailed protocols that help the practitioner assess which damaging beliefs and unhealed traumas the client has experienced, and which beliefs and traumas need to be treated in which order in order to optimize outcomes. The technique screens not only for Adverse Childhood Events or traumatizing events in adulthood, but also for generational trauma, such as the trauma descendants of Nazi Germans or Holocaust Jews might experience, which can alter DNA in offspring. Based on the premise that all upsetting events are types of trauma, and that if left untreated, they become stored within the body, mind and spirit/soul, the intention of AIT is to quickly remove the after effects of such traumatic events and clear the residue of the trauma, as it shows up as disturbing emotions, limiting beliefs, self-sabotaging behaviors, compulsions, obsessions, dissociation, spiritual blockage, and yes . . . (She had me at hello) . . . physical illnesses like cancer.

To make the claim that a psychological and spiritual treatment could be used to treat cancer treads on dangerous legal territory, and Asha is careful with her words when she talks about it. The governing medical boards are very fussy about protecting patient safety—and their turf—by going after anyone they might deem to be “practicing medicine without a license.” If a nutritionist claims that her green juice cleanse can help treat cancer, or if a psychologist or spiritual healer claims that his can, they’re at risk of getting shut down by the Powers That Be. While I’m grateful we have governing boards to protect patient safety and to hold medical practitioners to high levels of ethics, integrity, and mastery of skills, I also find it shocking that we’ve forgotten what healers have known for millennia—that psycho-spiritual healing is probably the most effective, lasting, and restorative treatment of the majority of physical diseases. To suggest that a trained and licensed psychotherapist might be practicing medicine without a license if they suggest that psycho-spiritual treatment might help treat disease seems like blasphemy to me! After all, the CDC estimates that 75% of all doctor’s visits are induced by emotional stress, and Occupational Health and Safety bumps that number up to 90%. Sure, there are some illnesses that need highly effective physical treatments, such as antibiotics or surgery. But it is often psychological issues that weaken the immune system and predispose to infection or surgical issues in the first place! (Read Mind Over Medicine if you want to nerd out on the science behind all this.)

The Link Between Psycho-Spiritual Wounds & Physical Illness

As part of my research for Sacred Medicine, I’m traveling the globe to work with shamans in Peru, Qigong masters from China, Hawaiian kahunas, Yogi Swamis, and other kinds of traditional healers, and they all know that psycho-spiritual trauma rides shotgun with physical illness. It’s only Westerners, in our Cartesian arrogance, who have split body, mind, and spirit/soul. Yet we are waking up again and remembering what traditional healers have known all along, that body, mind, and spirit/soul cannot be separated. If we treat the body without also treating the root cause of what predisposed the body to illness, the patient will likely get another illness, or the cancer will recur, or the disease will fail to respond to even the most aggressive treatment.

If You’ve Experienced Trauma, What Can You Do to Heal It?

If you’re looking to optimize your physical health by getting help for any unresolved traumas, there are a number of ways to get help. Start by checking in with yourself. What modality resonates with your intuition? Is it AIT? EFT? EMDR? Somatic Experiencing? Shamanic healing? Faith healing? A Native American Medicine Man?

I recommend doing your homework and tuning into your intuition before you choose a practitioner. If your practitioner is a licensed health care provider, like a medical doctor or psychotherapist, they are beholden to their respective medical board with regard to ethics, education, mastery, and continuing medical education. But the minute you go outside the system into the realm of traditional healers and energy medicine practitioners who don’t also have licensed degrees, you open yourself to two kinds of risks. Some practitioners have mastery but no ethic, while others have ethic but no mastery. In other words, you may bump into some highly gifted healers, but they may not follow even the most basic medical ethics, such as confidentiality, informed consent, and restraint from having sexual relations with clients. Even more common are the people who are kind, well-intentioned people trying to be of service, people who are basically ethical and mean well, but they’re simply not good at what they do and cannot reproduce trustworthy results. In my research into Sacred Medicine, I have concluded that just because someone has spiritual power doesn’t mean they have spiritual ethic. And just because someone has spiritual ethic doesn’t mean they have spiritual power. (I talked about this for 3 ½ hours in The Shadow Of Spirituality Uncensored class I taught. You can listen to the class here to dive deeper into the topic of spiritual discernment).

I don’t say this to scare you or cause you to hesitate to get help if you’ve been traumatized. I’m just advising that you activate your discernment, ask for referrals, and be ready to sniff out those who are trying to hook you with big claims they can’t follow through on or those who might be full on black magicians dressed up in white angel robes.

If you feel drawn to modalities like AIT, EFT, EMDR, or Somatic Experiencing, there are resources online to guide you to psychotherapists who have been trained to practice these techniques.

Imagine If Doctors Were Trained to Treat Trauma Alongside Disease

Doctors and other health care providers have been exploring exactly these kinds of issues in the Whole Health Medicine Institute that I founded. Those who have been certified to facilitate the 6 Steps to Healing Yourselfas outlined in Mind Over Medicine have gone through the 6 Steps themselves and have been trained to help facilitate patients who are exploring these kind of psycho-spiritual root causes of illness. (You can find a list of graduates here). But we’ve never overtly included into the training how to treat trauma directly. Asha and I are putting our noodles together to feel into whether there’s a potential for collaboration so that the doctors in my network might be trained to not only have awareness of these new treatments for trauma so that they can refer out to licensed practitioners. Perhaps they might also get certified to treat trauma directly. This bypasses the issue of “practicing medicine without a license” and opens up the potential for a whole new approach to disease treatment and prevention within our medical systems. Of course, there are other obstacles to this potential merging of worlds, including how little time doctors have to spend with patients. But as Tosha Silver would say, “It’s impossible that doctors could be trained to help treat unhealed trauma in sick people . . . without God.”

If You’ve Been Traumatized, Please Get Help

Let me just close by saying that if you’ve experienced trauma in your life and you sense that it might be predisposing you to illness or interfering with medical treatment, please know that you are not alone and that there is no shame in having experienced trauma. Most of us have trauma in our bodies, minds, and spirit/souls. We are not alone in our traumas, and we need not hide our pain or resist treating it. Trauma can be cured, and you can have your radiant, vital life back, if only you have the courage to enter the trauma capsule—with expert guidance—and begin to let the trauma dissolve its grip on your life and your body.

Everyone is entitled to their own journey, so it’s also OK if you’re not ready yet. As my mentor Rachel Naomi Remen, MD says, “You can’t force a rosebud to blossom by beating it with a hammer.” Maybe all you can handle today is admitting, “I have trauma.” That is enough for now. Be kind to yourself. As Karen Drucker sings in her song”Gentle With Myself,” “I will only go as fast as the slowest part of me is free to go.” But perhaps by gently loving the slowest part, some day you will be ready to heal. Maybe that day begins right now.

With love and wishes for your optimal health,

Lissa Rankin, MD, New York Times bestselling author of Mind Over Medicine, The Fear Cure, andThe Anatomy of a Calling is a physician, speaker, founder of the Whole Health Medicine Institute, and mystic. Passionate about what makes people optimally healthy and what predisposes them to illness, she is on a mission to merge science and spirituality in a way that not only facilitates the health of the individual, but also uplifts the health of the collective. Bridging between seemingly disparate worlds, Lissa is a connector, collaborator, curator, and amplifier, broadcasting not only her unique visionary ideas, but also those of cutting edge visionaries she discerns and trusts, especially in the field of her latest research into “Sacred Medicine.” Lissa has starred in two National Public Television specials and also leads workshops, both online and at retreat centers like Esalen and Kripalu. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her daughter. She blogs at LissaRankin.comand posts regularly on Facebook.

Source – LissaRankin.com

[THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN BY THE MINDSJOURNAL]

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