EPP 4: Trauma to Triumph

LESSON ONE: WORKING WITH FEAR

Trauma often produces fear, and a repeating review of fearful events, which is very normal in the human organism. Are you safe? Did you survive? It’s powerful to see if you are acting like you won’t make it, you won’t survive without your usual eating behaviors. Is it true?

Click image to watch Trauma to Triumph Lesson 1: Fear (and anger). PASSWORD=eatpeace

Download slides here: EatingPeaceProcessGiftofFear

ACTION STEPS FOR LESSON ONE:

  1. Practice feeling and living the turnaround “I am safe” every day. You can add it to your meditation practice, or hold it as a reminder.
  • “I do not need to eat to survive right now”.
  • “I do not need to binge to fix my emotions right now.”
  • “I can survive this feeling of fear”. 
  • “I can survive a change in my body (if there is one) in the future”

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LESSON TWO: Avoidance–Why look when I can just avoid it?

ACTION STEPS FOR LESSON TWO:

  1. A consideration in mental suffering, illness or addiction is it springs from wanting to avoid reality (and often, this is assuming it’s frightening, worthy of being avoided, and necessary to avoid for the rest of our lives).
  2. Download this exercise to look at being willing to make a small change in a persistent time where you have trouble with off-balance eating: Eating Peace Process MAKING A SMALL CHANGE

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LESSON THREE: You Can’t Make Me – Defensive and Defiant Energy & Compulsion

ACTION STEPS FOR LESSON THREE:

  1. Download this worksheet and complete the dialogue exercise between YOU (your wise, compassionate, observing self) and your green-light eater:  EPP Exercise Dialogue with Off-Balance Eater
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LESSON FOUR: Reviewing Trauma in a Safety Zone
Watch Trauma to Triumph: Lesson Four 18 minutes
Click to watch Lesson Four: The FOO Dinner Table

ACTION STEPS FOR LESSON FOUR:

  1. Fill out a Judge Your Neighbor worksheet on your family of origin dinner table and take the concepts through The Work.
  2. Consider your memories of first love, crushes, attraction, first kiss, new experiences with sexuality. If something troubling comes to mind, good for self-inquiry.
  3. Fill out a Judge Your Neighbor worksheet on a moment in your life, especially childhood, when you felt you needed protection that you didn’t get, or you thought you wouldn’t survive. Find someone to facilitate you in this work–it’s good to get support for situations in which we’ve felt traumatized.
  4. Remember you are safe as you review and remember anything traumatic.
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LESSON FIVE: Restoring Power Without Dictatorship

An inquiry meditation on powerlessness and powerfulness. Who would you be without your interpretation of power? Who would you be without the belief “my thoughts, my memories, my feelings, my compulsion has power over me”?