Love and relationships: what suicide taught me about both
By Orit Krug | April 16th, 2019
Working in a psychiatric hospital has taught me a lot about love and relationships.
Spending almost every day at the psych hospital teaches you a lot about life, love and relationships. I was in charge of around 10 creative arts therapists who ran the hospital’s group therapy and I did dance therapy for the patients too.
You see what it’s be like to be your absolute lowest in life.
I never felt immune to the idea that it could be me. Sometimes people had completely normal lives and BOOM! Their husband was killed. They got into a crazy car accident. And they were never the same.
Our lives can fall apart at any moment.
I learned a lot about relationships because I ran dance therapy groups for 10-30 people at a time, who were suffering from severe depression, anxiety, addiction, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and generally feeling suicidal. It wasn’t usually a very cheerful room. The energy was very heavy.
I’ve always believed that the essence of being a human life is social connection.
That’s why we’re here and it’s a huge part of what I cultivated in my dance therapy sessions at the psych hospital.
I knew I had to help my patients feel connected to each other and to themselves, but I had to be strategic. I slowly warmed them up and guided them to playfully connect and move with each other.
There were almost always people who were never ready to open up, no matter how much the group encouraged them too. Or there were people who, no matter how good the session was going, they attacked others, got into fights, and became very defensive.
Sadly, some of those people never opened up.
Most of them slowly became vulnerable and shared deeply spiritual and connected movement experiences with each other. They went from wanting to die to feeling a deep sense of belonging and purpose on this earth.
That’s what happens when you experience a deeply non-judgmental and open experience with another.
Love and fear cannot co-exist.
If you’re stuck in your head or in a constant state of survival mode, you cannot feel the highest capacity for love.
If you build walls to protect yourself or attack others to defend yourself from getting hurt… or worse, if you’re so controlled by fear that you become frozen and shut down, then you won’t be able to truly love.
We have to trust others so we can connect in love and relationships, because when we’re in fear, our social brain shuts off and our reptilian brain runs our behavior.
That means that when we have deep unresolved trauma, we’re more likely to behave like the animals we once were BEFORE we became social and cannot experience love as we know it.
Trauma can have a special shitty way of preventing us from ever getting the most out of love and relationships again.
I witnessed this in myself for my entire life, before I met my husband. And I saw this over and OVER again, across thousands of groups.
Sometimes, every person in the room stood up in a circle, hands on heart, and made eye contact with each other. Feeling no fear, no shame, no judgment. Feeling true human to human love.
But there was just 1 person sitting on the side with their arms crossed and looking at this happening, unable to physically join no matter how much they tried convince themselves.
As much as they told themselves to “just try,” their nonverbal subconscious brain took control said “DON’T you move! It’s way too dangerous in there.”
You cannot reach your highest potential of love without resolving the trauma deeply stored in your body.
It’s only when you really bring those walls down, become vulnerable, and freely express yourself (even to disagree with your partner).
If you’re in a relationship right now and resonating with this post, you probably realize there’s something missing, but maybe you can’t put your finger on what it is.
TRUE love is the most amazing thing we can experience on this earth for FREE.
So from the bottom of my heart, I know it’s not easy, but please do what it takes to let your guard down and to transform your love and relationships.
Do what it takes to resolve the trauma that’s taking over your body.
If you tell yourself, “I’m going to speak up and be vulnerable. I’m gonna stop worrying that he’s gonna hurt me,” but your nonverbal subconscious only focuses on the trauma from the past, your hurt is still PRESENT.
Affirmations and positive thoughts alone cannot control your fight, flight, freeze responses.
So do whatever it takes to resolve that trauma from your past. Even if it’s not obvious what trauma you experienced. It could be mild neglect because your feelings were never a priority in your family after growing up with siblings who need a much, much more attention.
Do whatever it takes to resolve this trauma and if that means you need to find a safe space first, then do it.
No romantic relationship today can resolve yesterday’s trauma.
No relationship is going to fill the void of the love that you didn’t get in the past. A great relationship can help A LOT but you need to do the inner-work first.
No partnership is going to feel as good as it CAN unless you resolve the past and then truly open the floodgates to receive and give love.
I know I’m giving tough love right now, but I experienced this too and it feels AMAZING to be on the other side of it all.
Get on the right path to healing trauma from your body and nervous system.
Many people spend decades and thousands of dollars in traditional therapies trying to heal their trauma. Unfortunately, even the most popular therapies are scientifically shown to be limited in accessing trauma stored in the non-verbal brain and body.
Even alternative approaches, such as EMDR and Brain Mapping, are often not enough to fully heal from the physical body or the nervous system.
This makes trauma healing a very frustrating journey for so many people. They often blame themselves for being “un-healable” and decide that they’re broken.
This is NOT true!
Every human being is 100% neurophysiologically capable of healing from the past, because we all have wiring and neural pathways that can be rewired from fear and overprotection, to love and openness.
My unique, scientific-backed process via Dance Therapy has helped hundreds of clients finally heal from past trauma and transform their relationship (even after decades of trying in other therapies).
You can heal too, but you need the right methodology.
Sign up for my online course (ranges from free to $20 USD) to begin a unique, body-based learning experience that will teach you:
- Science-backed education about how trauma is stored in your body and nervous system. You’ll gain an understanding why it has NOT been your fault you haven’t healed yet from past trauma.
- Gentle, guided body-based movement that is necessary for integrated healing. This is crucial if you want your mind’s intentions to match your body’s behaviors in relationships.
- An embodied approach to healing that has helped hundreds of clients break unhealthy relationship patterns and let in healthy, lasting love.
