Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: EMDR

  • Make the Chili

    I shared this story at St. John UCC a few days ago:

      Make The Chili

      A good friend of mine unexpectedly lost his wife. A couple months later we were golfing together, chatting about nothing. He asked what my dinner plans were and I told him wifey wanted my homemade chili and cornbread, but I didn’t feel like stopping at the store. We golfed a few more minutes when he quietly said, “Make the chili.”

      It took me a few minutes to realize we were no longer talking about dinner. It was about going out of your way to do something for someone you love because at any moment, they could unexpectedly be taken from you. So today I’m sharing with you that wisdom handed to me by my dear friend, that I’ve thought of many times since that day. Next time someone you love wants you to go for a walk or watch a football game or play a board game or just put your phone down and give them your undivided attention, just do it. “Make the chili.”

    Today this story visits me with greatly expanded awareness.

    A precious dharma friend has been experiencing anxiety and full-blown-panic attacks, possibly a long-covid condition. In our discussion about all of this I mentioned three therapies that might be helpful. Self Havening, EFT, and EMDR. This is what I sent to her after we logged off Zoom.

    Self Havening

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQXbZmuSbFs

    A 10-minute, Self-Havening practice to reduce anxiety, enhance wellbeing, and develop compassion and loving-kindness. See neuroscienceofhealing.com for more resources.

    https://www.havening.org/

    Tapping Points and Instructional Video

    Tapping (EFT) is so powerful because it addresses the emotions that have been stored in our bodies as we developed.

    Here is the short instructional video introduction:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAclBdj20ZU

    The points are on the side of the hand, where the eyebrow begins, where the eyebrow ends on the side of your eye, under eye right on the bone, under your nose, on the crease of your chin, on your collar bone, under arm on the bra strap, and on the top of your head.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAclBdj20ZU&authuser=0

    EMDR Therapy

    Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, commonly known as EMDR, is a mental health therapy method. EMDR treats mental health conditions that happen because of memories from traumatic events in your past. It’s best known for its role in treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but its use is expanding to include treatment of many other conditions.
    https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/22641-emdr-therapy

    Our meditation teacher, Barbara Brodsky, reminds us in The Path of Clear Light: Stepping Out of the Shadow, “There is no need to fix them, though you will wish to tend to them.”

    When we sit in formal meditation, if a fly buzzes our face we resist the urge to swat or shoo it away, thus developing concentration and mindfulness. We are cultivating the gentle truth of tending to conditions. We know everything arises from conditions. We know conditions are impermanent.

    If a baby cries because it is hungry, does the mother refuse milk to teach the baby that hunger arises from conditions and will pass when the conditions cease? Of course not. The mother will tend to the baby.

    John and I have been spending time with my nephew as he makes a huge lifestyle change from over-the-road truck driving and living in the truck, to local work and being “home” every night. Complicated hugely by not having had a home or an income. The goal is to generate stability rather than becoming homeless every time he changes jobs. Today he came for home-made vegetable beef soup and cornbread and a shower.


    Just as judging “judging” is still judging, fixing “fixing” is still fixing.

    Conditions are calling us to tend to them.

    Make the chili.

  • A Kind of Deeper Wisdom

    It has been quite the week…. my blood pressure numbers had continued to be high…. lines of poems kept coming forth to carry me through, like a flower cannot be opened with a hammer….

    On Friday morning I saw a Titmouse at the bird bath — the first I have seen here at this house. The totem meaning is very significant: when this bird visits you, it asks you to step away from the past and to worry less about the future. And a friend gave me the image of a young child learning to walk and how the adult will reach down and take the child’s little hand, giving confidence. Her guidance was that we cannot do this deep of integration on our own as humans, it has to come with help from above. That image of reaching up to one who can help steady us was the perfect image for me because Stacey recently sent a video of her walking with Jackson, our now 17 month old great grandson.

    From my journal on Friday, May 27, 2022:

      Dear Holy Spirit,

      Listening to an audio with Nick Ortner on tapping to release the emotional charge from events that happened in the past.

      I tapped on “Leaving the Garden” – the past life when I was pregnant for Joel. I saw myself slip out of the gate. (This is another of those points that deserves its own post.) I spent some time confidently living off the land in the forest. I was in perfect harmony with the experience.

      When the man (Joel’s former wife in this lifetime) who found me in the forest took me to his home, I went willingly to teach him how to love his experience too.

      Memories of him molesting me merged with the distaste of a tongue in my mouth in this lifetime, merged with the panic at weight on my body, distaste of sex and distrust of my own body.

      Memories of escaping “out the gate” again, this time from his home, and returning to the forest.

      He found me because he knew where I had been before. This time he took me to his home against my will.

      (As I wrote this last sentence, I heard a ‘ceiling walker’ as confirmation from spirit.)

      Entering a New Garden

      Seeing the parallel of having cut my wrists and having bled to death, resulting in the death of the fetus as well, and my cleaning up a friend’s blood after he intentionally cut his wrist following his diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. (Significant – but not sure how – my friend’s friend helped me with the clean-up.)

    A friend phoned just as the audio ended. I told her about the song “If I Could Only Fly” by Blaise Foley and the title of Merle Haggard’s album by that same name, in which Haggard is clearly channeling and expressing grief. Almost felt you touching me just now / I wish I knew which way to turn and go…. “Why Merle Haggard’s If I Could Only Fly is his masterpiece (by Noah Berlatsky, Wed 6 Apr 2016, in The Guardian): …remains the last great Merle Haggard album in part because it looks ahead with such clear eyes to this moment when we know there won’t be anymore.

    This journey is right at the core of impermanence.

      Saturday, May 28, 2022

      Dear Holy Spirit,

      Listening to a talk by Ram Dass (BEHERENOWNETWORK.COM). A caller said his brother had been given a mantra when their mother had died but the brother had forgotten the tune so Ram Dass sang it for the guy. Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ram-dass-here-and-now/id518366323?i=1000562049355

      Listen, listen, listen to my heart song
      Listen, listen, listen to my heart song
      I will never forget you, I will never forsake you
      I will never forget you, I will never forsake you
      Listen, listen, listen to my heart song

      The next caller was a young-sounding man who asked Dass what his view was on abortion. Dass kept asking the young man for clarity, what was he really asking. Finally, the young man confessed that a woman had carried his child for a while and then she could not do it any more, and she had an abortion, and they were both in a lot of pain.

      Dass said he had once been talking to a very spiritually awake being who had told him no being leaves a moment too soon or a moment too late. Dass went on to say there is a kind of deeper wisdom in the universe that if that child – if that being – was to come into life and come into form, you wouldn’t have been able to abort that child, no matter what you did. Its soul would demand manifestation. And I see it as the relationship among the three souls: you, and the woman who was carrying the fetus, and the fetus. And all of them have some kind of contract with one another – and sometimes beings just have to come in to fetal form to finish whatever they have to do and then they can go on beyond that.

      What I also feel is that the more conscious you become the less likely you are to call forth a being by procreating that you are not ready to carry through and embrace and support. So, because your life changes with a pregnancy, as you become more conscious, you say, “Alright, new moment. My life has changed. Now what will I do with this new moment. So, I think what I can say to you is that I can understand your pain and all of the feelings you are feeling, but I –think that there is a deeper wisdom in the whole situation and that you should just listen to hear that and let the pain of all of this deepen your compassion so that your actions in the future are ones that – so that you can have the legacy from this being who came briefly to be with you and let that legacy be one of increasing wisdom and compassion in the way you live your life.

      It would be terrible if the fetus sacrificed its life and all it left you with was guilt and incrimination. That would seem to be an unfortunate legacy so I invite you to have that and then get on with it. Okay.

      Young Man: “Yeah, that would be the best way to heal.”

      Dass: That’s the way I would do it.

      Young Man: “Yeah, she is having a lot of trouble with it, you know.”

      Dass: And all you can do is just love her and be present with her and just you keep your heart as open and be strong and keep your faith in the deeper wisdom of the universe. That’s one of the things you can do that can be very helpful to her. But just keep your heart open with hers as much as you can. But you can’t take away her suffering, she’s got to do her suffering until she’s done doing it.

      Young Man: “Yeah, suffering….”

      Dass: Okay?

      Young Man, “Yeah, okay.”

      Dass: Okay. (Dass laughs gently.)

      Young Man: “Happy New Year.”

      Dass. Oh, Happy New Year to you, my dear. Happy New Year. I hope it is a happy new year for her too. Will you send her my love?

      Young Man: “Yeah, I’ve told her quite a bit about you.”

      Dass: Good. Well, tell her that I’m thinking about her and I’m holding her deeply in my heart and I just hope she can come through all of this quickly and realize the joy and the beauty of her life and now take it and live it as richly and happily as possible. Thanks.

    The colleague who did EMDR with me reached out. I heard myself admit I’m afraid I’m going to have a stroke. The voice within says, “You are not going to have a stroke, Debra. You are going to have a stroke of insight.”

    She sent a release exercise, saying, “It’s a powerful process to get to the unconscious. Perhaps asking your blood pressure to tell you without words sometimes why it is so high. What is causing this pressure still ….”

    Sit quietly for a bit, maybe 10 minutes, with a blank pad of paper and markers, crayons, or oil pastels in front of you. Then pick up what moves you and draw whatever comes — not artistically but from your insides. Then look at it and write whatever comes. Name the drawing.

    Yesterday the damn broke and my blood pressure numbers are coming down.

    Today I had the first news from Joel, a text saying, “Not well.”

    Grateful, grateful, grateful.

  • Dear Former Me

    When I saw my primary on Monday she said I needed Zoloft or a therapist, maybe both. I had been overwhelmed with the stress of everything John has been going through, complicated mightily by the situation with Joel. For those new to YBR, Joel has been my co-author for over twenty years. He has developed dementia, and after being hospitalized in March for a medical issue, deemed unable to return to his home. He is now in a memory care facility near his son in Tennessee. On Wednesday his voice sounded raspy, and on Thursday morning a staff member swabbed his nose while we were on FaceTime with another friend. He has not answered text or a FaceTime call since.

    It is said one can handle work stress or home stress but not both at the same time.

    The story is more complex than appropriate to share in a single blog (would likely make a best-selling book), but what is important for this post is to recognize there is a distinction between pain and suffering.

    I have a lot of pain about Joel’s son not answering my email asking about his dad. It is almost incomprehensible the seeming lack of compassion the son has for those of us who have been with his dad. Several of us have been supporting him, caring for him, assisting him in meeting his stated desire to live out his life in his own home. Suffering comes when I go into resistance and blame about the choices the son is making. Suffering rides in on the shame that I participated in Joel’s current conditions by getting the paperwork in place that gave the son the legal right to make decisions for his dad. Shame also arises when I face how little compassion there has been for how difficult it is to supervise someone’s care from out of state.

    Yesterday’s news of yet another school shooting. Incomprehensible. At least 19 children and two teachers were killed yesterday when a gunman opened fire in a Texas elementary school. Incomprehensible. Many on social media speak of the heart-wrenching pain of this horrendous violence to innocent children. I was touched profoundly by one sharing that added wisdom to the mix.

    When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news my mother would say to me, “LOOK FOR THE HELPERS. YOU WILL ALWAYS FIND PEOPLE WHO ARE HELPING.” To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers, so many caring people in the world. ~ Mr. Rogers

    Yesterday I had an EMDR session with a very special colleague. I am grateful she was available to assist my finding some equanimity. I have been suffering. There was A LOT OF pain released with the emotion. As follow up to our time together, she suggested I write a letter to the former me.

    May 24, 2022

    Dear Former Me,

    I knew you would appreciate the special paper. You were such a loving creature and your heart wanted to do the right thing. You could not see all that was involved. It was not just about that time and place. It was as much about this time and place. That now and this now are one and the same, just as “you” and “I” are one and the same.

    You have done everything within your power. This is true for me, too. Fortunately for both of us, there is a higher power.

    We have neither had a childhood. It is time for us to have that chance. Children deserve to wake up in the morning and feel excited for their day. They do not thrive in the fields of constant vigilance.

    Do you remember the joy you felt in the gardens? You remembered it at the aviary at the zoo in Battle Creek. Your entire being was bliss. That is what you remember when I listen to the mockingbirds in Florida. We don’t have birds singing to us every moment but we have an experience of “ALL IS WELL” in our sweet bodies.

    I want you to do something for us. I want you to let go of your part. Let go of the feeling responsible for Joel. Let go of doing something wrong that hurt him.

    I’ll let go of my part, too.

    While neither of us carries all of the emotions, we both have carried the imprint – and the imprint has created a distortion.

    Can you see how the words on the page are now gradually going uphill? Things are looking up for us. Joel lives. I live. You live on, too. All endings are really new beginnings. May is going to be memorable for us. Our new beginning.

    I love you. Thank you. Please forgive me. I forgive you.