Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, I want to talk about the relationship between a positive mindset and working with our trauma. The first thing I want to say about this is that for those who have been through trauma, often holding a positive mindset toward the future, and that things will change, maybe saying positive affirmations can be extremely important and powerful for navigating your life and pulling forward when it feels like everything is pulling you back. In many ways, it can be your declaration of your right to be here and your right to take up space and your right to, to have a life that you want to live. So positivity, in in that way can often be the thing that saves us.

And allowing ourselves to feel positive emotion and pleasure is extremely powerful for our healing journey around trauma. With all that said, sometimes using a positive mindset to override underlying trauma can be like playing loud music to muffle the cries of suffering outside your window. You may be able to dampen the discomfort that you're feeling, but nothing is actually getting healed. Instead, it's just being used as a distraction, think positive, think positive, think positive, to not have to touch into this thing that actually needs attention. And then as soon as you are still and not caught up in the positive thoughts or affirmations of keep going, whatever is unresolved will still be sitting there, asking and waiting for attention.

Pain, trauma and our despised self can only be healed through a presence, compassion, and love. And when, I mean, what I mean when I say that it can only be healed through that, is that it needs attention. It needs us, if it's, if it's coming up and it's asking for something, it needs us to meet it in a way that you could argue is a positive orientation. Presence, compassion, love, like these are positive orientations that we're taking in relationship to the experience. But do you sense the difference between using that positivity to avoid what's there versus using that positivity in relationship to what is there? It is a significant difference.

And I'm not saying every moment we have to make space for the trauma that is here and hold it. Sometimes we have to realize like, okay, there's a lot here. I'm going to put this in a box. I'm going to put it to the side. And I am going to use maybe a positive mindset to keep moving forward until I finish this up.

And then I'll revisit this when I have more time and space. Right? This is all part of learning how to use your mind in, in a practical way in relationship to the reality of what's arising. So we all have different strategies, but the main thing I want to hone in on here is that we can sometimes use positivity in a toxic way, in a way that isn't actually healing, but it's further separating ourselves from ourselves. And an invitation, if that does seem like a pattern, to bring that, the beauty of that orientation, that positive mindset to the pain that is beneath the surface itself as a way to help integrate it and allow it to breathe and to integrate back into the wholeness of your system. As a disclaimer with all of these conversations around trauma, if this is really deep and really significant, working with a trained therapist is incredibly important.

And I recommend therapies such as somatic experiencing and EMDR a to begin. And the work that you're doing in meditation is helping you build the resources to hold the fullness of your experience. So you can also trust that on this journey. Thank you for your practice. Let's settle in for today's meditation.