Emotional Traumas

Every day we experience emotional reactions to our thoughts and our environments. Most emotional reactions are based on internal thoughts about ourselves or circumstances that occur in our environments. These thoughts dominate our consciousness for varied periods of time. Most emotional reactions are quick and fizzle out. However, there are certain times when deep emotional responses trigger forgotten memories about occurrences or people. For example; the death of a loved one.

Last week this author experienced this trauma. A dear and long time friend passed away at the age of 55. I had last spoken with him around Thanksgiving 2009 and tried to reach him over the Christmas holidays. I later learned he had returned to the hospital because his liver was continuing to fail. When I last spoke with him I spoke faith and positive expectation into him even though he maintained a matter-of-fact attitude about his infirmity. It was as though he had accepted his fate and was not expecting a recovery. We had shared many wonderful moments when we worked together in several bands. We both shared the same mentor in the music business; a former Motown Funk Brother, Tony Newton. Tony had taught us both how to stretch ourselves beyond our abilities to become overcomers. He had challenged both of us on many occasions to not accept what our weaknesses were telling us. Both of us took the emotional inspiration from Tony and made strides in the music industry. My friend Steve “Liberty” Loria went on to play bass for the band Spirit and this author went on to play keyboards for the band Iron Butterfly. Our emotional reactions to the challenges presented by our mentor drove us on to not only stretch ourselves, but to accomplish our goals.

We had chosen to move toward our goals as well as move away from the insistence by our mentor that we were making excuses about not achieving our goals. It was a dual motivation that propelled us into accomplishing what we desired. Liberty and this author had many conversations about how our mentor’s stance had driven us into believing in ourselves and our abilities. When Liberty died on January 18, 2010, a laundry list of memories about those times were projected on the screen in my mind. The trauma of facing my friend’s death and the subsequent realization of my own mortality, triggered feelings I hadn’t experience in years. Have you ever noticed how certain smells and sounds trigger certain memories? Or how certain memories trigger replays of smells and sounds in your head? It is because we imprint sensual inputs during traumatic times that coincide with our memories. Traumas are, in a way, wake up calls to certain experiences and the subsequent meanings of those experiences to us. It is during the times of trauma that we become clear about ourselves in relation to our lives and to the lives of others. Why? Because in our deep introspection we literally step out of our own heads and participate in the collective consciousness that ties us all together. Our spiritual aspect is awakened even if we reject that aspect’s existence.