Can you lose your soul? PTSD and emotional "reduction"

[manyquestions]

Hey Ronin. It was a really toxic,complicated dynamic. What I did wasn't that bad although it was a little bit more than yelling. I also blamed them for weeks for not helping me enough, playing the victim. That alone is bad enough but not enough to lose your soul but as my soul was already severly wounded by the trauma I think it was enough to cause permanent loss of soul.
You know before all that.. if someone had told something like that.. I would have been very skeptic but now I'm experiencing it and it's hell on earth. I still hope I can reconnect with my soul some day..

Three Causes of Spiritual Illness | SharedWisdom
How credible this page is I don't know but they speak of irretrievable soul loss in severe circumstances.

 

[Ronin]

@manyquestions I dunno. The way I was taught of these things? (Shaman elders and all?) Soul loss causes death. As in having no life/vital energy to go on with / enfleshing the body anymore. Equivalents were sudden complete chi depletion, and the like, on the Eastern minded side of it. Turning out to shadow land and being shred to pieces, while the body goes to coma and dies during the process, in the taiga parts of the world.

Certainly not something resulting as something from doing someone wrong a few times, worse off, intoxicated.

And even then, usually there are counted with helpers, guards, quick return to the body assistants, guardian angels and spirits and saints and what have you... to prevent that from happening. Because a serious state resulting in death, and death itself, not being natural (or wanted) state of things. Sort of white cells in a body, fighting off infection.

Shamanic hat off: So why worry about souls, in the meantime...
Instead of fixing what you CAN be fixing? (And back to emotional numbing and all.)
Because souls will sort things in time, but you can do something else, and very real, with very available tools (therapies, change of thinking, emotional regulation, and all.)

 

[shimmerz]

I worked with a Shaman for years. Soul retrieval was a big deal during our times together. And after a soul retrieval there was a definite shift in me. I could type about this and experiences etc for hours but I won't. I am a true believer that soul loss can lead to/exacerbate PTSD.

Ever hear the term 'sell your soul to the devil'? I believe many people have lost sight of their soul. Or traded it for something else. Or given it to someone (usually an abuser) with the thought that they can keep our body safe.

Yes, I believe you can lose your soul (which to me is defined as our essence). But you can also get it back imho. It just takes a lot of work to do so.

 

[manyquestions]

Thanks guys. Your input means a lot to me.
I will do exactly that - Focus on what I can do and just hope that eventually the soul will return or I can build a new one so to speak.
Just a thought: I always noticed the presence of my soul like a light if I was doing some serious introspection. I can see my inner workings like a picture in my mind to some extent but now I can not feel this presence anymore. Did you experience something similiar shimmerz? I just want to know if anyone really knows that it can be rebuild or whatever you want to call it if the essence is completley lost due to intensely overwhelming circumstances/trauma.

 

[IamFree]

I myself have always thought of trauma as being a cancer of the soul. I also have thought of my soul being in a coma rather than dead. as for the other selfs I know I would have been without the trauma I see them as something which has died but with another self that can be reborn from them bit like the mythology of the phoinex.

 

[shimmerz]

I can see my inner workings like a picture in my mind to some extent but now I can not feel this presence anymore.

I lost any connection to my feeling of my Higher Self and my soul as well. It freaked me out. First of all let me make clear I have not been a spiritual person all of my life. This HS stuff came to me during my healing phase.

So something happened about 5 years ago to me and I felt this empty void thing happen when it came to my Higher Self. Freaked me out. I was patient. I waited. I kept trying as my Higher Self part of me (?) I had used along the way to heal. Anyway, the connection did come back. Oddly, it now feels like a different Higher Self.

No idea if that is an explanation that anyone would understand, but I hope so.

 

[shimmerz]

Just thinking about the stuff again. I’m not sure if anybody’s familiar with the silver cord concept if you are I recalled continuing my attachment to the silver accord working my way farther and farther along it. To my way of thinking the higher self is at the end of the silver cord. So even though I couldn’t attach to the higher self I did in fact visualize holding onto my silver accord while I had the feeling my HS was not available to me.

 

[Lisamarieaxo]

This is very interesting to me. This is a topic have have felt into. I have long felt that in times of trauma, the soul goes down and the ego defenses go up.

I am partaking in a course now with Sera Beak that is soul work to retrieve this soul loss. She speaks of the difference between the human soul (trauma impacted) and the divine soul (not impacted by trauma). I feel true healing must include the defragmentation of the soul or something.

I have often felt this chronic emptiness. I attribute it to this soul loss.

 

[Sideways]

I don’t have a problem with the idea that severe trauma can influence a person’s soul. I’m not really sure where I stand or how I feel about the soul, healing the soul, whether it can be damaged.

But I do feel strongly about mental health, and mental health stigma.

PTSD is an illness. It’s a serious illness. But it’s an illness. Nothing more, nothing less. Regardless of what trauma can do to your soul? PTSD isn’t part of that. It’s no more going to destroy a person’s soul than a bad case of the flu. There’s enough stigma about mental illness around without unnecessarily adding to it. The more we understand about ptsd, the more we understand - it’s an illness. A treatable one at that. It doesn’t steal your soul, it doesn’t destroy your soul. The neurons in your brain are misfiring. Which is about neurology, the way our brain works, not your soul.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[Lisamarieaxo]

I don’t have a problem with the idea that severe trauma can influence a person’s soul. I’m not really sure where I stand or how I feel about the soul, healing the soul, whether it can be damaged.

But I do feel strongly about mental health, and mental health stigma.

PTSD is an illness. It’s a serious illness. But it’s an illness. Nothing more, nothing less. Regardless of what trauma can do to your soul? PTSD isn’t part of that. It’s no more going to destroy a person’s soul than a bad case of the flu. There’s enough stigma about mental illness around without unnecessarily adding to it. The more we understand about ptsd, the more we understand - it’s an illness. A treatable one at that. It doesn’t steal your soul, it doesn’t destroy your soul. The neurons in your brain are misfiring. Which is about neurology, the way our brain works, not your soul.

Just my 2 cents.

I understand sideways and hate the stigma too. But there is this emptiness feeling, vacuum things, that I do feel is spirtual. It's almost the worst experience I've had. I've noticed other ppl don't have it. I also seem to just not be self directed. Sometimes I feel like there is nothing inside. I know that's not true as I am a loving person.

 

[shimmerz]

Regardless of what trauma can do to your soul? PTSD isn’t part of that.

Many healers would disagree. They work on the body, the heart, the mind, the soul. I have experienced work on all of these areas. The shifts have been profound. I think whatever the healing modality, it needs to call to the recipient of the healing.

 

[Sideways]

Sometimes I feel like there is nothing inside.

This is absolutely worth exploring with your T. You’re using different words, but ehat you’re saying sounds so much like the shame schema that often comes as part of the cptsd package. The feeling is real, but the meaning that we’re attaching to the feeling can get skewed by cognitive distortions and learned self concept issues that typically come with complex trauma. It’s worth discussing, because feeling “whole” again? Is something that can be achieved, and is worth working for:)

@shimmerz - please don’t get me wrong. I’m big on the concept of whole body & mind healing practices. Trauma therapy (and in fact mental health treatment broadly) has benefited a lot from healing practices drawn from a broad range of practices beyond traditional western medicine. I personally have gotten a whole lot out of both mindfulness and trauma-informed yoga.

But for me personally, I draw a line at the point where we decide that ‘my soul is sick/destroyed/etc’. For me, I have an illness - body and mind need treatment. My soul is intact.

I suspect that a big part of that comes from the religious component to my own trauma. Regardless, I like to normalise mental illness as just another form of illness like any other. Treatable, understandable, commonplace.