A Poster Child for Togetherness – Nicola’s Story       by Steve Gunn 

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[ The case studies are not here to illustrate soul connections but to demonstrate the power of personal healing and transformation using Ptsen Nuh metaphysical techniques.

In some cases, but not all, the persons need for healing was triggered by a soul connection - however in these case studies we do not look at the relationship aspects or if they got back together - we focus on the individuals' healing and transformation.

If you want to know about a soul connection you will not find out about it from anyone else's story even if they seem similar because every situation so unique thats why we don't feature the stories .. Soul connection articles on the general issues and principles can be found here but to find about about your own unique situation it needs to looked at individually which can only come from an individual consultation.]




My awakening did not come with a year long hiatus around the world. It would have been nice to have eaten, prayed and loved in exotic locations, but somehow children, work and a mortgage meant that the Universe had other plans for me and nothing quite so glamorous.

From a young age, I knew that something was ‘up’ with me, and apparently so did every body else with people either loving me or hating me and sometimes both, but what that meant or how it would look was still yet to be determined. My parents trailed me off to psychologists and counselors in a vain effort to ‘fix’ me or figure me out but nobody could quite ever pinpoint a diagnosis – ADD? Bipolar? Schizophrenia? Borderline Personality Disorder? I just didn’t quite fit the diagnostic criteria for anything. Almost ADD but I had an excellent schooling record, I was just bored easily and unchallenged and liked to daydream. Psychotic episodes indicative of schizophrenia but with no hallucinations or paranoia or longevity. Bi-polar perhaps, but no serious mood swings. BPD might explain the strange energetic sensations and emotional sensitivity but no hysterics or serious relationship difficulties.

And so unfolded the first 21 years of my life, trying to work out exactly what was wrong with me so that I could be treated accordingly. No such luck, but I was prescribed a mood stabilizer, diagnosed with some kind of non-specific bi-polar disorder with no mood swings but occasional psychotic episodes (three over a period of two years) which lasted for two or three days where I thought I was a most grand human being, here to heal the world, birth the Christ consciousness and being frighteningly pursued by the Devil intent on thwarting the grand plan.

In the meantime, life unfolded as it should: university, marriage, work, and children, not necessarily in that order. Tick, tick, tick. I was, by all accounts, a high functioning human being, prone to sporadic and not terribly long lasting or serious bouts of melancholy and introspection but that could have been easily written off to a fairly tragic and unloving childhood and adolescence, early parenthood and the pressures of working, attending to my studies and raising my two small children. Oh and getting beaten every few weeks or so by an emotionally manipulative and controlling spouse. But that was a secret.

I was the poster child for togetherness. Highly intelligent, flourishing career, perfect family, a regular little 23 year old Stepford Wife. I think I was older at 23 than I am today. But I was juggling my balls perfectly. And like any good psychology student, I had conquered my thoughts and emotions and was awfully proud of my excellent progress. Peaceful? Contented? Um, not quite. And that awful, gnawing, painful, feeling in my heart, I could just ignore that forever.

But the energy – I could not ignore. Tingling sensations in my hands and feet and stomach and the middle of my forehead. Energetic sensations shooting up and down my spine. Hot flushes. Feelings I could not fathom and certainly couldn’t explain. Even then I called it ‘energy’. I don’t even know where I got that term from, I was raised Catholic and had no concept of anything metaphysical but energy it was. I investigated every single possible medical cause. I studied mental illness. I spent years ‘googling’ possible explanations for what I was experiencing with no joy.

Then there were the things I just ‘knew’, how people were feeling, what they were thinking, what they’re motivations were. I could even physically feel their aches and pains. I had heard of psychics, of course, even went to a tarot reader once, but she told me that me and my wife beating husband would be together forever so I kind of lost my faith in that right there. Plus, I couldn’t predict the future so obviously I wasn’t that and I thought no more of that subject.

But I knew other things too, historically, globally. Why things were the way they were and also how they needed to be. My children called it the “Gospel according to Mum” but I had an answer for everything, and not just an answer but an explanation and even sometimes a solution that transcended my education on topics as diverse as what happened to the Mayans, to the Final Solution, to the decision making of the Australian Cricket board of selectors. And I don’t even like cricket.

So it was back to the mental illness route. Bi-polar’s think they know everything and ok, I didn’t really have bouts of unexplained depression or unbelievable highs and there was no explanation for all this energy, the itchy and scratchy as I had come to call it, but I didn’t have anything else, so bi-polar it was. I was finally boxed. And that did fill me with a certain kind of peace, not the diagnosis itself, but the box. Obviously my bi-polar manifested differently. I could accept that.

I left my husband quietly one evening. We had had a ‘fight’ a few days before and he had gone out on a drinking and drug binge so I hadn’t seen him for a while. I was in the kitchen with my boys making dinner when my seven year old son looked up at me with sad and fearful little eyes and asked haltingly, ‘Mum. Am I going to grow up to be a murderer?’ As shocked as I was, I regained my composure and with as much gentleness and lightheartedness as I could muster, replied ‘No. Of course not. Why?’ and I will never forget his chilling response: “Because murderers have dad’s who hit their mum’s.’ I was 24 years old when I packed our bags for the very last time.

My energy settled. No more itchy and scratchy. I took care of myself and my children and put us all back together. I saw my clients. I exercised. I did everything right. Sometimes I’d still get so hot I thought I was going to burn alive and sometimes I still couldn’t sleep, afraid I was going to fall into the abyss and never wake up. But I was good, as in better, and I had never been better before.

But then I met him, and by him I mean them. Three years of self imposed celibacy and I declared myself ready to re-enter the world of men and dating. After all I was fixed. I could spot a wanker a mile off and I had all the tools to make sure I would never be used or abused again. Or so I thought. Most of the time I really did. I was charming and lovely and witty and confidence itself, but every two years or so I met somebody I could not get over. There was nothing to explain this. These men were no more good looking or smart or funny or special then any of the others. I didn’t ‘want’ them any more than any one else. We would go out for less than three months and usually less that three weeks, there was no reason for me to be attached and once, I was even the one who instigated the break up, but they were ‘special’ in that they brought the energy back. With each of them, we would do nothing more than look into each others eyes and just bask in the love and energy between us. We just wanted to ‘eat’ each other and every time I would think, this is it, this will be the one that stays, this will be the one that can handle this level of connection. But none of them could. And I couldn’t work it out. I knew they loved me. In fact there were many times I’m sure I knew they loved me a lot more than I loved them but they still couldn’t stay. And I worked myself into a tizz, trying to work out what I was doing wrong, why it always ended the same way, why it hurt so damn much when sometimes I wasn’t even sure I liked them. And then berating myself for being so mental and stupid and having such abysmal taste in men. But they all said the same thing – ‘I didn’t choose you’. Comforting. I remember arguing with one of them once. We were walking home from a date and he started breaking up with me. When I asked why, he looked at me and shouted “because I f**king love you and I don’t want to’. And so it went.

It was also around this time that I met Beck. Beautiful ditzy, loopy, psychic Becky who assured me every one of them loved me and every one of them would come back and held my hand when none of them did. Thank God I had her. I can imagine how much I would have spent on fortune tellers if I hadn’t. Whilst her own skills were still in their infancy, we were a couple of fairly misguided but well meaning 27 year olds, she did open my eyes to spirituality and metaphysics and the magic of the Universe, if only of the Doreen Virtue kind. She kind of lost me with the fairies and mermaids but at least I had somewhere else to look. The energetic sensations were back with a vengeance and now I could ‘feel’ people with me. I had always known bi-polar didn’t fit and now I was determined to find what did. I learnt that there was energy, chi and reiki and prana, I still hadn’t read about anyone feeling it like I did but at least I thought it might be possible now, I mean if it could be channeled then surely it must be ‘felt’.

I once visited a local spiritual store owned by a witch. When she asked me what I was, I replied ‘I’m a healer’ with enormous confidence I didn’t even know I had because I had seriously never thought that was what I was, most of the time, I just thought I was mental. She replied with a knowing smile and a ‘yes, you are’.

But I didn’t really care. My heart was still aching and I was still in that selfish place that insecure people sometimes find themselves in, where everything just hurts too much to be of value to anyone else. But I had answers now, energy was real, and there were soul mates and twin flames and I read everything I could. Most of it completely delusional but I would read late into the night certain that this time I had found it, the logical explanation that would change my life only to wake up the next morning and think ‘what the’ until the energy got so strong I would be looking again at the same mental stuff which I think ended up scaring me more than actually helping.

After five years of searching, and another five psychotic episodes (even though I was medicated), I found Steve. It would be terribly dramatic to say just in time, I had had dark thoughts, more than dark thoughts and I was getting very tired of picking myself up from the kitchen floor where I’d been curled up in the foetal position crying my heart out for two hours, but whilst I had thought about it, it seemed terribly selfish to just end it especially when I had children.

Steve called me a ‘karmic light’ in our first session, destined to wake up and destined to wake up others, a kind of karmic responsibility for having been woken up myself. He also confirmed that I was a natural born healer which accounted for my psychotic symptoms, my energy just got too high and out of control - while that controller in my head could not explain what was happening to me and so made up a story. He validated my experience with such compassion and down to earth explanations that I knew it was right. It would be another year before I would accept it was right. The energy had led me on an eternal quest for truth but my fear of my energy had made me an atheist. I wanted answers but couldn’t find them so if I didn’t believe in it, it couldn’t be true and it couldn’t hurt me.

I started Ptsen Nuh a few weeks later. And it hurt. Everyday. I learnt the basic energy management and emotional release skills but my heart wasn’t really in it. Well, my heart was in it, but I just wanted the man back and when it didn’t look like that was going to happen then I kind of gave up, had another psychotic episode and started all over again. But this time, my psychosis was managed through energy techniques, not medication.

This time, I was much more committed. This was my sanity at stake here not some silly little relational drama. As a natural born empath and healer, I had too much energy, hence the itchy and scratchy. I need a clear energetic system lest it all go to my head and brings on the mental.

Sometimes I hated Steve, I really did, I thought he was arrogant and pompous and I was tired of being spoonfed tiny little tidbits, I wanted to know everything now dammit and for someone with no boundaries that was one of the hardest lessons to learn. But learn and release I did and I realised that what I had mistook for arrogance was really just discipline and his refusal to pander to my inner pity party. He was just exercising the sort of disciplines and boundaries that I needed and went on to learn.

But learn and release I did. I did give up work for a while. I lost my job (circumstances completely out of my control) and broke up with a boyfriend in the same week three times in the last few years and I thought it was time I listened to the Universe and just did the damn work instead of flailing about in self pity again.

I needed to. And so I dug right down to my boot straps on a search and destroy mission to weasel out every little bit of remaining trauma and pain and vulnerability.

And now I have learnt not only how to control my energy but how to rock it as well, to find not just peace and contentment, but confidence and wisdom and grace as well as my ‘silly’ beans, which had been repressed so many years before in response to an unfortunate relationship.

And it’s true. There is no aha moment. Just a gentle unfolding and realization of how everything is and how it always needed to be that way.

At the time, this work was bloody horrendous and it's taken me nearly a year to get here but now I can't quite work out for the life of me what all the fuss was about.

And now I can stand with my feet planted firmly on earth and right in the middle of the Universe at the same time. Wow.