Episode 77: Trauma to Transformation with Anouk Bindels

Hey Uncorked Fam, we are so happy to introduce you to the incredible Anouk Bindels who takes us on a journey from trauma to her riveting transformation.  She walks the talk and talks the walk.  Through faith and determination, she recovered and thrived over circumstances that seemed to be insurmountable.  

What would make Holli and Jeanna speechless?  Has Holli ever been speechless???  Anouk’s definition of trauma created this speechless phenomena.   “It’s not only the bad things that happened to you but trauma is also the good things that should have happened that didn’t.”  If nurturing, not being held or comforted was absent, this is all considered trauma.  Any disconnection from the body and feelings results in trauma.  The disconnection creates higher cortisol levels which is more prone to infectious, autoimmune disease, diabetes and even neurological inflammation.  With trauma the body keeps score.

Thinking positive and not feeling positive will not be healing.  Anouk explains positive psychology, how it is applied today, her healing trinity and her heart brain healing process.

With her story, we all know that anything is possible FAM!

More about Anouk Bindels:

I share my story because I know it gives hope and inspiration to people who are experiencing great challenges in their life.

My childhood was characterized by fear and isolation. I lost my younger brother in the year I became 20 and my first husband passed away when I was 30. I suffered with anxiety and depression for many years.

For a long time, I thought all the answers lay in psychology. In my quest to understand and heal myself, I became a psychologist, family and relationship psychotherapist and behavioral scientist. I certainly found some solutions here and I was able to share them with other people.

Then the biggest challenge of my life happened in 2007, when my second husband committed suicide. He didn’t leave a note; he simply walked out of the house, leaving me with our children.

This shattered me. Nothing I had learned through psychology gave me the tools to deal with it. I went into survival mode (fight, flight, freeze) and for a number of years I lived by the emotions of anger, hopelessness, guilt and shame, grief, anxiety and fear.

Living in chronic stress for such a prolonged time can make us sick, and eventually that’s what happened to me. The stress set off a serious immune reaction in my body. I lost the ability to walk. I lost my job and my income. I couldn’t look after my children. I was ill for many years.

The corticosteroids I was taking to manage the immune reaction caused another condition that created ulceration throughout my body. I was also diagnosed with depression soon after.

Then in 2011 I was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer.

I remember my lowest moment, lying on the floor in despair, praying to God for a sign that life was worth living.

My breakthrough came when I started attending workshops with different teachers in the filed of energy healing. They all say how we create our own personal reality by the way we think and act and feel. And they showed me the way to change, using methods that have been scientifically proven to work.

I realized that I could learn how to change my own thinking and emotional states through meditation – and I believed that in this way I could also heal my body.

Changing my thought patterns was very difficult in the beginning, I was holding onto a lot of grief and hopelessness and resentment. But I meditated three times a day, and over the year, I improved emotionally and mentally. I moved over to complementary and energy medicine also and in 2012 I started to see my physical health improve; I started walking again and the depression vanished.

Then in 2013, a scan showed that the oesophageal cancer had disappeared.

Since then, I have changed my whole life. I am vital and healthy, still clear of disease. Emotionally, I have grown into a totally different person. I feel strong and confident.

My career has changed too; I have turned away from the clinical world and towards the new science of meditation, energy work and health. I know it works. I run workshops and trainings for people who are dealing with mental or emotional trauma or physical conditions.

LOA Uncorked Assignment:

Ask yourself every morning: How do I show up today?  What is the best expression of myself?

Podcast References:

Anouk’s Website:  https://anoukbindels.com/en/home-2/ Anouk’s mediations:  https://anoukbindels.com/en/shop/ FB:  https://www.facebook.com/anouk.bindels.3 Insta: https://www.instagram.com/anoukbindels/ YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCml7PalflLcZC7nZdbJkbBg

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