Nyana is a Trauma Psychotherapist, Suicide First Responder, Compassionate Inquiry® and Internal Family Systems practitioner and founder of Safe Space. She holds a masters in Psychology and Neuroscience. Her own trauma healing journey as a suicide loss survivor led her to integrate the ancient wisdom of meditation and Kundalini Yoga into her work of healing the mind, body and soul.
This post is a short edited excerpt of Nyana’s personal experiences with suicide, her own healing journey and her work with others. Listen to her full interview on The Gifts of Trauma Podcast.
I was the child of a mother with an undiagnosed addiction and mental illness. In India, mental illness is considered shameful, so it’s hidden. We’re an honor based society, and the flip side of honor is shame. Anything that’s externally imperfect is neatly wrapped up, tucked away and not discussed. Recognizing addiction and mental illness is hard, accepting or acknowledging it is harder.
Growing up in that environment, I experienced a lot of other issues, like the physical abuse between my parents. Lost in their anger, they weren’t present. Gabor talks about what that does to a child. I was facing a world of unique daily challenges while dysregulated, emotionally imbalanced, and extremely scared. And as predators know when a child is not protected, I also became a target for sexual abuse.
Substances offered some comfort, but also impacted my ability to have interpersonal relationships. I could not feel safe in my body, so I lived in a dissociated state for years. Then one day I heard Gabor speak and that changed everything. That’s why I choose to support people through their healing journeys. Healing is a choice, and when we choose it, a completely different existence is possible
The core of the Indian culture was predominantly spiritual; producing great wisdom and beauty. But its 500+ year history of plunder and abuse under British and Mughal rule led it into very dark times. We still grapple with the epigenetic trauma that resides in us. As an abused population, we learned keeping quiet kept us safe. And because of the shame that’s wrapped up in what something should look like, versus what’s really happening, it’s difficult for us to receive help. What we do today, as a culture, is hide our darkness and display our lightness. We moved far away from the deep ancient wisdom that’s a part of us, but it is still present and it’s slowly re-emerging.
My culture has also mixed up abuse and love. For so many centuries we had to conform to and obey foreign rulers, the practices that ensured our survival in oppression have become normalized as ways to discipline and punish each other. We do many things in very abusive ways, saying, “This is for your own good.” So if someone violates my boundaries or raises their hand to me, a part of me believes that’s somehow benefitting me. As a child, this contradiction made me angry. I couldn’t understand how someone who loved me could also hurt me.
What brings people into my office is the fact that I talk so openly about taboo topics, like my mother’s mental illness and suicide. I’ve had many conversations around it because shame is the most silencing emotion. Silence hurts nobody except the person who’s keeping quiet, holding everything in, stuffing it down.
Silence led me to suicide. When the expression of my truth, of my experience of what I was feeling was silenced, it was as if I didn’t exist. I used to call myself “dead man walking.” I was completely shut down. There wasn’t any life or living in me. When you take away your expression of your authenticity, what is left? Just a body that copes with the pain, because pain is all you feel. And what is life when you only feel pain and you’re suffering in silence? My pain manifested as dysregulated states. I was constantly hypervigilant. It didn’t feel safe to speak, so I kept quiet. I didn’t have an opinion. Not realizing I could say no, or that my “no” was valid, I just allowed things to happen to me.
Alcohol helped numb my pain. I’d try something, it helped for some time, then I’d try something else. Sometimes it was alcohol, at other times I’d scream at myself, or use self sabotaging behaviors. Through it all, I truly believed something was very wrong with me. There was so much anger and rage in so many places that I tried to end my life.
Since then, I’ve spent a lot of time exploring suicidality. I don’t think science has the answers. What I speak of here is my own and my clients’ journeys. There may not be research to confirm my views, as by design, science removes what it can’t measure, and the spirit cannot be measured.
So what happens to a human being whose spirit is beaten down from the start? Whose expression and authenticity is repressed from the very beginning? Disconnection sets in, and their being reflects the disconnection of their inner voice, their inner truth. They’re left with a body on hyper alert and a mind that’s perpetually asking, “Am I safe? Am I here? Am I enough? Who am I?” That is the deep suffering I see, because we’re all expected to fit into our cultures’ structures and systems of conformity. When our souls are free, we seek levels of freedom that these structures cannot contain. So science tends to ignore the ethereal aspects of our beingness, or say they don’t exist.
When my mind and body were separated from my soul and my spirit’s interconnectedness with all living beings, when I only had a mind and a body, I was almost a drone. Without its soul and spirit, my mind was a machine that went out of sync easily, then threw my body out of sync. Without my soul and spirit grounding and anchoring me in my human experience, my innate balance could not be restored.
“It was only after I added meditation to calm the mind, yoga to heal trauma in the body and chakra work to release blocked trauma energy, that I finally started to find myself again.” – Nyana Sabharwal
People are suffering. We ask ourselves, “Why am I here? Do I deserve to exist?” But our cultures discourage our searches for authenticity and purpose. Instead, they demand that we prove our worthiness, by conforming,,, by rejecting our unique and interconnected essence.
We say we’re trying to create factories and products, but I think today’s humans have become the product. When our souls and spirits are quashed, we get placed on conveyor belts, all trying to be the same person, to have the same experiences. We lose our individual uniqueness and our inborn sense that we were created for very clear purposes.
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The Gifts of Trauma is a weekly podcast that features personal stories of trauma, healing, transformation, and the gifts revealed on the path to authenticity. Listen to the interview,
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