Healing Trauma in the Mind & Body
Trauma is persistent. This wound of the mind (refer to previous post “Am I Traumatised”) needs favourable conditions in the mind and body to heal. My job, as a Trauma Therapist, is to go on this journey with you. Together we find the right conditions for healing and I assisting you to implement those while giving trauma a nudge in the right direction.
Imagine a vegetable garden. For specific veges to grow - not weeds and gorse - the soil must consist of the right nutrients in the right quantities; sun light, water, temperature all must be favourable and some fertilizer would do well to enhance the results. If, instead, you planted some seeds, but the soil was lacking the right nutrients or was too high in iron (for example - obviously I’m not the best gardener), water was rare and the sun was too hot or the location too shady, the veges will not grow.
To extend the metaphor, let’s say you planted the seed of the type of relationship you want to have with your partner. You want it to be a loving relationship, where there was honesty, support, and the freedom to be yourself without judgement. However, you planted that seed in sand instead of potting mix. The sand is the environment in which that seed needs to grow and the environment is your mind. If you were humiliated, emotionally neglected, abandoned (physically or emotionally) or abused by a parent or other guardian figure in childhood, it will then be very hard to trust your partner not to do the same. If you know you have a loving caring partner, you may still act out your unresolved fears and anger in your relationship with them. In childhood, you learned that communicating your ideas will lead to humiliation and/or it will be very painful emotionally if they leave, so as a form of protection (and ultimately survival because as children we rely on the adults to support us to live) you don’t communicate out of fearm and you push your partner away so you have control over them leaving rather than loving them and being vulnerable to the pain should they leave. This allows you to protect yourself and retain control of the situation which creates the illusion of safety. You may also look for something to make those feelings of not being good enough - being “stupid”, “ugly”, or “worthless” or whatever the abusers led you to believe about yourself - that have now led to depression, anxiety, fear, anger, over many years such as drugs, alcohol, smoking, online shopping, or prescription medications. Although unhealthy, they serve a purpose and give you a little bit of pleasure by enabling you to keep those unresolved feelings buried in the sand.
In therapy, in this situation, we would use a combination of techniques to allow that original trauma to be reprocessed in the mind. We work removing the sand, laying nutritious soil, and adding fertilizer so that seed can grow. By moving the seed, the old unfavourable garden - over time - fades away. To do this we can use Hypnotherapy, EMDR, body work (for example massage, yoga, breathing techniques, chiropractic work) so the mind and body work together to heal. The combination of mind and body healing techniques is essential for trauma reprocessing, as trauma sits in the body as much as it sits in the mind. Healing trauma is a journey - a process - that takes time and effort but results in a beautiful new garden that self-sustains life.
