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Working with Trauma – Dec 2018
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6 Replies
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Initial Post
When I first got to this intensive, I was scared to open up about what I’d been going through. I did not feel like my full self, but I had experienced this part of Amanda, the part who was hurting and feeling lost. I had felt this all throughout my teenage years while simultaneously putting on a happy face. No one knew, or could even see, that I was hurting. The pain had followed me and I avoided it for a while until it became second nature to avoid the pain. Therefore, I ended up hiding it with drugs and alcohol, friends and sex until I thought I was healed.
When I walked into the Brain 1 and Trauma intensive, I felt more scared than I ever had before. Scared because I knew this was going to come up, I knew these magical people were going to see me in my Darkness, my ruthless Darkness. At that point, it had been consuming me. Externally, I understood why it was happening; I had no job, I was gaining weight, I was avoiding making good choices and I was surrounded by a man who I love but have struggled to be around – my dad.
Once we started going more in depth about how our brain stores everything, how our mind connects experience to emotion, how our experiences helped mold the ways we move through life, I finally recognized my trauma. That Darkness I had been holding and the way it was holding me was because I had not dealt with my trauma from my teenage years. And it finally clicked.
Nature had been protecting me for so long. My mind had been doing what it does best in fight or flight situations. During this intensive I discovered that I was never healed, that the world was protecting me the only way my mind could handle. Ever since this intensive, I have not dealt with my Darkness the same way as I had. I’m much more aware of how I can show up and deal with my Darkness. I would love to be able to guide someone into this clarity, something that’s been hurting and sitting with them for so long and guide them into the awareness, they can change the way they show up. Thus, they can shift their future experiences when triggered.-
Amanda, this was definitely an intense Intensive! I notice that you used your ‘Darkness’ as almost a descriptive Part of you, in your initial post. I don’t recall you using that description when we were there. Have you explored this further? And for the record, your Darkness is still a beautiful part of you. I am glad that through that week you were able to become more aware of this part of you and start to deal with it. You came a long way that week, from how you showed up on Monday to how you left on Friday. Great job being open and vulnerable!
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Summary Post
I thought that resourcing was a great exercise during this intensive. Internal, External and Spiritual. We sat in front of a partner and told each other things about ourselves that were positive and helped us through these three topics. In my personal experience, I’ve found that people don’t like to talk about themselves in a positive way. Of course there are exceptions and everyone is different, but many people feel awkward when talking about themselves. I thought this exercise was brilliant because it gave us the opportunity to listen to our truth and really feel it since we were talking to another soul. It also gave great clarity in deep listening, because we had to listen to our partner speak positively about themselves. It really held a container of positivity, love and connection. As a guide, I think this is a great activity to do, invite the client to be pushed out of their comfort zone a bit by giving them the chance to speak highly about themselves. What a concept! -
Initial Post:
I continue to work with a client from San Diego that is pretty challenging, Nikki. She is the type of client that wants to unload all of her problems on you, but doesn’t want to make many changes for herself, because it is much easier to blame other people for her problems and issues. Even hearing about her dieting is confusing to me. One day she is on a Keto diet and the next week Vegan, and telling people they are killing the Earth for eating meat. WTF? One thing that has been a constant frustration for her is your job/career. She is a Mortgage lender and in her opinion, she doesn’t make enough money and everyone she works with is awful and San Diego is too competitive and filled with unqualified people. I was really interested in the Brain 1 section of this intensive, because not only did it help me personally, but gave me some new ideas and education for ways to work with my clients.
Something that stood out for me from the reading was from Prochaska’s Changing For Good. I actually sent this PDF to Nikki and guided her to a few paragraphs that were relevant to her. We have talked at length about what it would look like if she took control of making positive changes for herself and her career. Part of her feels like she doesn’t have any control and another part of her is scared to act/change. I highlighted the section in the PDF entitled Commitment. ‘Once you choose to change, you accept responsibility for changing. This responsibility is the burden of commitment, sometimes called self-liberation.’ It is the acknowledgment that you are the only one who is able to respond, speak and act for yourself. I would like to think that some of that hit home, as she eventually hit a breaking point at her job and accepted another job, that actually has a very high earning potential. By making the decision to make a change, it opened up some doors for her that is getting her what she wanted. At least in some aspects of her life.
In some of our later sessions, I focused a lot on reflecting back to her what she was saying when she went off on her long tangents of ‘story’. I had her write down what she was hearing me reflect back, and then look over it and tell me if I was accurately reflecting back what she said. Interestingly, she was surprised that ‘she had said all that’. She said ‘I must be really annoying to listen to.’ (Inside i chuckled a bit). We talked about Awareness and what she is putting out into the Universe, how that makes her feel, what others see in her and what she wants people to see in her (sometimes very different things).
It is definitely going to be a long road with this client. But even though my sessions can be challenging, I do feel that she takes a little something away each time. -
Summary Post:
It’s interesting to go back to this section of Brain 1 and reflect on how learning about the ability to create new neuropathways can be so incredibly helpful! At times it almost seems like it can create hope in myself and my clients that there is an ability to change. All it takes is some new tools and ways of thinking. For me personally, I have been working with Ivy and noticing some ways of thinking that are not serving me, ie: i can fix everything and i’m responsible for everything and everyone around me. Wow…that’s overwhelming! For me, this creates a lot of frustration and resentment, and that’s not how I want to function. I have been practicing figuring out ways to find time and space to be creative and healthy, getting into my flow, and being clear about what I want and then looking to the future to make that happen. It is definitely difficult, but the more I practice it, visualize doing it, setting boundaries and then making it happen, it works! And it feels really good. It’s so exciting that I am able to re-train my brain in a way that I can get myself out a particular way of thinking (and assuming it’s how my life is supposed to be), to functioning in a different way. A way that brings me joy and fulfillment! This is experience is one that I will take with me in my ‘toolbox’ to use with clients. -
Hey Lauren! I can appreciate how you held space for your client even though there seemed to be some internal conflict around how she was showing up to the sessions. I really appreciate the exercise that you did with her around creating a conscious space for her to hear what she was saying. I can imagine her writing it down allowed her to become very aware and also challenged by her thoughts. When you wrote that she said “I must be so annoying,” we can actively see how she allows the Judge (or potentially called something else) has manifested and controlled aspects of her life. This client sounds like someone who can benefit from some Partswork if open to it. That voice in her head who is judging herself and other people (maybe it’s two parts?) could make an appearance into her consciousness. Awesome job guiding her and being there for her. I really love that exercise you did with her and I think that completely shifted her baseline.
