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Guiding through Trauma (July 18 Intensive)
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Initial post:
Going into this module, I felt a lot of trepidation about being able to address trauma with clients. I suppose I had an idea in my mind that if they were to touch into their trauma, there was a possibility that the emotional weight of it all may send the situation into a space that neither of us could control. Or worse: That the effect of the trauma might be intensified. However, after having the two massively informative days with Katie, I felt like we had a ton of resources (no pun intended) that would allow us to touch into the wisdom of our client’s trauma and start walking the down the path of healing alongside them.
An experience I had with this material with a client happened not too long after the intensive. One of my longer-term clients was working on processing the aftermath of a sexual assault (an event that she was quite sure she had mostly processed, but seemed to be reemerging in surprising ways). She knew that it was one of, if not the most, traumatic experience of her life, and she so badly wanted to face it head-on and draw whatever wisdom she could from the experience. She also, being someone closely connected to somatic experiences due to her work, wanted to incorporate the body as much as possible in her process. Something that initially came up that we were able to address was her shame around her reactions. She seemed to have a notion of what the “right” and “wrong” reactions were that she should be having in the stage of trauma-work that she was in. She would say things like, “I thought I was past this. I shouldn’t be reacting this way”. When we settled into the body, it was clear for her to see that the particular aspects of the experience were still very much alive in her system. With that information, we practiced some deeply meaningful pendulation (using dance and her child as the positive resources). She was definitely able to move some the energy that had been trapped in her chest and belly for a while.
Another aspect that we utilized in our session was working on simply normalizing her reactions. We got to the point where she recognized that there is not a right or wrong reaction to trauma; she spoke with conviction that she understood that she would give herself the gift of letting herself feel whatever she needed to in the journey of processing this horrible experience. By normalizing anything that came up for her emotionally and sensationally, she started to feel less pressure to have the trama be resolved as quickly as possible. This, in turn, allowed her to just sit in the presence of what was actually true for her, and not try to push and pull against her nature. This was incredibly freeing for her in the moment, and she wanted to bring that practice into her life as much as possible moving forward.
The last piece that seemed really significant for her was when she started to enter into overwhelm in the retelling of her story. I noticed that she started to lose track of what she was talking about; things started getting hazy, and she started to feel really confused. I named that we might be entering into territory that she was perhaps not able to fully process at the moment, and that it would be beneficial for us to get back to body sensations and away from the story for a little bit. Once we delved back into what was happening in her environment and body (small things at first, like characterizing the weather outside), she was able to stop the process of disassociating, and she got back to a place of clarity. Something I gained from witnessing her process with all of that was that our brains are really just doing all they can to keep homeostasis, and there are simple and effective “hacks” that we can teach ourselves to not let that mechanism completely take over. For my client, she was thankful to have some tools on her belt for ways of getting back to a place of peace when she was actively choosing to dig into her trauma of the past.
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Summary post:
In re-reading my post and the insights of the cohort, I’m seeing that, for me, trauma work is such a complex and on-going process that there are so many ways to approach and tend to it. It’s really interesting to me how it seems that each of us are drawn to work with trauma in pretty different ways. An important piece that I’m taking from this module is that trauma is simply not black and white, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to dealing with it. All of our traumas are relative, and so is the “treatment” and healing of them.
As coaches, it seems like the most important thing we can do for our clients in terms of their trauma is to simply be with and normalize whatever is true for them. It can definitely be intimidating to witness unexpected emotional reactions from those we are so desperately trying to help, but once we get to a place of allowing whatever is there to simply be, that gets mirrored to them, and they are eventually able to do the same.