Photo by Leo Rivas on Unsplash
Childhood trauma bring with it a vast array of symptoms and behavior issues.
It can feel overwhelming and often we don’t know where to start our healing process. This can be very demotivating.
Often we may find our selves in a state of fight or flight, unable to explain what we are experiencing. We may also have trouble listening and concentrating on what is being said and often struggle to see our own thinking and behavior patterns.
All of the above can make it difficult for us to get diagnosed and even listen to the insights of a therapist.
A good therapist, after listening to you over a few sessions will recognize the nature of the issue. But you may not hear or accept what they have to say as you are in too much of a stimulated or a tuned out state to really connect or listen.
Often the therapist will put you on a medication first to get you to calm down, before therapy can really start. This may be helpful in some cases.
However there is another aspect we really need to look at before we are completely ready for therapy to start.
That is to release pent up emotions we’ve been carrying since childhood. The emotions we ignore and push to a side, remains with us and often cause us to be anxious and flighty.
In this state, trying to get us to lower our guard and be open to therapy is not the easiest thing to do.
That is why its important to start with a emotional and energetic release.
One of the best ways to release pent up emotions from childhood is to revisit the child aspect within us and allow it to express all its emotions, needs and wants.
This is known as inner child reparenting therapy. Some therapists are trained to do this with people, but often this can be done on our own as well through visualization techniques.
We as the adult self can hold space for the child aspect of us to come forth and express their feelings, needs and wants that they were never able to express.
While doing the above, we can pay close attention to where in the body the emotion is being held and what is the associated belief we are carrying. It may be a belief like ‘I are not good enough’ or ‘ I am not lovable’.
Once we identify the inner belief we can tell the child self something like “You believe that you not good enough. But you are amazing and valuable. I am always here with you and for you”. This provides attunement ( reflecting back to the child self their belief) and provide reassurance that they are taken care of and that their belief is false.
The more you engage with the child aspect the more the beliefs will come to the surface and the more you are able to release the associated energies and emotions.
You can engage the imagination to provide suitable experiences for the inner child to reverse their negative beliefs by meeting their needs.
Once this therapy is done for sometime, you will find that you feel an inner peace. This is enough peace for you to start observing your own thoughts and behaviors with more clarity. This also allows you to work more easily with a therapist and be very transparent with them and listen to what they have to say.
You will find that therapy moves and progresses quicker now that you are in a state of calm.
This is only the initial stage, but it is a crucial one in my opinion when working on childhood trauma.
~Thanks for reading~
As I Unravel 