In some environments, children have to block their feelings. Imagine being terrorised in your home, being with someone, a mother, father, sibling, who enjoys seeing fear in you. In these circumstances, it is an act of self-preservation to block your feelings.
Our feelings give us signals about what is right and what is wrong for us. This natural ‘ check-in ‘ system is missing when we have learned to block our feelings for so long. It can be challenging to know who you are when you get older because it is difficult to feel.
This is one of the areas where somatic work is incredibly powerful. Somatic work is the therapeutic work with the body. It helps to connect a person’s mind and body and to effectively ‘defrost’ these frozen emotions so they can slowly, and loveling be re-integrated into the whole self. Somatic therapy works from the inside out to heal trauma, from the ‘bottom-up’, which allows feelings to emerge that may not have a story attached to them.
The feelings can be experienced without a story or images in a safe place. That is the relational healing that can happen in therapy. The nervous system can be released in a safe place with a safe person, perhaps for the first time ever.
To me, this is sacred work.
If you have been following me for a while, you will know that the healing of trauma is central to my work and that I am always learning. My next stop is The Embody Lab’s Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy Certificate starting September 24th. I’m so psyched!
It’s taught by some of the most well known Trauma Therapists and teachers in the world,
including Dr Stephen Porges, Staci Haines, Dr Peter Levine, Nkem Ndefo, Dr Albert Wong, Dr Arielle Schwartz, Deb Dana, Dr Sara King, Dr Pat Ogden, and others – it’s a fantastic line-up!
If you want to find out more, they have a free information session coming up with co-directors Dr Scott Lyons, Dr Arielle Schwartz and Nkem Ndefo to learn all about the program, what’s covered, who it’s for, and how a unified and holistic approach to healing trauma can transform pain and challenges into growth, meaning, change, and resilience.
