is your past getting in the way of your present?
DO YOU?...
- Experience anxiety/depression?
- Struggle with intimate relationships?
- Feel that there is something wrong or bad about you?
- Feel triggered by noise?
- Find yourself repeating the same self-destructive behaviours?
- Have trouble enjoying life?
- Feel disconnected from yourself and others?
- Feel at the mercy of a harsh inner critic?
- Suffer with feelings of shame and low self esteem?
You may be experiencing symptoms of early distress and developmental trauma.
As children we need to feel secure and connected. Our safety depends on healthy attachment and loving attunement to our needs and emotions. If this is impaired or damaged in any way, if our core needs are not met, we will experience distress and anxiety. We are left vulnerable, overwhelmed and unable to understand that it is our environment, not us, that is the problem. As a result we internalize the failures of our caregivers as our own, becoming bad and wrong and suffering feelings of rage, shame and guilt.
In order to feel safe and protect ourselves, we developed mechanisms to disconnect from the pain and distress. But these strategies, which as children were once protective and helped us to survive, have, over the years, become an imprisoning, rigid, set of self beliefs and judgements formed out of fear. The things that once saved us have now become the very cause of our suffering.
AN integrated approach to healing stress and trauma
Whether trauma will be a cruel and punishing Gorgon or a vehicle for soaring to the heights of transformation and mastery depends upon how we approach it. Peter A Levine
An integrated bodymind approach to working with stress and trauma can help heal these early wounds.
By working mindfully in the present moment. we can bring awareness to our survival strategies and protective identifications and we can begin to see that we are not who we thought we were....We are not our judgments and negative self-perceptions. We are not wrong or bad, at fault or to blame.
As we dispel the illusions of the past we create space in ourselves, we relax; our nervous systems can regulate, tensions are released and we experience greater ease and well being. Through healing our early trauma we are able to develop our capacity for connection and relationship, feel our feelings more fully, experience more freedom and joy and reconnect with our innate aliveness, our life force.
