Normalising Trauma
Trauma is normal. It happens to everyone. Please consider that specific traumas may be mentioned below that could be triggering. Do not read if you are sensitive to those triggers and unsupported.
We live in a world where bad things happen to good people, men, women, and non-binary folk alike. Even if you manage to survive childhood and avoid war, rape, sexual abuse, molestation, physical or emotional abuse or abandonment, assault, boundary violations, neglect, repressive religious or cultural environments, miscarriage, break-up, co-dependency, chronic health issues, car accidents, narcissistic relationships, heartbreak, abortion, c-section, traumatic birth, surgery, death of a loved one, betrayal, near death experiences, abduction or general isolation a “normal upbringing” also usually results in many micros moments of trauma including a disconnection from and shaming of our inherent sexual nature or vivacious selves.
Life happens and we have to keep going.
If you're reading this now you've made it to your current age and you’re still functional enough to reach out for help or to seek a better quality of experience. Well done. Not everyone makes it this far. Take a moment to appreciate that and everyone you know whose odds were stacked less favourably against them.
Our Trauma shapes us.
On an unconscious level our bodies and brains remember what worked in the past to help us navigate overwhelming experiences and we then utilise the fast-track neural pathways we built at that time to operate successful behaviours again and again whenever we feel under threat. Most of the time we don't even realise it's happening.
Your body is a survival expert.
These experiences of childhood and adult trauma and the survival mechanisms we learn as a result of them cause us to close-down, split-off and become inherently less capable of connection and intimacy. They affect our psyche, our neurology, our emotional reactivity and the patterns of muscular tension in the body.
All of this affects our Sex, our relationship with our Self and our relationships with other.
In therapy we identify how you avoid your pain.
In PsychoSexual Somatics® Therapy (PST) we identify your "Avoidant behaviours": those patterns of operating in your bodymind that have been successful to stop you becoming overwhelmed in the past by experiences of Rejection, Abandonment, Betrayal, Worthlessness and Powerlessness. We work to create new neural pathways that offer you more choices in how you show up in life so that you can be more present, more loving and ultimately experience more pleasure.
Our brains love efficiency and the rewards of nice feelings so very quickly the body learns to direct sensory traffic down your new, more loving pathways and the old trauma neural mega-highways begin to delete and dissolve, leaving you free to live your life unconstrained by the effects of your past.
Internal Family Systems works in a different way and also navigates you into relationship with the parts of yourself that protect and manage the deeply painful and vulnerable feelings that you are holding in the unconscious. Over time you release the grip of protective parts of your personality by coming into loving connection with them and an understanding of why they are doing what they are doing.
This allows you to recover leadership and protection of your vulnerability from your younger trauma-reactive parts and to open more and more space for making decisions about your life from alternative, healthier and more functional places. With the "unburdening" of the extreme beliefs and emotions that have been locked away, comes more energy, aliveness and vitality in the body.
