From Pain to Power
I think it’s fair to say that we’ve all experienced some form of emotional trauma in our lives, unless we’ve spent our entire childhood living under a rock, it’s difficult to avoid life’s inevitable growing pains. Some of us have specific traumatic events that we can recall instantly, ranging from a car accident, an assault, or being a victim of a crime. A memory whereby our fight or flight response was triggered and there was a full-on sensory experience that left us feeling vulnerable, fearful and completely out of control. Then there is ongoing emotional trauma, where we are at the mercy of dysfunctional parents, or the school bully, or we’ve been subjected to consistent physical and sexual abuse. These experiences from childhood can have a devastating effect on our self-esteem, self-worth and overall trust in life. Ongoing emotional trauma can eventually lead to PTSD, addictions, self-harming, anxiety, depression and insomnia. It can feel like ‘life’ is against us, we remain stuck in toxic emotions such as bitterness, resentment, blame, rage, sadness and despair, leading to overwhelming, isolation and hopelessness. Things can start to look quite bleak.
This way of being is not a life, but an existence at best. We are living our lives driven by past experiences. Our inner mind has no sense of humour and will continue to run a default early childhood program of “I’m unlovable” or “I’m not good enough” regardless if it causes us distress and unfavourable experiences. We live 95% of our lives driven by subconscious programs downloaded before the age of 7, and 70% of those are negative, we become printouts from the beliefs of our caregivers, parents and environment, which can be very disempowering and self-sabotaging.
How do we access those good-feeling states? How do we go from boredom, pessimism, hatred, powerlessness and despair, to joy, empowerment, freedom, appreciation, enthusiasm, optimism and abundance?
I’ve been helping my clients release past traumatic memories and associated emotions for 10 years now, using the most up-to-date research-based therapies and the latest scientifically-informed psycho sensory approaches.
Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing is an integrative psychotherapy approach, designed to treat trauma and alleviate the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Past trauma, like childhood neglect, physical or sexual abuse, violence, accidents, and others can block normal cognitive and neurological coping mechanisms in the brain. In turn, the traumatic memories ‘re-emerge’ as intrusive thoughts, issues, feelings, images, and flashbacks.
Emotional trauma is not set in stone and doesn’t have to be a life sentence, change is possible.
