Complex childhood trauma creates layers of distortion, disruption, contraction and imbalance. These can be physical, emotional and psychological. The longer trauma remains unresolved, the more engrained these layers become and the more they start to interact with each other, creating further layers of trauma and imbalance. This is a very difficult position to be in and you may not realise that this has happened to you until many years or decades later.
Finding the root causes of the original traumas and releasing the layers held in the nervous system are essential. Otherwise it's like trying to live life but constantly feeling held back or blocked and having recurring health issues. Treating symptoms is a long and pointless path that creates more confusion and more identification with suffering. Over time, unless the root causes are healed you will feel more and more like a victim and more stuck.
Healing the nervous system through somatic work is like peeling back layers of an onion. The surface layers tend to be easy enough but as you go deeper it gets tighter. Afterall, these deeper layers are coping mechanisms that you have unconsciously adopted and engrained and therefore they feel like you. There can also be alot of emotional charge trapped in these deeper layers. Just like peeling an onion, healing can bring tears of both sadness, grief, relief and also believe it or not - joy.
You can easily get confused and wonder why every time you do a piece of healing, you always find there is more. You may be wondering when you're going to feel better, or feel the freedom you've been craving for so long.
Instead of being discouraged and shaming yourself, stay focused and be aware of the deep process of unravelling that is taking place.
Often, there are many decades worth of unconscious imprints stored in the nervous system - these are ancestral patterns and traumas and they're usually buried very deeply. You may be healing layers that nobody in your family line has ever done before, and therefore it can feel scary and unfamiliar.
When individuals seek therapy from practitioners lacking a structured diagnostic approach to trauma assessment and treatment programs, they often find themselves more perplexed than before. Despite investing years in therapy, breakthroughs remain elusive. In some cases, therapy serves as a comfortable escape from confronting deeper healing work, providing only the illusion of progress. However, this approach can exhaust the nervous system and potentially re-traumatize individuals.
When I work with my clients i'm always very clear on what the root causes are - whether it's from their ancestry, their in utero experience or their early childhood, and also what the secondary layers of trauma are. They will all need to be addressed and healed -however the order in which healing takes place is very important and the focus given to each layer, as well as the cause and causality is very important.
Let me give you an example:
Childhood abuse that creates an internal fear, disgust and shame > Disgust leads to self hatred of body > Leads to development of eating disorder > Eating disorder creates more shame and puts the nervous system in a deeper state of dysregulation and stress > This affects self perception and relationships > In turn, leading to coping mechanisms such as dissociation, addiction etc. > This causes marriage to fall apart> Marriage ending leads to depression
The symptom are the depression, the addiction and the dissociation. Treating this without addressing the childhood abuse is dangerous and leads to confusion and more pain. Along the way, coping mechanisms and belief systems will have evolved and shaped in the brain and personality. This can either be supportive or self sabotaging - usually the latter. This often comes up in healing work as shame, not feeling good enough or feeling of being a victim. They all relate to the early wounds of childhood.
If you're reading this and you feel ready to heal please reach out to me.
Complex trauma needs to be worked with clearly, deeply and using somatic integration because usually the feelings are hard to talk about but are being felt within the body.
The nervous system has to be cleared and regrounded and structural imbalances in the body such as chronic pain, hormonal imbalance also have to be resolved. If not, childhood trauma can lead to more severe conditions including cancer and other auto immune conditions. It's vital to address the root causes so that you can heal and move forward.
If you are not sure about how to start healing from trauma in your childhood please explore my online course.
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If you are ready to heal the deeper layers once and for all please book a call with me.