Navigating through life’s many unexpected twists and turns.
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 overwhelm, 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. In fact, 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.
“Ellie”, age 52, came to see me for weight loss initially, but during our sessions together it became more apparent that she had a deep-rooted feeling of ‘ugliness.’ Ellie told me a story of when she was 12 years old, playing at her birthday party. In front of everyone her 18-year-old cousin asked her “Ellie why are you so ugly?” Ellie was understandably devastated and sobbed for days. This unfortunate episode didn’t create her ‘ugly feeling’ she did ‘trigger’ a core driving belief that originated earlier in her life, otherwise her cousins’ cruel words would not have been so devastating. I asked Ellie, “Who made you feel ugly Ellie?” She responded, “My mum, I was never good enough for her, and felt I was a constant disappointment.” I hear this statement a lot from my clients, it’s heartbreaking, isn’t it? We then worked on clearing the traumatic memory caused by her cousin, and continued to build her self-esteem, clearing the subconscious programs created by her mum, using an integrative approach of Hypnotherapy, EMDR and The Havening Technique.
What old programs are running your life? Do you feel stuck, unable to move forward, no matter what you do? It could be overeating, anxiety, depression, or feeling sad. To cope we can be very creative and find ways to self soothe and numb out or avoid our feelings with alcohol, drugs, dysfunctional relationships, shopping, gambling and endless drama, just to stay one step ahead of the pain. Eventually however, it catches up with us and we hit a wall, tired and defeated. Our inner being wants to bring us back into balance and harmony, and avoidance of our true feelings has a limited life span. Staying stuck in low energy emotions, creates more of the same, manifesting in yet more challenging experiences. Joyful, happy experiences are hard to access and maintain when we are ensnared by the past. It can be a very frustrating and challenging place to be, but with the right professional help it can change.
How do we access those good feeling states? How to 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 psychosensory approaches.
The Havening Technique for Emotional Trauma
Havening is a set of ground-breaking psycho-sensory techniques that can effectively resolve a wide range of stress related issues, caused by traumatic past experiences. Havening was created, researched and developed by an American medical doctor and neuroscientist, Doctor Ruden.
He discovered how traumatic memories get encoded and set in a specific part of the brain called the Amygdala (fight or flight). Once a trauma has been experienced, it becomes a permanent fixture, resulting in a multitude of issues.
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.
Heal the Past and Create Your Future!
