WHY I PRACTICE TRAUMA THERAPY
My dear one
You are so pure
It's just the past has
Pinned a part of you
To itself
And blocked your truth
You just
n
eed now
Your love
To gently loosen those pins
And set yourself free
A little bit about me:
I have been fascinated by psychological and esoteric matters as long as I can remember. Being one those annoying children, I exasperated my parents asking impossible questions about God, Santa, Infinity, and on and on. Although my background is in general nursing, I transferred to Mental Health Nursing at the first opportunity, hoping to learn more about the workings of the mind (hopefully my own!)
Initially I was a little nervous to be around people who were diagnosed as ‘mad’, however I noticed quite early in my career that almost everyone with a supposed mental illness had a history of significant trauma, often severe childhood abuse.
I discovered these just ‘normal’ people often had no serious problems in their present lives, but were plagued with ongoing emotions they found difficult to tolerate. In fact, they often became so distressed they wanted to self-harm and/or die. These people were usually diagnosed with various mental illnesses by health professionals, and subsequently medicated, but often the trauma, the original cause of their distress was unacknowledged and untreated.
I have spent hours and hours keeping people alive and safe from themselves while witnessing them raging against waves of intense distressing emotions. I felt so helpless in alleviating their distress, that I embarked on a mission to discover strategies that would ease this emotional pain, which seemed especially intense in people who had been sexually abused. This pain obviously had its origins in the past but presented itself ongoing in people’s day to day lives now.
To this day it seems unfair to me that a child, who has suffered so much at the beginning of their life, should carry that suffering into adulthood when they are finally free to live in freedom and safety. I didn’t understand back then how the mind worked, and how unresolved emotion will continue to resurface until there is resolution in the subconscious mind.
Frequently the medical solution to distress is medication which dampens heightened emotions in the short term. I acknowledge that medications are often necessary for the safety of the client and (sometimes) staff. Medication can dampen emotions in the short term but can carry side effects including addiction - and of course the feelings continue to surface when the medication wears off.
So I set about searching for information. University provided me with a grounding in many conventional counselling methods - the majority relying on thinking/talking strategies which did not really address that desperate emotional distress that my traumatised clients were experiencing. I did fall in love with Person-Centred Therapy though, which emphases the intrinsic ability of the individual to resolve their own issues, given the essential ingredients of ‘empathy and unconditional positive regard’.
I came to realise that trauma cannot be resolved by the conscious mind which is but a fraction of our whole mind, so I set about looking for therapies that addressed the Subconscious or Superconscious parts of the mind. This led to learning EMDR Therapy (Eye Movement and Desensitisation and Reprocessing), and Hypnotherapy - both therapies act on the deeper parts of the mind, where trauma, as unresolved memory, is actually stored.
I also continue to expand my learning about the another of my passions, Mindfulness and Meditation - 'who are we at our core?’. Meditation uses Alpha brain waves in the same manner as Hypnotherapy and Deep Relaxation, hence I named my practice ‘Alpha Mind with Jenny’ where I specialise in working with people who suffer in their present life from those traumatic events from the past which are actually over and finished.
I feel very privileged meeting so many incredible people that I don’t feel like ‘I’m working’ at all. I learn so much from each person I connect with that I feel nourished and inspired by their energy and courage. I love seeing the outcomes of the different therapies I use as clients leave each session feeling peaceful and more in touch with their inner selves.
I am also very interested in neurobiology and neuroplasticity in relation to emotional and physical pain. How the mind works - how it can be changed so we can all live joyful lives is my passion.
So in my future blogs I will expand on trauma - how it gets stuck - and how we can ‘unstick’ it!!
Thank you for staying with me this far.
LOVE AND PEACE.
Jenny