I love helping clients process trauma. Seriously. I don’t love that people have to endure the hard things in life because, well, they’re hard. I hate to see people suffer. But helping them process their pain….? Knowing that there is relief on the horizon and there is going to be a positive shift in their experience of past stressful or traumatic memories is massively rewarding.
What do I hear from people I’ve worked with after helping them process their trauma? I hear things like, “Christine, I find myself reminiscing about this past traumatic period of my life from years ago that I have avoided sharing with my spouse or kids and I am able to do it without experiencing all the emotional charge/physical pain.” Or….”I feel like I can make close friends and invite them into my life and I don’t have to hide the hard times-I can share about it and don’t have to fear breaking down.” Or….I get a text later in the day after the coaching session/trauma balance, “Christine, I keep catching myself sighing contentedly-that was so helpful!”
The sad thing is, many people-I would argue most, don’t realize there is a reasonably fast, gentle way to process trauma, and once you have, the emotional/physical charge that is attached to the memory is dissipated. You still have the memory, it’s just that you have the ability to access all your resources to put the memory in the right context, right time frame. You remember that it was a hard thing to go through but you no longer experience the intensity of the emotion when the memory comes up, the tightness in your chest, waves of nausea, light-headedness, panic, tears, etc.. It’s more like, ‘Oh yah, I remember that happened and it was a hard time.’, but the intensity of the experience is gone. If you have been stuck with the intensity of emotions from past stressful events, it’s hard to even conceptualize that you could have a different experience of the same memory, but you can!
Usually with trauma that is unprocessed, that memory is stuck in one hemisphere of the brain, and we aren’t accessing all our resources in processing it. It’s stuck and it’s not in the right timeline (in the past) and we can experience it as if we are right in it again and it’s happening now. We can’t put the memory into its correct context in time/space and bring into the conscious mind the other resources we have to process it. Thoughts like, ‘Yes, this happened and it was hard but I am ok now. I am safe. It isn’t still happening. I’ve grown through it.”, and so on.
I once worked with a client who, after feeling so much relief after one trauma balance gave me a list of maybe a dozen or so other traumatic memories they wanted to process. I explained that it might not be necessary to process them each individually because we have these things called ‘memory networks’ and when you process or clear a trauma, it likely has many ‘links’ to that memory-and your brain, (subconscious) goes to work once you do the work of processing one traumatic memory, lots starts happening at a subconscious level. We dream, our brain works things out and makes associations. A couple weeks later I saw the client to do some more trauma work and as we went through the list of memories to process, they simply didn’t have the emotional charge they once had! Memories that were an 8-10 on the scale we assess the distress of the memory (0 being no distress, 10 being most distress), were now a 0-1. We both were so excited for the miraculous healing that took place, tears of joy flowed! It made sense to me, I wasn’t shocked because I understood the memory network, but for the client, it was experiencing what I explained might happen, that just didn’t seem possible. A couple weeks later that client came to me and said, “Christine, you did too good of a job! I don’t need to come in and process all these other memories-I am at peace with it all!” And I say, Glory to God! -He made us with the ability to heal. It is true that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.
To say that I have the best job in the world is an understatement. This work changes the trajectory of lives, alters legacies for the good, restores marriages and helps people tap into their God-given purpose, ushering in peace where there have been troubled waters.
What is gnawing at you that you need to deal with that has been keeping you sad, stuck, anxious, depressed, hopeless? Maybe you should consider coaching.
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