Gestalt Therapy for individuals and couples.
Trauma
Trauma
Trauma is perhaps the most avoided, ignored, denied, misunderstood and untreated cause of human suffering
Forms of trauma
Trauma can occur in your life in different ways. It is possible that you suffered early childhood trauma due to a bad childhood, that you ended up in a single shocking event (single trauma), but it could also be that you have been in an unsafe situation for a long time (complex trauma) and that you had to survive.
The impact of trauma can be significant. You can suffer from stress, worrying, excessive thinking, fear, anger, irritability and poor sleep. Cortisol, the stress hormone, will ensure that your body is 'on high-alert', so that you can recognize and flee from potential danger. Even when the danger has long passed.
The effect of trauma can also be very tangible in relationships. With your partner, your direct colleague, your boss, your children or with a client. Situations that resemble that threatening situation from the past can cause the same feeling of insecurity, trigger you. Fighting, fleeing, freezing or people pleasing can be the effect. It can seem like you end up in the same story over and over and this can feel quite powerless.
Security through relational ground.
There's good news; there is a way out of your 'old' story. By slowing down and processing what has happened, there will be room for a new reality to be born.
It's not surprising that if you know trauma, you step into my office with distrust. If you have experienced something bad, it is logical that you do not trust everything and everyone. Come as you are. I find it important to be reliable, sensitive and responsive. That is why I constantly adjust my interventions and pace to you and to what is happening in the here-and-now. So that your subjective way of healing can take shape.
It is important that we take the next step from a safety point of view, but never end up in the red. I'll make sure that you don't go through the trauma again by talking about it, but that your experience is embodied and gradually becomes part of your story. As an experience that belongs to your past instead of being overwhelming and directing you, every time this is touched.
Your body "knows" the way to get what you need. To be healed; listening to physical expressions/complaints is sometimes difficult because it reminds you of the pain and insecurity, so the tendency is to stay away from it.
In my experience, if you bring home what the body tells you, with attention and care, you will also feel a physical and emotional relief/shift.
Little by little, space will be created.
