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Trauma healing

I appreciate listening to those who have been involved professionally with trauma healing with their diverse perspectives, genuine compassion, and skillful and caring experiences---therapists, psychologists and other experienced healing practitioners. There is such an openness and invitation to join the dialogue, even in disagreement.

A few years ago, I was watching a video of a therapist speaking about how to help clients work with resistance, particularly around supporting grief to be expressed. It was explained that grief kept people stuck in a depressed place due to trauma.

The therapist spoke of a client who described feeling stuck in a place that was ‘fiery hot’ within, where a part of her lived. She wanted to lead her client on a journey to that place where she was ‘residing’. To me, this would signal extreme trauma. The terms ‘fiery hot’ spoke for themselves.

The therapist suggested an opportunity' of freedom by having the client visualize climbing up “a hot ladder out of that burning hell”. She would be at the top of that ladder with her hand waiting as the client ascended. Though the therapist wasn’t in the ‘hot hole’ with her, she was ready and available to help her near the top as the client allowed this climb, out of grief, to occur.

Do you hear something off with this therapeutic suggestion?

Coax ‘out’ of Trauma

From my awareness, in feeling into how the therapist used a ‘metaphor’ to attempt to coax her client ‘out’ of trauma in order to release the grief, she might not have realized that the client was experiencing an emotional freeze state from the past. The therapist used the metaphor of ‘burning’ instead. She also had positioned herself 'above' the client, waiting for the client to reach her at the top as the resource.

Somehow, this particular metaphor use, and the way the therapist positioned herself in the story, lacked awareness of inner bonding and inner resourcing. I feel that a therapist (or a trauma-educated practitioner) in any position that could be experienced as an ‘authority figure’, ‘expert’ and ‘above’ the client, can mistakenly lead to a reinforcement of an unequal power position. This would enable an outer reliance on resources that really need to be built within.

Co-equal Grounds
In-other-words, this felt like a hierarchal structure of healing. This is not a 7th Plane awareness of how Love flows within. This is different than what is possible if the therapist was on co-equal grounds in helping to access the inner needs of the client. It creates more dependency or possibly co-dependency towards the therapist rather than through the development and structure of a 'love' bonding connection within through the 7^th Plane.

The inner resource connection is often that wounded Inner Child, that younger aspect who got frozen in the past. The client was unable to feel or allow for her Inner child’s grief and feelings. Accessing this part of the journey is how the inner world can better be navigated.

Safety, trust, and inner connection between the Inner child, an available adult aspect all through connection with the 7^th Plane/Creator/Unconditional Love becomes the foundation for resilient growth, deep transformational release, and Source-aligned intuition. This would have helped resource within and help build virtues without thinking that the client needed to find this through a dependent relationship outside herself in climbing out of ‘hell’.

I’m not saying that we don’t need outer connections as support in our lives, but in the healing of trauma from abuse, that comes when the inner connection is established within too. To me, when psychology is devoid of the spiritual awareness, it doesn’t address what has affected the sub/unconscious in more balanced or non-hierarchal ways.

In working with those who have severe and complex trauma, and being one who had experienced this as well, I deeply wondered why the therapist was attempting to address just the grief when fear, shame, terror, or horror could really have been the blockers in holding the depression in place depending on what happened. I wondered how any child would experience needing to grieve as the primary emotion in the midst of being physically harmed initially. Grief is often dissociated. The context of healing just seemed out of place in what was presented in the video.

And using such an example of hell and hot ladders without knowing the depth of issues in the unconscious, could have been a huge graphic trigger for those who have complex, serial trauma. What if that fiery hot place was a reflection or remembrance of a ritual sacrifice? I’ve heard these kinds of stories show up in sessions for years.

What would have been the possibility of having available inner resources established prior, within the client? Creator’s energy and the adult within could invite that inner child from the past into the present moment where safety is available. With guided and facilitated inner belief work and reframing, safety can arrive when the present moment becomes the focal point of remembering, rather than reliving it from the past. 

Understanding the Resistance

There is always a reason that resistance is held in place in the healing of childhood trauma. Most often it’s issues of safety and timing to explore more. Yet, everything serves us somehow so discovering what that is through the Inner child is essential. Then the service can be released (changed) in what it has done for the Inner child or adult.



Additionally, giving Creator’s teachings (concepts not known) to bring safety in reorienting to the present moment, rather than positioning in an unequal way, can lead to more heartfelt inner connections and an opportunity to allow space for when the feelings are ready to arise.

We all deserve to learn how to resource from within. The Inner child work helps develop this skill in order to work with the emotions and the resistance.

With care and healing,

Judy

More on working with the Inner child and the Unity Inner Child Process is in Book 2 and 3 of the “Moving Beyond Revised: Healing the Trauma from Childhood Abuse through the ThetaHealing^® Technique”.
https://www.themovingbeyondtraumaproject.org/