Healing Emotional Wounds
Childhood is a survival exercise for everyone.
Even when our caregivers are safe and supportive, there are still misses, hurts, wounds.
Parenting, in general, is a practice in doing “good enough,” but even the best parents are imperfect and can cause unintentional wounds.
And when our caregivers are unsafe, unattuned, or absent, it can throw off our whole attachment system and plunge our inner world into chaos.
The world is full of pain, loss, and missed opportunities.
Trauma can result from any overwhelming experience, whether it’s “too little too long” or “too much too fast” at any point in our lives.
Traumatic experiences and emotional wounds can create confusion, distressing or intrusive thoughts, feelings of collapse and giving up, out-of-control emotions, or recurrent thoughts and feelings – all adaptations to help us avoid any reminder of those initial experiences and the pain they carry.
These wounds often contribute to a sense of self that is flawed, broken, or “not enough” in some way. Beliefs like “I’m not good enough” can run under the surface of all of our life experiences and limit what we believe is possible for ourselves.
It’s painful to feel disrespected, hurt, ostracized, picked on, criticized, scared or overwhelmed. Life is full of events that cause pain – some physical, some emotional. Accidents, bullying, abuse, confusing family dynamics and responses, life-threatening events, and loss can all have a major effect on how we see ourselves and the world.
When these things happen repeatedly or are extremely overwhelming, it can cause deep emotional wounding or trauma.
Traumatic experiences also get locked into the body.
We’ve all experienced circumstances in which our adaptive survival mode is triggered, often referred to as the “fight-flight-freeze” response. When we’re exposed to threatening or overwhelming events in which we don’t know how to adapt, our bodies go into this mode.
If that energy isn’t moved through in some way, it gets stuck, and the response that “wanted to happen” remains.
It remains an open wound, creating tension and anxiety, and it’s easily triggered by circumstances resembling those of the original trauma. This can lead to reactivity, avoidance, confusion, checking out, shutting down, intrusive thoughts and feelings, and diminished confidence about navigating the world safely and effectively.
The good news? These wounds can be healed.
Through mindful contact with the experience in the body, it’s possible to start to gain perspective and understanding of the automatic responses that occur. The beliefs and lenses through which we see the world can be better understood, and the tensions, impulses, and locked energy can be allowed to move through to their completion.
Approaches like EMDR can directly facilitate processing overwhelming and traumatic experiences. EMDR is an approach that taps into the brain and body’s natural ability to process information. What was once posttraumatic stress can be experienced instead as posttraumatic growth.
Every experience we have can be something we learn and grow from – one that teaches us about our inner strengths and our capacity to survive. We can learn about what we need, what feels good and what doesn’t… and feel into our power, natural abilities, and available resources for support.
This happens when we can turn in, turn toward, and work through the painful experiences we’ve gone through. No experience is too much to handle.
If you’re here, you’ve already gone through it and survived. It just becomes a matter of processing it, making sense of it, and allowing it to move through the body so that it’s not stuck there, creating unwanted feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.
I am here to offer you an opportunity and a safe space…
… to work through the impactful experiences in your life.
We will work together to get in touch with, provide space for, and better understand who you are and what you have experienced.
I provide a supportive container that allows you to connect with what you’ve learned to avoid because it’s painful or overwhelming.
With attunement and attention, we can support you as you allow what’s there to be, understand how it’s affecting you, and learn what’s needed for you to move through it.
James* came to therapy; he wanted to “fix” what was “broken.”
He came to therapy feeling overwhelmed and anxious.
When he was a kid, his parents went through a messy divorce, and he learned to keep to himself.
He was self-reliant and was good at the things he did, but he was feeling anxious, worried, stressed, and burdened by too much responsibility.
In therapy, James gained a deeper understanding of himself. He began to see how different emotions, like anger, weren’t allowed to be expressed in his family growing up. He started to understand how he held it back and why he never really stood up for himself.
He tried new ways of being, speaking his needs, asking for what he wanted, and setting boundaries with others. He felt stronger and more capable. He felt less burdened, less anxious, more at ease, and more confident.
And he recognized that how he was feeling wasn’t because he was broken… or flawed somehow. Rather, he was in a chronic cycle of doing what wasn’t working that well for him anymore. Instead of communicating and asking for what he needed with his wife or boss, he sucked it up and took it on himself to make it work. And when it didn’t work, he beat himself up, feeling like he wasn’t good or strong enough… or that he was lazy because he wasn’t trying hard enough.
By the end of therapy, he realized he was enough… and that it felt supportive, freeing, and empowering to ask for things and set limits with others. He realized that there wasn’t anything broken inside him; it was just that he didn’t bear all the burden for things working out.
He didn’t have to continue to deny his needs like he learned to do growing up… and didn’t have to do it alone.
If you’re ready to embark on this journey…
… then, I’m ready to connect and offer my support to you.
Reach out and call or message today to schedule your free 20-minute consultation so that I can answer your questions, discuss your challenges, and learn what you’d like to get out of your therapy experience.
Are you ready to awaken to the possibilities for your life – to a whole, healthy, best version of yourself?
Call (406) 381-4548, or message today. I look forward to hearing from you!
*Name changed to preserve client confidentiality.