S1 EP39 – Healing Trauma

Transcript

Hi everyone. I’m Dr. Margaret Paul, welcome to the inner bonding podcast. And today I want to talk about healing trauma. Many of us have had a lot of trauma from the past, and certainly there can be a lot of trauma going on today with what’s happening on our planet. A new client of mine asked me this question, can inner bonding heal trauma by itself without trauma therapies. I had domestic violence growing up and did all the trauma therapies out there, which didn’t work. So I’m just asking if inner bonding can heal the trauma.

The answer, as you will see in this podcast is that the practice of inner bonding is vital to healing trauma, to healing, both adult trauma and childhood abuse and trauma therapies are also vital. It’s not one or the other trauma therapies such as the emotional freedom technique, EFT somatic experiencing S E trauma release exercises, Tre and eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing, which is EMDR are a vital part of healing. But as my clients said, they don’t work on their own.

If you keep it retraumatizing yourself with your various forms of self-abandonment forms that that you might’ve learned as a child, that you likely did learn as a child, you’re not going to heal. And so here’s where inner bonding comes in. Here’s where it’s so important to be learning and practicing this process. Learning to love yourself is vital to healing trauma. In the many, many years, I’ve been counseling individuals. I’ve often worked with people who have suffered from very severe physical, emotional, and or sexual abuse in childhood, or who have suffered severe trauma from Wars or natural disasters or from rape or muggings as an adult.

Many of them who have sought my help are suffering from fear and anxiety from depression, from various addictions, relationship problems and sexual problems. Many of these people who were badly abused as children actually had no memory of their child and ed, and they had no idea why they were suffering so much. Many of them has had spent many years in therapy yet had never remembered their abuse. The reason they couldn’t remember the traumatic events of their childhood is because the child or the children within who suffered the traumatic abuse did not feel safe in revealing the abuse.

These unconscious inner parts were protecting themselves from the horrible pain of the past. These inner children knew that the adult self did not have the strength to learn about and manage the pain in order to remember and healed traumatic events from the distant or even more current paths that are affecting you today, you need to learn to see value and love yourself. And you need to develop a strong, loving adult self who’s capable of managing extreme pain. Without this loving inner adult, you might get so flooded and overwhelmed with the feelings of the traumatic memories or events that you can’t function.

The practice of the gentle and transformational inner bonding process. Not only develops the strong, loving adult self. It also teaches you how to love yourself, which is vital. Like I said to healing trauma, the loving adult is the aspect of you. That’s connected with a powerful and loving source of spiritual guidance, whatever this is for you. And who’s open to learning about what it means to love yourself, learning and practicing the inner bonding process develops your ability to connect with your spiritual guidance. To, to, we all have a personal source of spiritual guidance, and we all need to learn to connect with that.

It’s your connection with your guidance that gives you the strength to manage the intensely painful feelings of trauma. And that teaches you to see and value and love yourself with childhood trauma. Once the inner children who hold the memories feel safe, that there’s a loving adult self who’s capable of managing the pain. You’ll start to remember your past. As these memories come up, you’ll begin to understand the conclusions you drew about yourself that are currently causing your pain. Almost all children who are abused, draw erroneous conclusions about themselves as a result of the abuse, false beliefs, such as I have no worth, I am just an object for others use or abuse.

I am not lovable. I should never have been born. I would be better off dead. I don’t deserve love. I’m a bad person. It’s these beliefs that are greatly contributing to current pain healing from childhood abuse is not just about remembering the past. It’s about remembering the very good reasons you had for drawing the conclusions that are now causing you so much pain. It’s about gently and lovingly acknowledging what happened that led to your present beliefs that are now hurting and limiting you. It’s about learning how to access the truth from your spiritual source of guidance, so that you can move out of the lies that you’re telling yourself that are keeping you in the cycle of pain.

Most of us learned to abandon ourselves rather than to love ourselves. Most of us learned to treat ourselves the ways that we were treated and the way we saw our parents or caregivers treating themselves. We learned to abandon ourselves in the ways we were abandoned. And in the ways our parents have been in themselves, parents who are abused, have no functioning, loving a don’t. They operate from their abusive wound itself. So they could not role model, loving self care. As long as you treat yourself, the way your parents and other caregivers treated you and themselves, you’re going to suffer healing from childhood abuse is about developing your loving adult self so that you can learn to love yourself, your inner children, your inner child, the way you always wanted to be loved.

You can heal from childhood abuse and adult trauma through learning, to access and bring into your being the love, the truth, the wisdom, the strength of your spiritual guidance through learning and practicing or bonding. You’re going to discover the incredibly beautiful and perfect essence within you. The part of you that was never damaged by the abuse or the traumatic experiences. It’s very comforting to know that we all have a part of us that was never damaged. This is your true self that will emerge as you heal the false beliefs of your wound itself.

This is what will happen as you develop your loving adult self, through learning and practicing in her bonding, along with practicing the trauma therapies that that I mentioned, that release stored trauma out of your body, such as the ones I mentioned, the emotional freedom technique, the trauma release exercises and other trauma therapists. However, you likely can’t do this alone. You were alone during your childhood abuse and maybe during adult trauma, and you might retraumatize yourself. If you try to heal alone, you will need to be facilitated through your healing by another loving presence.

And you might need to be lovingly held by a loving other person who can bring through the love of spirit to you. If you had a traumatic childhood, you might wonder if you can ever really heal from it. This is the question my client, Andrea asks me. I had a terrifying childhood. I’ve had counseling motion, light therapy, and been hypnotized and there, and they’ve done wonders for me and I still long for completion in my mind over these things. My question is, is there ever an end to your struggle in dealing with such things?

The answer, as I said is, yes, you can heal. But of course there are challenges, as I’ve said, major healing occurs when you practice in her Bonnie and learned to give yourself the love that you didn’t receive as a child becoming the loving inner parent that your inner child needs. This is what will create the inner safety and self-worth that are necessary for healing. I encourage Andrea to let go of the concept of struggle and replace it with learning and healing. To me, struggle has a negative con connotation while the idea of learning and healing throughout my life feels like an exciting journey.

Also, it might be useful for, for Andrea to let go of the notion of completion, even with profound healing, there’s always more to learn. I think life would feel very dull if this were not true. So instead of looking at your healing process, as a struggle with a completion point, why not look at it as a sacred journey of evolving your soul in your ability to love and to fully manifest yourself? It’s my experience that when someone has had a terrifying childhood, they often develop much more depth and strength and resilience than people who had it easy.

You needed to develop these qualities to survive. The fact that Andrea survived her terrifyingly abusive childhood with her sanity intact indicates that she found the strength within to deal with it. Instead of seeing this as a liability, I suggest honoring it. It’s my experience that only very old souls present themselves with an extremely difficult childhood in order to challenge themselves in maintaining their ability to love the fact that Andrea chose to heal herself rather than being like her parents says much about who she is in her.

So when she filled out the values, this about herself, she will have done much in her work in defining the beauty of her soul, defining who we are in our soul is a major aspect of healing. And we need our spiritual connection to see who we are through the eyes of love, rather than the eyes of our wound itself. However, a terrifying childhood leaves, wounds and scars, and those in scars can show up in numerous ways. One of the main ways that I’ve seen over and over is that due to ongoing and intense stress from dealing with various forms of abuse, the immune system often gets compromised.

Being subjected to a terrifying childhood can very sadly lead to various illnesses, much supportive work, including making sure that your gut is healthy and balanced will need to be done to build up the immune system. They’re often raw places inside that may frequently get triggered. And these raw places need to be addressed with inner bonding and trauma therapies. I’ve personally used the emotional freedom technique EFT with much success. But the thing that is healed my own raw places, the most is learning to show up as a deeply compassionate, spiritually connected, loving adult.

For me, learning to lovingly and compassionately embrace my core painful feelings of loneliness, heartbreak, and helplessness over others. Every time they arise has been deeply healing. This is what has enabled me to regulate my feelings so that I don’t get so easily triggered into the protections of my wound itself, that I learned as a child to deal with my emotional and sexual abuse. Your spiritual connection is one of the most important aspects of healing. The more you learn to stay connected with your higher guidance throughout the day, the safer and more loved you will feel on the inner level.

If you practice opening to learning with your higher self, even if you don’t believe that it’s there, you’re going to eventually know that you’re never alone and that you’re always being guided in your highest good, deep healing occurs. As we develop our spiritually connected, loving a loving adult, define the beauty of our soul and learn to take loving action on our own behalf. Now terror often causes post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, and can result in being anxious, angry, or numb and frozen when you can’t fight or flee as you couldn’t during childhood abuse or adult trauma, the body often goes into a frozen state.

Here’s where the trauma therapies I mentioned can be extremely helpful. PTSD is an anxiety disorder that can occur after you’ve seen or experienced a traumatic event. Something that involves the threat of injury or death, natural disasters, such as fire flood, or earthquake events, such as war, child abuse, or violence as an adult, such as muggings, kidnappings, rape, or torture to yourself or others can cause PTSD. Sometimes PTSD occurs immediately. And other times it can be delayed for months or even much longer.

If it occurs soon after the trauma, it generally resolves fairly quickly, but some people experience a long-term form of PTSD. Not everyone, not everyone responds to trauma with PTSD and past trauma may increase the risk of PTSD of current trauma, people who, who, who don’t feel alone in their experience and have the caring support of friends and family are less likely to experience PTSD than those. With little support. PTSD can show up in many ways, people may re-experience the event over and over through nightmares and flashbacks or during the anniversary of the event.

Some form of the trauma therapies that I mentioned is often necessary to begin healing PTSD. These techniques can help to release stored trauma out of the body. In addition to these techniques, it’s necessary to deeply release the heartbreak and grief from these traumatic experiences. As you practice inner bonding and develop your spiritually connected, loving adult, you become strong enough to manage these deeply painful feelings till you have a strong loving adult. Your inner child may continue to feel alone dealing with the trauma through nightmares, flashbacks, and avoiding frightening situations.

However, even when you’ve been practicing in her bonding long enough to have a solid spiritually connected, loving adult in place, you will likely, still need the support of loving others to feel and release the deep existential pain. My client Sarah had been brutally traumatized throughout her childhood by both of her violent and sexually abusive parents. And she had disassociated to manage the pain of the extensive trauma. When she came to an inner bonding intensive, she didn’t know that she was suffering from did dissociative identity disorder, formerly called MPD multiple personality disorder, nor that she was suffering from PTSD.

What she did know was that nightmares and flashbacks were suddenly disrupting her life to the point of not being able to function in the loving environment of the intensive. She was able to establish a strong peer, a strong spiritual connection. By the third day of the intensive, her different felt safe enough to let her in on her multiplicity and on some of the memories at the intensive, I taught Sara the EFT, the emotional freedom technique and a form of seeing the memories without having to relive them, which is called re verification.

I’ve had a lot of training in dealing with trauma and multiplicity. So I do know these techniques, reliving memories can be retraumatizing back at home. She was completely devoted to her inner bonding practice within a couple of years of working on her own, coming to two more intensives and doing individual work with me. Sarah was able to move on with her life, no longer a victim of her trauma. She had integrated her many personalities and it healed her PTSD. Now, obviously this took time. It’s not instant, but she was so devoted to it for PTSD to completely heal.

It’s vital the practice in her bonding and develop your spiritually connected, loving adult trauma. Can’t be healed without the help of spirit. As the wound itself has no capacity to create an inner sense of safety, Which is what the traumatized Inner child or inner children need. It’s also vital to receive the loving, help and support Of others. We’re living in challenging times, and it’s more important than ever to be able to help each other in loving and healing ways. If you’re living with friends or family, loving hugs are important. If you’re living alone, hold each other virtually and imagine being held by spirit loving mothers know instinctively that when their children are hurting physically or emotionally, what they need is to be gently held with loving arms and sous with loving words, those of us who have raised young children know the magic of kissing it and making it better years ago, Dr. Erika Chopich

And I discovered the healing power of mothering. And we wrote about it in healing, your aloneness. What we discovered has now been verified over and over in his excellent book in an unspoken voice author, Peter Levine tells a heartwarming story. When national guard soldiers were ordered to remove Ilian Gonzales, the young boy who would become a pawn in a political battle in Florida, from the hands of his Cuban exile cousins, living in Miami, they trained a female federal agent to caringly take the boy from the cousins and angry onlookers, knowing he would be extremely frightened and not wanting to further traumatize him.

Levine wrote a quote. The agent held him firmly enough to not be ripped away by the angry mob yet gently enough for her embraced a match. The words she calmly recited in Spanish alien. This may seem scary right now, but it soon will be better. We’re taking you to your pop-up. You will not be taken back to Cuba, which was true for the time being. You will not be put on a boat again. He had been brought to Miami on a treacherous broke boat ride. You are with people who care for you and are going to take care of you.

As she rocked him gently and spoke soothingly to him. He relaxed Levine goes on to describe another dramatic mothering scene that occurred during the East Timur conflict as dazed and disoriented refugees wandered into a refugee camp, a group of Portuguese nuns, greeted and gently held and rocked the children and the most shocked of adults whispering soothing words to them, thawing them out of shock with their love. This is the power of mothering, loving touch of bringing the unconditional love.

That is spirit through to the SA through to the scared and traumatized person. And both men and women are capable of mothering. I’ve seen the same thing over and over again, and inner bonding. In-person intensives as participants remember their trauma. They move out of their frozen state and into being able to feel the depth of their heartbreak, loneliness, grief, and helplessness, as they saw, they’re gently held and rocked with love, allowing their heart to open, not only to the deep pain, which they had to protect against feeling during their fear and trauma, but also to the joyful feelings, since all the deeper, painful and joyful feelings reside in the same place in the heart, until they can safely feel their deeply painful feelings held in a loving embrace.

They frequently can’t feel their deeply joyful feelings. Each of us can be an instrument of love for each other. All of us, both men and women have the capacity to open our hearts to the love and compassion of spirit just as the federal agent and the nuns did all of us have the capacity to offer mothering, unconditional holding and soothing energy to help thought the fear within people who have experienced there, the horror of abuse, war, or other forms of trauma, it’s vitally important not to underestimate the power of love to heal while we can do much for ourselves in terms of being loving and compassionate with ourselves.

We greatly support our healing of deep trauma. When we experience the loving embrace of another, the mothering that Eric and I gave to each other many years ago was life changing for both of us. I doubt that either of us would have found our homeless without it. I hope you find safe and caring mothering in person and virtually if this is what you need and that you offer it. When you see another in need. Now, as always, I encourage you to go to inner bonding.com and take advantage of all the wonderful resources we or we offer our free seven day inner bonding course.

I encourage you to take the love yourself course, which you can do at any time. I encourage you to take a five day intensive. I have an intensive coming up in February, a virtual intensive. They are so wonderfully healing. And so if you, if you want that deep healing work, go to our website, click on events and take a look at the intensives. I do work with individuals and couples, so to the many wonderfully trained inner bonding facilitators. And I hope you take a look at inner bonding village. Everybody gets some free sessions with an inner bonding facilitator in training and some discounted sessions with inner bonding facilitators.

So it’s a very inexpensive way to get the help you might need. I am sending all of you love and blessings.