Here is an incomplete list of shifts that can and do happen in effective developmental trauma healing work, wherever and however that work is done and regardless of whether these elements are consciously called out or even consciously known by the person holding the work.
For sure, all of these changes have occurred incrementally in me over time, throughout the past 30 years and continuing in recent months and weeks. And I see these changes in my clients, at varying paces, and not necessarily in all categories at once.
As you are reviewing these categories of change, I invite you to pause and notice within yourself whether each type of change has occurred in you over time. If yes, maybe pause to really feel into how it is different now than it was when you started your journey.
What are the intentions and goals
of “trauma healing” in people?
Emotional Safety/Attachment
The experience of feeling emotionally safe (enough) with the facilitator and/or group, feeling they are accepted and seen, and have permission to be themself.
Then based on that baseline, a (likely gradual) increase in emotional safety over time, where (at least some part of) the person is able to believe that it’s ok to be who they are and feel what they feel, and they also can feel that the facilitator and/or group will continue to be accepting and supportive (enough) of them even as they reveal more painful material about who they are and what they feel.
Experiencing Neutral and Positive Things
Creating or expanding capacity to feel things that feel good or ok.
Some people have little or no capacity for feeling ok. The bad feelings and feelings of threat are so intense that it feels like anything good or ok is impossible or can’t be real. Some people can feel ok for moments, but then the ok feeling triggers an increased sense of danger, like the calm before the storm. Or some people can tolerate feeling ok or neutral but if they feel actively good or excited or hopeful, those feelings then trigger dread or danger.
Looking for, paying attention to, and staying longer with things that feel good or ok.
Some people can tolerate feeling good or ok, but they miss the chance to feel good or ok because their attention is always habitually focused on seeking out and mitigating threats. So we invite the practice of slowing down and intentionally noticing and seeking out things that feel good or ok.
Connection with the Body
Creating or expanding the ability to notice what is happening in the body: physical pain, discomfort or bodily needs; both good and bad feelings that express in part through bodily sensations; impulses or desires felt in the body; constriction, bracing, holding, openness, flow, breath.
Creating or expanding the ability to send communications to the body: inviting breath, ease, grounding, or movement; gently sitting with organs, systems, or any body part to both explore what is present and to invite useful shifts.
Safety, Support and Connection Generally
Creating or expanding the person’s/body’s ability and capacity to feel relatively safe, supported and connected. This may include but is not limited to the relational connection with the facilitator or group that was mentioned above.
Making Contact with Difficult Emotions, always while connected to a relative experience of safety and connection.
Making initial contact with specific emotions that had been hidden.
Gradually deepening and expanding contact with painful emotions that are known. Expressing what wants to be expressed (as long as it’s not a habitual expression of the same feelings and content repeatedly as generally these habitual feelings are hiding other deeper feelings and this repeated expression doesn’t help except for momentary relief.)
Disidentifying; that is, maintaining a witness or observer part of the self that can know that their overwhelming emotional experience is “just” an emotional experience and is not all there is.
Helping the body to learn that overwhelming emotions can be survived, that those emotions don’t actually bring the annihilation that it feels like they are bringing.
Reconnecting Undercouplings/Sense of Self: I matter
Incrementally increasing access to the following qualities and “knowing” within the body:
Locating hope.
The fire of life force; “I am alive!, I’m here!, I matter!”
Boundaries, the right and capacity to claim personal space.
Sense of self: “I am, I know who I am, I am the authority on me.”
“I feel things, I want things, I need things, I have values.”
Uncoupling Overcouplings
Incrementally being able to relate to challenging situations without being thrown off balance by emotions, by supporting the body to realize that the situation and emotion are not inherently bound together.
In particular, separating intense emotions from situations, such as:
Uncoupling fear from immobility
Uncoupling frustration, anger, or helplessness from the disappointments in other people’s behaviors
Uncoupling shame/feeling of failure from personal challenges/lack of progress
Uncoupling loneliness, grief or longing from relationship losses, lacks and challenges
Freeing the Body
Incrementally reducing unconscious habitual clenching and bracing postures in the musculature.
Incrementally reducing ways in which parts of the body or body systems are offline, not fully functioning.
