Heart-centred healer

Some of the basic human attachment needs are to feel connected, accepted, loved, valued & feel supported.

When a child experiences their parent/caregiver as unavailable, unpredictable, rejecting or a source of pain the insecure attachment develops, also called developmental trauma.

Traumatic experiences and lack of safe connection alters the way our brain works early on. These traumatic memories often become disorganised. Due to the limbic brain working extra hard in those situations, other functions of the brain reduce (such as the pre-frontal cortex or our thinking brain) people often encounter confused thoughts and with that related emotions and feelings. Those early traumatic memories become fragmented, difficult to make sense of. Traumatic events are often remembered as images that are isolated, such as bodily sensations, vivid images or sounds for example. Exposure to similar sensory experience in the present time trigger this same response and re-traumatisation occurs over and over again. Now the person’s behaviour response matches the original event more so than the current situation. Tiggers are subtle and diverse!

Have you ever tapped someone on the shoulder in a friendly way only to find that it really startled them?

Brain based-somatic approaches have been found to be the most effective in beginning stages of healing trauma (Emotional Freedom Techniques are one of those). As somatic release occurs of what was stored in the body and brain, interruption of the stress response to a stimulus also occurs and this time a different message is sent back to the brain, as safety is created, moving closer to our natural state of homeostasis becomes possible.

True healing in fact, as much as it is mystical, is also very science based.

A good starting point is to begin exactly where you are at, and doing so with with self-compassion. Asking yourself about what feels out of alignment, what causes you to react, how does that feel in your body?

Engaging in a therapy process with an experienced practitioner will be helpful if those early attachment wounds still feel raw and present today.