As humans, we are programmed for connection, we thrive on healthy relationships. However, when we have experienced an unhealthy, unsafe situation, or been stuck in a toxic relationship with someone, it can be very traumatizing. This means that the experience has left an imprint in our cellular memory, which has changed our wiring. We have adapted to this unsafe situation by developing coping mechanisms to keep us safe. Our wiring has changed from CONNECTION to PROTECTION.
Depending on the nature and impact of the experience, this protection mode can have different levels and ways of manifesting, on a mental, emotional and physical level.
On a physical/neurological level, our wiring runs along neurological pathways formed by repetition of actions, or by sudden drastic changes in our lives. At the same time, these pathways create habits, and thus, like a cart track, become more and more ingrained. This works the same way for both positive and negative experiences and habits. But when we get stuck in a pattern of negative habits, we call it an addiction. Positive habits are called a choice for a healthy lifestyle. Either way, they both create and deepen these neurological pathways, connections/patterns and resulting habits.
While our natural wiring for connection is based on love, trust, and knowing that it is safe to be open, authentic, and vulnerable, the “new” adapted wiring for protection is based on fear, mistrust, and the idea that we need to hide our true selves, or parts of ourselves, wear certain social masks, avoid authentic communication, and perhaps even conform to other people’s will, just to protect ourselves and feel safe.
Deep trauma can even result in wiring that protects us from our own painful memories of the traumatic event. We may not be able to remember what happened exactly, we may feel numb and disconnected from related feelings, or we may be completely blocked from the entire memory of the event.
This is why it is so difficult to have healthy relationships when you are not (fully) healed from trauma. We can only let 'the other' in, truly enjoy the connection and let love blossom to the extent that we have healed ourselves. If we are not truly in touch with our true selves, we cannot truly connect with others. It is in our connection with others, both existing and new relationships, that we will repeatedly see our unhealed trauma reflected and triggered in so many ways. We will likely attract people and situations that energetically match us, and our unhealed parts.
This can lead to difficult, even toxic relationships. However, these bonds trigger our wounds, over and over again, until we begin to recognize the underlying pattern, and consciously choose to break the cycle of pain and begin the journey of self-healing.
This inner journey of healing trauma is about reconnecting with ourselves, our bodies and our emotions. Going deep inside, to the pain, gently ‘touching’ these places and feeling into them.
A carefully dosed triggering, you might say, of these painful areas, to open them up. Unpacking and processing, layer by layer, the trauma that is stored in these places in our system. We can recognize these places, these ‘packages of trauma’ in our system where we feel pain, stress, tension and discomfort in our body.
Trauma healing focuses on bringing relaxation to these areas, so that the negative energy, the tension in this area can be released. This process of letting go involves our entire energy field, the mental, emotional and physical body. During this process of relaxing, letting go and creating space in the entire system, on all levels, we simultaneously create new impressions; new, love-based wiring.
In short, the process of trauma healing is about creating the space to relax, let go, and reset.
In other words, the trauma healing process is activated by the healer, who creates the safe, warm, high vibrational and loving space for the individual, where they can feel and experience the necessary space and calm to relax, let go and reset.
This experience is the result of feeling safe, carried, seen, heard, understood and supported continuously and repeatedly, while the healer is also focused on their energetic work; The transmutation of the lower energies, a process guided by the energetic principles of quantum physics.
This healing experience lays the foundation, on an energetic, mental, emotional and physical level, for the individual to deeply understand through experience the process of healing trauma through connection with the body.
By relaxing and letting go, bit by bit. Until we notice a shift from being set up for protection, to being able to connect with Self, and from there opening up and being able to have healthy connections with others.
In essence; the shift from FEAR to LOVE. And only then can truly meaningful, healthy and fulfilling relationships be built.