We are all a work in progress. You may have noticed that I recently changed the name on my Facebook Page and am evolving the message on my website. So what’s that about? I finally have enough energy to explain.
2020 has been a very challenging year for almost everyone on the planet – me included. On top of all the other things that go on for us all, I do work that requires me to continually upgrade and evolve as both a practitioner and as a Soul. One of my responsibilities includes working on my own past trauma in order to minimise counter-transference. I’ve also been asked to take on a bigger role in Earth Healing and planetary ascension – which has its own learning curve!
Adding a global pandemic, lockdown and all of the fear and division that brought with it has certainly stretched my personal resources, which (as a HSP) impacts my ability to hold space for both my family and my work. I don’t feel that I have the capacity right now to work with Trauma that has a big T. So I have removed that word from my branding.
That word was included mostly in an attempt to differentiate my services from the things that I DON’T do – (things like standard remedial m@ssage, T@ntric bodywork, sexu@l services… Not that it always stopped those inquiries.) To help people who struggled with other types of bodywork or Therapy (often people with trauma histories) to find a safer place. When I started this work, there weren’t many of us, and the ones seeking it out were usually veterans of many years of therapy and healing – looking specifically for the missing pieces that I offered. And we did great, collaborative and joyful work together.
However, the word trauma has now come out of the shadows and is being addressed much more openly. The Pandemic has also prompted a lot more people to seek help for the first time. Much more of our deep and hidden trauma has been triggered over the last year, as the world changes rapidly and it can no longer be ignored. I’m so glad to see people who have been ignoring or suppressing their trauma for years, are finally looking for help. But it’s caused me to reassess my own place within the trauma-informed services landscape. The Somatic branches of Psychotherapy have been evolving and new therapies such as EMDR, EMMET, TRE and more have emerged and established themselves. Many of these are more appropriate for those in the early and acute phases of trauma, so I feel I should step back and redefine my position.
Trying to help people who haven’t yet developed realistic expectations about what the healing journey actually looks like, took more of a toll on me than I realised it would. In my willingness to help people where they were at, I found myself overwhelmed and over-stretched. I was trying to bend myself back into a shape that I haven’t occupied for years. And that’s a position from which I made mistakes. I allowed too many violations of important boundaries and eventually found myself resentful of what I experienced as demanding, entitled behaviour. I can’t work in someone’s energy field from that space. And I don’t require myself to do work that makes me depleted and anxious. (As my late husband said, “I can go broke reading the paper. No need to work this hard at it.”)
My own healing journey is decades in and I have traversed with many different modalities and practitioners over that time to get where I am today. I’m very proud of where I am, and yet also acknowledge that I’m not even close to finished. I too once had expectations of being “saved” or “fixed”. It took a long time to embrace many of the concepts I now hold. To be able to hold paradoxical truths in each hand. To understand that I was the only one with the power to heal myself or to block my progress. And there is no way I was ready to hear any of these things until I was ready to. I don’t expect anyone else to be able to either.
The truth is that I am a completely different person to the one who started this journey. My paradigms, beliefs, views, biases, boundaries have all evolved with me. I can’t really go backwards and I’m not interested in dragging anyone forward. Working safely within people’s limits has always been a tenet of my work. Despite the old paradigm that the more I learn, the more I realise how much I still don’t know – It’s time for me to take my place as an elder (small e) and work where I can have the most positive impact. There are so many new pathways through trauma, and more than enough other practitioners out there with the skills to help those that I can’t (I don’t have the training or disposition to work specifically with addiction, sexuality, acute mental health issues or aggression).
It’s my belief that we all need many different guides to suit the different parts of our journeys anyway. I’m here for the veterans, the ones who appreciate gentleness and lived experience, the ones who follow their intuition to find me, the ones who are ready for deeper integration of all of the work they’ve done before, the ones who need someone who looks in all of the cracks that the others ignore to find those elusive last pieces, the ones who realise I’m just helping them find their own way back home.
