Building trust From within.
I recently started working with a client who came to me in his words “as a last resort”. He said to me “I am stuck in a cycle of stress & pain & complete disconnect from where & who I truly want to be.”
Through meeting this lovely open and curious client I was able to get a glimpse into the life of someone who is experiencing loud trauma and suffering and is living in a world that is as equally as loud, fast paced, and unapologetically breeding mindsets that support failure as not being an option.
The sense of tension and hypervigilance in the room was thick and certainly induced more curiosity, for me. The darting eyes and inability to sit without fidgeting helped me ask questions related to what the client was experiencing right in this moment. I wasn’t interested in offering him verbatim what I do, I wanted his experience in that moment to lead the way for what I could potentially offer.
We talked for a while and he would reference his experiences with his body as traumatic & scary and that he had felt his body had failed him. Without knowing much about his personal experiences I could only offer support. I was curious when I asked him if he trusted his body. His immediate response was,
“No way, I have such fear around my back failing me when I bend down to pick something up or put my shoes on properly. There is no trust”.
With a couple of sessions together and both learning loads about the position in which we both stand, we met in the middle on a couple of ideas.
To learn to soften the distrust in the body.
To become open to understanding that to trust we must first listen.
I am passionate about supporting anyone who’s interested in building agency in their body. We have one incredible home in which we reside. With all our intelligent systems that provide us with important information in every moment within every context & environment. We are incredible vessels of information & have huge capacity for understanding & creating change.
If you are a trauma survivor and have done work on healing, regulating and rebuilding you will know how difficult it can be to make change because the implicit memories our nervous system stores are stored away so very deep.
An environmental trigger can set you off and can lead to reactions you didn’t plan for.
When we work our way back, slowly & in a supportive manner with all your important resources on hand, these range from Psychologist, GP, Physio, family support etc. we can have impactful change in rewiring the nervous system to heal and progress.
This lovely client asks loads of questions and I just love this. I too am curious about peoples experiences. When exploring the implicitly stored experiences we often don’t know how they feel other than the recurring emotion; Anger, Fear, Frustration, Sad, etc. These are all great emotions to place on the emotional agility scale that we can build equanimity within (to be with the emotion no matter the place on the scale we place it).
The wonderful thing about body-work is it allows for an opportunity to explore the verbalised emotion, through the body. To relate to where we feel it, what it feels like, how long it lasts for, and can we notice the variance within it.
This client expressed he has ADHD and was feeling anxious, hyper-aroused, exhausted, like he was running on adrenalin and had been for weeks. He had bloodshot eyes, was a little shaky, and couldn’t sit still.
We talked about sleep, nutrition, and movement along with his personal relationships, work, health & well-being goals.
Then he slowed down.
I noticed he took a sigh…
Then another…
I asked if he felt safe?
“I do, actually”. He sounded surprised by his own realisation.
We continued to slow down,
I got him to lay down, if he felt like closing his eyes he could, and I asked him to gently scan his body for anything he was noticing. Sensations, thoughts, ideas, inquiry points.
“I feel tight & heavy in my chest”
I asked if we could inquire more here?
“Yes”
Tell me what is happening, “I feel really tight and my breath is shallow. It feels heavy in my throat and chest. This is what happens when I feel anxious, overwhelmed, stressed”.
I invited him to explore it a little more, “could you breathe into this area with more awareness, more curiosity?”
“Yes”
He instinctively placed his hand over his chest/heart area.
He started to increase is breathing rate, and I offered a gently cue “breathing in through your nose slowly not forcefully, breathe out through your mouth slowly if you can”.
He slowed.
After a while, he offered some insight into that moment and said,
“I haven’t felt this slow & light in ages”
We celebrated this in the form of gratitude.
If your body can show your mind that it can slow down and support you feeling light, can you shift your perspective on trust to slowly build your capacity for trusting your body again?
“I want to”
“What if we take the feeling of lightness and offer it gratitude for presenting itself to you?”
“I like that”
Our session went on and together we explored some effective and simple strategies that are used almost daily with clients that have a variety of needs and entry points for regulation and healing.
I just love supporting people connect with the depths of their inner world. It’s a gentle approach that is supported by research and ethics in practice.
I am just thrilled to support a soul into their own world with kindness, compassion & curiosity for creating change.
If we change the narrative/story the mind creates about our past, we can heal the past and move into the present moment equipped for safety & connection.
The love I have for my work is ever evolving
✌🏻❤️
kate x