Category: Complex Trauma

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Trust, needs, vulnerability, & Complex Trauma

What makes you vulnerable makes you beautiful. ~Brene Brown

What happens when people open their hearts?
They get better. ~Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

She was a wicked thing sometimes. All full of want. As if the shape of the world depended on her mood. As if she were important. ~Patrick Rothfuss, The Slow Regard of Silent Things

We’re never so vulnerable than when we trust someone – but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy. ~Frank Crane

I’ve been feeling a lot lately. Emotions and sensations swirling around in me, creating chaos, or perhaps expressing the chaos, within. They have been happy, joyful, pleasurable feelings on the one hand. And completely terrifying on the other.

Terrifying because they are new and different.
And.
Terrifying because I am actually feeling them. 

And terrifying because I am beginning to be emotionally vulnerable with another person. I am learning what that actually looks and feels like. I am doing it in small steps and most certainly keeping much still to myself, and also with each little step of expressing my emotions to them, I am finding new, not harmful ways, of caring for myself and the overwhelming feelings of all the experiences I am having.

I’m trying on adulting.
Clearly stating boundaries.
Telling the person how I feel around them.
Not running and hiding or putting all my armor on with extra reinforcements.

It has not been easy. I have probably misstepped. I know I have gotten caught up in conversations in my own head that didn’t go well and lead me to tears (hello INFJ).

And still. I am doing things differently. Which is new and different and feels strange and yes, is terrifying in moments.

As humans we have very real needs of attachment and belonging. We actually need to feel loved, adored. We need to be respected in having our autonomy and our autonomy needs to be not only respected and accepted but also rejoiced and celebrated. We need to be physically safe, and also we need to feel emotionally and psychologically safe. We need to feel connected, understood by another, and to feel they feel connected to and understood by us. 

Having these needs met, to even a minimal degree, allows us to survive as infants and children. They are absolutely necessary for survival. In some ways it doesn’t matter who meets these needs. Ideally it would be our primary caregivers, but it can be secondary, or even tertiary caregivers. And we only require these needs be met just enough for our actual survival.

That means as children we can be neglected, abused, disregarded most of the time, but as long as there are moments of feeling like a person, even our abusers, actually care for us, we will survive.

As adults, the needs are the same, but the requirement to have them met for our survival isn’t as dire. As adults having these needs met means the difference between simply surviving and beautifully thriving in our lives.

We all have these needs, and yet expressing them can be incredibly delicate and feel overwhelmingly vulnerable. 

And vulnerability in our culture is considered a weakness.

And when we have had childhoods where there was abuse and or neglect, expressing our vulnerability could have literally meant our deaths.

So. What are we to do, as adults, with our wounding, our pain, our fear, our trauma, to have our needs actually met?

First I want to note that it is important that others meet our attachment needs, yes. That is part of thriving in our lives and being in a loving relationship. However, it is equally important that we know how to meet these needs for ourselves too. That we are able to build our resilience when those we love inevitably hurt us in some way.

I say inevitably because we are all human. We all cause unintentional harm. We all have our own “stuff” that we need to work through. And so, part of being open to a loving relationship where another meets many of our attachment needs also means that we are open to them sometimes hurting us. It also means that we will inevitably hurt them also. What matters here is how we come back into relationship through repair.

When we are able to process the traumas we have experienced as children and are able to come back into our bodies, we learn what it actually means to fully experience our emotions and their correlating bodily sensations. We begin to learn how to titrate so we don’t go into overwhelm. We learn how to hear our bodies long before they are screaming at us. 

And.

We learn to trust ourselves. To have compassion for the people we’ve been and the person we are today. As we learn to trust ourselves, we can also begin to trust others. 

Learning to trust another is yet another piece of our trauma processing. So many of us were abused and or neglected by our primary and or secondary caregivers, starting at such early ages. These experiences train us to distrust those we love and those who express that they love and or care for us. Part of our trauma processing is also allowing these old distrusting neural pathways to atrophy while we build new paths that allow for us to trust, and know who to trust in the first place.

It is important to note we need to be connected to the feelings – emotions and sensations – of our body to move into deeply trusting relationships. Being embodied means we can actually hear the appropriate alarms, and trust that they are correct and act accordingly when it comes to relationships. It also means that we can trust another when those alarms don’t go off.

And once we can trust another, then we can begin to be vulnerable with them.

Being vulnerable with another person is terrifying. We are opening ourselves up to being hurt by them. We are also opening ourselves up to being loved by them and see what it feels like to be truly respected and adored. 

It’s not easy. We will have many missteps. We will dip our toes in and share something deeply vulnerable and then immediately pull our toes back out and maybe even take several steps back or run away and hide for a bit. With practice this sharing of ourselves, the more raw and vulnerable pieces, becomes easier, but perhaps never totally easy (I have no idea actually, I’m still in the dip my toes in and try not to run away and hide stage!). 

And before we can share our feelings, we actually need to be able to feel them. 

/…/

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To learn about my six month Trauma Informed Embodiment™ for Sexual Trauma Survivors go here. The next cohort begins April 15.

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Wanting

I do not always know what I want, but I do know what I don’t want.~Stanley Kubrick

The problem for a lot of people is that they don’t really know what they want. They have vague desire: to ‘do something creative’ or to earn more money or ‘to be free’, but they can’t really pin down what it is precisely that they want. So they drift from one thing to another, enjoying some moments and hating others, but never really finding fulfillment or success. (..)This is why it’s hard to lead a successful life ( whatever that means to you) when you don’t know what you want.~John C. Parkin, F**k It: The Ultimate Spiritual Way

Over the last year plus I’ve been exploring the idea of want, and specifically what I want. What I want in my family life, in my friendships, in a lover and partner, for my work, for me and how I am in the world.

I’ve been trying to tease out what makes me feel good, what fulfills me, what satiates me, what satisfies me, what is pleasurable. What some would say makes me “happy.”

It’s been a challenge, to say the least. I know what I do NOT want.  That is easy.  The list can go on and on. But what I want?  Actually want? I don’t know.  Not consciously. At times it feels almost impossible to connect to.

We are taught in our puritanical patriarchal culture that wanting, particularly female wanting, is bad. Evil in fact.

Good Girls™ don’t want. And well, we all need to be Good Girls™, right?
Because Good Girls™ get husbands who protect them and provide for them and their children. (There was a little bit of vomit that came up in my mouth as I was typing that there.)

If we grew up in any sort of conservative, or even liberal, religious community (be that family or neighbors or both) we have an added layer of what wanting means:
It means the destruction of the Garden of Eden.
It means chaos unleashed on the world.
It means our personal damnation and the destruction of the world.

And so.  We learn not to want. Or at least, to not really want. We learn to stuff our wants down. To ignore them.  To pretend they don’t exist. Maybe we learn to vaguely want vague things like the quote above states.  But to know, deeply and truly, what we want?  Well that is not something most of us know how to connect to.  Because we never learned how.

To acknowledge our wants, to connect to them, to know them deeply, is an act of rebellion, yes, and it is also an act of deep vulnerability.

Most of us can make a long list of all the things we don’t want.  It is easy to wrinkle our noses at things and to know our Noes, in many ways.  Knowing what we don’t want is a defensive act.  It is an act of connecting to our knowing, yes, but at a more surface level.  There typically isn’t a lot of vulnerability in saying No to something or someone.  When we say no, we aren’t in a place of needing or desiring something within us to be fulfilled. In fact when we say no, we are saying we don’t need that thing or person to fulfill us.

To want however, is to notice the lack.  To notice what is missing.  To know what could fulfill us on any type of level. It also means, typically, that we need to either rely on another in someway to fulfill that want, or we need to do something different for ourselves, to change a way of being, to break a pattern or cycle, to fulfill that want.

What does it mean to connect to that want, that desire, that need for fulfillment? Well, in our culture, it means we are Selfish. And NOT Good Girls™.  In fact, it means we are Bad Girls™.

And we all know what happens to Selfish Bad Girls, right?

Historically speaking they are ostracized. Or slaughtered. Or both. Bad Girls™ don’t receive safety, or protection, or security.  They are shamed. Used as a cautionary tale. Callously pushed out of the inner circle and community.

I’ve thought about my own social and familial conditioning in regard to wanting. In regard to knowing what I want. In knowing that my wants can change. That I can think I want something, try it out, and then decide I don’t. I’ve thought about all the ways I’ve been told to want is to sin.  That wanting is selfish. That I should be grateful for what I have.

Where I’m left is…
Curious.
Sad.
Frustrated.

In a space of…
Unearthing.
Unraveling.
Unlearning

I’m left in this space of connecting to the things I know I want.  Some may be very surface level (like I want a roof over my head and food in my fridge).  Some are a little deeper than that (like I want to feel good in my skin, to be resilient, to know deep my being that This Too Shall Pass).

Some of my wants, I’m finding, are deeply vulnerable.  I want to feel wanted.  I want to feel loved.  I want to feel connected. I want to be told I’m amazing, smart, funny, beautiful. I want time with the people who matter most to me, and those who are becoming to matter most to me. I want physical contact, sexual and non. I want quiet space to be with myself, both in the company of others and in solitude. I want to feel joy. To feel complete within myself while also being deeply connected with others.

I find myself in this unraveling what it means to want and what it to feel, viscerally, the things I want.

I find myself seeing that wanting isn’t always straight forward.  It isn’t always this or that.  It is sometimes a both and of wanting polar opposites. It is sometimes needing to rely on others to have my wants fulfilled.  It sometimes means looking deep within myself, at the hidden places, the forbidden places, and bringing them to light so I can see where the emptiness is and find ways to fill it, to fulfill it, to fulfill me.

It is not always easy.  It is not always fun.  It has been an adventure.  To figure out what I want through trial and error, exploring this and that.  Connecting to the wants that feel right, honoring them. And to knowing that this may be only what I want right now.

None of this makes me selfish. Or a Bad Girl™.

It makes me human, stumbling along her way, along side you, as we learn to unearth and unravel and unlearn.

Since I wrote the original of this essay, I have not only learned what my wants are, I’ve found them fulfilled in my life in the most unexpected ways. My own opening to possibilities, to understanding my own worth and deserving, to stop settling for less than because it’s easier. It has been an interesting and exciting journey, finding myself back to me, exploring my wants and seeing how some of them are actual needs. Finding connections with people I least expect, and learning how to express my wants in ways that are honest, but not demanding, vulnerable, while also knowing I am strong and resilient. It is a journey, and I’m still one it and may be for the rest of my life. And it’s a journey that is becoming more fun, more exciting, more filled with possibilities every day.

…

This was originally written for my weekly newsletter in July 2017 and has been edited for publication here. To receive my most recent writing, you can subscribe to my newsletter here.

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Learning to feel pleasure after trauma

…as a survivor and a bystander of family violence, desire was hard to trust. … So all of my erotic self was wrapped in ‘how do I associate with pleasure and desire without fear, without losing control, without being harmed?’ I really had to walk out of a space that allowed for me to unravel and unpack those things as separate so I could define my sexuality and my erotic self in relationship to something that did not have to be violent, to understand that desire to be loved and to love your family wasn’t always mired with violent pasts but could begin again with new, healing destinies.
…
…This is about structural violence too and about how I relate to myself through desire when I am deeply undesirable, I am expendable, and I am only here for labor or reproduction? And… then what is my erotic self in that, when you’re devoid of being able to define yourself outside of capitalism and white supremacy? ~Cara Page, in adrienne maree brown’s Pleasure Activism

There once was a time in my life when I considered myself to be relatively asexual. I mean, I liked to dress up and look sexy, but a truth was, I don’t know that I ever actually felt sexy and I definitely know that I didn’t really care one way or the other about the act of sex itself; it was nice and fun and all and also eh.

Looking back at the me of my teens, twenties, and even thirties, I can say that was pretty much my attitude towards any type of pleasure: I could dress the part, even enjoyed dressing the part to an extent, but when it came right down to it I had no interest or strong feelings about it either way. Wearing my clothes wasn’t exactly pleasurable, I didn’t really enjoy food or eating (though I did eat plenty), I generally hated my homes and didn’t take a lot of pleasure being in them. I would zone out on TV, not really paying attention or enjoying what I watching. I didn’t read a lot, and what I did I don’t know that I really paid attention either. 

I lived life through the motions. Not really being present, definitely not being in my body. I could “take or leave” pleasure, because frankly, I couldn’t actually feel it. I didn’t cry a lot, but I didn’t laugh a lot either. 

I don’t know how young I was the first time I left my body, and it was definitely by the age of four and may have been younger. Between the physical violence of my mother and the sexual abuse from various family members and friends, I learned very early on that being in my body was not safe, and was not a place I wanted to be. To be in my body was to be in pain, in fear, confused.

When we add to this being told for as long as I can remember by my father that he wished I was a boy, which was compounded over the years by our culture stating quite clearly that women and girls were less than, of course I didn’t want to be in my body. Of course I hated my body and being it.

Not being in my body meant that I could avoid pain, or so I thought. But what I didn’t understand then was that while I was doing all I could to not feel the painful sensations and emotions of my body and life experience, I was also missing out on any type of pleasure that came my way.

After the birth of my daughter, almost 12 years ago now, I started on a journey of being the mother, the parent, I always wished I had. This lead to me truly beginning my own trauma work, which eventually led me to somatic and body-centered mindfulness practices. I entered into this work, not to feel pleasure, or even to be in my body, or for any reason for myself. I entered into this work for my daughter, so she could have a different childhood and life than mine.

Here’s the thing though, at the end of the day it doesn’t actually matter why I entered into this work. It doesn’t matter if it was for her or for me, if I had any intentions of actually being in my body or not, or feeling pleasure or not. I entered into the work, and the rest, as they say, is history.

While it is true that I experienced physical abuse as a child, and that definitely impacted my relationship with my body and being in it, I know that the sexual trauma I experienced, both in childhood and young adulthood, also has its impact, and perhaps a greater impact on my relationship with my sexuality and with pleasure (sexual and non) itself.

When we don’t feel safe within our own bodies, when “sex” is used as a weapon against us, especially at a very young age when our brains and neuropaths are beginning to develop, it only follows that we would have a very complex relationship with our sexuality and with pleasure.

Sexual trauma impacts us in many ways. It can cause anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation. It can have us live in a dissociate state, outside of our bodies, outside of the present moment. It can have us feeling unsafe in our bodies, in our surroundings, and in our relationships. Because of all this it can prevent us feeling happiness, joy, and pleasure. Which I now believe to be perhaps the most devastating impact of all.

Learning to come into our bodies is not easy and frankly I don’t even think it’s “fun.” It is hard work, requiring intention, patience, and self compassion.

And, in order for us to learn to experience pleasure, we need to come into our bodies. Pleasure, including happiness, including joy, including truly savoring the food we eat, feeling the softness of our clothes, sheets, blankets, smelling the complexities of flowers. Pleasure including being present in the moment, enjoying our loved ones and the beautiful experiences life has to offer us. And yes, pleasure including our sexuality and the acts of sex itself.

But coming into our bodies is only part of this work. An important and large part, yes, but only a part all the same.

There is a deeper aspect of pleasure that we seem to associate with only sex and our sexuality, and that is the pleasure of relationship: deep, vulnerable, honest, relationship. To have these types of relationships, be they sexual or not, we need to trust, ourselves and others. Trauma, and especially childhood trauma, destroys our ability to trust those we love, those who love us because as children those who were supposed to care for us, to protect us, betrayed us instead.

This betrayal is not an easy thing to undo. This betrayal prevents us from allowing ourselves to deeply love and be deeply loved. It stops us from trusting others with our darkest shadows as well as our brightest lights. It keeps us hiding, putting on the appearance of happiness or connection or joy while we are only going through the motions. It keeps us disconnected, feeling alone, and stuck in patterns and cycles that are ultimate harmful to ourselves.

Learning to come into our bodies, learning to trust the messages it is giving us as well as to trust that we can experience all the sensations and emotions in our bodies without harm coming to us, helps us learn to trust other aspects of ourselves which in turn helps us to learn to trust other people (and to learn to know who to trust and who not to).

Humans are social creatures. We are wired for connection, for belonging, for love. To experience the pleasure of being in an honest, vulnerable relationship may be one of the greatest experiences our lives as humans has to offer. It can also be one of the most terrifying experiences as we learn what it means to be ourselves, to be comfortable with who we are, to be present in time, space, and relationship, and to allow ourselves to be truly seen as we also learn to truly see others. 

That fear though, that is our trauma being in control and keeping us in those harmful patterns and cycles. Being brave isn’t easy, and in the end, I do believe it is worth it. 

…

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To learn about my six month Trauma Informed Embodiment™ for Sexual Trauma Survivors go here. The next cohort begins April 15.

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Authoritarian culture, trauma, & our sense of belonging

I’ve also been thinking about how Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is connected to our trauma work and processing. As a reminder:

When we consider how this pyramid connects with authoritarian culture, we can see the ways our oppressive culture and the status quo stays in place.  Authoritarian culture hones in on our need for a sense of belonging. This is how cults work.  This is how many online “spiritual” groups work. This is how our government works.  This is how white supremacy works.

In authoritarian culture, when we follow the rules we get to be in the “inner circle”.  The cost of being in this circle, and having our need for a sense of belonging met, is that we need to follow the rules, to not question authority, to not listen to our own inner knowing and no and sense of something not being right.  When we do this, we are almost always a guaranteed that sense of belonging.

When we break out of that, start to question authority, break the rules, listen to our own inner knowing, we are pushed out of the “inner circle” and we lose our community and therefore our sense of belonging.  This can also impact our sense of safeness, as we know that in groups we are stronger and as individuals we are more vulnerable.  Which then leaves us in a space of scrambling for that sense of safety and sense of belonging.

This is why people who are physically abused by their intimate partners stay: Their basic needs of food and shelter are being met.  Yet they have no sense of real safety, or the abuser provides a sense of false safety and protection.  The one who is abused is typically isolated from any other form of community and so their only sense of belonging is with the abuser. Because their sense of safeness and belonging is precarious, it is almost impossible to move into a space of questioning or leaving.  First they must find another place of safeness and sense of belonging and this takes time and energy and patience from those outside the abusive relationship who are trying to help the abused.

And.

With every authoritarian culture there are the dissenters and resisters. Those who protest.  BUT it is only as these people are able to find each other, and therefore have their need for a sense of safeness and belonging met, that each individual is able to speak out more and more.

Bottom line: We need our people.  This is a basic human need. It is only slightly less important than our need for food and shelter and is directly tied to our sense of safeness.  Without these needs met, humans can not survive.  (Also note that our need for belonging is directly tied to our attachment needs – which are our sense of belonging and being loved).

As a species, we actually do not need to obtain the two higher levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy.  We need neither self-esteem nor self-actualization to literally survive.

And authoritarian cultures count on that.  As long as one has a sense of belonging, that basic attachment need met, then the one is likely to remain compliant and complicit.

How does this tie into trauma?

I have written before about cultural relational trauma. The culture we live in traumatizes us.  Particularly if we don’t fit the “norm” of white, thin, able-bodied, male, upper-middle class (or highter), heterosexual, CIS gendered, etc. Depending on where we fall on the spectrum of meeting or not meeting the “norm” we are more or less traumatized by our culture.

This trauma then lives within us, in our bodies, minds, and spirits.

It is important to note that trauma wants us to isolate.  How this typically shows up for us is not that we all go and live in caves and become hermits, but rather that, in order to fit in and have our need for a sense of belonging met, we hide our trauma.  We don’t discuss it.  We stuff it down.  We try to act and be “normal”. We cover up the ways we are different, the ways we have been harmed, and try to pretend there is nothing wrong.

Again, our authoritarian culture counts on this.  It can abuse and traumatize us as much as it likes and we won’t speak up because we need our people, even if those people are abusive, even if our connections are not deep, even if it is all surface level.  There is safety in numbers.  We do not want to be pushed outside that safety.

When we look at chronic trauma – those who have been repeatedly abused sexually, physically, psychologically, or emotionally – we see the hows and whys that they don’t report or tell on the abuser.  Doing so would again jeopardize our sense of safeness and belonging.

Look at how we treat victims of rape.  Look at how we slut shame.  Look at how we victim blame.  Look at how we question the experiences of others.

That is authoritarian culture at play.  (Note, rape culture is a part of authoritarian culture.  It is another tool to be utilized by those in power).

So, how do we move past all this?  How do we process trauma and move towards an anti-authoritarian and pro-consent culture?  How do we burn down the status quo, knowing that we may be putting our basic human needs in jeopardy by doing so?

We find the dissenters.  We find the resisters.  We find our true people. We find those communities where it is safe to question the authority of the community itself, not just the greater community and culture outside of it.

This is not easy.  It is made somewhat easier by the internet.  It also makes us more open for targeting by those who feel their own basic needs being threatened.

And.

As we find more of our true people, the dissenters and resisters and rebels, the ones saying No More and Not On My Watch, we satisfy our need for a sense of belonging (and also our need for a sense of safeness).  We find our strength in numbers.  We find those who will have our backs and who’s backs we will also protect.

And then, we will rise up together, and burn this all down.  Together.

Not one individual can do this work alone, in a bubble.  We need our people to do this work.  We need our people to fight along side us for justice.  We need our people so we can have our basic human need for a sense of belonging to be met. So we can change the world together.

Together, is the only way we will rise.

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Loving or hating our bodies

I am not a Sunday morning inside four walls
with clean blood
and organized drawers.
I am the hurricane setting fire to the forests
at night when no one else is alive
or awake
however you choose to see it
and I live in my own flames
sometimes burning too bright and too wild
to make things last
or handle
myself or anyone else
and so I run.
run run run
far and wide
until my bones ache and lungs split
and it feels good.
Hear that people? It feels good
because I am the slave and ruler of my own body
and I wish to do with it exactly as I please 
~Charlotte Eriksson, You’re Doing Just Fine

There is a lot of talk about body love and body acceptance out in the social media world. It would seem that we are supposed to love our bodies no matter what, no matter how we feel they betray us, no matter what has been done to them.

Love is a strong word, a powerful emotion. And frankly, I don’t know that I will ever love my body. In early February Ijeoma Oluo wrote on IG about whether she could accept the love of another if she didn’t love her own body (you can see her post here). The post came at a time that I really needed to read it, as I was going through a particularly bad patch of hating my body. 

I don’t know if it’s true that we are unable to truly accept the love of another if we don’t love our own bodies. I think there may be a bit of chicken and egg there, in that having someone love us, including loving our bodies, may help us to love our selves, including our bodies, a bit more. 

But what I do know is that there are definitely times in my life when I hate my body. I hate it’s shape and size, I hate its stretch marks and cellulite, I hate how its aging, I hate how it aches and hurts and doesn’t seem to be able to move in ways I want it to, in the ways it was once able to. It’s not every day. And there are also days that I love certain parts of my body, but never the whole all at once.

While part of my complex relationship with my own body is due to our societies emphasis on what bodies “should” look and move and be like, it is also true that part of my hatred and anger stems from the abuse my body has endured, and how it has responded to this abuse. 

I live with an “unspecified autoimmune disorder,” which means that I have several “markers” of various different autoimmune disorders, but not enough in any one particular one to state “Oh, you have X”. This translates to doctors sometimes don’t know what to do me, and any “treatment” I do is a lot of trial and error and mostly done on my own. This means that sometimes I have chronic pain, but sometimes I don’t. It means that I have a blood clotting disorder that I need to manage. It means my endocrine system needs a lot of support. And it means that what this managing and support looks like can literally need to change from day to day.

I know that my autoimmune issues stem from the abuse my body experienced, Iexperienced, as a child. I know that the sexual and physical and emotional abuse all have had their long lasting impacts. I know the whys and how my body is the way it is.

But that doesn’t mean I like it. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t infuriate me. That doesn’t mean there aren’t times when I hate that my body feels the need to be impacted, to respond, to cry out about the pain it has endured.

And.

My body has survived horrible things. It has kept me alive for over 47 years. It has birthed two babies. It has run two half marathons. It goes on hikes, it snuggles my children, It functions in all the ways it needs to to not only keep me alive, but also so I can raise my children, do my work, and now enjoy my life.

So. There we are. The both-and of it all. Yes there are times that I hate my body and there are times when I am in awe of and grateful for it. But love, I don’t know that I’ll ever get there, and who knows, maybe I will.

In doing my own work of processing the trauma from my childhood, I have been able to come back into my body, to learn to tolerate the uncomfortable times as well as the pleasurable ones.

Because when we are dissociated, when we are disconnected from our bodies and from the here and now, it is true we are able to avoid the discomfort our bodies often express, but it is equally true that we don’t experience the pleasures that we can also have.

Coming back into our bodies, sounds so straight forward. In some ways it is, but in others it’s not. We are each complex beings and our journeys to trauma processing and being able to tolerate all the sensations and emotions we experience can be complex too. There is forward and back. There is progress and regression. 

Coming back into our bodies is not the same as loving our bodies. We can be present in them and not love every part of them.

And.

With time, we can learn to be grateful for what our bodies have endured and still kept us alive. We can learn to be in awe of all our bodies have done and do. We might even begin to start to like certain aspects of our bodies, both its physicality and its functions.

And maybe, we learn to love our bodies as part of our whole Self, an integral and necessary part of who we are.

Maybe.

We’ll never know though until we begin the journey.

/…/

The next cohort of Trauma Informed Embodiment™ for Sexual Trauma Survivorswill begin on April 14 and registration is currently open. This six month program is part support group, part practical coping and embodiment skills, and part psycho-education. During our time together we will utilize the first phase of the Trauma Informed Embodiment™ approach I have developed. There is a sliding scale fee, and alternate payment plans are also available. To learn more go to http://gwynnraimondi.com/tieforsexualtrauma