Hello, Beautiful People who are here reading my continuing journey! I am so happy you are a part of my life and enjoy reading my updates. It’s been a while since I’ve felt like sharing as I’ve turned away from the public eye to focus on my own healing and self discovery. I have also been writing the new, updated version of my book which I hope to be ready and published soon. I am still very much passionate about sharing my learning and experiences of parenting, unschooling and healing trauma.
I have been in therapy now for several weeks, working with a professional psychologist. When I went in to get my referral, I was very clear that I did not want to work with someone who specialised in CBT (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy), as I knew from experience that this would be working only at the level of thoughts and beliefs, and would not reach the deeper emotions stored in the body. I found the perfect therapist, and began a confronting and powerful journey into healing childhood trauma, and I am starting to see changes in my life for the first time! It is also confirming what I have always truly known on a deep level about how we heal trauma and the importance of feeling our emotions.
As I have shared before, my healing journey began in the spiritual community with teachers, healers and fellow seekers on the path to self awareness. This opened me up to a whole new world beyond feeling stuck as a victim and realising I had free will to choose a different path – a path of healing. I delved deep into teachings about the nature of reality, training the mind, connecting with stillness, changing beliefs and healing childhood trauma. I spent years questioning my thoughts, changing my perspectives, meditating and transforming emotional experiences.
Every practice, teacher and healer brought something important into my life and my journey, just at the right times. I had learned how to be in a peaceful relationship with my children, face my inner demons and deepest fears, have healthy boundaries, and connect with my true self. I had become a master at nurturing my soul and being “spiritual.” But something was still missing. I was still suffering with bouts of depression that were becoming increasingly unbearable, I still didn’t feel I belonged here on Earth, I felt excluded and lonely, I worried excessively about my health and that I could die at any moment, I thought terrible things were going to happen to my family, and I was still repeating unhealthy relational patterns with my husband.
Although useful in the past, I began to realise that spiritual practice was no longer helping me in the way I needed. I no longer needed to nurture my soul, I needed to nurture my inner child and address the trauma I had experienced in the past. This is when I decided to leave spiritual practice behind and go in a new direction of healing; I began seeing a professional therapist to finally go back and heal the trauma that was still affecting my life. The sessions have been aimed at recovering memories that became so painful I blocked them out.
Digging up the past is something that had caused me to feel ashamed, especially within the spiritual community, as there was such an emphasis on “being in the present moment” and focusing on non-beingness, and while these practices did help me at times, what I now know I needed was the permission to go even deeper into the pain and stay with it. I had done this from a spiritual foundation, as a spiritual being, but I now needed to do it as the human me – the inner child trapped inside that continued to suffer. I also needed to do it outside of the realm of spiritual teaching or guidance, and with someone professional and focused only on processing the trauma.
This new way of healing trauma isn’t that different to how I have healed it before through meditation; it just leaves the spiritual language out of it and is focused more on the human emotional experience rather than the non-beingness. It’s a visceral experience that connects me to the original trauma through the physical and emotional sensations in the body, and allows me to become the inner child and process the trauma. No amount of spiritual practice or teaching has been able to shift some of these patterns like working with a psychologist has. These are patterns I thought I would have to learn to accept and live with for the rest of my life.
It validates what I’ve always felt to be true on my healing journey – the only way to fully heal trauma is to go back and fully process and integrate our traumatic experiences. We can never go back and change how we were treated by others or get back the love we never had; we can only go back and fully grieve for what we lost and find the strength in ourselves to change the experience of the trauma.
This isn’t to say I don’t agree with other healing modalities, as they were all an important part of who I am today and prepared me for the even harder work of facing myself. I am forever grateful for the presence and guidance I have received from those who have walked with me on my path; they will always have a special place in my heart. This is solely about my own journey and experiences of healing that I wish to share with others who can relate and may benefit.
I’ve understood for a long time that repeating patterns and experiences are connected to the past, but I had no idea that particular patterns and feelings I was experiencing were connected to moments in time I hadn’t considered. So exactly how has this therapy helped me to connect to these moments and change repeating patterns in my life?
At the time of beginning therapy with a psychologist I had been feeling very depressed and like all of my unmet needs and suffering had come all at once, and they had! I was extremely tired of feeling alone and like I couldn’t function as a normal person in the world. I no longer wanted to be a spiritual being in a state of non-beingness; I wanted to feel human and blend in as a part of the world. I was tired of remembering my parents in a certain way, felt trapped in my past and wished I could erase my life and start again. I felt on edge constantly and was always angry with my husband. I had frequent moments of wanting to scream, and sometimes did in my car while driving, and wanting to completely demolish and smash things to pieces. I felt totally tainted and poisoned by the life I had lived growing up. I just wanted to finally be free of the past.
I am reminded when someone says to me “You shouldn’t dwell on the past” or “You need to stay in the present moment” that this approach never worked for me. The more I tried to forget the past the stronger it came knocking in ways I hadn’t recognised. Since my therapy sessions I feel less ashamed for re-visiting my past, as I have seen that doing this is the only way to release myself from it. As long as I avoid it, it will continue to play out in unhealthy ways in my life. Our past comes knocking for a reason; we did not process our trauma as children because we were too young to know how, and did not have conscious parents to help us do so. These traumas are then repressed and stored in the body but never disappear until we go back as adults who know how and fully process them. Then these stuck feelings are able to flow and move on.
Since starting therapy based on healing childhood trauma, I have been able to discuss my feelings and use them to access repressed memories and heal them. What’s not important to me is whether or not these things actually happened; they may have, or it may be the way I interpreted them as an infant, a child, or a teen. What matters to me is that I have been able to go back and grieve for what had been lost in these moments and reclaim the power and strength I needed in order to move forward. I have been able to say things to the people who hurt me that I was unable to say at the time. This has been very healing. I have also noticed that I no longer worry as much, feel like I’m going to die, get as angry with my husband, or feel the need to criticise as much. I may need to work on these things some more, but for the first time I feel like things are changing for me.
Healing will continue to be a part of my life; it’s an ongoing journey. All we need to understand is that when things feel tough or like they keep repeating themselves, it’s a call to listen to ourselves deeply and heal something that needs to be healed. It can be difficult to recognise this in ourselves and feel like we have a choice to be different, but we always have a choice. The way we feel is not our fault; most of us didn’t get the love and understanding we truly needed as children. But it’s our responsibility as adults to get the healing we need in order to live happy lives for ourselves and with our family.
Wishing you all happiness and healing,
Love Leisa ❤
Leisa Coleman 