PTSD & Trauma Healing
What is PTSD and Trauma Healing?
For the past 20 years I focused a good part of my practice on helping people heal from trauma. As the founder of trauma release method, I’ve also trained professionals in how to utilize integrated methods to assist the body and the mind in releasing trauma.
Trauma is not only about the memory of an event, trauma is held within the body in very specific patterns. These patterns, when not given the space and attention to heal properly, become layers of trauma within the psyche and body and eventually will begin to affect everyday life.
For more on trauma release method, click here.
Sample case of working with PTSD
***Note, this is a more severe case than some others. Trauma can mean something different to every person and each case is taken as an individual journey. I’m offering this case, with the permission of my client, to provide a map to see how I might work with another person should an example be useful. Thank you for taking the time to learn more about my work and offerings.
In 1998 I had one of my first experiences working with severe PTSD.
My client was brought in by her husband, when they sat down she was nearly catatonic. As an intuitive I picked up on some of what was occurring (with permission of course) as I was asked to read her because she couldn’t speak. The things I saw were sequences of events where she was brutalized in various ways. Without going into specifics, at various times within the beatings she had left her body and when she came to me she wasn’t fully in her body as her body was no longer a safe place to be.
It’d been over a year since the events ended, and it was clear there was no part of her that felt safe.
We communicated through specific movements to begin. We agreed on a movement that meant yes and a movement that meant no. Once those were established, we agreed on a gesture that meant ‘need more information’ and one that meant ‘please ask another way’. Then there was a specific gesture for ‘stop now this is too much’.
I asked her if she wanted her husband in the room and she said no. After he left, she visibly relaxed, not because he was scary to her but because she felt she had to hold it up for him to feel better and now she could just let it go.
The first two sessions were a lot of sobbing, silence and holding space. I gave her two homeopathic remedies to help her unconscious and nervous system begin to release the trauma. In the third session, the remedies had released enough she could speak a little. Each session was more movement, more access to aspects of her that needed to heal, more learning, more integration. Weaving a web back to life was slow and consistent. We used homeopathic medicine, various forms of somatic healing, NLP, shamanic visioning work and more and in every session she led with what came up for her, we agreed on a path, and allowed for an outcome.
After 5 sessions, she felt she released enough to begin to make decisions on what she wanted to become, how she wanted to reintegrate after the trauma and who she wanted to see herself as and we started the rebuilding process.
Now a year later, she is a different woman than she ever was before, integrating what she learned, what she survived, and who she now chooses to be from a place of strength. She is no longer afraid every moment, she has healthy boundaries and says ‘no’ with clarity often. She also decided on creating a different relationship with her husband and her family as she is not the same woman she was. It was difficult for them at first, and now, they see what growth means.
Trauma doesn’t need to define us. It can be a healing teacher when we have to tools and the support to move through and beyond it to become the next stage of who we are. JenSatya
Testimonials of Trauma Release with Jenifer Satya Shapiro
