Trauma Therapy.
Go from surviving to living | Gestalt Therapy in Amsterdam city centre.
You did well.
You have made it through. Something bad, horrendous, dangerous, happened to you. Chances are, if you are reading this page you didn’t have the most responsive and sensitive environment.
Having no-one to emotionally and situationally be in tune to what it was that you needed in that very moment. How horrible to witness something so bad, without a relational ground to feel carried, or be able to collapse and cry on someone’s shoulder. And you did it, you made it through.
Maybe it took you a while before you could sort of find a non-overwhelming daily routine. Good job. And now, it’s getting increasingly hard (again). You notice you just can’t relax in your body. Maybe your body expresses some pain, maybe your relationships suffer, whatever it is, you “just” want to feel better. But most importantly; you never want to go back to drowning, with no one to notice. But then, how?
When feelings re-occur, our bodies desensitise. If I don’t feel it, it will be safe. Truth is, it can’t prevent what already happened.
Not feeling. Feeling nothing. Some body parts might hurt or feel numb. Maybe the words flee as soon as you try to address what happened to you. It is completely normal when you went to such an ordeal. It’s important to know that even the feeling nothing, means something and there’s space to explore the silence, the numbness, the stuckness, in relation to me as a therapist and other reliable people. Providing you with a sensitive, responsive, contact in which a new outcome can be made possible. Reassuring your body it’s ok to start feeling the feelings (Figure 3.2), because now there’s support. The goal of trauma therapy is never to drag up a story, or dive in the deep-end. Working with trauma means slow, steady, reliable, little steps. Going from survival to living. And it means polishing your self-support game with the people around you.
Transgenerational Trauma & Wisdom.
We all come from a world, a land, a culture, a city, a family lineage. Going back to our ancestors, our bodies carry the information and pain of events in their personal, societal or worldly lives. Through epi-genetics our bodies “know” what can be helpful and what can be dangerous as well. Years after the fact, from our genes, information is used to navigate life. And not only pain, also wisdom is right there, in our bodies. In sessions, we allow this knowledge to unfold and see what messages they hold, for you.