Healing Stories
Carol’s Journey
Carol was successful as an executive administrator. She was articulate and confident in so many areas of her life except those times when her husband was critical. In those moments she was entered into a world of “unspokeness,” where having no words took a hold of her. This was an inner place where all she had learned about herself, her ability to be assertive, be a strong professional, of healthy centeredness evaporated, fell through her fingers like sand.
Without knowing it Carol was in a state of her history. She no longer saw her husband as her husband but was in a sense “time traveled back to another time and place in her childhood”.
It was the world where Carol originally learned whether relationships and the world was safe. Expectations and mindsets, ways of listening and seeing under stress formed here about will she be responded to or ignored. Is danger around every corner? Am I wanted? Can I be an active agent in my life or not? Does criticism and a certain tone of voice mean I’ll be punished and left alone.
Very young feeling states about whether Carol mattered or not to her dad formed at this time within her psyche and nervous system. Places where whether she mattered or not to others for what she did and didn’t do…and said and didn’t say, for how she looked the part, looked pretty, looked innocuous when necessary. For how she performed and delivered, for who she made happy and who she made sad. Places it was not safe to matter as well as being placed into positions of mattering too much and being given responsibility without the authority to make it happen.
Taught that she could never be good enough to make her parents happy she had to be a reflection of them.
When her husband was angry and critical Carol slipped through the looking glass between here and now. Her nervous system guided by her history responded the way it did 40 years prior. It went into a freeze response. She “stalled” in mid-air.
Our work together helped Carol begin to separate out her past from her present. She discovered a part of her that had wisely gone into hiding long ago. A part of her self that had never give up on being found again.
That someday to be returned back to her true self was now. Carol was reintroduced to that little girl waiting for her. Embracing this part of her vulnerability and inner wisdom she let her know she mattered. Carol saw her own goodness.
Our work together addressed these places between now and then, experiences that we all travel to under duress, habit or a particular trigger— a role of your partners eyes, a difference of opinion, a certain tone of voice. Places where our mind and body had to shear away from one another for smart and good reasons early on in our lives.
Over time Carol began to recognize the parts of her that needed to know they mattered. Rather than being whisked away upon hearing that certain tone of voice and look of her husband she found her way to stay with herself in an empowered present as an adult while keeping her little girl within her heart safe and cared for.