A story about recovering from abuse through processing with the body.
Misty grew up in a abusive household with violence, isolation, and neglect.
She ran away and had to figure life out ‘on her own’.
Today, she has a stable job, a few friends, and many challenges here and there, especially socially, but she is getting by.
She knows deep inside there are some emotional issues that she is afraid to open up to.
She can’t afford to breakdown or ‘lose it’.
She comes to therapy, slightly worried, but knowing it will be a necessary process — yet, she is willing, the secret ingredient.
Misty shares stories, I encourage her to only share as far as she wants.
We don’t have to go where she doesn’t want to go.
She shares, and she welcomes her emotions to emerge.
I encourage that, as it is good to allow emotions to express.
Expressing emotions heals emotional repression, which can lead to harmful self-destructive tendencies.
Once we feel ready, we shift to the somatic portion, and Misty lay’s down comfortably on the massage table with a blanket, ready to receive, in a slightly fragile state, yet open, willing, and trusting.
Gentle touch techniques create an immediate effect on the nervous system, metabolising some of these difficult, deep, generational, and old emotions that have been running through her body.
With the support of another gentle presence, the physical expression of these emotions can go from being stagnant and closed, into internal motion, flow, and release — in the most subtle, and gentle way.
We continue to work together, with trust, openness, ease, and rest.
The parasympathetic system (rest and digest state) is active, and Misty is in a dream-like, almost sleeping, yet aware.
At the end, she wakes with a deep sense of rest, and feeling more sharp, alert, and soothed.
What was once a fragile state, transformed into an integrated, process, and witnessed journey that has now crossed it’s threshold and no longer holds her back.
Every now and then, when those memories come, she has the somatic tools to navigate them. Along with the support of a contained professional therapeutic setting to process challenging and complex emotions..
Misty feels more connected to her body and she can decode what the body needs, how to control and change it’s state, while allowing it to be authentic and truthful in it’s expression.
The names have been altered to assure and respect their privacy.
