5 Things You Can Do Today if You Have Experienced Severe Trauma

It can feel really overwhelming to have the load of severe trauma on you. Here are some things you can do today to help… And who knows? You may have already started making your way through the list before you even read it!

This list you are reading has been made by someone who was tortured and is now virtually all healed, with real happiness in her everyday. You can have that too.

Therefore, the first on the list:

1. Make sure you are safe NOW. No one can take responsibility for your safety but you. You have enough to deal with from the past. Make sure you can use your present to create the safety needed for recovery. You may need to reach out to others, perhaps even strangers, to create that safety. And even if people let you down sometimes, know that your present safety is possible.

2. Commit to complete healing. Don’t settle for being basically functional or just off drugs or whatever – know that complete healing is possible, and is possible for you. That you can be happy!

3. You need a team for the big stuff, and don’t settle for less than excellent help. Even on the public purse, really excellent assistance is available. If you work with someone you don’t really quite trust, you will slow down your healing. It’s up to you to figure out if some help is better than no help; just keep looking until you are satisfied you have the right people on your healing team – you may have more than one!

4. Explore the energy-based ways of healing. Trauma is stored deeply in the body, and in the energy fields around the body. Talking therapies can’t touch this – I should know, I was in therapy for 20 years with some very excellent practitioners and I still had loads to get through when I was fortunate enough to find the energy modalities.

Here are a few worth looking at (there are more):

a. EFT – emotional freedom technique – is a way of gently stimulating the meridians whilst talking in a particular way. It is easily learned and something you can play with on your own. A free manual is available from www.emofree.com. An excellent EFT practitioner for severe trauma is Dr Shoshana Garfield – visit www.shoshanagarfield.com.

b. PEP – Psychoanalytic Energy Psychology – This is a way of working with the way the energy system interfaces with the body and psyche. It is a combination of many energy-based modalities created from the loving genius of Dr Phil Mollon – www.philmollon.co.uk.

c. TAT – Tapas Acupressure Technique – This is also meridian-based, and created by the acupuncturist Tapas Fleming to successfully treat her own breast cancer. She’s amazing, TAT is amazing – go to www.tatlife.com. And have I mentioned yet that you can get a free manual too?

d. Advanced Integrative Therapy, formerly Seemorg Matrix Technique – created by Jungian psychotherapist Asha Clinton. It works on patterns more deeply help than in the meridians. Please do visit: www.seemorgmatrix.org.

5. Read these books:
a. Phil Mollon’s Psychoanalytic Energy Psychology, published in 2008 by Karnac Books. Phil explains the most popular modalities and explores different ways of maximising their efficacy with severe trauma. Available from Amazon.
b. Coping with Trauma: Hope Through Understanding by Jon Allen, explains with compassion and wisdom what trauma is and how trauma is physically converted by the body into illness.

Severe trauma is a step beyond into an unspeakable wilderness. There is a way out – your way. These 5 action points are something you can do today to speed up your journey.

By Dr Shoshana Garfield - www.ShoshanaGarfield.com