Working "underneath" your survival strategies is the best way to resolve symptoms of chronic stress & trauma

In society we have been taught to meet deadlines and live in a constant state of push. Trauma survivors and people living in a chronic state of stress also learn to push to survive. This is the most familiar state for them.

To make matters worse, in the last decade, the ever growing coaching industry has been throwing result-based ideas and deadlines for healing.

Thus it’s not uncommon to bring the same attitude and unrealistic expectations of a quick fix to your healing journey.

Unfortunately this attitude will bring more confusion and frustration. We don’t have control over the pace of healing. In fact, having a fixed agenda will just add more pressure to your system. This actually delays healing.

If we push the system will bring up all sorts of survival strategies. It will put up a wall and at best you will be strengthening your survival strategies and at its worst you will be likely to face retraumatization.

The beauty of Somatic Experiencing (SE) and the methods I use with my clients is that it creates more space in the system.

The system can finally “breathe” and from there it will allow us to work underneath the survival strategy layers, without bringing up strong states of self protection.
Only then the system will feel safe enough to reorganise and true healing can finally happen.