Most of us have some things in our lives that we understand intellectually,
But still live inside emotionally.
Some of us react or get activated by things and we don't really know why.
We get angry,
We want to withdraw,
We shut down,
We're nervous,
We fawn,
We want to get away.
We understand it intellectually,
But we wonder,
Why am I still doing this?
Even though I know intellectually I'm distant from what happened as a child now.
But still it feels like it's living inside of me.
What I know after decades of working with people.
Is that what happens in childhood?
In our relationships,
In our family.
Stays with us and shapes our adult relationships.
If you grew up having to read everybody else's faces,
Having to read the atmosphere in the room,
Needing to take care of other people so that you would feel safe,
So you understand what everyone is feeling,
Except what you're feeling.
If conflict still feels dangerous,
Still makes you anxious so that you automatically fawn to keep the peace,
You do whatever you need to do,
You crack a joke.
These aren't necessarily qualities of your character.
They may be adaptations that you made in order to feel safe and stay connected with the people you love.
And needed to stay on good terms with for your very survival.
Your parents held the keys to the house,
To the car,
To the refrigerator,
To the bank account,
To your life.
Staying connected with them was paramount.
It was survival,
So rupture in these deep attachment relationships.
Can feel like rupture within yourselves.
And revisiting.
These childhood or inner child wounds.
Can once again feel unsurvivable.
But it's not.
That's why I created RTR.
Relational trauma repair because RTR helps us understand what happened between people.
In our attachment relationships,
Not just what happened inside of us,
So that we can go to the origin of that relationship and repair it.
Instead of just talking about what happened from a distant place,
We embody it,
We experience it,
We feel it.
We name it.
We give it language,
We elevate it to a conscious level so we can do that thing.
Of thinking about what we feel instead of shutting it down or hiding from it or hiding others from it.
We live with more courage and more faith in our ability to tolerate our intense emotions.
For example,
You might do a timeline.
In which you trace the development of attachment wounds over time,
You might talk to the self at three,
The self at seven.
You might write a journal entry as that self,
As that self.
Pouring out the truth of that relationship.
In your heart and then you might reverse rolls.
And look at it from the role of another person in your attachment figure.
Or you might do a social atom,
A kind of family map,
And understand the context in which that relationship wound occurred.
Reality.
And how to re-find that part of yourself.
Give yourself a voice.
And create some space so you can feel now what you couldn't feel then.
So you can say the words now.
That you couldn't say then.
So that you can heal.
And RTR isn't only for people who've had trauma.
RTR is for all of us.
Living in this human body and what flesh is heir to,
We all experience rupture.
We all experience neglect,
Disappointment,
Hurt,
And we all need to process those emotions so that we can reclaim the parts of ourself that go underground to stay safe.
We don't need to carry the same nervous system bracing we felt as a child in an environment where everybody but us had power.
We can reclaim.
The adult part of ourselves,
Welcome that healed child back in,
Or that hurting child back in.
And re-empower ourselves to live a more present life today.
We can learn to breathe into the wound,
Process it.
And understand it.
Rather than shut it down again.
We can learn to see ourselves more clearly and ourselves in relationship.
With more autonomy,
More freedom to choose the life we want to live.
