Adults who are experiencing trauma from childhood abuse are more common than people might think.
Abuse can come at the hands of a parent or close family member. It can be a situation where alcoholism or mental illness is involved. It can occur in a loving home where parents are just trying to keep their heads above water and don’t really notice the signs. It can be a situation where the parents don’t even know about it because the child has been threatened and is too afraid to disclose the situation. There are so many different scenarios in which childhood abuse, both physical and mental, occurs.
Whatever the circumstances, it is important to know that healing for that young child can happen when that child is actually an adult. Notice that I said… the child needs to heal. And… that child can heal years later when that child is no longer in a child’s body.
Through a very powerful NLP Coaching technique called Time Line Therapy®, I guide my clients in revisiting childhood events from a safe perspective. They imagine themselves floating high above the event… maybe even so high up that they are imagining themselves in the stratosphere as an objective observer of their lives. Or, they can imagine themselves in a movie theater watching the events play out on the screen from the safety of their seat in the back row of the theater.
As an adult watching this scene play out, they can clearly get some lessons that enable them to release the negative emotions and trauma associated with the event.
In these circumstances, anger, sadness, fear, hurt, and guilt may all be present simultaneously. Anger can be directed at parents for being too busy to notice, the perpetrator for taking advantage of an innocent child, or even themselves for not running away or telling someone. The child may have held onto some guilt for thinking that they somehow brought it on themselves.
Complex emotions are always involved in situations like this, and we work through all of them until that adult sitting in my office can leave it in the past, where it belongs. The biggest lesson the subconscious mind might really learn is that “that which does not kill you makes you stronger.” You simply cannot change “what is” or “what was,” so it is very important to gain an empowering belief around the event, which allows acceptance of the situation vs. resistance, which only keeps negative emotions alive.
If you want to know more about how hypnosis and NLP coaching techniques can help you, please always feel free to reach out for a complimentary and confidential phone consultation.
Jayne Goldman, MBA, C.Ht., Founder and Principal of Best Life Hypnotherapy in Los Angeles, is a Certified Hypnotherapist and NLP Master NLP Practitioner and Coach.
