Trauma Resolution Sessions

Creating Deep and Lasting Emotional Integration

Living in our modern, emotionally disconnected world, trauma happens to us - whether we grow up in obviously abusive environments or not. We learn through our traumas that in order to be safe, we must behave, think, and feel in certain ways that often compromise our authenticity. The experience of trauma takes us from feeling whole, and splits us into “parts” - ones that seem to get us approval, and ones that seem to get us rejection. On a subconscious level, we learn that it’s safe to accept the parts that are approved of, but also that to stay safe, we must suppress, disown, and deny the ones that cause us to be rejected. As a result of the denial and suppression of these ‘unsafe’ parts that cause rejection, these aspects of who we truly are (and often the details and memories of the events that caused these splits) become shunted into the subconscious, into the shadow.

This splitting, or fragmentation, is a totally natural coping mechanism of the human psyche, and it causes something called Structural Dissociation. The entire process of Structural Dissociation plays out on a subconscious level - so that we are usually not even aware of the aspects of ourselves that we’ve rejected, suppressed, and disowned. They simply seem to “disappear,” and when this happens early in childhood or infancy, we often don’t even remember they were ever there in the first place - but we are left with a sensation of discomfort that over time turns into depression, anxiety, addiction, and all the other “isms” we experience in our adult lives.

As we grow and our lives change out of the traumatic situations we experienced during childhood, adolescence, and even young adulthood, we get signals from our body - in the form of “symptoms” - that it is time to re-integrate these hidden and forgotten aspects of ourselves. We find that in order to resolve our emotional (and sometimes physical!) pain, numbness, and distress, we must begin to repair the relationships we have lost with our fragmented aspects of self.

Trauma Resolution Sessions RECOVER, RESOLVE, and INTEGRATE these lost aspects of self, so that we can move forward with our lives feeling more whole, centered, happy, and clear.

This is not regular talk therapy, this is gestalt emotional processing using the internal family systems, structural dissociation, and attachment theory models to actually *resolve* the emotional pain and poor self-concepts that lead to our lives and relationships feeling hard, bad, and/or unmanageable. This type of work results in functional changes to your everyday life, the relationship you have with yourself, and your relationships with others.

The level of benefit you get out of these sessions is dependent on a few things: the level of trust you and I create together in our therapeutic relationship, your internal willingness to go deep and be with your uncomfortable/painful emotions, and how long you feel committed to the process of reshaping the behavioral/emotional patterns you’ve become habituated to operating under. 

Weekly sessions are not necessary for these processes to work, and in fact I usually do not recommend a weekly standing appointment. It is best to book sessions when something is “up” for you - ie. when you’re triggered/activated or when something feels like it’s an active issue or problem for you. That’s when we get the best and most far-reaching results. (Keep in mind this does have the potential be weekly or even more if you find yourself easily and often triggered, but it doesn’t *have* to be to get results). 

The 3 main trauma healing techniques I use in session with my clients are:

• Parts Work

• The Completion Process (detailed below)

• Emotional/behavioral health education (aka framework building)

As a licensed clinician, I have spent the last decade focusing my work with patients and clients on emotional and mental health. I have completed a variety of continuing education courses and credentialing processes detailing the inner workings of the human psyche and emotional trauma, and have developed a deep and unique sensibility regarding the treatment and management of trauma and many mental health concerns. ***Please note - I am a board certified Chinese Medicine practitioner and a licensed acupuncturist with a decade of mental and emotional health education and training, as well as a certified Completion Process practitioner, NOT a licensed psychotherapist, social worker, or psychologist.*** See more about my credentials and education here. Read testimonials here.

What does a Trauma Resolution Session look like?

Sessions with me are not always held to a specific time frame, if we are working within a memory or with an inner part that needs extreme care, we will take as long as it takes to achieve the feeling of ‘completion.’ These sessions have lasted 45 minutes at a minimum to over 5 hours at a maximum, but typically run for about 1 - 2 hours. If we are using parts work to explore the inner world or framework building to develop greater consciousness and understanding of the psyche’s structure, sessions are capped at 2 hours.

Your session will start with a brief discussion of the current pain you’re experiencing in your life and wanting to resolve. Within the session, we are using the feeling of a specific, currently active emotional trigger to access the memory of the first time that feeling ever occurred within your body (usually before the age of 8). You do not need to actively “think of” the memory - as many people with trauma do not have readily-accessible memories of much of their childhood. It is my job as your guide to help you coax the memory from your subconscious. Once we have access to a memory, we use the Completion Process to work within the memory and resolve the emotional distress that was never resolved at the time. We will know that the emotional distress has been resolved when you have a palpable feeling of relief and closure.

Sometimes a memory that needs relief through the Completion Process is being "held" in the subconscious aspect of your psyche by a part of you who is in resistance to letting you feel, see, and work through it. These parts are called “protector parts,” and their resistance is always due to very real and important (to them) reasons for wanting to protect you from acknowledging painful feelings and memories. That means we have to use Parts Work to create safety for (and a healthy relationship with) the part of you that's in resistance to changing or feeling vulnerable, so they can get on board with healing that aspect of your trauma. Occasionally when this happens, we may spend the entire session only on Parts Work, and in these cases sessions are capped at 2 hours. I want to emphasize that Parts Work is every bit as beneficial and healing as going through the Completion Process.

We end the session by reflecting on any insights you received, takeaways you have, and/or integration “homework” you may want to work on between sessions.

One session is enough to have a significant impact on the way you feel and move around your daily life, and multiple sessions allow you to work through deeply embedded issues and traumas that affect and permeate into many aspects of your life.

The Completion Process

The Practice of Putting Yourself Back Together Again

The Completion Process is an 18 step therapeutic visualization technique developed by international emotional and relational health thought-leader, Teal Swan. This process is a comprehensive approach to healing core traumas that recur and show up as emotional triggers and limiting beliefs preventing us from living empowered lives free of fear. Teal writes, “everyone on earth, regardless of how good his or her childhood may have been, has experienced trauma to some degree that continues to influence our lives today. This is a technique that goes to the core of all problems, where suffering begins in our lives. The Completion Process unhooks us from those past experiences and integrates our fractured aspects, rejoining us with our present day self.”

The Completion Process walks you through an emotional trigger that’s currently present in your life by following that emotion to your earliest childhood memory of it, and then within that memory resolving the needs of that "inner child" version of you. The relief this method provides comes through in two ways: first through the mental visualization and subsequent emotional and physical experience of resolution for the parts of you stuck in the loop of that memory, and the second through providing a framework of conscious awareness through an evolved perspective of the events that occurred.

I trained under Teal Swan personally in a rigorous, immersive course, becoming certified in the Completion Process in early 2021. While I’ve been studying and practicing in the field of resolving emotional pain and trauma - counseling and treating patients and clients professionally for about a decade - this process and technique is by far my favorite I’ve come across. I have both personally experienced and witnessed in others a healing and transformation that is unparalleled in its depth and permanence.

Teal developed this technique over a decade of years spanning her own abuse, healing, and work with her clients. She popularized this technique in 2016 as a method of self-healing through her book The Completion Process. Since then, she has traveled the globe teaching and certifying high-level practitioners to facilitate this process for others.

Within my own healing work, I personally always do this process with a practitioner, because, due to the specific type of trauma wounding some of us experience in childhood, it can be very challenging to take ourselves through the Completion Process in an in-depth way without being witnessed, guided, and supported. If you have questions about trying this method by yourself or a with me as your facilitator, please get in touch and we can schedule a complementary consultation call. I highly suggest reading The Completion Process book for yourself, even if you plan to work with a practitioner.

Here are a couple reviews of her book and method:

The 18 Steps of The Completion Process

It’s actually not necessary to know and be familiar with the individual steps of this process in order to benefit from working with me as your practitioner - but if you’re anything like me, you’ll want to know exactly what you’re getting into beforehand, so your mind has a framework it can use to get itself on board with the process. I’ve detailed the steps to the Completion Process below so that you can familiarize yourself with them.

1. Create a Safe Haven

   We set up a Safe Haven (safe place) in our mind, and we also create a primary “Safe Support Figure.” This has to be done only once, unless you wish to create a different kind of place at another time. Your Safe Haven may evolve, change, and expand as your inner child(ren) discover their needs and desires. This place can be indoors, or outdoors, or a combination of both. It can be contained to one room or a home, or it can be an entire kingdom or landscape. There will be a water feature in your Safe Haven - it can be any one you like, whether it’s a bath, pool, river, ocean, waterfall, fountain, shower, or something else completly - it’s only important that it feels right to you.

2. Emotional Vipassana

   We practice Emotional Vipassana in order to explore the feeling or trigger. Vipassana is a Buddhist meditation technique of being present with a sensation. When we have a strong uncomfortable emotion or feeling in the present, we close our eyes and sink into the feeling. We familiarize ourselves with the unique sensations or “feeling flavor” of the feeling. We are unconditionally with that feeling - experiencing and observing it without needing it to change.

3. Validate the Present Feeling

   We give the emotion or feeling the message that we are completely with it, that we see it as valid, that we care about it, and that we are ready and want to know what it has to say. We are open to fully receiving it. In this step of the process, it is common for resistance to surface. The resistance may be to the process as a whole, to a part of the process, or to being witnessed in your emotional vulnerability in general. All of that is okay and welcome, and a skilled practitioner will be able to help you navigate through that resistance into the next step by allowing the resistance to be felt and experienced in its fullness. It can feel overwhelming to be present with an emotional process we’ve been avoiding for a long time, so any resistance that comes up is fully welcome and honored. Resistance to feeling and processing your emotions and/or being witnessed in emotional vulnerability does NOT mean you can’t use this process. It simply means you are in need of someone to patiently and lovingly guide and be present with you as you feel and work with the parts of you that have doubts or fears about change and healing.

4. Invite the Memory to Surface

   We use the sensations of the “feeling flavor” that we’ve explored in step 3 like a rope connecting us to the origin or root cause of that very feeling. We ask, “when was the first time I felt this feeling?” And instead of mentally chasing the answer, we let our subconscious offer it up to us like a bubble floating up from the depths of the ocean in whatever form it comes. Your body and whole being is incredibly intelligent and has a wisdom our rational minds sometimes cannot understand. Sometimes the only access we have to a painful memory is a singular sound, smell, color, or word. This is okay. You will be guided and supported to allow the memory to develop at its own pace. Sometimes it all comes rushing back to you, and sometimes it takes a few minutes for it to fully reveal itself. Whatever you are shown by your own subconscious - whether it’s a memory you’ve been aware of for a long time, or one that hasn’t brought into your conscious awareness in years or maybe not at all since it occurred - it is the “Right” memory. Even if it makes no sense to your conscious, rational, adult mind - it is coming up and out for a reason, and together we will discover what that reason is.

5. Re-experience the Memory

   If/when a memory surfaces, we observe and experience the memory in whatever way it comes to us. We take time to be present with the intensity of the feeling of the memory. We emotionally and visually re-experience it from the 1st person perspective of your younger/child self present in this memory.

6. Validate the Feeling within the Memory

   We give the emotion in the past (same as we did when it was present tense) the message that we are completely here with it, that we see it as valid, that we care about it, and that we are ready and want to know what it has to say. It is safe to feel this feeling, and we are open to fully receiving it.

7. Step into Adult Perspective within the Memory

   When we feel ready, we step out of the perspective we are currently in within the memory (usually the 1st person perspective of your memory’s child-self), and step into the perspective of our current adult self that is witnessing the child’s memory.

8. As Your Adult Self, Validate the Child’s Emotions.

   We comfort and show affection and unconditional, focused presence to our child self in the scene with one prerogative in mind: validation of the child’s emotions. We give the child the message that it is right and OK to feel how they feel, and we give the child permission to fully feel how they feel. If we feel unequipped to do this, we bring our Safe Support Figure from the Safe Haven, or any Being from any realm you feel safe calling into the experience, into the scene to do this for our child-self.

9. Await Relief

   We wait for the child-self in the scene to naturally move in the direction of relief (keeping in mind the child-selves may just need you to prove that you will be there for them forever, just as they are). We allow this step to take as long as it takes - there is no rush at all.

10. Call Back Other Fractured Aspects of Self

    We “call back” any other fractured aspects of the self that are present in that one scene and if they are ready, we lovingly merge them into the core child-self, so we are only working with one child-self. When we experience trauma, aspects of our consciousness fracture off - we experience splits. One part of the split is what you continue to consciously identify with, and the other parts are shunted into the subconscious - and usually left at the scene of the trauma. In this way, it’s important to call back these fragmented aspects so that your inner child-self within this memory and emotional process reclaims the feeling of Wholeness. Sometimes, the fragmented aspects are not ready to merge, and that’s okay too.

11. Meet the Child’s Needs within the Memory

    When and if the child feels validated and is ready to move forward emotionally, we take action to find a resolution to the situation at hand. This is where creativity and individuality are important. We must find out what need is not being met and meet it. We can say things to our child-selves that make them feel good and safe and loved. We can stand up for our childhood-selves in whatever way is necessary. We can provide the perpetrator of your trauma with education or healing of their own so that they don’t need to act in abusive or neglectful ways. In this step, we trust your inner child-self to know what is needed to alter the circumstance, and if they aren’t sure or are having a hard time coming up with solutions, together we offer suggestions to your inner-child self. We can get very creative here with solutions - in this visualization process we can do things that may be unthinkable in our tangible reality. The goal here is to allow the inner child-self to feel in control and safe. Above all, we trust the child-self in the scene to know what they want and need - even if your adult perspective doesn’t readily understand why.

12. Choice to Stay or Go

    After a feeling of relief has occurred as a result of taking action to change the circumstance in the memory, we give the child the choice to stay in the memory/visualization or to come to the Safe Haven.

13. Check for Completion

    If the child chooses to stay, we ask the inner child-self why he or she wishes to stay - usually it is a feeling within the child of the process being “incomplete.” We respond accordingly, and we repeat Steps 10–12 if necessary before bringing the process to a close. As we repeat the steps, we check again for any more nonintegrated, fractured aspects of the child-self that might still be stuck in the memory. If we find any, we merge them into one child-self and ask again. We trust the child to know what is right for them, and we meet all of the child’s needs within the context of the memory. If the child wants or needs someone to stay, we leave an aspect of ourselves or a Safe Support Figure there with our child-self. If the child chooses to go to the Safe Haven, the child is brought into the Safe Haven. If there are fragmented aspects of your inner child-self that have come forward from the memory but chose not to merge with the central child-self, we invite them into the Safe Haven as well - they also have the choice to stay or go.

14. Enter Safe Haven and Deactivate the Memory

    Coming into the Safe Haven, the memory the child was taken out of is then closed (for example, turned off like a tv screen or popped like a balloon).

15. Create Purification and Healing

    Place the child (or children - if there are multiple) in the healing water, and bathe them as a purifying and healing ritual for entering into the Safe Haven. The child drinks the water as well. This symbolically ends and creates distance from the previous life in the memory so that the child can begin a new life here in the Safe Haven.

16. Meet the Child’s Needs within the Safe Haven.

    The child’s needs and wants are met within the context of the Safe Haven to the degree that the person doing the process feels as if the session is complete.

17. Option to Stay or Merge.

    The child is given the choice to stay in the Safe Haven or to rejoin and merge with the adult perspective. If the child chooses to stay, lovingly embrace and support that choice. If the child chooses to merge, we imagine the child merging with our adult perspective and becoming a part of us, like a puzzle piece going back into place.

18. Return to Conscious Perspective

    We return to conscious perspective, taking at least a few deep breaths as we bring our consciousness back to real time. And we gently take time to re-acclimate to the sharpness of our surroundings and the new level of integration and presence that we feel.

* if you invest in a package of sessions, the 3 sessions must be used within 1 years time. Sessions are not refundable, but they are transferable.

If you are in a crisis or if you or any other person may be in danger, the following resources can provide you with immediate help. The Completion Process should not be used in place of medical, psychological or psychiatric advice. Although Teal Swan and her team are in the process of clinical trials, this process is not yet peer reviewed.

• http://www.suicide.org/international-suicide-hotlines.html

• Another international list :
  http://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/

• America:

  The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-TALK [8255]) is the United States based suicide prevention network of 161 crisis centers, that provides a 24/7, toll-free hotline available to anyone in suicidal crisis or emotional distress. After dialing 1-800-273-TALK (8255), the caller is routed to their nearest crisis center to receive immediate counseling and local mental health referrals.

• UK:
  hotline: +44 (0) 8457 90 90 90
  https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/suicide/

• Canada:
  http://suicideprevention.ca

• India:
  http://www.aasra.info

• Australia:
  lifeline: 13 11 14
  https://m.lifeline.org.au

• New Zealand:
  https://www.lifeline.org.nz/

• International rape crisis hotlines list:
  http://www.ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

• Addiction hotlines:
  http://drugabuse.com/library/drug-abuse-hotlines/

• Sex and porn addiction hotline:
  Australia: http://www.sexaddictionaustralia.com.au
  http://www.itv.com/thismorning/sex-pornography-helplines