An Introduction— Forty Years Of Tears: Healing Complex Childhood Trauma

Healing complex childhood trauma is a long and winding journey.

For me, while these brutal young experiences had been effecting every day of my life, true healing only began in my forties.

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Over the years, its purpose has changed several times. I hadn't been able to settle on a specific theme for my writing and content. Recently I haven't been posting articles to my blog simply because its purpose stopped resonating. It no longer felt aligned.

However, recently things changed.

I changed. I finally began my journey toward healing complex childhood trauma.

Through this continued experience, I discovered what I need to express—what so many unseen women need to express.

This discovery began in a single moment in my forties, changing my life forever.

I was attending a training at Life Centered Therapy, a group practice in Waltham, Massachusetts. There we provide somatic and spiritually based psychotherapy. During our trainings, we break off into dyads and practice on one another.

These trainings are often more like retreats than professional commitments. Much of it is focused on own personal growth supporting us to provide authentic support to our clients. I went to that training with the intention of resolving pain in my throat and chest chakras. As an intuitive, I knew something was energetically stuck and disrupting my ability to keep up with the tasks of daily life.

I went into the dyad hopeful and open. LCT incorporates a kinesthetic approach through muscle testing. This allows clinicians to communicate with the deepest knowing within our bodies beyond the conscious mind.

During the dyad, my partner and I observed by the founder of the practice, Andy Haun. As my partner asked questions an muscle tested for answers, my body indicated confusion. It indicated that what I thought I was there for was not what actually needed attention.

I was surprised, interested, and nervous. I did not like the thought that something could be revealed that I was unaware of.

After that, the muscle testing became inconsistent— I knew what the problem was.

Vulnerability.

Vulnerability had always been difficult for me, both within my own therapy and in my personal relationships. I remembered one instance of significant trauma in my childhood that seemed to have led to nearly impenetrable walls. However, over the years, I had thought they had loosened.

Muscle testing clearly indicated that my body was not allowing another person to enter its inner world.

My partner switched modalities to parts work, a practice that explores sensations in the body, guiding the client to discover underlying, subconscious meaning.

Through this exploration, my body revealed profound distrust held in my lower abdomen. It felt like an overwhelming nervous tingling. Through it arrived thoughts about its meaning that had never before surfaced; ideas and images that I had no explanation for.

It expressed fear of people, fear of intimacy, fear of others knowing too much about me, and intense distrust; sensations began traveling through my legs, begging me to run away. As I continued to journey further within myself, the level of vulnerability surpassed anything I had allowed before. The intense discomfort in my body was close to unbearable.

This is when my life changed. The founder leaned forward, speaking to me with kind authority, interpreting what my body had revealed. He said to me"

I don't believe you ever had bipolar, I believe you have always been told you were the problem, being diagnosed bipolar was a way to force you to embody 'I am the problem.' The people who forced this on you were the people who abused you. They took their hate and placed it onto you; they took what was the problems within themselves and forced them into you. Since then, you have come to believe you are the problem

Yet, you were never the problem. You have embodied that because of them. You were never the problem.

His words seemed to seep deeply into some place within that had never been accessed before. I could feel an immediate shift, an opening. I didn't know what it was, I just knew it was was happening.

Over the next couple of days, my body continued to process the session. I could feel energy moving through fibers and cells, strange sensations creeping through my bones.

One afternoon I took my usual seat in meditation. As I listened to beautifully mantras of kirtan my body began to vibrate. It began shaking more and more powerfully. I allowed my arms and legs to follow the urges as I collapsed to the floor. I didn't try to stop the convulsive movements— I don't know that I could have.

It went on for several minutes. As the involuntary movement calmed, a tiredness like I'd never experienced before overwhelmed me. My legs and arms felt numb and my eyes felt too heavy to open.

I knew it had been a fundamental release of energy that had been trapped within my body. I am very aware that convulsions can occur within deep meditation; I wasn't concerned about the convulsions themselves. I was frightened of whatever was bubbling through to the surface. I felt small in comparison to what beginning to move out of my body.

After that meditation, my body-mind began to show me traumas that I had not previously remembered, and the incidents I had recalled became more clear, more visceral. Trauma after trauma after trauma emerged.

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I cried for seven months—and the journey continues.

I have come to know I never had bipolar. I have complex post-traumatic stress. I have come to fully understand that I never was the problem. I was made to look like the problem so that cruel people did not have to face themselves. I was the scapegoat.

This blog is dedicated to my need for expression and to the parts of me that have been buried for decades. They yearn to be witnessed.

This blog is dedicated to my sisters— survivors of horrific childhood abuse and neglect. I know what you are going through, and I want my writing to provide support, love, peace, and validation. I want my writing to convey the pain you may not be able to express quite yet. I want my writing to embody all of our voices, because we all deserve to be heard.

The parts of us that have been barely surviving deserve to heal.

We can navigate this journey to healing— but we can't do it alone.

My beautiful sisters, I see you and I love you. Lets do this together.

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Sarah Dionne is a supervisor and consultant. She is also on track to be ordained as an interfaith reverend in 2027 through Tree Of Life Interfaith Temple in New Hampshire.

Sarah embodies love and compassion as a mother, partner, friend, and professional.

Learn more about her at Dionne-Assoc.com

Sarah also provides clinical supervision, consultation, and in-service training.

Learn more

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