From anxious and frozen to feeling safe and joyful
Are you working hard on yourself through your own personal development work or talk therapy, but you still don’t see the changes you want in yourself and your behaviour? Why?
Because to make life long shifts you ALSO need to engage with the unconscious patterns held in your body.
Core Energetics is a process that helps restore you restore the natural flow within your body and connection to the Core of who you are, so you can experience more pleasure and fulfilment in your life.
At CoreExplore online, we focus on you. What you hope for and what your unique gifts are, and then guide you step by step at your pace to resolve the unconscious patterns holding you back.
Mariah’s journey below is just one example of how the Core Energetics process and our CoreExplore principles of change, work in practice; and how they can help you make lifelong changes that can completely change your life.
Mariah was experiencing anxiety and would often go into ‘terror/freeze mode’ in her day-to-day life. Mariah understood logically that she was safe, but ‘my body would still react as if there was a threat’. Sometimes, it would take weeks to get out of the ‘stuckness/frozen panic’. Mariah was also experiencing a lot of tension in her body, feeling stiff, in pain and fatigued.
‘I knew something was holding me back from being in life, and I knew it was in the past, but I couldn’t get my body to move forward from it.’
Instead, Mariah would ‘would go out into the world and put on a mask. I was the happy, bubbly gal, who didn't have a problem ever because I was so scared to share how I really felt.’ But when she wasn’t at work she was ‘at home in my bed, not knowing what was going on. I spent all of my free time sleeping or scrolling [social media]’.
Mariah decided to reach out after, she had a car accident that made her symptoms even more extreme. She had been told by another therapist that she had ADHD, was Autistic and probably bipolar and recommended she go on medication. Mariah knew this wasn’t the whole answer for her.
‘I knew that I needed someone to really trust to help me connect to what I was afraid of. My feelings. I went on a quest to find someone to help. And thankfully, I found Dana.'
Mariah reached out by booking a free call with Dana to see if she felt we would work well together.
‘We booked a session and ever since that first session, I felt so safe with her. I trusted her. She just gave me so much space and listened to me like no one had ever listened to me. This is why I chose to work with her.’
With all our clients, we are constantly working with our 6 key principles of change.
It was clear from what Mariah was experiencing that she had experienced being in situations that were genuinely unsafe and threatening through her life. That meant it was especially important to create a sense of safety in our relationship as well as help Mariah to feel safe within herself. This meant allowing the willingness in her body to take the lead in deciding how we would work together and encouraging and supporting Mariah’s genuine response – both the ’yes’ and the ‘no’.
At first this looked like listening to Mariah’s story and slowly supporting her to notice what was happening with her body and involuntary movements as she spoke. Often Mariah knew she was freezing or frozen, but she hadn’t yet connected this with her physical state.
‘I remember my first session with Dana, she told me that I wouldn't even move when I had a feeling come up.’
Mariah’s reality about what she had experienced had been denied and negated through her life and her struggles were used as evidence by others that there was something ‘wrong’ with her. There hadn’t had space in the past for her to genuinely share her experience without interruption, judging, minimising, or criticising. It was important that our work together gave her this space.
Helping Mariah connect to her own story and her body as well as genuinely reflecting what she had experienced started to soften Mariah’s perception of herself.
‘Dana acknowledged that I was seeking out relief from childhood trauma and she didn't question it.’
Many of the early offers for movement were met with ‘no’s from Mariah. Being able to say ‘no’ and have her ‘no’ accepted and supported in connection was important in Mariah feeling safe in our relationship.
These offers were always subtle and spacious with lots of support for Mariah to share her genuine internal response in the moment. We worked together to over time to find ways of moving in subtle ways when Mariah felt her natural willingness or curiosity arise.
Mariah knew how to force through things and put on her ‘happy mask’ while doing it. Our work together focussed on allowing the person under the mask to be shared and subtle expressed and celebrated. Over time, the Mariah under the mask was coming out more and more – she is curious, creative, funny, vibrant, social, strong, and sensitive.
As Mariah slowly and gently opened to movement, more sensations in her body came into her awareness. Mariah’s body patterns tended her towards disconnecting from her body and feelings and keeping herself stuck.
Mariah’s energy tended to be stuck in lots of density in her body or would ‘disappear’ or ‘go somewhere else’ when she felt too much intensity in her body. We slowly worked to grow Mariah’s capacity to experiences manageable waves of emotion, sensation, and movement, while moderating intensity and continuing to integrate and release with vibration (neurogenic tremoring).
Mariah felt like she ‘didn't know how to feel any of my feelings’. Through our work together, we were able to help Mariah become aware that these patterns helped to keep her safe at one point in her life, even though they were causing her pain now. Her body was stuck in a protective pattern from the past and was unconsciously reacting to the present as if it were the same as the past.
It was important for Mariah to feel that her body reactions were not trying to punish or hurt her but were simply ‘habitual coping mechanisms that the child Mariah put in place many years ago.
Alongside Mariah becoming clear about the impacts of the ‘dysfunctional dynamics in my family’ on her life, she was also becoming aware of how her natural response to these dynamics had been blocked internally to protect her at the time.
More subtle movements were able to extend into more fluid, expressive movements as Mariah was able to access her genuine original impulse to situations from the past. Mariah was able to allow things to flow more freely with her body more and more as we built her body memory of being safe while feeling strong emotions.
Mariah longed to ‘speak up, be honest and share how I really feel. I wanted to be able to say no when I didn’t want something and yes when I did’.
As we were releasing the patterns in Mariah’s body and creating new habits of being aware of and expressing her emotions, her reactions in her day to day also shifted. She has been able to make decisions about people and environments that were impacting her negatively. She has been able to set boundaries and reinforce them when challenged. She has been able to speak honestly and feel safe within herself.
‘I have been able to remove certain relationships that were leaving me feeling drained and upset. I have been able to identify what boundaries are and learn what is the best for me.’
Mariah now knows that ‘when I have moments of experiencing old beliefs/internal voices, I can see that they are not the truth. I have more compassion on hard days than I have ever had. Instead of being mean to myself and punishing myself, I am nice to myself, I am kind and I treat myself as if I was speaking to my little Mariah ’.
‘I have so many more resources available to me and I can now ask for help without feeling like I am being a burden. I have become so accepting of who I am as a human. I actually enjoy who I am. I like the person I am.’
Mariah’s capacity to feel and experience what is true for her has grown exponentially.
‘I can feel my feelings without becoming shut down. I can give space to what is there and instead of running away from it, I sit with it. I can listen to my feelings and sensations in my body, and not feel confused about what is going on. I now understand that all emotions and feelings are a part of the human experience and each day I find a little more acceptance within this. Now I can take a real look at life and bring a lot more logic and understanding to myself and my experiences and it's given me a lot of relief.’
Mariah genuinely knows in her cells that ‘I am important, and I matter and what I want matters.’
Mariah is curious and open as to what comes next for her.
‘I am looking forward to just being in life more, and using the tools that I now have, and the new understanding of myself to see what I can create and experience. I feel joyful to just be in life and looking forward to whatever comes my way’.
Thank you so much to Mariah for sharing your experience so generously and courageously.