From health crises and relationship conflict to growing self-awareness and communication.
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.
Ada’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.
When Ada came into therapy she was experiencing:
‘A lot of relationship stress. I felt out of control of myself. I was very sensitive to everything. Anything and everything felt emotionally triggering for me. That was so exhausting.’
The emotional stress that Ada was experiencing was coming out in physical symptoms ‘I had chronic bladder infections (even though tests did not show any cause), neck tension, headaches and back pain. I wasn't sleeping either – I had insomnia and was having a really rough time. I was experiencing migraines that meant I couldn’t really function for 3 days per week.’
What ultimately prompted Ada to seek help was feeling like it was the only option left.
‘I was at the bottom out point – it was like “I need to do something, or I don't know what will happen next”’.
Ada was introduced to Core Energetics by chatting with Dana. She began her journey with 1:1 work with Dana and began attending CoreExplore classes to complement her individual work.
‘When I heard Dana talking about stuff – how your body shape reflects relationships and stuff that happened when you were a kid. Examples that she gave were fitting to me. I was thinking ‘How does she know this about me? I was like - mind blown’.
With all our clients, we are constantly working with our 6 key principles of change.
During the first months of working with Ada, our focus was on slowly supporting Ada to feel her emotions and opening the contraction in the areas of her body that were expressing physical symptoms. There was a strong link between Ada’s unfelt feelings and her physical symptoms.
When Ada wasn’t feeling her feelings, her body would make her feel through physical pain and tension. The extent of Ada’s physical symptoms really reduced her capacity to deal with the relational stress she was experiencing at the time.
Our work together during the early stages included gentle sensation tracking, using gentle and soothing movements that helped Ada find more ease in her body and support as waves of feeling began to bubble up. We also kept a close eye on the relationship between what was happening emotionally for Ada, and what was expressing physically.
We also worked very consciously with opening areas of contraction in Ada’s body in the areas where she was experiencing the most symptoms – in her pelvis, back, head and neck.
As the hold on Ada’s emotions began to soften and the contracted areas of her body began to open, her symptoms reduced, and some symptoms disappeared completely.
‘After 3 months or so working with Dana, all my bladder infection the symptoms went away completely. I had insomnia for a solid 6 months before seeing Dana, and within a few months I was sleeping fine. The migraines I was experiencing went from making my unable to function 3 days a week, to experiencing a headache 1-2 days a month (which is connected with my cycle and responds to pain medication)’.
As Ada’s physical pain and symptoms began to subside, her capacity expanded to look more deeply at what was causing her to feel so ‘sensitive, triggered and exhausted’ in her relationship. Ada found that she was reactive and ‘bitchy’ to her partner and also became highly stressed and desperate when her partner would leave the house for any reason.
‘I came to learn that these bitchy moments or behaviours were just a reaction to something that has a deeper meaning for me. It’s not coming from right now – it was coming from not wanting to be abandoned’.
Ada started to feel that she was regaining some level of control over what was happening, and as she gained awareness around the deeper causes of some of her behaviour. The next phase of our work was about releasing and transforming the old patterns that took over when Ada felt triggered or challenged in her relationship.
This meant unpacking the origins of the big feelings from the past and helping her body to come back into the present as her capable adult self.
‘I don't have the same behaviours around being abandoned anymore. Before working with Dana, I would freak out every time my partner would get angry and him leaving the house to go out was a real anxiety point for me. Now I know he'll always come back, and I genuinely don’t feel scared anymore.’
Once the intensity was taken out of Ada’s reactions to her partner, she could start to see conflicts and disagreements without blaming or accepting blame when things would go pear shaped at times. Nobody had to be ‘in the wrong’ to sort things through and Ada could stay connected to herself and her heart through conflict.
‘I feel more settled in myself because I know what's happening and can also understand why my partner reacts sometimes too.’
For Ada, the biggest gain was ‘about the awareness and how I can describe what’s happening in a way others can understand. I can understand it for myself, which takes away some of the anxiety about the 'strange' things I am doing or thinking or feeling. This helps me to respond to others differently because I can understand them better too.’
A real proud point for Ada was that she was finally consistently investing in herself in a way that felt nourishing for her.
‘I am really proud that I am still coming to sessions, and I am sticking with it. Usually, I get excited about something and do it for a couple of weeks and then it stops. I am still here and still feelings the benefits’.
Ada hopes to really get clear about delving deeper into her direction and relationships
‘I want to figure out what my true boundaries are and what I really want for myself in my life!'.
Thank you so much to Ada for sharing your experience so generously and courageously.