Lockdown and Pre-birth Trauma

We are in unprecedented times and for many it feels like we are looking at ourselves through a magnifying glass. I certainly feel it like this. You are probably feeling fairIy strong emotions – happiness, fear and anxiety, grief, frustration, anger, hate, love. You will most certainly notice familiar ways of surviving it all, some healthy, some less so. You may be learning new creative skills, keeping physically healthy or you may literally lockdown and dissociate from it all feeling low and lifeless. Maybe just feel in a bubble. Or carry on in an “I’m fine” and make the best of it way. And you may find yourself becoming over-anxious, rigid and obsessive. The hygiene regime against COVID-19 certainly can create a high level of anxiety.

Clearing out the clutter seems to be a common theme of our conversations right now whether we do it or not. And of course that means the clutter of embodied relational trauma that we carry and which affects our health, energy, and levels of stress which can so easily suppress our immune system – so vital for us right now.

Our unresolved early attachment biography will get triggered in the patterns we see in ourselves and in the way we relate to those we share lockdown with.

With years of experience facilitating constellations, I cannot help but think there is a parallel between our lockdown experience and how it was for us in the womb waiting to be born. In both cases there is no escape from the place you are in, how safe and held that place feels and whether you feel the love and care of another.  All kinds of emotions may surface for you.

The survival strategies we have refined to great complexity over the years resulting from our early pre-verbal trauma may also start to become apparent and more obviously an obstacle to whether we feel we are living or just surviving what could be an opportunity for so much more.

There is no better time than now to explore who we are and want to be in a world that is collectively beginning to do just that. The more self-aware we become, the more we resolve our personal trauma, the more likely the world will do the same thing and in doing so hopefully bring health, equality, a fairer economic system and environmental sustainability.

The Identity Constellations method of self-enquiry is remarkably effective online and that is the safe and only way to work right now.

I have worked 1:1 online for six years doing IoPT but now experienced an online workshop as participant and facilitator, and it backs up what I have always felt about online work : it adds something different.