(HS Levine 052519 2017) Bottom-Up Healing for Childhood Sexual Abuse

Course overview

Jenny came to Peter ready to work: "I realized that I was living mostly in my head and not understanding my body at all and what was happening to me." She also came with a history of traumas-awakening during surgery, being hit broadside by a semi-trailer truck and something she first referred to as "my early childhood trauma." That trauma was sexual abuse by a brother that began early-three to four years-and continued into her early teens. Peter's work with Jenny is carefully paced. He begins with a question "what do you want today?" That question is intended to instill, from the very beginning, the idea that Jenny is in charge-providing an antidote to the sense of powerlessness Jenny carries from the trauma of sexual abuse. Once Jenny inhabits a physical stance that's contrary to shame and powerlessness, they take another step. Once she is physically engaged, feeling lighter and less afraid, they move on to create another beneficial experience-sensing and maintaining her boundaries. Finally, Jenny imagines herself-feels herself-running which is the body's natural response to threat. So instead of freeze and collapse, she experiences the relief and release she could not get as a child.