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Tamika Rose, “Somatic Healer” and “Soul Embodiment Guide”, talks about how our sense of safety or lack of it begins from conception (though some might argue it starts even further back than this, in past lives). Our nervous system is shaped by our mother’s experience and her nervous system. The energy in which we were conceived, then the energy of our prenatal experience while our mother carries us in her womb, and finally how we were birthed all create an imprint that has lifelong ramifications.

For the first time in my life, I am starting to work on my birth trauma with a psychologist. Birth trauma can include: a cesarian section, forceps or suction delivery, breech birth, posterior birth, a birth with one or more interventions, and separation from our mother after birth.

I was my mother’s first child, and her first experience of childbirth was horrific. The hospital’s monitors weren’t working properly. The monitor said I was distressed (who knows if that was true), so the staff thought they better get me out. They attempted to pull me out with forceps (including the use of rotational forceps), but none had experience using this equipment. Finally, after what I imagine would be an excruciating ordeal, a doctor who knew how to use forceps arrived and got me out. My mother was crippled after the birth and couldn’t walk. She had to get someone to pick me up and bring me to her.

No one thought that the birth would impact me. But my psychologist believes I have been grappling with this violent entry into the world all my life. When I was a child I would open the photo album and show my friends all the bloody, gruesome pictures of the birth. My mum ended up removing the photos as she didn’t want me showing them to my friends anymore. I had a lot of symptoms of trauma as a child, which no body picked up on. I was hyperactive. I have always had a lot of problems sleeping, and slept in my mum’s room. I wet the bed far longer than most children. I also had a reoccurring nightmare where a sadistic dwarf who reminded me of Rumpelstiltskin would come up out of the ground and pull me under. I’d be on the playground and he’d come up through the tire rings. I’d be in the swimming pool and he’d come up through the plugs/filters at the bottom of the pool. I now for the first time in my life understand what was actually pulling me. It was the forceps.

We don’t remember our birth consciously, but it’s embedded deep in our nervous system, psyche and body. As Tamika writes, it will play out in our feelings, thoughts, beliefs, behaviours, relationships and how we experience and live our lives. I have found that when I have taken marijuana or ayahuasca I have been taken into the trauma. I would be moaning in pain, having a panic attack, dissociating, and feeling like I couldn’t breathe. As I wrote about in another post, I thought I was being raped. I was kicking and screaming “get off me get off me”. I was left wondering if I had been raped at some point in my life. I didn’t understand where all this came from. But my psychologist says that birth trauma and rape feel the same.

My body seems to have developed its own defenses to prevent this kind of trauma from happening. I have vaginismus, which means I cannot fit anything up there, even a tampon. I would not be able to have sex.

I am starting “attachment-focused” EMDR with my psychologist to help with my birth trauma and other chronic relational trauma. My psychologist says it is much better than traditional EMDR. There is some information about this therapy here. It involves “bilateral stimulation” which my psychologist says helps connect the left and right brain hemispheres and process the trauma. I was reading a bit about bilateral stimulation, and according to “Anxiety Release”, it promotes a relaxation effect, helps you become less “stuck” on what is bothering you, shrinks the trauma and decreases worry (though it can produce  some unexpected responses in some groups of people such as migraine sufferers, those with acquired brain injuries, and those with Complex PTSD or DID). My psychologist sits near me and taps on my left and right foot with her feet. We haven’t started bringing up the trauma yet. Right now we are just building up my inner resources, which involves building an inner “support team” consisting of a “protector”, a “nurturer”, and a “wise figure”. My protector is a big version of a sea king doll I recently bought.

I will imagine him zapping away any demons with his fork, or strangling them with his octopus hand. My “nurturer” is the angel who visits me while in hospital, and my “wise figure” is Luna Lovegood. I think this kind of therapy involves you visualising a peaceful/safe place as well, which I have decided will be up a tree (the place I loved most when I was a child). Right now though I am struggling to connect with these figures and places.

Steph writes about her EMDR experience here. I am only in the preparatory stages, and getting used to my psychologist sitting so close to me and touching me. This is all very new to me. I don’t have any physical contact in my life and I find it both nice and scary. We are experimenting with how I feel with her sitting at different distances from me. At one point when she moved her chair back my right ear started ringing. My psych told me this is a symptom of trauma. I experienced it again when I left the session. I also had a headache and a slight tremor, and that night I had a nightmare. I feel like the therapy is already doing SOMETHING, and I am unsure how I will go when we get deeper into it. I might go numb and struggle to feel anything, or I could get right into the trauma and end up kicking my psych. Who knows. But I have been seeing this psychologist for years and we have built a trusting relationship, so there is no body else I’d rather be doing this work with.