These examples of some of my clients have been chosen either to illustrate points in the accompanying articles, or just to demonstrate the connection between childhood trauma and adult illness. In some of them, it's easy to see the connection, once it's pointed out. In others, the connection is not so easy to see, and treatment then becomes a question of how much trust you have in the healer.
It's important to understand that these are pretty simple, clear-cut cases with not much complexity. If a person has a serious, chronic disease, or worse yet, a collection of conditions, their case will not be as simple as the ones described here. They most likely have layer upon layer of emotional trauma that needs to be sorted through and healed one at a time. (The well-known analogy of peeling away the layers of the onion.)
Client #1
An elderly woman had a broken bone that would not heal. For twelve months, she had been almost an invalid, able to walk only a little or not at all because of the pain. She had been moved into her daughter's house and was waited on hand and foot. Her doctors had no idea why the bone wouldn't heal. The first two times I worked with her, she felt much better afterward, and she could walk more easily. But the relief lasted only a few days and then the pain returned. On my third visit, I was shown the reason for the bone not healing: She was the center of attention because of her condition; her children pampered her and took care of her; she loved it! If the bone were to heal and she could take care of herself again, her children would go back to their own lives and things would return to normal for her. I shared this information with her, and assured her I knew she wasn't doing it intentionally. Still, she was not pleased to hear it, and, not surprisingly, I was not invited back. But I spoke with her daughter a few months later, and she told me her mother was all healed up; she was dancing and everything!
The "true cause" of her bone's refusal to heal was an unmet need to be taken care of like a helpless little girl, because she didn't get that growing up. That need was met by her being pampered for months by her daughters. And even though she didn't like what I told her, the fact is, she didn't consciously want to be an invalid. Once she knew what was going on (even if she didn't consciously believe it), then she was able to release that need and her body was able to heal. She just needed somebody to make her aware of it.
Client #2
This man came to me with extreme pain in one leg. It had been getting progressively worse for months, and had reached the point where he was in pain more or less constantly. He limped when he walked, couldn't sit for long at a time, and also couldn't lie in one position for more than a few minutes. Consequently, he was getting only a few hours sleep a night, and he was just a wreck. He had been to several doctors with no luck, and was finally referred to me by another client of mine.
Obviously, relieving the pain was the first order of business, so I asked if he would be able to lie on my treatment table. He said he probably would be okay for about 15 minutes before he would have to move to a different position. We worked on moving the pain out of his leg; as well as doing it myself, I also showed him how to do it, and he did a fairly good job. He was pleased to see that his leg was feeling better as we worked. We talked some about his life, and I pointed out ways in which he was sabotaging himself. They were things he had never thought about, and he agreed with my observations. When we finally stopped working, he was amazed to find that he had lain on the table in one position, without moving, for over an hour. He stood up, and walked around; his leg felt much better! Wow! What a difference! And he had had the experience, himself, of moving the pain out of his own leg, and feeling it happen. (This man is definitely on my side at this point!)
Then I told him what I had been shown as we were working. The cause of his pain was that his mother didn't have time to give him all the attention he needed when he was a child. It wasn't her fault; she had to work all the time to support her family. It wasn't his fault that he needed more attention; we need what we need, and that's different for everybody. There was no blame anywhere, just a situation that needed to be remedied. It wasn't an easy cause-and-effect connection to see, by any means, but maybe the fact that his leg was feeling so much better would gain me a little credibility.
So I recommended things for him to do. Continuing to move energy out of his leg, in order to control the pain, of course. But the pain was just a symptom, so I suggested things to remove the cause that was still alive and well inside of him. Simple things that didn't cost much if anything.
But he couldn't do it. He couldn't accept what I told him was causing his pain, because it didn't make sense to him. It wasn't even a bad childhood, as he remembered. So, despite all the positive experiences he had working with me, despite the fact that he could walk out of my house without limping, he rejected everything I told him. The person who sent him to me told me later that he was still searching for a doctor to help his leg.
Client #3
When I lived in Texas, I was a Registered Massage Therapist, and this woman came to me for a massage because, as she said, "she was tense." That was putting it mildly; every muscle in her body was clinched! She said she had always been that way, and didn't know why. She was thin, and her face was drawn; she looked much older than she was.
I began to work on her, and she responded very well to massage, as I did it. In other words, as I massaged a part of her body, it relaxed as it should have. But as soon as I moved to a different area of her body, the part I had just worked on tensed up again.
After a while, I saw an image in my mind: a fawn, lying very still in the woods. In case you don't know, when the mother deer leaves her fawn alone to go search for food, the fawn stays absolutely still and quiet. No matter what happens, it won't move or make a sound, because that's how it survives. Along with this image, came a flood of information, then other images. I saw a child sitting in a small space, legs pulled up to her chest, quietly sitting in a little ball. I knew that I was seeing her, as a small girl, sitting tensely, quietly, in a closet, being still and quiet like the fawn. Because as long as she stayed out of the way and unnoticed, she was less likely to get hit!
I told her what I saw, and what I knew, and she said yes, she had spent much of her childhood like that. I didn't ask who the abuser was because it just didn't matter. What mattered was that it was 30+ years later, and her poor body had never realized that it could finally relax! And she had never made the connection between her childhood and her constant state of tension and anxiety as an adult.
After I pointed it out, she readily accepted the idea. Because she lived over a hundred miles from me, additional visits were not an option for her. So I gave her as much information to work with as I could: I taught her energy releasing exercises and a meditation, and recommended several tapes or CDs to help her work on conscious relaxation. I also suggested she find a therapist to help her release the experiences. At least, with the knowledge of what was causing her tension, she had a place to start on getting rid of it.
Client #4
This client was well aware of how her childhood had caused the problems she was having as an adult; all she needed from me was help dealing with it.
As a child, she had been sexually molested, repeatedly, by a relative. She told her parents about it, and they did nothing to stop it. As an older teenager, she was abused by her boyfriend, and again found no support when she told her parents about it.
When she came to me, she was in her 40s and married. She was having serious problems with her husband concerning their sex life; she had deep anxiety regarding the sexual well-being of their daughter; she had various medical problems with her sexual organs; and she was dealing with tremendous amounts of anger toward her parents.
As I said, she knew perfectly well what had caused all of it. So we worked on releasing all the various energy components of her trauma from her body, as well as bringing in energy for the organs to help them heal physically.
Client #5
A man I know was treated very badly by his father when he was growing up. He was abused physically and verbally from the time he was very small until he grew up and left home.
One thing about being a boy is that, regardless of how you feel about your father consciously, you have an unconscious belief that says, "I'm supposed to be like him." For this boy, that belief took the form of, "My father hates me, so I guess I should hate myself."
So, in his mid-forties, he was diagnosed with leukemia. There are many ways he could have (unconsciously) chosen to "hate himself." His particular method was to fill his body with white blood cells so it would destroy itself.
There is no treatment to tell about here, because, although I know the man, he is not a client of mine, just someone I know well. I tell his story here because the link between his childhood and his adult disease would never be guessed by anyone, yet it's so easy to understand once the workings of his unconscious mind are explained.
Client #6
This woman came to me because she was constantly making up negative scenarios: Her partner was going to leave her. People were talking about her behind her back. Nobody liked her. She was making her life miserable, with no actual evidence that any of these things were happening. In addition, she was in a job she disliked, and in a relationship that was very unhappy. She didn't like herself or the way she looked, and she didn't like her life.
What was happening was that she had a terrible self-image from her childhood. She had been a large child; not fat, but big and tall. So the other kids teased her, and while her parents didn't blatantly criticize her, she was aware (correctly) that her mother looked down on her because of her large size. So she developed a horrible image of herself and hated her body. And because she didn't really like herself, she imagined that other people didn't like her either. She felt like she didn't really deserve anything good in life, like a job she would enjoy or a happy, healthy relationship.
The beliefs that she had about herself existed in her body as energy forms, as did the memories and emotions from childhood that created those beliefs. So we began to work on getting those beliefs and emotions out of her body and replacing them with positive ideas about her body and herself. She began working with the energy in her own body, taking ownership of it and developing appreciation for her body.
After a short while, with no prompting from me, she began to work on improving her physical appearance. She also began finding new and stimulating things to do with her life. The last time I saw her, she was in training to enter a new field of work that she felt would be interesting and rewarding. Just because we changed the energy in this woman's body, she was able to make dramatic improvements in the way she felt about herself. And when that happened, she felt inspired to make dramatic improvements in other areas of her life.
