"Healing Developmental Trauma" by L. Heller and A. LaPierre

[maiko]

Thank you for sharing your experiences and for giving so much substance to the experience of reading the book. Here I was thinking I had all my problems / traumas / issues nicely sorted out and labeled and put away for possible later reconsideration. Then I started reading “Inside the Criminal Mind” whilst listening to an audio version of “Healing Developmental Trauma”. At the same time I started Rolfing sessions and then one morning whilst brushing my teeth in slow motion, my mind followed the exercise ”Your Mother’s Eyes” as described in the audio version and the book. The exercise asks you to center yourself and bring up an image of your mother’s face and eyes and to track the emotional and physical response you experience.

It sounded so harmless and I ignored the advise to do this exercise with a partner and the hint that it might get quite evocative. The result was instant, both physical and emotional, and since that moment (about three weeks ago) I feel out of balance and stirred up.

Now I am rereading the book, I do not recommend the audio version or at least not as the sole version, the format doesn’t do the subject justice.

I take the book as an opportunity to be more honest to myself and to really take a look at what feelings and subjects I still have to integrate. I still can’t put a finger on which survival style(s) hit closest to home, but my inner resistance shows me, I might be on to something. What really helps me at the moment is Rolfing as I discover so many tensions in parts of my body that I wasn’t aware of and that influence my breathing, my posture (so far I am apparently not standing straight with my shoulders back), my movements and the perspective on things. At times I feel a bit / really overwhelmed, self-observation isn’t always easy but I am grateful for the recommendation of the book. As with everything it isn’t the only possible tool in the box but it is a very useful approach.

 

[hlat]

I'm really glad to listen to book and wish I had done it earlier. I'm trying to get my wife to read it.

I think this is one of the first books that should be read, up there with The Narcissistic Family.

 

[goyacobol]

Q: (L) Well, they said the power for changing reality lies in the belief center of the mind. But then they also said something about emotions. Emotions that are limiting, and then emotions that help to progress... So, maybe the belief that one needs to cultivate - if any - is the belief in unlimited possibilities AND also in the benevolence of the universe and the process. Maybe that's what it is?

A: Yes yes yes!

Q: (Joe) The other phrase was that the one thing you have to do before transitioning to 4D is to think in completely unlimited terms. That doesn't mean you have to be able to think of everything that exists, but...

(L) You have to be open.

(Joe) Right, no expectations. That means getting rid of your hard and fast beliefs about things.

(L) And I think that comes back in a funny sort of way to this “Healing Developmental Trauma” book. One of the problems of early trauma is that children come to believe that the universe is not a safe place or it's scary. They just get completely wrong ideas which lead to thought errors. That's something that's preverbal…

(Pierre) And very limiting.

(L) And those are the kinds of things that probably the neurofeedback can fix more easily than anything else because those are things that produce certain brain waves that persist over time. There's no other way to get to them because you can't TALK your way through something that's preverbal! You can get into some kind of body therapy and spend years with a therapist, but why do that when you can just go directly and change the brain waves? And if you change brain waves, the brain's going to change. Right?

A: Yes yes yes!

Both the Healing Developmental Trauma book and the NeurOpimal sessions seem to be helping with the preverbal emotions that block our development. Also reading Inside the Criminal Mind seems to have helped many of us jump start this process by helping us recognize "thinking errors" we may not have noticed before. Well, I guess all these latest books just fit together for me anyway. I can't leave out Collingwood's, The Idea of History either.

Having two grandchildren has made me very aware of the importance of early development. It's like being forced to remember how it is to "play", imagine and find excitement in the world around us (hopefully in a more healthy way).

(Pierre) What I understand from this discussion is that the healthy beliefs are the unlimiting beliefs, but...

(L) Why believe anything?

(Pierre) Yes; beliefs by definition ARE limiting. If you don't believe this, then you believe that. So, I guess unlimited beliefs is sort of a transcending of the very notion of belief. It's going beyond beliefs.

A: Become like little children...

Q: (Artemis) Inquisitive, but without bias or beliefs.

(L) And adventurous, open to experience, and not formed up with any beliefs. And one hopes that it's a little child that has not been developmentally traumatized! [laughter]

You know becoming like little children may not be as easy as it sounds especially after all the traumas and false beliefs we have accumulated since our own childhoods. On the other hand I am thankful for all these new sources of information and the possibility that many of us may heal, grow and even be able to share what we learn to help others.

 

[Corvus]

I am reading it and it came as a surprise because it described truly behavioral patterns and causes. I have mostly a mix of Trust and Autonomy styles with some elements of Connection and Sex styles, seen elements of Attunement among family member. When those patterns are everything you know for most of a life and see it as a normal because it was only thing you knew, but deeper feeling saying it is not quite right, it is hard to know the way out, but the sad thing is it is repeated from generation to generation without end nobody knowing it, and examples can be seen on macroscale, for example Israel being good example of Trust style.

 

[MarcusAurelius]

Both the Healing Developmental Trauma book and the NeurOpimal sessions seem to be helping with the preverbal emotions that block our development. Also reading Inside the Criminal Mind seems to have helped many of us jump start this process by helping us recognize "thinking errors" we may not have noticed before. Well, I guess all these latest books just fit together for me anyway. I can't leave out Collingwood's, The Idea of History either.

Having two grandchildren has made me very aware of the importance of early development. It's like being forced to remember how it is to "play", imagine and find excitement in the world around us (hopefully in a more healthy way).



You know becoming like little children may not be as easy as it sounds especially after all the traumas and false beliefs we have accumulated since our own childhoods. On the other hand I am thankful for all these new sources of information and the possibility that many of us may heal, grow and even be able to share what we learn to help others.

So happy to hear about the progress working through the developmental trauma with NeurOpimal, the resources recommended here, Laura and the C's! I think there's gold the two points you make about setting an objective to discover a "childlike" place in oneself and that untangling developmental trauma by other means than speech (and writing, from my own experience) are required.

 

[goyacobol]

So happy to hear about the progress working through the developmental trauma with NeurOpimal, the resources recommended here, Laura and the C's! I think there's gold the two points you make about setting an objective to discover a "childlike" place in oneself and that untangling developmental trauma by other means than speech (and writing, from my own experience) are required.

It is the "like" part that causes me to think deeper about how that should be or will be. The Cs are not saying to become children but to be "like" little children. I think in a perfect world it would be children not suffering from trauma and fear but curious to learn and not frozen in any "belief" system.

Session 10 February 2018

(Pierre) Yes; beliefs by definition ARE limiting. If you don't believe this, then you believe that. So, I guess unlimited beliefs is sort of a transcending of the very notion of belief. It's going beyond beliefs.

A: Become like little children...

It reminds me of a bible verse (not to go biblical but I think some gems might be found there):

Matthew 18:2-4 New International Version (NIV)
2 He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. 3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

I don't know if that is kind of what the Cs were saying or not but when you look at all this Dionysius chaos it isn't doesn't bring out the best emotions. I would rather see an era where "knowledge" covers the earth because I am beginning to think maybe "knowledge protects".

Isaiah 11:6-9
New International Version
6 The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them.

7 The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox.

8 The infant will play near the cobra's den, and the young child will put its hand into the viper's nest.

9 They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.

Of course the "Lord" means so many different things to different people they are killing each other to see which one everybody else has to believe in. Can you "believe" it? (note the child is leading wild animals not adults).

 

[MarcusAurelius]

It is the "like" part that causes me to think deeper about how that should be or will be. The Cs are not saying to become children but to be "like" little children. I think in a perfect world it would be children not suffering from trauma and fear but curious to learn and not frozen in any "belief" system.

Session 10 February 2018


It reminds me of a bible verse (not to go biblical but I think some gems might be found there):

Matthew 18:2-4 New International Version (NIV)
2 He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. 3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

I don't know if that is kind of what the Cs were saying or not but when you look at all this Dionysius chaos it isn't doesn't bring out the best emotions. I would rather see an era where "knowledge" covers the earth because I am beginning to think maybe "knowledge protects".



Of course the "Lord" means so many different things to different people they are killing each other to see which one everybody else has to believe in. Can you "believe" it? (note the child is leading wild animals not adults).

Tuning into children can be quite enlightening. Conversely, my own efforts to think, rationalize, read, talk or journal my way through developmental issues or gain freedom from limiting states of being have been futile. Until the pathways to feeling my own emotions fully and connecting to others were opened finally by EE, I was in prison. Now developing a relationship with that part of myself that feels childlike, pure, true, innocent and worthy (just because) is enriching, empowering and feels right, feels like knowing. I'm gathering Heller's approach, the bodywork, the EE, the new brainwave technology bypasses the resistance and defenses, to allow an adult to regain access his or her own lost essence, instincts and path - to become like children, as it was put.

 

[Martina]

Thank you for sharing so much about the book and your experiences and thank you for working on becoming the best versions of yourself, you are also great as you are now btw.
I haven't bought the book yet but I see it's important because I found myself in all of surviving styles, mostly in autonomy but my test result scored highest on attunement 42.86% and connection 30.77%.
What I basically discovered through my life is that I work on issues from past because they pop up on daily basis. Every job experience, or general experience that I have confronts me with my baggage and also shows me what I have to work on. I was unsatisfied with the job I had too loud and than that crazy coworker started to pick on me and causing me discomfort. I hate conflicts, I totally avoid them at any cost, so I quitted my job when my contract expired. And than I couldn't get job for half a year and I was afraid I'm going to experience something like that again, I applied for many jobs but I felt like I'm not going to fit anywhere.
I finally got job as a kindergarten teacher, accidently, because I applied for an assistent for a kid with troubles in development and they hired me as a substitute teacher. I loved the job and the kids of course. It was the opportunity to see how I behave and to remind myself how I was as a child. I actually didn't know any of the songs, games or dances. First of all I felt incompetent because I only have a bachelor degree in history, not in education. I tried to learn as much as I could from my coworkers but they were not so open for cooperation because they knew I was hired only for collecting some tax benefits the state gives for hiring unemployed and I'm only there until they expire which was after 2 months. So then they didn't prolong my contract.
I was learning everything to be a good teacher, I've learnd all the songs and stories very quickly and reading about how I have to behave, what we should do and play. Kids were really good and they accepted me and we had really great time. They helped me to relive the childhood in a positive way, when I was kid, I hated kindergarten. What I wanted for them was to create a good memory of kindergarten the one I didn't have. I hope I helped.
My son didn't go to a kindergarten because I was still on college when he was a baby so we had a kindergarten of our own and my son was more interested in learning about nature than dancing hokey pokey. But I think I did ok. That was the best time of my life plus those two months I worked with the kids.
So after I lost job I got sick, I felt like I've lost 20 kids and endangered our finances because I pay everything for my son myself. I wasn't here because of that. I feel better now, no matter what happens I always feel ok after a while because I feel this force, aliveness always being with me. I don't know how to explain it. I know something takes care of me and that I will manage somehow.
My parent are as they are, I'm sure they did the best they could, although I said ugly things about them on forum previously, it's not their fault and it's stupid of me to be a hostage of a past. I have many things to work on and I bet my life will organise itself to afford the new lessons. We grow with every experience.

 

[hlat]

Healing Developmental Trauma is available on hoopla if you are into e-audiobooks on your phone or tablet. If you have a library card to a participating library, then you can listen to this book immediately for free.

Book link
https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/11373896

Participating libraries
hoopla Participating Libraries map
For example, Transylvania County is a participating library
http://library.transylvaniacounty.org/

 

[Starshine]

Thank everyone for sharing your thoughts, I read the whole thread again. By the way, I am just beginning to understand how to use the forum, or at least how it is best for me. I used to come and open many threads, not finishing most of them, deriving from one subject to another, getting overwhelmed by all there is to learn, feeling inferior to all of you hard posters, anticipating and feeling ashamed of not participating enough. Kind of what Carlise said but more generalized :

It was quite the revelation for me to hear that you have been going through this stuff the whole time as well.

It was easy to imagine that you were always just an extremely capable person with a with a big bad attitude, creating a worldwide network of people, fighting off all kinds of attacks, showing evil spirits who's boss etc. I mean this just puts what you have achieved on a whole new level, it really is an inspiration.

Now I am able to stick to a specific thread and stay focused, read the related books, follow the discussion and post my input. Staying in the present allows me to follow the Ariane's thread.

Reading your struggles also makes me realize how wrong I was to put you on a pedestal, creating myself a great distance from you and my own possibilities of sharing and evolution.

Reading HDT was profound from the first sentence. I translate it from French version: "the purpose of this book is to restore the ability to be connected".

I was really affected throughout the book, it was like reading my own internal makeup in so many ways. I was absorbed and felt really enthusiastic and empowered. As I've said in Samenow's thread, it brought back many memories. I totally related to the ocular blockage which I've experienced many times in my life.

Yet it's been two or three months I've read it and didn't reopen it. Reading the thread helps me remember, but I guess it's one book to keep in reserve to come back to. Also, it creates new associations for me, regarding Samenow's thinking errors, identifications, and counter identifications. I guess one could take the thinking errors one has and classify them according to the different survival styles using the helpful post #70 from @Hesper.

What I retained is the logic and power provided by self-regulation and grounding. I feel more and more equipped to deal with the daily struggles of life. I can see when I begin to get bogged down but doesn't allow it to spread so far. I feel like I have the choice now. It makes much more sense that by gaining knowledge you gain free will. Finding balance is not easy but being able to notice that we are so out of balance is sometimes even harder.

I take on the advice from the Cs on becoming like little children and can't help but think about Natural Movement approach derived from Herbert philosophy, and its modern Movnat legacy. Looking at how children move, I guess there is something important about flexibility, mobility, and environment enrichment to transpose and keep in mind.

On a side note, from the Belgian website sportnat.be : Hébert's work cannot be reduced to the Natural Method. Hebertism is a holistic teaching model composed of integral training, learning of common handcrafts, mental and moral culture, intellectual culture, aesthetic culture and naturist initiative. Hence the interest it generated in the most diverse circles from working life to dance and theatre, via scouting, Christian esotericism, science...

Gratitude... and Love too (I hesitated on this one by fear of being judged but I'll leave it, and you'll understand I mean Light and Knowledge, and do not mean to force you to receive it in any way [justification] )

 

[Anamarija]

First of all thank you for 'sneak peek' in the HDT which I order recently and I feel like a child waiting for his the desired toy. Although I'm aware HDT is not a toy and have big expectations especially because of my disorder.

Second, even you made me cry (reading about the way book affect you) I'm so thankful to see and realize how you cope with same issues (more or less) like me and still don't give up and striving to get the hole picture.

'Puzzle' analogy:

I see my life (with everything that means, gathering knowledge, applying, feeling, thoughts, beliefs...) like puzzle. Doing puzzle is something I didn't do for years but in the time of war in Croatia that was something very therapeutic for me.

The main different between puzzle and life is that on the beginning of the life you don't get a hole picture, if we include Lizzards in this, you get something that genero81 mention from Castaneda book about predators mind:

The Predator's engage in a stupendous maneuver by "giving us their mind," which is baroque, contradictory, morose, and full of fear.

But through separate the wheat from the tares (I'm not sure is this English expression - distinguish truth from lies) the hole picture emerges sometime.

When I open a box of puzzle, first what I do (and probably many others) is putting the edges of the picture on table where I'm doing compilation. For me knowledge (informations that I think that I have understood and that I have applied in my life) that I got from this source (C's, Laura&co.) is those edges on the puzzle table.

All I want is to compile the whole picture. And sometime (most of the time) I have urge to do everything now (like some of you), even I know how is amazing and fun do it slowly and in the same time doing other stuff, just to prolong finishing (playing).

Sometime I experience enlightenment and that could be when I finally succeed to connect some dots (pieces of puzzle). And that is something that give me boost that I could do so much more.

But sometime, like this time, pieces of my puzzle are so small, like very small dots. Which could be connected with my fear that there so much to learn and I think that I'm not capable enough to do this. And what usually happened, the more you learn the more you understand that there is so much more to learn.

But, we all (at least, the ones that choose that) have to compile puzzle in order to get full picture, it's just matter of time and it depends how much we want to spent time, energy etc. for doing it. And when we finish this journey/puzzle and in 5D look in retrospect on our Work and we would probably think that we could it better than we did, so why not use this like a boost when we feel that we are not enough this or that to do what we all came for?

I presume that my analogy could be to simplistic for some of you but, in order to do Work, I try to oversimplifying just to be practical and that I could understand more and in better way.

 

[mabar]

Sometime I experience enlightenment and that could be when I finally succeed to connect some dots (pieces of puzzle). And that is something that give me boost that I could do so much more.

But sometime, like this time, pieces of my puzzle are so small, like very small dots. Which could be connected with my fear that there so much to learn and I think that I'm not capable enough to do this. And what usually happened, the more you learn the more you understand that there is so much more to learn.

Happens to me similar as you describe it, thanks for sharing your analogy.

 

[Anamarija]

There is something I read in Healing Developmental Trauma that I found very interesting, mainly because I never fought this way and it sound so logical:

When a child experiences early trauma, a distress cycle is set in motion that initially moves bottom-up and later top-down in continuous self-reinforcing loops. Bottom-up, trauma creates nervous system dysregulation. When people experience trauma, they feel bad; children, in particular think they are bad when they feel bad. Chronic bottom-up dysregulation and distress lead to negative identifications, beliefs and judgments about ourselves. These negative identifications, beliefs, and judgments in turn trigger more nervous system dysregulation, and a distress cycle is created.

Even I'm not a child anymore , I still sometimes feel/think the same like I was a child.

 

[Anamarija]

Many times in my daily life I see my self looking at people like they are just my perception of them, blurry. For a couple of seconds my view becomes clearer and just for a moment I see them like they are someone new to me, more vivid. In that moment I feel enthusiasm but in the next moment I forgot all about this till the next time something remind me of it.

The Ocular Block
How contraction in the eyes and cervical areas abet withdrawal from experience was understood by Reich as an actual blocking of the diaphragms at the cranial base, the tentorium, and in the region where the optic nerves cross. In Reichian theory, what is called the eye block engenders a depression of all bodily functions and a systemic reduction of energy available to the organism. To the degree that there is contraction and disengagement in the eyes, we do not see the reality of our environment. When we are not present to who or what is directly in our vision, we live in fantasy. For example, if a child is bitten by a dog, all dogs may become trauma triggers. If the adult that child becomes sees all dogs as dangerous, that individual is not using his or her eyes. He or she is not able to distinguish in the present moment which dogs are dangerous and which dogs are not. The ideal of seeing the world accurately is related to the process of being present, in the moment and in the body.

Transference and the Ocular Block
Transference is a projective process related to the ocular block. It is a nearly universal human phenomenon that affects all of us. For example, when a man responds to another person as if he or she were his mother, he is literally not seeing the other person; he is not using his eyes. As a result, he is living in a fantasy; he is responding from his adaptive survival style to unresolved past experience.
The resolution for transference and trauma triggers is to see what is actually in front of us without an overlay of fantasy or projection. One of the most effective ways to help individuals with projective patterns is to invite them to engage their eyes, to orient themselves to their environment in the present moment. As soon as individuals begin to use their orienting response, they become more present, and projections begin to dissolve. Because of their early trauma, individuals with the Connection Survival Style have the greatest tendency to use projection as a coping mechanism. The process of resolving projections takes time of course, but understanding the functional unity between the physiology and the psychology of projection gives therapists a significant tool to interrupt and help resolve projective distortions.

 

[anka]

This post is not related to the discussed HDT book directly but I think some might find a helpful info here. Trauma/Mind/Body conference which took place in the end of June & beginning of July is running this weekend (July 11-12) free replay of all their talks (over a hundred of them). I just got this information and was not able to even glance through but some videos seem promising. Here is a short list with a few names familiar to the forumites:


DAY 1 – June 29th, Mind Body approaches – part 1

DAY 2 – June 30, Functional medicine approaches – part 1
Dr Kelly Brogan - The value of functional medicine approaches for the future of mental healthcare

DAY 3 – July 1st, Brain, nervous system and somatic
Dr Stephen Porges - Polyvagal theory and how to regulate the nervous system

DAY 4 – July 2nd, Energetic approaches
Dr Gerald Pollack - The fourth phase of water for optimum health
Master Mingtong Gu - Healing trauma with Qi Gong

DAY 5 – July 3rd, Social and developmental approaches
Dr Gabor Maté - Healing trauma with compassionate inquiry

DAY 6 – July 4th, Mind Body approaches – part 2
Dr Dietrich Klinghardt - The 5 Levels of Healing

DAY 7 – July 5th, Functional medicine approaches – part 2
Dr Joseph Mercola - Cultivating immune resilience


The website uses Vimeo player and for later watching any talk can be downloaded before midnight of the US West Coast time tonight.
You can watch any of the videos or buy the entire collection of talks on the website which is here... Trauma, Mind, Body super conference.