The Healing Journey: Rosalie’s Story
AS A CHILD, Rosalie had been severely abused by her father. When he was drunk he’d climb into her bed at night and rub his body against hers until he climaxed. If she resisted him, he’d hit her and threaten her with worse. If she tried to run away and hide, he would become enraged, chase after her and mercilessly beat her. On two occasions during the year before he and her mother divorced, Rosalie’s father had forced her to have intercourse with him.
When Rosalie came to see me, she was thirty-five years old, single, and mildly anorexic. She’d already been through several forms of therapy, but was still going on and off starvation diets and suffering from regular anxiety attacks. Her body was thin, rigid, and tight. She was mistrustful of everyone she knew. On the most basic level, she mistrusted and hated herself. She felt she was fundamentally flawed—“damaged goods,” as she put it.
For some people who have been traumatized, practicing meditation alone and/or without proper guidance can lead to fear, confusion, and shame. Mindfulness practices can unleash buried emotions and potentially overwhelm and re-traumatize the practitioner. On the other hand, trauma-induced defenses against raw feelings may impede a meditator’s ability to focus attention or contact places of wounding. In either case, meditation can feel unsafe, discouraging, or outright impossible, creating a sense of personal failure.
The guidance of a somatic-based therapist can provide a safe container for processing traumatic memories and associated feelings that arise in consciousness. Yet for there to be an ongoing unfolding of healing, insight, and freedom, the intentional cultivation of mindfulness and self-compassion are necessary. In working with many clients and students over the years, I’ve found that the synergistic blend of somatic-based therapy and meditation can be profoundly transformational.
The body is the foundation for attention in both
