“If there is no wind, row.” -Latin Proverb
I am powerless. 
So many times this past week, I heard versions of this belief – triggers taking my clients back to their earliest experiences – when they had no voice, when their feelings didn’t matter, when they were children essentially in captivity with caregivers too broken or too selfish.
The work of trauma therapy is the unwind the past from the present – to validate feelings but question conclusions of perpetual fear and hopelessness.
For if these conclusions are founded on perceptions skewed by historical trauma, it can be dangerously easy to mistake what is happening now for all that was true then. 
We can become frozen in terror or shut down by depression – as our nervous system reacts instinctively, the way it learned to in childhood.
Yet, instead of immobilization as our best and safest option – we have ways to take action now as adults that we didn’t have then.
It can be so hard to see what we CAN do and such hard work to do it – but there can be so much hope and empowerment in the realization that we are able to, as the proverb says, row!! 
I would love to hear your thoughts, Lionhearts – how have you learned you have power to change things that previously felt overwhelming and impossible to overcome? 
#empowerment #keepgoing #lionheart #complexptsd #emdr #emdrreadinesscourse