Divorce Trauma

 

Emily’s mother called me to work with her 11 year old daughter, who was having problems reading at school and had been diagnosed with a visual condition similar to dyslexia.

 

When I met Emily it was immediately apparent that she was highly sensitive, very bright and extremely perceptive emotionally.  Her body was very gangly and i sensed that she couldn’t really feel her abdomen or legs at all, and the chest was constricted.  She also had the slowness of speech and expression characteristic of highly sensitive children that are easily overwhelmed and have experienced strong trauma.

 

I asked about her early childhood and history, and the significant factor seemed to be her parent’s divorce and her father leaving when she was 4 years old. In addition Emily seemed disenchanted with the adult world and was struggling with how to reconcile finding many things pointless and stupid, and thinking that life should be more fun. She was also very dreamy and easily distracted, which appeared to be due to little connection with her physical body and the here and now surroundings.

 

Emily was extremely willing and able to do the craniosacral work. The first session was over half and hour, and she seemed to relish the experience. We worked with her feet and pelvis, the sensation and energy slowly returning, and then the lungs and heart, which were really cut off and constricted. As her breathing deepened and her whole body began to relax, the colour returned to her face.

 

When Emily got up after the session she was surprised to be able to feel her feet and tummy, and even more surprised that she hadn’t felt them before.

 

 

The following week her mother reported that Emily was more like her early childhood self again, bright, perky and sparkly, and that she seemed more with it. We continued to work on her grounding and after two sessions the early trauma seemed mostly resolved. That weekend she had a birthday party and announced that it was the one she had enjoyed most in her life – quite possibly because she was more able to really be there in person…

 

I did some sessions with Emily’s mother too, who was pretty nervous and highly strung, and yet very aware of her own inner states.

 

 

The sessions helped her calm down, stop worrying so much about Emily and to look more at herself, and work on staying centred so as not to overwhelm her child.  I showed her how to centre herself before talking to Emily, how to be aware of not overwhelming her with her ideas, but to leave her space to find her own responses and words.  I also worked with Emily to recover her ability to set boundaries and tell people to back off when she was feeling overwhelmed. She began to find words to define her own experience and need for space and quiet. The combination began to change the mother-daughter relationship, and both grew.

 

One really delightful outcome of working with them both was a discussion about school and how serious adults were, and why they didn’t know how to have fun. I gave Emily the space to express all her frustrations with the silly subjects she had to learn and boring serious teachers, and her mother really began to see her point of view.  It became apparent that in order to smooth out some of her school and homework issues Emily needed her mother’s support in doing things her way, and not allowing her teacher’s judgments and expectations to affect her.

 

For a highly sensitive child like Emily to whom the teacher’s approval was really important, it was essential that she have her mother’s full backing if she was to carve out her own path and find a way of dealing with the endlessly large amounts of homework given to her.

 

Emily thought about the prospect of failing subjects and doing homework quickly and badly for the first time, initially with obvious dread and hesitation, and then with relish as she began to be honest about how much she detested French and what she really wanted to do instead. She began to laugh and really glow with vitality and by the end of the conversation there was a new understanding between her and her mother, and also a new confidence in both that they would be able to figure things out.  It was touching and painful to witness how much insecurity and stress the school system and Emily’s attempts to conform to goals she couldn’t possibly meet had caused – both for her and her mother.

 

And it was wonderful to witness Emily verbalizing her views on adult behaviour, and her very common sense grasp of the things that really matter in life, and how these were not being supported on the whole in her school lessons. Just being told that she wasn’t wrong to want life to be fun and enjoyable was enough to give this child back her sense of rightness and self-esteem. Such a shame that this wasn’t being conveyed at her school, and yet it was clear that with her mother’s support and awareness of what was important for her, Emily would be able to find a compromise that would support her self worth whilst enabling her to stay in the mainstream system and learn to function in the culture…

 

Although there are ongoing emotional issues with Emily’s father, however the initial trauma of the separation has been resolved so that she is much more present and able to respond, and develop mentally and emotionally. She is learning that her responses of shock and outrage at her father’s insensitive behavior are normal, and that she doesn’t need to gloss them over or deny them. The fact that her mother is also willing to be aware and look at herself, and to ask questions about how to help and support her daughter as an individual makes all the difference for this child. With sensitive children a very little amount of acceptance and understanding can go a huge way to helping them have the courage to express themselves and develop their full potential…