The Lingering Pains of Childbirth

Fixing the pains of a traumatic birth

All through my EMDR and Hypnotherapy treatment, one of the major symptoms of Fibromyalgia, that used to have a severe impact on me, was chronic pain in what I could only describe as my laterals, otherwise known as the bony bits of my ribs under my armpits.

This was a very debilitating pain and a regular feature in my daily discomfort. Frankly put, it damn well hurt.

I had undergone every scan known to man and there was nothing wrong physically, so it had to be psychosomatic, which is a physical illness or other condition caused/aggravated by a mental factor such as internal conflict or stress. 

I’m sure you have all heard a doctor say it must be in your head, and you’re dismissed as a fool, but as you read this I can reassure you that this actually was in my head, yet I could feel it daily at extreme levels in my body.

You may be wondering what had actually caused this and how it was resolved…I will tell you exactly how!

This is truly where the power of an EMDR specialist and Clinical Hypnotherapy comes into play.

Why is EMDR so important?  

The subconscious knows everything from the minute you were born, it's filed in the database for reference, should it be required in the future to keep you safe. 

When you try to consciously think and remember something (like someone’s name from the past) it never comes immediately, but then it will just appear randomly hours later. That is because you have tried to overthink it and when you relax and are in a different place in the subconscious mind, it just spits it out! 

My point is, when you are relaxed (such as when in a hypnotic trance) and not stressing, the subconscious will be more helpful than when there is loads of noise and other distractions. It just won’t help, it likes the quiet!

That’s why in a state of hypnosis we can regress back to the original cause of an issue, the therapist is your guide to resolving the issue, and in my case it was this horrific pain in my laterals.

Finding the root of my Pain.

So once in a state of trance my EMDR specialist set about asking my mind when this pain first started, and to help us resolve this by using a regression. Quite often when I am working with clients in both hypnosis and EMDR, the mind will volunteer old memories that are the cause of the issue we are working on.

Now that I was in a trance and the therapist had asked the mind to travel back to an earlier time when I first had this feeling of pain in that area. A very clear memory appeared of being in the kitchen, aged 7 with my Mum. This was nothing I had ever recalled before, then as the memory became clear I heard the words “You hurt me” from my mother. Now that is something my mother would have never said maliciously, and I instinctively knew that she was referring to my childbirth being painful. This is just what the mind had logged from that snippet of a much longer conversation.

Nonetheless, the 7 year old me felt pain and sadness from this and the feeling in my ribs turned up. So in this instance just as I would today, the therapist allowed me in my 40’s to have an internal conversation with that younger me and explain that whatever it was, it wasn’t their fault and mum wouldn’t have meant it. In essence, I healed the inner child and the pain started to lessen…but it wasn’t entirely gone.

So when asked the question: ‘is this the first time you have felt this pain?’, my inner voice answered ‘no’ but I did feel better already. Once again, my mind was asked to travel back to that first time and what happened next was truly incredible.

I then found myself somewhere warm and comforting, but with no voice or language, there was just a serene peace with lovely colours and calm, then it hit me that I was in the womb! The next thing I knew I was pulled out into a bright and painful (in my ribs) world of bright lights and people. That exact same pain I had been feeling shot right back up!

I was a C Section, which in 1966 was less common and I have subsequently found out my birth for mum was pretty traumatic. I had been yanked out into the world and guess where I was held by the midwife…of course on my laterals and ribs, exactly where my pain was then.

So with a conversation held with my Inner baby, explaining what had happened, that it wasn’t their fault and they had grown up healthy, enjoying childhood and many things in life and that they hadn’t hurt their mother. As that pain was confronted and resolved, all the pain went away. That is the power of hypnosis, the mind and the magic of the creative.

The Incredible Things an EMDR Specialist Could Do…

As an EMDR specialist I heal so many people from wounds and beliefs formed in the past, so whether it's pain, beliefs, fears, anxiety, depression, or unwanted habits, they are all there for a reason and very often it dates right back to childhood. 
So if you want true and deep lasting change, you have to find the root cause and soothe it. Once we have found the root using psychotherapy techniques such as EMDR, Gestalt, NLP or Hypnosis, together we can solve it! If you would like to know more about what I can do for you feel free to contact me.