Notes From a Relationship Coach
​(Big ideas in a small email)

“Trauma teaches us to fear our feelings instead of feel our feelings because feeling them would be far more dangerous.”

–Gabor Maté, When The Body Says No​

All your feelings, wounds, triggers, and trauma live in your body. Where else are they gonna live, New Jersey? So if you want direct access to your pain, grief, coping mechanisms, and such, sit still and pay attention to your meat slab for a couple minutes.

What is your neck pain telling you? Your sweaty palms? Your exhaustion, digestion, fidgeting, breathing?

Healing is part cognitive (thinking), part somatic (feeling), and both are vital. The problem with trying to think away your trauma is the brain has no nerve endings – it quite literally does not feel anything. Your mind is a distant observer. Therefore, healing requires us to…

1. Come home to our bodies
2. Feel what we’ve been avoiding

When we must dissociate to not feel overwhelming emotions, we disconnect from ourselves, others, and reality (which is why a relationship coach has to understand trauma – it’s the #1 relationship destroyer).

Cognitive work is like learning sheet music; somatic work is actually playing the piano. Both are necessary, yet so many people study the notes and never touch their instrument. But that’s where the magic happens, y’all.

Somatic strategies to help connect with your physical self:

•Petting cats and dogs
•Barefoot grounding (“earthing”)
•Singing, humming, dancing
•Drumming, playing instruments
•Sports, walking, swimming, exercise
•Weighted blankets, body pillows
•Laugh, cry, yawn, sigh, burp
•Cold plunge and/or sauna
•Yoga, Tai Chi, Chi Gong
•Holotropic Breathwork
•Acupuncture, chiropractic, massage
•Mindfulness, meditation, body scanning
•Eye-gazing, cuddling, synchronized breathing
•Somatic Experiencing (SE) Therapy
•Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy
•Trauma Release Exercises (TRE)
•EMDR, tapping, brainspotting
•Etc.

Don’t die with your music still inside of you,

P.S. I’ve been making New Jersey the butt of jokes my entire life (for no apparent reason), but I actually spent a week in NJ this month and it was downright lovely! Literally deer and chipmunks in the rose garden outside my charming little airbnb. I’m probably not gonna stop shaking my fist in the air and yelling “Go back to Jersey!” until the day I die. But I’m here to report that it wasn’t bad.

*This email contains Amazon affiliate links to the books mentioned.

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