Trauma sensitive coaching - my passion

Q: What is trauma?

A trauma is an incisive experience or many small, subtle negative experiences in your childhood that completely overwhelm your coping strategies at the time of the experience. At the moment of the event you split off the emotions, images, memories, smells, sounds, words from yourself as self-protection. In addition, you split off the part of yourself that was hurt. You lose the connection to yourself. Trauma is thus everything that causes you to lose the connection to yourself.

Q: What is trauma sensitive coaching?

My trauma sensitive coaching is a profound process in which I guide you to release your traumas and repressed feelings, to reintegrate your wounded parts, your inner child, to bring it home. When you begin to feel your long suppressed feelings again in a safe setting at your own pace, the dysfunctional behaviors that your nervous system has established as trauma responses become obsolete. You begin to reconnect with yourself, your true essence, and can act more consciously and thus more healthfully.

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Trauma sensitive coaching became my passion. Why? Because it goes deep. Because it has profoundly changed my own life on all levels. With my trauma sensitive coaching, I get to the root, right to the festering wound. It is painful. Yes. The healing lies beneath the anger, the fear, the powerlessness, the grief, the shame, the feeling of never being good enough, feeling rejected or worthless.

In my trauma-sensitive coaching, I don't make your emotional pain go away.

You feel it.
You transform it.
In my company.
At your own pace.
You are safe now.
The emotional pain of your childhood is still inside you.
It is waiting to go.
It is waiting for you.
I hold the space for you.
You are no longer alone.

What is trauma?

A trauma is an incisive experience or many small, subtle negative experiences in your childhood that completely overwhelm your coping strategies at the time of the experience. At the moment of the event, you split off the emotions, images, memories, smells, sounds, words from yourself as self-protection. In addition, you split off the part of yourself that was hurt. You lose the connection to yourself. Trauma is thus everything that causes you to lose the connection to yourself.

Nothing bad ever happened to me

There are different types of trauma, shock trauma and developmental trauma.

If you experienced many small micro-injuries in your childhood, you may have experienced developmental trauma. Developmental trauma is subtle and often not recognized as such for a long time.

Your parents said things to you that hurt you
Your parents are cold
You grew up in a dysfunctional family structure
You have been told verbally or non-verbally that you are not good enough or that there is something wrong with you.
You have experienced emotional abuse/manipulation
Your parents made fun of you
Deep inside you were afraid of your mother or father

Trauma is also what you have been missing

Trauma can occur not only because of what happened to you, but also when your essential needs were not met as a child:

You were emotionally neglected, had to deal with everything emotionally on your own, had no emotional support
Your parents did not tell you the words you needed so badly
You were not seen or heard, your voice did not count
You were punished with silence
Your family was not a safe place for you
You were not allowed to be who you are
You have not felt unconditional love
You felt you had to earn love and attention
You have lacked security, love, closeness, trust and protection
Your feelings were ignored or not allowed

Materially, you may have had everything at your disposal. You were sent to guitar lessons and enrolled in the sports club. Your mother stayed at home and took care of you and you went on vacation regularly. The outward appearance of the family was perfect. Yet, all your life, deep down, you have the feeling that something is wrong, without being able to name it.

From the adult's perspective, the individual incidents may seem insignificant.

Put yourself in your 5-year-old's shoes.
How did she/he feel deep down?

Scared?
Faint?
Left alone?
Delivered?
Not loved?
Defenseless?
Never good enough?
Ashamed?
Worthless?
Deeply insecure?
Angry?

What happens during a trauma?

You can imagine that you are a house. In this house there is a dark cellar. In this dark cellar you put since childhood days everything into it which you cannot feel or do not want, because you lack the coping strategies for it.

Because you are overwhelmed, because it scares you too much.

Then you close that cellar door and you are busy your whole life from morning till night keeping that cellar door closed at all costs.

You gradually lose the connection with yourself.

The more you putyourself in that dark basement, themore you lose yourself.

You no longer know who you are.

You develop survival strategies to avoid feeling your trauma

Because of the suppressed feelings, your nervous system gets out of balance and activates a trauma response as a protective mechanism so you don't have to feel the pain.

You establish dysfunctional behaviors to keep the basement door closed at all costs.

Aggressive behavior
People Pleasing
Addictions of any kind
Overfitting
Perfectionism
Helper syndrome
Constraints
Sacrifice
Any behavior where you are on autopilot
Self-sabotaging behavior
You always put your needs behind
Your focus is always on the others
Excessive activities (food, sports, work, sex, partying, cleaning, Facebook, Netflix, etc.)
You can not set limits

These are trauma responses that your deregulated nervous system has established so that you don't have to feel the emotional pain.
Have you ever caught yourself acting in a way where you said to yourself afterwards, I didn't mean to do that?

The moment your cellar door opens a bit, one of your survival strategies kicks in, just to avoid feeling the pain, to further suppress your feelings, to slam the door to your cellar shut again.

Do you want to resolve the emotional hurts of your childhood?

With my trauma-sensitive coaching, you begin to feel the emotional injuries from your childhood so that you can gradually let them go. What you can feel, you can heal.

How to recognize if you are traumatized

If you are triggered frequently, these are indications of experienced trauma. Triggers are the activation of old childhood wounds. They have nothing to do with the current situation. In the trigger situation you are emotionally catapulted back into your childhood. If these childhood wounds were not stored in you, you would be able to react confidently in the situation.
On my page Working with the inner child you will find many detailed examples of how you can recognize if you are possibly traumatized.

What is trauma sensitive coaching?

My trauma sensitive coaching is a profound process in which I accompany you to release your traumas and repressed feelings, to reintegrate your wounded parts, your inner child, to bring it home. When you begin to feel your long suppressed feelings again in a safe setting at your own pace, the dysfunctional behaviors that your nervous system has established as trauma responses become obsolete. You begin to reconnect with yourself, your true essence, and can act more consciously and thus more healthily.

In my trauma sensitive coaching I incorporate body oriented techniques from my trauma therapy methods such as:

Emotional release according to the Journey® method, etc.
Inner child work
Learning to feel yourself again
Get back in touch with you
Body-oriented exercises from trauma therapy (Peter Levine et al.)
Regulation of the nervous system (polyvagal theory)
Neurogenic tremor according to Dr. Bercelli

Trauma sensitive coaching is

Transformer
liberating
Intensive
In depth
Only for the brave

Your trauma is in your body, not in your head

Talking about your challenges doesn't help. I have tried that myself. Talking about the problem is avoiding feeling. I therefore work with process work, individual, deep inner journeys. In the session your body, your inner child, your subconscious speaks, not your mind.

Everything you have experienced is stored in your body. Everything.
What you can feel, you can heal.

What makes trauma-sensitive coaching different from other coaching?

I work differently.

People who have a trauma experience and are trapped in a trauma response need something completely different than people who just need a push and guidance for a change process in their lives.

The thing with the comfort zone

Many coaching sessions revolve around getting you out of your comfort zone, leaving behind the "known" and doing "new" things.

You are trapped in a trauma response, not in the comfort zone

Many people are stuck in a trauma response and not in the "comfort zone." If your nervous system is deregulated, out of balance, due to the trauma experience, there may be activation of the posterior vagus nerve. This can lead to

Solidification
Dead set mode
Dissociation
Depressed mood
Social withdrawal
You are paralyzed
Introversion

and without trauma sensitivity can be confused with staying in the "comfort zone". This is a trauma reaction and has nothing to do with the "comfort zone". Without trauma sensitivity, retraumatization can occur during coaching or therapy, or the affected person is labeled as "resistant".

Regulation of the nervous system

When experiencing trauma, it is important to re-regulate the nervous system, to learn step by step - at your own pace - and to learn that feeling emotions is safe, that you are safe now.
By working through the trauma, feeling the long suppressed emotions again, getting the emotions stuck in you flowing again, in conjunction with supportive trauma-sensitive exercises and techniques, your nervous system can come back into balance.
This takes time.
You go at your own pace.

Why mindset work and affirmations have not worked for you so far

If you use mindset work as a strategy to keep your basement door closed, mindset work will only work to a limited extent, because the contents of your basement will still be there, knocking on the door from the inside. All the time.

If the feeling of deep worthlessness is buried in your basement, you can tell yourself every day for years: I am valuable. I am a gift to the world.
Your basement content will always be stronger and sabotage you.
However, if you have resolved the underlying trauma, mindset work is an absolutely powerful tool.

Deep trauma sensitive coaching for your emotional release

In my intensive trauma-sensitive coaching, I accompany you with all my passion, empathy and dedication. You will experience in a protected setting that it is safe to slowly - at your own pace - feel again. Emotions and traumas are stagnant energy that is stuck in your body and wants to be freed, wants to flow again.

In my trauma-sensitive coaching, we go at your pace. Your body determines what it releases in a session and what is not yet ready.

Do you have a deep inner urge to free yourself emotionally?

I hold the space for your healing.

I offer trauma-sensitive coaching in individual sessions online and on-site at my practice in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and during 2023 I will also offer trauma-sensitive online group coaching.

Stefanie Heinlein

I am an expert on narcissism, healing practitioner & mentor. My mission: emotional release & working with the subconscious mind. I supported people to free themselves from the shackles of their emotional hurts and traumas, and related repressed emotions and patterns, regardless of the cause. My particular area of heart and specialization is supporting women in releasing their narcissistic trauma so that they can once again live a self-determined life with self-love, self-worth and self-confidence.