Money & Developmental Trauma: A Match Made In Trauma
If you want to book your own somatic experiencing session visit my booking page here
Money & Developmental Trauma
I am Caitlin Seandel, a somatic experiencing practitioner and I specialise in people’s relationship to money, which means I specialise in developmental trauma. Through using somatic experiencing my clients explore their relationship to money via their nervous system, recalling memories and experiences from childhood that are impacting their relationship with money today.
What is Somatic Experiencing?
Somatic Experiencing is a healing modality that focuses on the nervous system, specifically the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). The ANS operates unconsciously and is responsible for our rest, digest, and flight, fight, fawn and freeze responses. It is also responsible for our ability to connect with others as well as ourselves. Basically everything that keeps us alive and well.
When you go to a somatic experiencing practitioner you will focus on sensations instead of stories allowing your body to lead and to begin to complete trauma’s that have been stored (and most likely repeating) in your nervous system and in your life.
The outcome of working through somatic experiencing is embodiment.
Embodiment means more confidence, clarity, joy, connection to self and others and a larger container to experience the hard things in life.
Somatic Experiencing has impacted my life in such a positive way which is why I like to write about it, in hopes to convince you to book yourself a session!
Developmental Trauma and Money
When it comes to money- I work with clients through 4 sessions:
Why are you here today
What does money represent to you
An open session
A pathway forward
These four sessions usually provide a surprising revelation for my clients around their current pain point in their relationship to money and all of these revelations have been rooted in childhood experiences aka developmental trauma.
The outcome of these four sessions is the client having a clearer understanding of why they relate to money the way they do and a pathway forward to transform that relationship for the better that is fully owned by the client and their nervous system (embodiment).
Let us look at one of my clients who came in to work on their relationship to money and what came up for them:
About client: 38, female, small holistic healing business owner
Sessions:
*Note: the following has stories/memories come up which is typical in an SE session. When this happens we don’t work with the story but with the sensations that are associated with the story/memory in the current moment.
Being called useless by family; a previous partner and being told by family and friends that she was so lucky to have him (he wasn’t that cool), needing to tell people that she’s actually the catch and the amazing one; remembering that her heart stopped when she was born and she had heart palpitations when she was younger that have since stopped. This last point felt like the largest revelation to her and I offered that exploring it would be great for our third session.
The big words were security and space to breathe. A memory that came up was after her parents got divorced her dad refused to send his child support but wanted to drop it off and be mean to both her and her mom about having to pay child support and the guilt, anger, sadness and overwhelm she felt as a child in those moments.
Third session: she brought in the heart stopping and it was instant dissociation in the body- tired, eyes glassy, body looked frozen- working with this as a practitioner requires giving a lot of supportive touch (if there is consent and ability) and grounding. Took us almost the full hour to bring her body back into a place of energy. I did a lot of education around dissociation and she was realizing how often she dissociates in life. During this time I was also able to make connections around her business and her dissociation that we took time at the end of the session to discuss- helping her to create a plan and to be in better harmony with accepting how she works.
It should be noted: We are not here to do a total life revamp in 4 sessions, we are here to take the smart steps that feel good, digestible and aligned. A full life revamp (is not possible nor sustainable) would lead to overwhelm and trigger her dissociation.
Hasn’t happened yet: I have an idea of an exercise that I will do with her as she also has a pattern of money being just out reach, i.e. in a year it will be better in 6 months etc and I got an intuitive idea on a practice to see how it will feel in her body if that timeline is now.
After these four sessions, clients are able to continue to book regular sessions with me where we can continue to work through the experiences that came up or take some time to integrate and put into practice what they have discovered.
This is one of the beautiful things about Somatic Experiencing is we move slowly, intentionally, with curiosity and compassion ensuring that we don’t overwhelm our client and this is what allows for a new pathway to be recognized and then forged.
