Let’s Talk about Trauma and The Work

Byron Katie came up with 4 simple steps that work for trauma, too. The Work is direct, simple and grounded in the body.

I have used The Work with many clients. It is common that in the first or second session, we go right to the core of a trauma. I expect this. I don’t fight it. If it comes up and my client says they are okay to go there, I go there. Why waste time?! Most of us have been sitting with this stuff for way too long.

There are 4 questions to The Work. In the 3rd question, “How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?”, as a facilitator I ask sub questions that are direct and effective. First, I want to ground your response to the thought in your body. So, I will ask, “What’s the feeling in your body when you believe that thought?” Many people have difficulty directly experiencing feeling, especially when triggered by a distressing thought. I will ask you to breathe into your belly, solar plexus, chest and heart and identify your physical sensations and any feelings you can identify. This grounds The Work in your body. Without this step, trauma cannot be resolved.

Often a client will say things like, “I feel a heaviness in my stomach and chest. My heart is racing” or “My heart starts beating fast, my back is tight and I feel a weight on my shoulders.” The body responds viscerally to stressful thoughts. I will follow this with, “What images, past and future, arise when you believe this thought and experience these feelings?” Here’s where memories in the form of past images and fears of the future arise. Now we can see tangible evidence of how the present situation is triggering past trauma and future fears in the mind.

Just these two steps are enough to make some progress with resolving trauma and anxiety. However, The Work takes it further. The next question is again a feeling question, “What emotions and physical sensations do you experience when you see these images?” Again, this grounds the experience in the body. I notice that clients who do The Work with me develop emotional intelligence quickly. When I do The Work on myself, I love the feeling of courage that arises with this step. I can go right into the most difficult of feelings because I know The Work provides me a way through and out the other side.

This is followed by several questions, “How do you treat yourself in this situation when you believe this thought and have these reactions, and how do you treat the other?” I may ask, “How do you treat your life?” With these questions, you get in touch with how past trauma has dictated how you treat yourself, other people, situations and your gestalt, your life.

The Work takes it further with the 4th question. I will often ask, “What is this thought costing you now in your life?” If it’s from childhood, I will add, “What did it cost you then?” Most people will respond with something like, “my life and my happiness” or “any kind of optimism and positive feelings and joy” or “peace and myself”. For childhood trauma, I will ask, “What would it have been like for you back then, if you had known and understood that it wasn’t about you? It wasn’t personal?” This gives you some insight that what happened triggered a dissociation. As a child, you leave yourself during and after trauma. You try to figure out why it happened and what it means about you. You become a talking head instead of inhabiting your body. What if it was like getting pooped on by a passing bird or experiencing an earthquake? It feels so personal, but it’s not. It had nothing to do with you. You are good. You are alive and whole and strong. This realization gives you your life back. It happened 10, 20, 30 years ago, and you are still taking it personally and abandoning yourself in your current life. You continue to traumatize yourself in the present moment.

We haven’t even started the turnarounds, the opposites, of the original thought. And, we usually work anywhere from a couple to 5 or 6 thoughts. By the end of one session, you have made progress in releasing trauma, realizing your patterns, and how to remedy it - come back to yourself, stay connected to your body, be present, stop torturing yourself by reacting the same way you did when you were 3, 4, 8, or 16 years old! Let’s free that inner child to come out and play!,

I did not come up with these questions or sub questions. They were all taught to me by my facilitator who worked directly with Byron Katie.

As a facilitator, I teach my clients how to use The Work on their own. Doing The Work on your thoughts about your parents, for example, is an amazing way to start clearing the way to loving them, yourself (and everybody else) unconditionally. Is it work? Yes! But it works!