Addiction & emotional repression
The body keeps the score
Bessel van der Kolk wrote that the body keeps the score. It stores our early childhood wounds, injustices, neglect and abuse as patterns of frozen energy, deficiency stories and repressed emotions. Much of this somatic programming is unconscious and lies at the root of addiction and compulsive behaviour, as well as a battery of other issues including depression, anxiety, attachment wounds, self sabotage, toxic shame, and chronic pain.
With nowhere else to go, our programming remains in the body until we are able to consciously and skilfully access and then metabolise it. And until we do, the surface layer of symptoms - addiction, depression, anxiety etc - remain. This is why things like addiction and compulsive behaviour are so often non-responsive to traditional talk therapy or approaches such as ‘going cold turkey’. Talking about addiction or depression cannot penetrate the deeper layers of the body.
This knowledge reframes many of the issues that seem to plague us in life - the things we’ve been led to believe are ‘wrong with us’ - as symptoms of deeper, repressed somatic programming. And it paves the way to effectively healing it.
3 levels of healing
To work holistically on issues like addiction, depression, chronic pain and attachment wounding, we must access and then metabolise three layers of somatic programming. Starting from the deepest, moving to the surface:
THIRD DIMENSION: Baseline repressed emotions, such as anger, hurt, sadness, and fear that our system learned were unsafe through early traumatic experiences. These are typically deeply unconscious. Either we can’t feel them at all, have issues expressing them clearly, and/or we are triggered by these emotions in others. The repressed emotions are frozen in the body within patterns of somatic contraction.
SECOND DIMENSION: A middle layer of protective ‘strategies’ that the psyche intelligently leverages to keep us out of having to feel the deeper, repressed emotions. This is comprised of a matrix of ‘deficiency stories’, negative self beliefs and shame-based identities. “I’m unlovable”, “I’m broken”, “I’m weak”, “I’m too much”, etc. Rather than feel buried rage at mum and dad, our system presents us with this safety net of stories that act like a kind of smoke screen.
FIRST DIMENSION: The surface layer of symptoms, issues and problems that we are conscious of. Addiction, chronic pain, attachment wounds, anxiety, depression, toxic shame etc. This layer results directly from both second and third dimension programming and is both a ‘bypass’ to not have to feel it as well as, in the case of addiction, a self soothing strategy to take all the buried pain away.
Addiction, depression and chronic pain are not pathology, but intelligent, adaptive responses to a traumatising world. With the right tools, these patterns can be brought to rest
Why work with me?
I am a certified facilitator of the Kiloby Inquiries (KI) method: a ground breaking new paradigm in somatic healing, and the core of the first Intensive Outpatient Program in the US to leverage mindfulness to heal trauma and addiction.
Over the last five years I have been privately mentored 1:1 with the founder of the paradigm, Scott Kiloby. Whilst I have extensively trained with Scott to be a facilitator of the KI process, I have also lived it, working extensively on my own deep family of origin traumas and compulsive patterns, ultimately yielding a deep sense of freedom that I once thought was beyond reach.
I continue to be in the work, and this is the beauty of somatic inquiry. In time, the tools become second nature. Each time we are triggered in daily life, we are shown a doorway to deeper healing and freedom and we walk through it by skilfully applying the somatic tools. Dynamically, we become capable of peeling back the layers of a lifetime of repression unwinding the content that has been holding us back.
This work is a path to lasting freedom. If you’ve felt victim to depression, anxiety, addiction, toxic shame, cyclical relationship issues or chronic pain, then there are tools available to give you the agency you’re looking for.
How I can support you
A MENTORSHIP MODEL
Lived experience of working with trauma, addiction, depression, attachment wounds and chronic pain suggests that the most effective model for healing is mentorship. Rather than relying on paying for endless 1:1 therapy sessions, the aim is to equip you with the tools to do the somatic work on your own, in your own life, in the moments you are triggered. Right there when you feel the pull to gamble, binge eat, drink, smoke, watch porn, have a toke, or exercise for the third time. Right there when you feel the old body pain rearing up again, or notice the chronic resistance to being vulnerable with your partner. Right there, in the dark pull of depression or the sharp fire of anxiety.
I offer a sequence of mentorship packages that take you on the journey to recovery. These equip you with powerful somatic tools to deprogram your suffering. Completing each package sets you up to do the work on your own. After that point, I offer ongoing mentorship to keep your inquiry skills sharp.
Mentorship packages
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Addiction & Repression 1 - foundations of somatic inquiry
In this 4 week package, you’ll learn the basics of somatic inquiry.
Learn about the mind-body connection, why it matters and how to bridge it
Learn how awareness can be leveraged in somatic work and how it can metabolise our wounds and traumas
Learn tools to help you soothe and regulate your nervous system when you are triggered
Learn tools to unearth the deficiency stories that keep you in suffering and how to begin releasing them
Learn how to work with body contractions that give your suffering longevity
Learn the art of pendulation and other tools to tackle big feelings and overwhelm
Learn how to illuminate the secret stories and unconscious beliefs that hold you back
Learn how to do the work in the midst of a busy life when you’re triggered
Note: This package must completed before commencing Addiction & Repression 2
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Addiction & Repression 2 - healing the roots of suffering
This 6 week package is tailored to you and your own patterns of suffering. You’ll learn the deeper tools to work on your core programs, unconscious beliefs and root somatic repression.
Learn the map of repression and how it works, feeding addiction, depression etc
Learn the rapid fire tool which powers through rusted-on somatic programming
Learn how to use everyday triggers and suffering as a direct doorway into healing
Discover your primary repression and how this patterns your symptoms
Understand how to break through self-sabotaging patterns using somatic inquiry
Learn how to find and reclaim your ‘shadow’: the aspects of your vitality that are locked in the unconscious
Learn how to work with the inner parts that scare you or that you’re ashamed of
Discover the programming underpinning attachment issues and how to heal them
This work takes time and requires commitment but the sense of freedom is palpably real
As my own healing journey continued with these powerful somatic tools, there would be moments when I’d stop in my tracks, realising that something deep had shifted. Perhaps a compulsive energy that would ordinarily erupt around a particular trigger was absent, or I found that I was able to clearly express my anger or my needs to someone when I might otherwise have let it slide. Or I’d see into the inner workings of an old dynamic in relationship: an identity I had unconsciously been inhabiting and a role I had been playing in order to get love or stay safe. As the programs dissolve, so too do the habituated patterns that keep us in cycles of suffering.