I have been seeing a young girl for craniosacral treatment recently in her early twenties with significant anxiety and it took three sessions for me to feel the real root of the problem.
She was born a twin and the first to be taken out of the womb by C-section, cord was around her neck, and she was immediately taken to the other side of the room to be checked out whilst they delivered her twin. There must have been some time before she was reunited with her mother and twin which was apparent when recalling details provided by her mother.
I will not go into all the personal details but this trauma at birth had set up her blueprint for her response to any triggers during her life. And each ‘trigger’ brought her back to her birth and the feeling of being abandoned and possibly the fear of dying. The cord around her neck would have been sufficient for her at birth to think she was dying and then you layer on top of that the feeling of leaving your twin and your mother and that wonderful safe warm and loving environment of the womb.
I see more clients now who have had birth trauma which has impacted their lives, but we rarely consider this as a root cause for issues later in life. People easily dismiss the capability of the baby feeling any type of emotion at birth but why would they not? It is a real shock being born even if the birth is a ‘calm experience ‘with no presenting/obvious issues.
Pulsatilla, which is one of the oldest and most useful homeopathic remedies, is a great for abandonment at birth and a feeling of rejection. Its central themes are:
· Fear of abandonment
· Needing reassurance
· Mother Wound
· Kidney energy
· Feels alone
· Wants to please
· Low self-esteem
· Craves reassurance
The key point though I want to make is that trauma at birth is where we experience our first ‘stress response’ and this is then linked to how we felt i.e. abandoned, dying etc and as we move through life when we experience stress, we will often revert back to that first stress response and link it to how we felt at the time. For example, in this case any stressful situation brought back feelings of being abandoned and dying and each time the stress response can get more embedded.
The good news is that we can work through birth trauma and release these embedded patterns.