Using Energy Work To Clear Birth Trauma and Post Natal Anxiety.
As sad as it is, in this modern world with all the modern interventions and abilities to ensure a lower mortality rate for babies and mothers, we have a new type of trauma emerging, known as Birth Trauma. Birth trauma is the result of significant birth interventions where the mother and child experience situations that interrupt a conscious and calm birthing experience. Birth trauma leads to fears of being out of control (for mother and child) or having felt fear or panic during the labour process. Whilst in most situations (because of and thanks to modern medicine) there are fewer deaths, these interventions which start with induction, epidural and other drugs administered during labour, through to the use of forceps, suction caps or emergency C-sections, can have and do lead to significant levels of trauma for mothers and babies. The nature of significant intervention and possible trauma leads to issues of bonding for mother and child, increased levels of anxiety for mothers and also the onset of anxiety and separation fears for child as they grow up (particularly if there was no skin to skin, heart to heart contact in the first minutes after birth). All of this can lead to a very challenging and less then fulfilling experience for mothers and their newborns in the early years.
Traditionally if a child was demonstrating significant anxiety, the child’s case would be treated separately with no consideration for the birth experience and also no consideration for a mother’s own mental wellbeing. Subsequently if a mother has experience what is termed ‘Post Natal Anxiety’ it is necessary to consider what her birth experience was like. If it falls under these categories:
Unexpected – didn’t go to plan
Dramatic – felt dramatic and overwhelming
Isolating – the feeling that no one else understands or gets what you are going through at the time
No Known tools to cope – at the time, in the moment, during the event the person has no effective strategies that help alleviate the feelings.
If these categories are met, then it is possible that the mother has experienced some form of birth trauma. These four categories known under the acronym ‘UDIN’ are what are considered foundations for trauma. In the conversations I have had with countless mothers, their birth experience most definitely falls under this description.
So what can be done about this using energy approaches? It is worth mentioning here that the connection between a mother and child is so strong (energetically) that the child still has an attachment to mother for the first 9 years of their life. This is really important to consider when wanting to support a child to overcome anxiety. Supporting the mother first with her anxiety and experiences of pregnancy and birth, leads to a quicker turnaround and reduction in anxiety for child. This type of work is known as ‘surrogate’ work and due to the strong bond of mother and child, this has a powerful impact.
Babies are conscious beings from the moment that they are conceived and are therefore ‘making meaning’ of their environment the entire time they are in utero. This has the impact of a child taking on and absorbing the emotions, fears and feelings of the mother (and father to a lesser degree. This is because the baby is unable to understand that they are separate from their mother’s feelings. Now this can be a little confronting to hear, however it is no ones fault and is simply a case of “we don’t know what we don’t know”. The good news is, is that we can reverse the impact of in utero and birth experiences for mother and child using an Energetic healing modality known as ‘Matrix Birth Reimprinting” (MBR). Matrix Birth Reimprinting was developed by Sharon King after she began to notice in many of her healing sessions using traditional Matrix Reimprinting, that people were able to recall their time in the womb.
MR using Emotional Freedom Techniques, developed by Karl Dawson, is an advanced quantum process that was developed from traditional EFT Tapping when a client of Karl’s, when he was an EFT practitioner at the time, had a past memory occur in which she saw herself in a traumatic memory and felt as if she could actually tap on her younger self in the memory. Karl tried this process and found that this was indeed possible. So where EFT tapping focuses on tapping on ourselves and our own feelings and emotions MR allows us to tap on the younger versions of ourselves within the memories. This allows us to relieve our younger self (known as ECHOs – Energetic Conscious Hologram) and the feelings and emotions they felt at the moment that a UDIN (trauma) occurred. This dual approach of tapping on ourselves in the present moment and our echos of the past the means a deeper level of energetic clearing occurs. Because all emotional events leave a charge in the body, tapping on both present and past us means quantum fast shifts in how we feel about past events. MR then went on to be further developed by Sharon to include specifically birth processes and in utero trauma/experiences and the beliefs and perceptions that birth experiences creates.
So how does it work? When we have a traumatic event occur in our lives we are then left with a physiological, psychological and emotional imprint that leaves a subconscious and conscious attachment to the events, meaning we are able to be retriggered constantly by these events. Due to the very intimate and life changing nature of childbirth, these imprints can be particularly upsetting and create ongoing fears and worries such as specific anxiety disorders. It is worth noting here that anxiety is a fear of the future based on previous events where we felt scared and out of control. For mothers and babies the anxiety comes from not feeling in control during their birthing experience. The more interventions that occur the higher the likelihood of trauma. What MBR allows us to do is a three way approach – enter a memory at time of trauma to find out what child and mother have made it mean, what beliefs and decisions came up during this time? Then tap on the mother and child in the memory to release the energy, charge and emotions caused by the trauma, we then change the memory by using an alternative more empowering story to create a calm and conscious birth. The power of MBR is that it understands that our brains do not know the difference between what we actually and literally see and experience and what we image or create as a visualisations and new stories.
For instance, it is already scientifically proven that visualisation can create future outcomes, and now it is possible to do the the same with the past. The intention of the MBR process is to take away the disempowerment experienced by the mother and change it to a story of calm and conscious birthing. What that subsequently does is affect how the mother feels when she looks back on the birth, removes the emotional triggers for herself and, because we have worked on the child too (through the mother) in the memory we also clear the emotional charge and energy for the child, thereby reducing their own feelings of anxiety in the present time.
What that allows to happen is a clearing of that strong (negative) energetic connection that is playing out between mother and child, and bring in a new conscious one. The inclusion of tapping on the old pictures of the mother and the baby means we clear the energy from back then, whilst also tapping on the mother at the same time in real time. This shifts energy and stuck negative emotions at a deeper more subconscious level as well as in a quantum quick timeframes. MR has already taught us to “Heal your past heal your future” and now MBR takes it to a new level by acknowledging just how challenging and emotional the birth experience can be for the mother’s too.
An example of the success of a MBR process was for a woman I recently had come to me due to her 7 yo daughter having significant bursts of rage whenever she was in environments that she was not familiar with or that felt unpredictable to her. She did not like to be in situations where she was unsure of expectations. At school she was brilliant and at home mostly good. When I asked more questions about her birth experience it turns out that it was significantly emotional for mother and child and there was significant impact for her and her child. The mother had suffered gestational diabetes and her labour was brought forward via induction because of issues with the placenta. This induction lead to a sudden onset of labour which put mother and child under stress, the baby had made it mean that she was being rushed and this was not a good thing, she also felt out of control (hence why this was playing out in her childhood as rages whenever the environment she was in was not predictable) quite literally for the child this meant that she felt unsafe. What added to the anxiety of the child was mother’s own anxiousness and feelings of insecurity when worrying about how her child would be in different environments.
We spent two sessions clearing the birth and other past memories where the child had rages. By working with the mother on her specific experiences and also using her strong connection to her child we were able to clear the trauma for her as well as her baby without the child being present, when you consider this, this is powerful! Within a week of the mother having her first session, the child was faced with a usually challenging situation that would have triggered her to rages, however there were no outbursts and the mother was absolutely blown away by how happy and calm she was. This, she said, had not happened before and she saw just how effective the MBR process had been.
To have this knowledge and understanding for mothers brings such an important tool into their hands to allow for deeper healing and wellbeing for mother and child. It is quite literally a win win. Also just to summarise, the body never forgets what we go through and it never releases it without some sort of somatic (body) focused help which is what MBR and tapping are. It is also possible to use MBR to heal our own births as adults – because when we tune in and focus on the feelings and energy of our own adult anxiety we are often taken back to our time in the womb. Nothing is ever forgotten. No longer too is it enough to just rely on talk, when you consider this it makes sense because I child does not have the language to express how they feel, but they do have the ability to identify the feelings and where they are in the body. It is a beautiful empowering process that brings such calm for parents and child. Something magical happens to a family when a mother embarks on a healing journey.