Helping you to find, resolve & get back to you!
One of the most common things we hear from people experiencing birth trauma, is they just want to feel “normal” again. We want to help you free yourself from the birth trauma you’ve been experiencing, focus on a positive future goal state & find yourself again. So if you’ve been suffering from a difficult birth experience or an experience during the perinatal period, we’re here to help you!
What is birth trauma?
The word “trauma” isn’t always one that sufferers resonate/identify with following their experience. This could be because they are trying to down play their birth experience or are worried about being branded as ‘dramatic’. This doesn’t mean that what they are experiencing is not birth trauma.
Birth trauma essentially describes a birth experience, or an experience occurring during pregnancy, birth or immediate postpartum, either directly or indirectly, which leaves the sufferer with negative emotions such as anxiety, distress, anger, shame, guilt etc.
Symptoms of birth trauma include; intrusive thoughts, flashbacks to the traumatic experience, recurrent nightmares involving the traumatic experience, avoiding thinking about or talking about the traumatic experience, hyperarousal, insomnia, fear of something bad happening to you, your baby or a loved one (not an exhaustive list).
Symptoms may be experienced frequently which can have a monumental impact on a sufferer’s day to day life. It may make bonding with their baby or loved ones difficult, it can make regular tasks seem unmanageable, it can lead to other mental helath difficulties such as depression, anxiety and PTSD. It can generally reduce the enjoyment of that persons life. The impacts can generally be felt beyond the individual sufferer and have knock on effects on their family, friends, dependents etc.
What’s going on inside the brain?
When a person experiences a traumatic event, either directly or indirectly, they are immediately catapulted into their stress response (fight/flight/freeze response). They can experience feelings of panic, distress, anxiety etc.
Following the event, the emotional response experienced at the time, can become inextricably linked with the memory of the event. This prevents the memory from being properly processed to the long term memory store.
So, each time the sufferer recalls the traumatic birth event, they are once again catapulted into their stress response, experiencing the same feelings they did at the time.
Whilst the neocortex (the rational brain) can recognise that they are no longer in any physical danger, the amygdala (the primal brain) continues to respond as if they are.
How can I find birth trauma resolution?
If you have been experiencing the impact of birth trauma, or a traumatic event occurring in the perinatal period (pregnancy, birth, postpartum), you deserve to find resolve. Your feelings matter & you don’t have to continue to feel this way.
Firstly it’s important to recognise that the body & the mind have their own natural healing abilities. By caring for yourself & giving yourself space to process your experience, you might find a reduction/eradication of the symptoms you have been feeling within the first 8 weeks post experience.
However, if you are in need of support - we’d love to help! See below for the services on offer here at NBC.
Independent birth reflection sessions
We offer independent birth reflection sessions to help you understand you experience, process what happened & give space to unpacking your feelings & the impact on your day to day life.
Sometimes, all is needed is the opportunity to tell your story & be heard in a safe space free from judgment or agenda. We can also discuss some self help techniques to help ease the effects of the traumatic birth experience.
Three step rewind therapy
Three step rewind therapy is a neuro linguistic programming technique designed to relieve the symptoms of birth trauma or trauma experienced in the perinatal period.
It is quick, simple & does not require the sufferer to re-tell their story if they do not want to. It has proven extremely effective for those who have used it.
It works by breaking the neurological pathway between the memory of the event & the difficult emotions experienced as a result. This allows the memory of the event to be properly processed to the long term memory store which prevents the memory from automatically catapulting you into your stress response.
It also allows an opportunity to create a new neurological pathway to a more positive future goal state.