Healing from witnessing your parent being abused

Last night I watched ‘The Drover’s Wife’ on Netflix. It broke my heart wide open and then I closed it over to cope with the grief, the anger and the pain from domestic violence and alcohol fueled violence that affects so many women and children, myself included.

It is devastating as a child watching your parent be verbally, emotionally, physically and/or sexually abused. It is infuriating that you are too small to save them, to fight back, to stand up to the abuser and tell them to “STOP. Take responsibility for their pain and their life, to be a caring, mature adult and do the right thing”.

The joy of life gets stripped away as you deal with your anger, your resentment, your fear of when it is going to happen next or if it will get worse. You worry about your parent getting seriously hurt or killed and you being left alone with the perpetrator. You worry about when he/she will turn on you. You feel so helpless and hopeless.

You wonder why none of the other adults in your life step in to help. You wonder why your parent stays and allows themselves to be treated so poorly.

You struggle to lift your head up and live. You wonder “What’s the point of trying if it is always going to be like this”. You don’t ever relax fully just in case the fighting breaks out again.

Fun times, parties, are not fun for you as you know once the perpetrator gets drunk the fighting is likely to start. So, you brace yourself ready for what is to come. You hope and pray it doesn’t occur this time. You pray that maybe just once they will pass out before they attack and abuse.

You wonder whether there is any goodness in them at all and how they can live with themselves afterwards, after being so cruel and destructive.

You wonder why life is so hard and why humans can be so cruel. To survive you harden up, you numb yourself to the pain, you become bitter, cynical and angry. You do what you have to do to survive, even if that means isolating yourself from those you love, never letting anyone close because you don’t want to see their pain, face them being hurt anymore.

You close down and retreat into yourself or you leave, run away physically or energetically, no longer being a part of the family system. But energetically, spiritually we are always a part of our family system. They are in our blood, our DNA, the cells of our body. We live because they lived and passed on life to us. We can’t cut ourselves off, that’s like cutting off our own arm.

If we do cut ourselves off fully we will eventually get drained, exhausted, burnt out as we have cut ourselves off from the goodness, the energy supply, the river of life force that flows through our ancestors to our parents to us.

They are a part of us. We are a part of them. Our job as adults is to find our way back to our hearts, to feel our pain and to humbly stand before our parents and speak our truth.

“It hurt so much to see you suffer. I just wanted you to be safe. I wanted to feel your love and play. I wanted to be seen and listened to, to be heard and cared for. I accept you couldn’t give me that, you didn’t have any more energy, love or joy to give to me with what you were facing.

Thank you for giving me what you could. What you couldn’t give me I’ve had to find from elsewhere. It’s taken a long time to find it Mum, but I have found it. I honour you and all you went through.

I thank you for my life and for the closeness we now have. Thank you for finding your way through too. I’m so glad you won’t let anyone treat you that way ever again. I love you so much and I welcome you back into my heart, my life, my love and I look forward to spending more time together actually enjoying life. Thank you Mum, thank you for my life”.

When we can do this, we set them and ourselves free. We get to have peace in our hearts and calm in our bodies and nervous systems. We get to step out of hypervigilance, scanning for danger and isolating for protection.

We get to rejoin life and to see that there is love and goodness out there. There are lots of people who treat each other with love and respect. We start to let ourselves participate in life more fully and receive the love and goodness we have always longed for.

In time we also see that the perpetrator didn’t know how to behave better, how to cope with their hurts and disappointments from their life. As we heal we eventually find compassion for them and their journey. We see that they had deep pain inside which leads to their lashing out and hurting others.

We see that as an adult we can now walk away from that. We don’t have to stay entangled in their pain. We can hand it back and leave it with them. We can bow, honouring their difficult journey and then turn to face our own life, to walk forward into our future, using what we have learned to create as much goodness, love and joy as we can.

May all children and parents who have suffered from domestic violence find peace. May they heal and come back together to honour the love they have for each other and enjoy the rest of their lives as much as they can. Blessed BE.

Here’s a link to my page with free resources to assist with healing from child abuse.

(The healing process I’ve explained above is just my life’s example. A lot of the deep healing occurred through doing Family Constellations sessions where I could feel my feelings and speak my truth to someone standing in as a representative for my Mum and my Stepdad. I didn’t have those conversations with my actual parents. That would have been too confronting with the level of pain I had and they may not have been able to hear it.

Family Constellations creates a safe space for you to speak your truth and heal. Once you have healed and found more peace you might have a truthful conversation with your parents. When you’ve reached a greater level of peace within you, you are less vulnerable, less likely to be reactive or defensive if they can’t hear you or acknowledge what you have been through. Your parents will have seen what occurred very differently to you. If they have not dealt with their pain they may simply deny it or push you away as it is too hard for them to face it.)

Family Constellations Facilitator Training 2024 (in person, in Meadows, South Australia)

Facilitating this training has been my greatest joy this year. I look forward to sharing it with whoever feels drawn to participate in 2024.

It is such a privilege to walk beside people on a healing journey. This Family Constellations Facilitator Training is a 6-month healing journey where you learn about the hidden dynamics within families that impact our health and wellbeing.

Learn about intergenerational trauma and how it passes down the family line looking for someone to face it, feel it and release it on behalf of all.

Learn how to see your life and your experiences from a systemic perspective, understanding why your parents and their parents may not have been fully available to nurture and nourish their children.

See the repeating patterns and how to shift them.

Feel your emotional hurts and transform them, speaking your truth to representatives of those involved.

Release what no longer serves you so that you can open to receive more love from life, Source, Earth, yourself and your family system.

Connect to the bigger processes unfolding, supporting your growth and healing.

This training is a 6-month journey of stepping into greater peace and love. It will involve some challenging moments as you face and feel the inner depths of your pain, your truth of how you feel and what you need, but you will come out of it empowered to create more of what you do want in your life.

And as a bonus you will have also learned how to and practiced facilitating constellations for yourself, others, and small groups. You will have the skills and knowledge to become a Family Constellations practitioner if you wish to do so.

There is no pressure to do this. You can simply do the training with the intention of focusing on your own healing and that of your family system. It is up to you.

With Family Constellations there is no right and wrong. We hold a space for what the field wants to reveal to us. We honour what we are shown and those involved.

We give thanks for the realisations and the freedom that comes from understanding the wider system and hidden dynamics shaping our families behaviour.

We honour all involved and give thanks for our lives. We face the truth and acknowledge what is.

We turn from that which has held us back and walk forward into the new feeling the support of our family system walking with us.

We feel the presence of our ancestors and foster a deeper sense of belonging, of being held, loved and supported by those who came before us and passed on life to us.

We honour life and the difficult journeys we have as humans with tender hearts in a world that can be deeply painful and cruel, as those around us act out their wounds and slowly return to their natural state of innocence.

Learn how to rest in the stillness, peace and love of the field, which holds you in pure light enabling you to rebalance, renew and refocus into living from a state of love.

If this feels interesting to you, if you are willing to go within and face what is, then you are welcome to do this training.

You don’t need to have any qualifications or existing skills.

I will provide you with a detailed manual explaining life from the Family Constellations perspective.

We will have one weekend a month together to do constellations, to share and heal deeply.

In between you read the manual and practice what you have learned.

We can stay in touch through a private Facebook Group and of course I am available for 1 on 1 sessions (but these are at an additional cost, discounted for training participants).

There are more details on my website including a list of Frequently Asked Questions.

Blessed BE,

Jodi-Anne

Family Constellations Workshop

Thank you to the 13 beautiful souls who came to yesterday’s Family Constellations Workshop to share their hearts, release their burdens, and open to love and life in deeper ways. Thank you for saying “Yes” to your lives, to looking within and feeling what needed to be felt.

It was an honour to facilitate the 6 constellations and to witness the shifts and changes taking place in us all as our hearts were touched by the depth of the human journey and the pain we carry until we discover how to transform it back into love, into wholeness and sacredness.

We had laughter and tears. We had noise and silence. We had sacred stillness and peace coming over us all as constellations came to completion. And we celebrated each of us and our progress on our healing journeys. It was wonderful to watch.

Thank you once again to all who came, to all who held space for us, and to your ancestors and family systems that provided such a safe space for you to come back to your hearts and love.

My next Family Constellations Workshop will be on Sunday, December 18th, 2022 as part of a Summer Solstice celebration at the Farm for Wellbeing in Flaxley. There will be a welcome to land with Aboriginal Elder David Booth and his son Kyle, a welcome to the farm and calling in of the directions, meditation and grounding process with Joan Carpenter, 2hrs of constellations with me, a fire ceremony with Vesna Cavic, dinner and a Sound Bath by Shanti Sound. It should be a fantastic day. Tickets will be available soon.

My next whole-day Family Constellations Workshop will be on Sunday, January 15th, 2023. To book in for a constellation or as a representative just message me.

The Family Constellations Facilitator Training starts on February 4-5th, 2023. This is a 6-month journey, learning how to facilitate constellations for yourself, and for others, as well as how to start a Family Constellations business if you wish to do constellations for clients one on one and in workshops. It will be a deeply healing process as you will get to do many constellation exercises for yourself as a part of the training and you will get to be a representative in the constellations done for others. If you are keen to do the Family Constellations Facilitator Training just message or email me at hello@jodiannemsmith.com and I can send you more details.

Today is a day of rest and relaxation, giving thanks for yesterday and for all that occurred. Many blessings to all, Jodi-Anne

Healing trauma

Here’s a great article explaining how trauma that isn’t resolved results in changes to the DNA that are then passed on to future generations. There are many ways to heal trauma – to allow yourself to feel and release the emotional pain, to accept what was and turn to face your future instead of being entangled with the past.

For me, the most powerful approach was Family Constellations, which is why I went on to be trained as a facilitator of it. Through constellations, you can help heal the trauma in your family line so love and peace flow to the present and future generations, not past pain and trauma.

I also use Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE) to clear out the stored stress, tension and trauma in my body. TRE helps to gently release these stuck energies so that it diffuses the pressure in our body bit by bit, making it easier to then look at what it is that challenges us. It is no longer so overwhelming as some of the energetic charges have been released. It is a bit like letting steam out of a pressure cooker bit by bit so it doesn’t build up and explode.

Newsletter October 2022

Welcome to my October 2022 newsletter. I hope you and your family are well.

Family Constellations Workshop and Facilitator Training

I’m so pleased to announce an upcoming 1 day Family Constellations Workshop Sunday 20 November and Family Constellations Facilitator Training starting in February 2023. The facilitator training will be face-to-face in Meadows, for 12 days, 6 weekends, February-July. I’m really looking forward to sharing the theory and tools to facilitate constellations for yourself, for others and for clients if you want to start a Family Constellations business.

The world is full of so much chaos and beauty depending on where you look. Family Constellations has been powerful in helping me to find solutions, insights and steps to take to resolve the inner and outer conflicts I have faced. It helps me to find peace and to make a difference, to help alter the energy dynamics in my own and others’ family systems.

It helps us to release what no longer serves us, to break patterns of blind love, loyalty and enmeshments. It helps to release the entanglements so we can walk forward holding our heads up high, present in our own lives, rather than caught up in what others are doing or have done in the past. It helps us to come home to our hearts and for that, I am very grateful.

If you are keen to experience a constellation come along to the workshop, book a one-on-one appointment in person or via zoom, or dive into the facilitator training for a 6-month-long self-discovery journey of transformation that will benefit not only you but your whole family system.

In 2024 I will make the facilitator training available online, but for now, it will be in person at Meadows in South Australia. It will be limited to 15 people max. I look forward to creating a beautiful, safe space for the expansion of all who participate.

Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE)

I continue to use Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE) personally and teach it to others through individual appointments. Some of the tensions and traumas that have shaken out of my body recently were from dental appointments where a lot of work was done to force my jaw to realign itself. I had teeth pulled, a device that pushed my top jaw outwards and then braces to straighten my teeth. It’s such a weird concept for me to let someone poke around in my mouth. The reflex to bite down and stop it is strong. I hadn’t thought of it as trauma but to my body it definitely was.

And for a lot of us, it certainly is a stressful process where we sit tensely, reluctantly allowing the dentist to do what is needed. In this way, it is a mild freeze reaction in our autonomic nervous system. Our body can feel trapped, and panicky. We may numb out or dissociate from our bodies to cope with not being able to run away or fight back. Our bodies are pumped full of adrenaline and cortisol in such a situation. We are primed to fight or flee, but we have our foot on the brake as well as the gas pedal because we know the dentist is supposedly helping us. This push/pull, go/stay dynamic is stressful for the body, hence the trauma, and the inability to complete the activation to fight or flee.

If we don’t do something to destress and balance up afterwards that stress and tension stay in the body and we get tight muscles, frozen shoulders, sore backs, etc. We get locked up inside as that trauma, that tension gets locked into the cells of our body. We lose some of our freedom to flow and move with ease and grace, as we are locked up tight.

TRE helps to release this tension so that our body and mind relax again. We come out of hypervigilance or anxiousness back into calmness, into knowing we are safe, it’s over, that was then and this is now.

It takes time to release all the charge, the stored tension within, but each time you use TRE you are releasing a little bit more and more and more. It’s like letting the stream out of a pressure cooker. We want to do it bit by bit, so it doesn’t build up and explode.

The impacts of TRE are cumulative over time helping you to heal, let go of defence mechanisms, be more present in your inner world and feel and release what has been keeping you in your life patterns. Your defence structure softens and releases as you clear out the emotional pain, tensions and traumas, so you can relax and enjoy life.

Star Groups – Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises (5:02 mins) – explains the fight, flight and freeze mechanism, how stress and tension build in our body, the impacts of this on our health and how TRE helps to reduce this.

If you’d like to learn more about TRE visit my website. There is a free online self-study course by Richmond Heath to learn TRE. If you’d prefer to learn in person you can do so with me in an individual appointment. Three appointments are recommended so you learn how to self-regulate the process. After that, you can use TRE at home whenever you like as part of your self-care process. I’m even happy for you to bring a friend and learn together so that you only pay half the cost each.

TRE is a wonderful gift to learn. It is an innate healing mechanism in the body that we activate and then let the body do the work. Your body will literally shake out the stress, tension and trauma while you rest and witness the process. You are fully present and aware, just allowing your body to do what is needed to release and balance up. Above is a video explaining how it works and another one below which shows examples of people tremoring. There are many more examples of people tremoring using TRE on my website.

Cathrine Scharff Thommessen – TRE (1:06 mins) It shows examples of people tremoring.

Free resources available on my website

I have also created a heap of pages on my website with free information on healing from stress and illnesschild abusedepressionfear and anxiety and addictions. There’s also free information on spirituality and conscious evolution as well as over 100 channelled answers to questions about how life works and the healing journey on the Life Insights page. I hope there is something on my website that you will find useful on your healing journey.

Individual Appointments in person or online

I am still offering individual appointments in person from Meadows or online (via Zoom or phone) in Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE)Family ConstellationsCrystal Light Bed (in person only), and Psych-K. Appointments are available on Mondays and Tuesdays. I can do weekends if needed. The cost is $120 per session. 

Thank you

I want to thank you for your interaction with me in the past. I look forward to spending time together the next time you feel drawn to have an appointment, attend a workshop or do one of my online courses that I’m preparing. They’re not available yet, but in 2023 I’m hoping to have several that provide an easy way for people to build skills and learn more about how to heal and find greater peace and happiness. I had 1000 views of my website last month which is wonderful. I’m so pleased that the information I have provided is being accessed and is assisting so many people with their healing journeys.

Testimonials

If you haven’t liked or recommended my Facebook page, please consider doing so. Testimonials are so helpful. Your comments may be just what someone else needs to read to find the courage to book an appointment and go deeper on their healing journey. Here are two testimonials.

Another self

The Netflix series ‘Another Self’ is a Turkish 8-part series that follows the life of 3 women and their families as they work through their challenges with the help of Family Constellations. I’ve watched 3 episodes so far and each has shown a Family Constellations session explaining how illnesses, relationship problems, career issues, finance blocks and repeating patterns are often related to our unprocessed trauma or that of our ancestors passed on for us to heal and bring peace to the family system.

It is wonderful how Family Constellations is becoming more mainstream and how TV shows like this demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach as it reaches the core cause underneath our challenges and helps to alter our defence mechanisms and conditioning to free us to choose differently and experience a more joyful life.

I thoroughly recommend this show to anyone who is curious about understanding the deeper reasons why we experience the challenges we do. It’s an engaging and clever series beautifully presenting Family Constellations concepts and theory while demonstrating its application with real-life examples. Well worth watching. Enjoy!

https://www.netflix.com/au/title/81380432

Upcoming Family constellations Workshops

Hi everyone,

With the upcoming easing of mask requirements in South Australia, we can finally start holding Family Constellations Workshops indoors again. I am so excited. I hope you can join me on 15 May 2022 and/or 26 June 2022 for a 1-day constellation workshop. I’m keeping numbers small, only 12 participants (5 constellations and 7 representatives), so book in quickly if you would like to attend.

I hope you are well,

Many blessings,

Jodi-Anne

Do we need to forgive?

It can be hard to forgive when you have been hurt deeply. This video explains some deeper aspects of forgiveness and how Family Constellations can help you to say what you need to say to those involved and hand back anything you’ve carried or been burdened with. Connecting with the energy of those involved in a constellation helps you to feel into their side of the story, to clear some of the emotional pain and to find peace. It’s well worth doing so you can focus on living and enjoying your NOW, not being stuck, entangled in the past.

If you’re keen to experience a Family Constellations I am hosting a workshop in Meadows on Sunday 7 Feb. Constellations can also be done in individual appointments.

Stop carrying responsibility for Mum and Dad’s issues – healing family trauma

Are the emotions you struggle with yours? Science has now shown how unfinished trauma is passed on genetically to future generations. We carry the wounds of our ancestors in an attempt to heal it. This process and ways to help release what you carry is explained in the attached article.

For example: Did your mom or dad reject their sadness and grief? Are you, or your kids, depressed or always grieving?

Did they hide or bury their anger? Are you or your children unusually angry, or did you choose an angry partner? Or perhaps you can’t access your anger at all, while feeling depressed and broken?

Did they disown their need for love and intimacy? Do you hunger for love and yet cannot find it?

Family systems seek wholeness by re-creating what was disowned by previous generations. These later generations (ours and our children’s) try to bring this wholeness by acting out rejected family aspects.

Family Constellation work shows us when these patterns run our lives and how to disentangle from them.

Positive experiences reverse impacts of trauma

This is a great 2:37 min podcast explaining recent scientific research that has found that the impacts of trauma experienced in your life or trauma inherited from your ancestors through changes to their DNA that are passed onto you in their sperm or egg, can be reversed through positive environmental experiences.

In this study, which involved mice who had been traumatised, they found that the trauma behaviours such as depressive behaviours, cognitive problems, anti-social behaviours, and risk taking all stopped after exposure to positve environmental experiences. Furthermore the trauma markers on their DNA healed and were not passed on to their offspring.

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