Dhana's C-PTSD Transformation

Trauma recovery, particularly when dealing with complex PTSD, can be uncomfortable but that discomfort is worth it when you are able to reconnect with your inner child and truly heal the parts of you that have been in pain for so long.

Thank you so much Dhana, for coming on and talking with me this morning. I'm really excited to catch up with you, as always. I love catching up with you.

But also really excited to talk about some of the work that we've done together. And I know that it will be quite inspiring for others to hear part of your journey, as much as you are willing to disclose, of course, that's always in your ball park.

So if you are comfortable, why don't you share with everyone who might be watching how it is that we came to connect and some of the work that we've done together and just what's been the most transformational for you.

Well thank you so much Ruby. It has just been such a roller coaster ride from start to finish.

And you mentioned that I can say whatever I feel comfortable with and to be quite honest with you, from where I started to where I am now, I was uncomfortable with everything. I wasn't comfortable disclosing anything at all and now I feel like an open book so I don't really mind what you share or what people know.

What you see is now what you get and I'm really comfortable and really quite content in my own skin and not caring about what other people think of me or the way I conduct myself or the way I do things.

The way that I got to meet you was through a mutual friend and she actually gifted me a session with you because I was in such a crappy state. I was just about ready to pack it in.

I hadn't long been dead. That may sound very strange to a lot of people but I had actually passed away and come back and been very sick. My life was just rubbish and I was stuck and I was doing everything in my power to make it better but I was just hitting road block after road block and feeling like utter shit to be quite honest.

And now, today, I don't. I feel the opposite of that. I feel like I look at life from a bird's eye perspective so 10,000 feet up as opposed to 6 foot under.

Looking up at the world going oh my god I'm digging myself a bigger hole, I'm burying myself and it's just getting worse. So thank you.

Ah you're so welcome. Now one things that we did, so we did some really deep trauma work. A lot of the work that is supremely uncomfortable when you're going through it. So would you mind talking a little bit about what that was like for you, to go to those places that you might not necessarily have really wanted to explore.

Gees, that was like going to hell and back. I already thought I was in hell but you took me to a whole new level of hell. But I have to say that ... but in saying that I didn't feel like I was in hell on my own and I felt empowered and like I had the tools thankfully, thanks to you, to actually go through hell and come out the other side.

And coming out the other side, that journey to get to the other side was utter rubbish on so many levels but when I did come out the other side I felt enlightened, expansive, liberated and relieved. And the changes in just my, on a cellular level and on a unconscious level, I changed.

Oh yeah.

And my perspective on the world changed. And it's like somebody takes a bag of potatoes off your shoulders that's been sitting there for years and all of a sudden you can sleep properly.

All of a sudden you can have a conversation with another person without being stuck up in your head. You can actually laugh, laugh with somebody.

I don't remember before you and I met and before I went through the sessions with you I couldn't remember the last time I had actually laughed with somebody or enjoyed or been lighthearted enough to have a conversation with somebody.

I was so serious and so literal that I couldn't see the joy in anything. Life was just a complete shit storm and I wasn't interested in anything that looked like it was fake or false but yet I think I was the one coming across as fake and false.

Sure. And so we've done a lot of work and we've done some of the more intrinsic work that I do so you've gone through that process of doing a trauma timeline and... okay so deep breathe, I know it was a big deal.

As someone who has had significant trauma in their life from a very age and who has had that as something that has been ongoing over a very long period of time can you speak to someone who might be on the other side of this, in that place where you once were, feeling like this will never change and you can never get free of it, and can you just sort of speak to what it was like to go through that process and what it meant for you to get that full, whole picture of your life?

After a lifetime of emotional, mental, physical, sexual and just trauma on so many levels from quite young, my perspective of the world was really tarnished and my trust in the world or in myself was not existent. I didn't believe anything that I saw. I didn't see anything good.

My relationships with previous partners, with parents, with siblings, with my own children were really toxic and they needed to change. I could see they needed to change. I wanted them to change and I thought I was doing everything to change them but I think I was actually doing a lot of sabotaging subconsciously to keep it where it was and by doing the trauma work, the ... and working with you and allowing myself to trust you was the greatest decision I ever made.

Purely because you gave me the ability to trust myself, trust my own abilities and my own instincts and to be okay with being me and knowing that whatever my feelings were and whatever my thoughts were and whatever my responses were that was okay too and to have someone say that you're actually okay when you have not been okay for your whole life .. oh wow, sorry, that'll make me cry now.

It's such a gift. It's such a blessing and it opens an entirely new world for you. Sorry, I'm crying now. To live your best life. Yeah. That you wouldn't have lived had I not met you, had I not done the trauma work, gone on that fucking awful hell roller coaster of trauma and coming out the other side to now being able to have the freedom to live the life that I want, looking at it from a 10,000 foot perspective rather than a 6 foot under perspective so that was my experience.

Yeah, beautiful and I know that reconnecting with and really being able to support your inner child was an important part of that work as well.

Oh just to connect with that inner child and to acknowledge that inner child in the first place was substantial. That was something that had never been done. I think there was maybe a little bit of surface work that I had done but nothing as deep and nothing as connected as that. No there was no. Just to be able to connect with that inner child and acknowledge that there is one there for starters instead of saying it doesn't exist at all is such a... it's so lovely.

Yeah, it really is and so coming out the other side where you are now how are you feeling about the future? How are you feeling about things coming up?

Encouraged actually, enthusiastic, excited. I’m excited about the future and I feel really calm about the future too. I don’t feel like it’s a hopeless waste of time and what’s the purpose of anything anymore.

I actually feel encouraged and enthusiastic and excited about each day and what new adventures and what new experiences will I have and where I’m going feels like it’s a good place rather than a continued downwards slope into crap, into hell.

Yeah, absolutely and so from your perspective what did you enjoy most and what would you say was the best thing about this transformational journey that we’ve gone on together?

The evolution of the gift that you help us find within ourselves. The evolution of the gift that you give is to be able to connect with myself and to feel that it’s okay for me to be me. That it’s okay for me to be, exist on this planet. It’s okay for me to be in society. It’s okay for me to be a person.

To know that I’m okay to be alive is the gift that you have given me and you’ve allowed me to give me as well through doing the work with you.

Yeah, beautiful, thank you so much Dhana and is there anything else, just before you go, is there anything else that you would like to say to someone who might be thinking about doing this work, who might still be a little bit apprehensive, if they have concerns or if you were talking to a friend and you knew someone was going through something, or had been through something similar to you what kind of advice would you like to give that person?

I would like to tell that person that regardless of that feeling of apprehension and fear and anxiety that comes with anything about change, that the journey is not going to be easy but it will be worth it and if you’re going to go through it there is no better person to go though it with than with you because you have integrity, you are trustworthy, and you’re not a judgemental person.

You really are genuinely 100% there for each, you were for me and I know you are for others. I couldn’t be more grateful that I’ve met you and that I’ve allowed myself to embrace what you help and teach with. You are amazing. Thank you.

Thank you so much. As I’ve said many times it is such an honour and a privilege to be able walk beside you and to guide and assist and support people on this trauma transformation and I am just so, so happy that you are in such a great place now compared to where you were before. So I’m wishing you all the best for the future, Sweetheart.

So a complete 180 and I encourage anybody to take the leap and invest in themselves but trust you.