We have all been "exposed to" the experience in this life that we have not been able to consciously process, whether it be an attachment wounding, a narcissistic injury, a relational trauma or some other form of rejection, abandonment, hurt or betrayal. 

One of the basic definitions of trauma is: overwhelming inability "of" information processing. 

Unbearable and unendurable, emotional and somatic experiences that have not found a relational framework in which to be held.

Most of the time this leaves us internally with the pain that we might not be feeling. Often there is some numbing going on or it is more of a dissociative or shut down quality. This usually makes a lot of sense based on what happened early in our life, a coherent and adaptive response that would otherwise have led to extensive fragmentation of the sense of self.

The healing response to this is to find a slow and safe way to access this emotional experience, to touch it and be touched by it here and now, to contain it, to articulate it, to give it a voice and to make sense of it.

It is this experiential feeling, verbalising and making sense of our experience that illuminates the unconscious meanings we have ascribed to it. This is the very essence of this integration process, which is about consciously embodying and holding the emotional and somatic material that has been dissociated, usually for very intelligent reasons.

Karima Valentina Hočevar