Why Clay Therapy?
Hi I have worked with Donna and I want to share with you my experience with Clay Therapy as an adult.
I would totally recommend Clay Therapy as a form of emotional relief from childhood trauma.
This is my subjective experience. With great appreciation to Donna my therapist, I am now totally free from my childhood fear of the unknown or unfamiliarity. Some of the debilitating and anxiety driven fears, I portray in my adult life are the following:
- Fear of making a mistake
- Fear of not being good enough
- Fear of what others might think of me in situations like public speaking
- Fear of not measuring up to another person’s expectation
- Fear when meeting new people or going to new and unfamiliar place like airports for example.
During the clay field therapy process with my therapist, I became aware that, my fears were derived from being constantly ridiculed in my childhood by my adoptive family, mostly by my mother and sister. I was called “ugly like a frog, nose chiselled like a carved face mask and so on,” besides being physically abused on regular basis. Being an adopted child with abandonment issues, whilst being subjected to physical and verbal abuse had emotionally damaged me. I developed intense fear of people!
This trauma has never been confronted until the therapeutic clay field process, that I discovered what the hindrance was in being authentically free from fear.
Apparently, growing up, I developed very intense shyness around unfamiliar people or even going to new places, where I might find myself feeling awkward, because I am thinking that people in the room are judging my imperfections. This was a troubling thought to digest, but for me, it puts me in the spot. My usual reaction would be to withdraw emotionally and as much as possible by wishing no one is going to address me in any conversation publicly. My self-esteem was very low, upon reflection.
I must say that, I am very grateful to Donna at Innate Therapies Australia; through clay field therapy, I was able to overcome my inhibitions and low self-esteem as a result. Clay therapy works has given me an insight into my own subconscious interaction; for example: I remember digging a tunnel (working with the clay) which is for me is to feel the love of my significant others engulfing me; I need to be embraced and accepted, comforted and soothed. which I might add, I had been craving, a longingness in my infancy and childhood. To culminate, I was an adopted child. Realising this unconscious thought process, whilst at the same time, relieving this empowering experience during the therapy is like finally “coming home to rest.”
For far too long, these many years, I had been blocked up; emotionally entangled and fleeing from my feelings. Shyness was the mode of escapism, which I encapsulated and attributed as being a personality trait. Needless to say, it was the trauma that I experienced as a child from my significant others led to the reasons why I had developed fear and extreme shyness and the need to hide.
Indeed, now after been confronted with my unconscious human need of being loved and accepted, I finally can do many things which I used to shy away from, since my childhood; such activities as:
- I can now dance in public without the fear of being watched or judged about my imperfections.
- Today, I can speak in public forums,
- I know I have the confidence to be authentic and not try to please everyone all the time
- I have started my own business, whereby, I coach Managers and leaders; I also do training for managers as a Leadership and Executive Coach.
Finally, for anyone reading my experience with clay field therapeutic works with Donna my therapist, I have something to say to you. Clay field therapy is not for children and adolescence only, adults who have been stunted in their emotional growth through some form of trauma in their childhood, I recommend Clayfield Therapy. Try it for the sake of your health and wellbeing in both areas, psychologically and physically. Since blocked emotions, like stress and anxiety can lead to mental health issues and physical ailments.
