Finding Heart: Using Play and Somatic Counselling to Support Children Through Medical Trauma

Being open hearted means something very different to me after my last week's therapy session. I work with a somatic therapist and I had been working through early medical trauma coming up as fear and terror deep inside my chest. Being with this feeling without dissociating through coming back into my over chattering mind was a challenge. It is so much easier to just go into the stories I tell myself instead of being there with this cold discomfort.

With the presence and witnessing of my therapist, I continued to stay with this feeling that felt older than my language. It came as an emptiness in the cavity of my chest and I began to realize that it was as if my heart wasn't there. I was hollow and this feeling came from this void space within me.

"There is no heart inside me" I realized out loud.

"Can you stay there?" she asked me and I could. I could hold the feltsense of safety long enough to dip my toe into this very feeling I usually don't meet within myself. I stayed to feel the coldness and get to know where I hold it.

I am still getting to know these embedded pieces of own trauma story. After staying as long as I could to feel and experience my own early medical trauma, I felt myself understanding one of the places my fear originates. These early memories of surgery are in me and are like unread books I have held onto tightly. They are hard to find without the support of my therapist and my own learning of my embodied medical trauma.

Being born with congenital heart disease has gifted me a deep connection to my body, sensations and inner workings, particularly of my heart. My relationship with my own heartbeat is one of complete trust and distrust at the same time. My awareness of its function and presence is as loud as a ticking clock from the 1970s that is loud and always in the background sound landscape. This inner sense of safety and danger is my barometer and has been since I was born.

Many people who are born with life threatening illnesses and chronic diseases have survived by disconnecting with their trauma. For me as a young girl, it was reinforced by nurses, doctors and relatives to be brave and strong. What I took with this message is not to feel and to use my mind to make sure that my heart was strong like me.

My toys were my friends and I used them to process what I had tucked away inside myself. My dolls, who I really wished were real, were always tucked away and sleeping with felt pen marks on their bodies. Quite frequently scar marks that matched mine from surgeries and procedures.

In my play therapy sessions with children, I am curious about the toys they use to communicate their own pain and discomfort. What if I can help them integrate and connect with their experience? That is my hope with each child that comes in my door that their pain, fear and discomfort can be played out instead of embodied and hidden away. Their play, like the felt pen marks on the dolls I played with may have signs that are the key to their story.

Here is a recent podcast where I discuss this further: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2m8XfitD0TcO10RSSF3nDo

Please reach out to me if you would like to ask questions or begin to work together: https://www.handstoheart.online/