Befriending the Guardians is a Trauma Sensitive coaching approach to exploring, resolving, and integrating trauma resulting from abuse, neglect, racism, transphobia, climate crises, weather disasters, divorce, parental or partner loss, imprisonment, school failure, and any experience that leaves humans feeling fearful and isolated.
This approach is especially useful if you feel stuck in trauma reactivity.
You’ll know you are stuck in traumatic reactivity if you experience:
bouts of sleeplessness,
constant catastrophic thinking,
sudden anger flashes,
negative self talk,
obsessive fears and suspicions, and
any thoughts, feelings, and behaviours that obscure your experience of wholeness, the deeply satisfying sense of connection and competence supported by agency (your ability to do what you say you will do) and self-efficacy (your conviction that you can overcome obstacles as you move forward in your life.)
Agency and self-efficacy, both learnable characteristics, lead to that “I’ve got this!” feeling no matter how many times you fail on your way to clarifying and achieving goals.
If you are experiencing any combination of the above indicators of trauma reactivity, you may be ready for a trauma sensitive approach to meet whatever comes your way. We all deserve to feel a sense of connection rather than isolation, optimism rather than dread. That ‘we’ includes you.
A trauma sensitive approach includes:
Creating and practising thought-and-action habits to support agency and self-efficacy;
Learning and practising self- and co-regulating techniques to soothe in-the-moment trauma reactivity; and,
Understanding resistance to change using “Befriending the Guardians,” an approach that explores and utilizes your individual strengths and resources, qualities easily overlooked when we are in a trauma-induced reactive state.
If you’re ready to reframe your behaviours and expand your experiences of meaning, peace and joy, email jane@winterblooms.net with the word coaching in your subject line.
The WROOTS Option
If you are feeling weighted down by past traumas, the Writing Out of Traumas (WROOTS) course is a longer, more in-depth option to consider. This course consists of five two-hour sessions spread over what ever time you may need to accommodate your personal integration process. I call it Writing Out Of Traumas because it utilizes cursive writing (not printing or keyboarding) with a pen and paper. Cursive writing has been proven to be a whole-brain, healing activity; investing in your cursive writing chops will tranform into a lifelong companion you will always be able to count on to support you during challenging times.
The complete WROOTS course is coming soon.
As soon as it is up and running, I’ll post a note here on where to find it.
All folks who are curious about WROOTS should have at least one live coaching session (see above) with Jane before commiting to the course.
Thanks for visiting Winter Blooms.
To learn more about the creator of this trauma sensitive site, visit the About page on this website.