A Pirates Story 

Terry, a 32 year old woman of Vietnamese heritage, was living with a persistent fear that her life was in danger.  Terry worked on getting over this fear long and hard, she tried many forms of healing and therapy, but to no avail. Born in this country, and raised in a safe neighborhood, she could not remember her life ever being threatened.  She was very unhappy with herself for not being able to take hold of what she considered as an “irrational fear”.  When someone like Terry, has excavated extensively one's childhood memories for a potential trauma exposure and still is unable to explain her fears, we keep looking to see if it may be the case of PTSD in the Womb, which happens when a trauma experienced by a pregnant mother  is imprinted on an unborn child. 

"Was your mother's life ever in danger while she was pregnant with you?" I asked Jane, and immediately her eyes lit up excitedly.  “You are so right!” she exclaimed.  My mother’s life has been threatened when she was pregnant with me. As they were leaving Vietnam on a boat, the pirates attacked them.  Not realizing that the pirates were primarily seeking financial rewards, my mother was terrified that she and me, her child would die.  She later gave birth to me in a refugee camp.  What was interesting, Jane did not feel particularly unsafe on a daily basis, yet the sense of some threat to her life haunted her. Her body recorded her mother’s state of initial terror and from then on she carried the fear “I will die.” This fear went away during a Prenatal Trauma Healing that involved a surrogate healing of her mother’s initial trauma during a pirate capture incident, as well as clearing neurochemical and emotional imprints held in Terry’s own body and the field.

Our personalities are molded by our mothers in a powerful way from the very beginnings of our lives. From within placenta inside our mother we learn about life, but not the life that is our own. You may have never thought that your ADD, your anxiety and depression are to a large extent connected to your pregnant mother’s depression, or your late night hunger tied to your mother starving during the Second World War. Or your fear of fainting and being suffocated was caused by your mother losing consciousness during anesthesia administered at birth.  We will sense these traumas as very real, as something that happened to us directly in our lives, yet find ourselves unable to recall an actual event to match that experience.  Consequently, much of  prenatal trauma remains unhealed.

While early childhood trauma has been closely investigated, there has not been as much awareness on how we are affected by prenatal trauma. The main reason that womb trauma has not been given as much attention is that we need to access this timeframe where we have no “conscious memory.”  So we are not as clear about what actually happened and the extent to which we remain affected in adulthood.

Dr. Cristian Northrup on Trauma Crossing Placenta Barrier

An author and well-known obstetrician Christiane Northrup shares that if a pregnant mother is going through high levels of fear or distress, her every thought and every emotion is accompanied by a metabolic cascade of neurochemicals in the body. Hormones known as cytokines (signaling molecules used extensively in cellular communications) are produced affecting mother’s immune system as well as her child’s.  This shatters the natural sense of invincibility and trust basic to that stage of our development.  The opposite is also true. When the mother is feeling healthy and happy, she produces oxytocin. This is often called the molecule of belonging. The presence of this component creates feelings of bonding and strengthens immunity in the baby. It contributes to a child’s constitution of well-being for the rest of his or her life.

Pregnancy is a crucial time in a child’s development. Neurotransmitters and hormones moving inside the mother’s body create a chemical and physical imprint on the baby’s brain and body. Inside our mothers’ wombs, the placenta feeds us the nutrients from the mother as well as her emotional downloads. Our own flesh reverberates with the emotional states that mothers go through such as dread, helplessness, despair. As these incidents occur entirely outside of our control,  the memory in a form of energetic imprints can be carried in our psyche, our body, and our field throughout the lifetime.  

One could say that of all the bad deals human beings were dealt when they were created, prenatal trauma may be one of them. But on the good side – this gives us an imperative that in healing ourselves we heal our mothers, along with our ancestral wounds.  In fact, many of the chronic conditions we experience fall in the category of “hereditary” conditions.  And with that comes the sentiment that not much can be done.  The time has come to change that sentiment.  

As we come to understand how our own health gets created through the pattern of the lives of our ancestors, our healing involves seeing the larger whole and acknowledgement of all their experiences. 

While we are not responsible for trauma passed to us by our parents, we must be responsive to it. We must use it as a catalyst to facilitate not just our own healing, but that of our ancestral, and the traditional heritage as well. If you are ready to be free from your Womb PTDSD and are looking for guidance and healing,  I will be able to use the Energy Restructuring methodology to completely resolve your prenatal trauma, while repairing your mother’s wounding, and in this way manifesting larger continuity and harmony within your ancestral  tree.