Shelly’s Story
I wanted to share a testimonial with you, so you could understand the impact and importance of the work I do, and how it might help you or a loved one.
My dear client Shelley Mackay wrote this for me:
I have starved this body. I have stuffed this body with food that is not good for it. I have allowed this body to wallow in immobility and I have pushed this body to its absolute limits in endurance sport.
I am a survivor of significant childhood trauma. I survived by shutting down, by going dead, by refusing to acknowledge my emotions, by being beige. Beige for me meant having no colour or life of my own but instead allowing others’ colours to reflect onto me so that I might look like I fit in with them. If I couldn’t literally be invisible, this was the next best thing. That meant I became an expert at wearing a lot of different masks. The last of those masks was Athlete.
It’s a little ironic because up until my mid-thirties I was the opposite of an athlete. I was a couch potato extraordinaire. I was a truly gifted couch potato – if there were medals for such a thing I would have won gold! Couch potato was a great way to stay invisible and beige. However, through a particular set of circumstances I found myself swept up in the feeling of status that came with being “An Athlete”. Soon after running my first ever 10km I found myself training for the Coast to Coast. Then a half ironman (or three). Then the full ironman. Definitely an athlete!
Then I got really, really tired. I still wanted to be Athlete but no matter how deep I dug I just couldn’t find the mo-jo. This is a problem when one needs to wear a mask to hide one’s true self – what to do when the mask starts to slip!?
Enter Claire. A friend suggested a consultation with her and I hoped I’d find a new coach who would help me get to new heights of athletic prowess – then my identity as “An Athlete” could remain intact! If you know Claire at all you’re probably smiling right now, because you know that she has a natural, powerful gift of being able to see through the surface bullshit right to the heart of the matter – which she does with compassion, kindness and complete non-judgement.
One of the first things she did was just look at how I stand. No movement, just standing. When it came to my back, she commented on the fact that the top of my spine was flat – no ‘S’ curve. I actually knew that, because a cardiologist discovered it when checking out my mild heart murmur. Apparently there’s not quite enough room in my chest cavity because of my flat spine, so I said to Claire “Oh yeah, I know about that. I was born that way.” To this day I get goose bumps and tears in my eyes when I recall what she said next. “No, you weren’t. That’s a trauma response”. It pierced my armour. Got through my mask. Settled in my soul. And far from shattering me like I believed would happen if I let my true self be seen, instead I felt deep, intense, unbelievable relief. I think it was the non-judgement. The non-pity. I did not feel pathetic or broken or disgusting – I just felt seen and accepted. As is. Beige. No mask. Not an athlete. Just me.
I’ve been working with Claire for about five years now. It started with learning how to breathe properly. I was astonished that something that seemed as simple as breathing properly made me feel like crying. Finally air getting into starved parts of my body. Then we worked on moving well while honouring my body’s needs. Please note: I did not know that my body had “needs” (beyond the obvious 😊). I hated my body and just expected it to do what I demanded of it regardless of the consequences. And boy were there consequences. Constant fatigue, lack of flexibility, stiffness in my back, frozen shoulder…
A major fact that I did not know and that Claire (very patiently) helped me understand is that trauma is stored in the body. Literally in my muscles. In my tendons. In my immune system. It wasn’t just my emotions that were shut down and gummed up. It has been a long, hard journey untangling both the actual trauma I went through in my early years and the consequences of the life I built in response to that trauma. Claire has been alongside me every step of the way. Through the deep depression, the anxiety, the fear and, at times, the longing to just give up. While my very skilled and experienced psychologist has been helping me untangle my brain, Claire has been supporting me to understand my unique biology and working with me to craft a lifestyle that optimises opportunities for growth and healing. I can state categorically that I would not be as well as I am today were it not for Claire’s powerful work with me. She is wise, knowledgeable, compassionate and a gifted communicator.
I nearly spat out my coffee when, after an assessment into my unique biology, Claire explained to me that my natural health type was Activator. Like what??!! It was SO the opposite of how I had lived much of my life (hence the fatigue, stress, compromised immune system…). An Activator is NOT beige. NOT a couch potato. NOT someone who sits by and lets others make all the decisions for them. I have argued with Claire, complained to her, cried with her, listened to her and learned so, so much from her.
Here is what I am gradually coming to really understand. I am not THE activator. No one is. I am myself. My true self, the cells in my body, my unique biology, make me a Shelley shaped activator who has been tempered by trauma AND THAT IS OKAY. I do not have to be all that ‘An Activator’ is. What I do need to be is me. And what I need to do is engage in a lifestyle that honours my unique me-ness so that I can be in flow. When I am in flow, I offer the best of myself back to the world around me.
What Claire has helped me discover is absolutely priceless. I believed that trauma had defined my life. I was broken. Damaged. Full stop. What I now know to be true is that trauma does NOT define me. Yes, it has absolutely shaped me. It has 100% contributed to who I am today – but do you know what? The best parts of myself, the parts I like the most, are those that were shaped by trauma. It’s knocked off what might otherwise have been some pretty sharp edges. It’s made me deeply empathetic. It’s given me a drive for social justice and a desire to do good in the world.
I simply do not have enough words to express what a massive, unbelievable, powerful influence Claire has been in my life. I am myself, my actual true self, in large part because of her patient, kind, incredibly wise and insightful way of seeing me and working with all of me. I’m still a work in progress, and this, I suspect, is the whole point. We all are.”
I thank Shelley for her time writing this, in the hope that it will be able to help someone else in a similar situation. If you would like to discuss your options, please contact me when it suits