Working through the ten stages can be painful, and potentially we all suffer and grieve.

Working through the ten stages can be painful, and potentially we all suffer and grieve. Very often we who have experienced childhood abuse have coped at least in part through some degree of deep dissociation. While this was necessary for our survival then, continued dissociation (especially forms that are apparently not within our control) is not adaptive once the abuse has stopped. Now the task of the ten stages is to help you stay present long enough to learn other means of establishing safety in the present. How does someone with automatic survival skills of dissociation learn to do this? Gentle meditation is one skill that can help.

The ten stages does not only consist of telling our story or focusing on childhood memories, though of course that is a part of the student work. Bringing child memories to mind, talking about them in a trusting relationship, and developing the capacities for managing them while staying present in the moment are all crucial parts of our healing process. A premature emphasis on our childhood material can in fact do more harm than good. We may first need to learn and practice a variety of self-care meditational skills that we can then employ during the memory work phase.This we call TRUST and Consent

In the past, we were encouraged to speak about our abuse in the belief that this catharsis would be healing.  This instead led to re-traumatisation rather than mastery of the abuse material or healing. In fact, some childhood survivors are able to tell their stories easily, but in a dissociated manner. Because of the risks involved, this healing work is best done with the help of our long-term students who can help us learn to cope with past memories effectively. Our goal is to help us connect to the past while staying in the present.

We are focused on a stage approach, which includes early preparation, focus on developing trust and consent and stabilisation.  first phase of the ten stages is safety. How can we experience this if we do not even feel safe within ourself, but at the risk of constant flashbacks? In fact, for many of us it may have felt that there were only two choices available to us historically: abuse or dissociation. We begin by learning trust and consent threw interaction with our child within so that we can be present enough to develop a whole ten stage range of self-care for our child within is crucial to recovery.



Contact with our child within is about learning to stay present (or for most of us get present in the first place) in our body in the here and now. It consists of a set of skills/tools to help us identify and manage dissociation and the trauma-induced emotions that lead to it. Processing done from a  dissociated state is highly useful in the ten stages and leads us from Trust and consent to our specific truth. Once we are present, we can need to learn other means of managing the feelings and thoughts associated with our recognised truthful memories.

Every one is different. Dissociation identification will work for different people in differing ways.
-Moving from trust and consent often takes the form of focusing on the present by tuning into it via all our senses. For example, one meditational technique could involve focusing on a sound you hear right now, a physical sensation (what is the texture of the chair you are sitting on, for example?) and/or something you see. Describe each in as much detail as possible.

-Diaphragmatic or deep breathing meditation: Childhood survivors often hold their breath or breathe very shallowly. This in turn deprives you of oxygen which will make anxiety more intense. Stopping and focusing on deepening and slowing your breathing can bring you back to the moment.

-Relaxation letting go, guided ten stage study - We with dissociative mindsets are engaging in a form of self-hypnosis much of the time. The trouble is it appears out of our control, it is out of our control!But it is not out of the control of our child within. Our guides have become trained in Child within gentle meditation and can help teach you how to use dissociation in a way that works for us.  We build and develop a safe container for childhood memories in an awakened child within between sessions, create a safe or comfortable place (“safe” may not be a concept some of us can relate to or may be triggering to some) Contact with the child within we learn the ways to turn up and down the “volume” of painful feelings and memories locked away within us moving from anger to peaceful understanding.

Meditation and child within contact and emotional management skills can help us proceed with the study of our child hidden within in a manner that is empowering instead of re-traumatising.