Julie, Anchorage, Alaska November 1, 2021

Healing at Last!

At 52 years of age, I have spent the last 30 plus years on a path of questioning and searching for healing. Although I had no idea what I was looking for or why. I just knew from an early age that I was in a tremendous amount of pain. When I was 20 years old, I stopped drinking alcohol and started voraciously working a 12- step program. I had only been drinking for four years but it was enough to bring me to an emotional and physical bottom. This led me to traditional talk therapy, which I participated in for many years off and on. I also became interested in various forms of spirituality, meditation, yoga, as well as a clean diet and exercise. This was all necessary for me and they are tools I continue to use on a daily basis but everything I was doing just seemed to scratch the surface. I still felt like an imposter, pretending everything was fine and always trying to manage and suppress uncomfortable emotions. I had a tremendous amount of fear, especially in intimate relationships, and continued to pick the same partners with the same patterns of abuse, superficially wrapped up in a lifestyle of self- help and a vegan diet. It felt less scary to stick with what was familiar and to try to continue to manage enormous amounts of guilt, fear, anxiety, and shame than to face the darkness and bring it up to the light. I did not know how to let people get to know me, especially my kids. I was a great caretaker but always just playing a role, a dysfunctional role, and never feeling known or worthy of being known.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what led me to White Raven Center and Rapid Transformation Therapy. My mind was racing with thoughts about past and future. Resentments, blame, guilt, shame, and fear were at an all time high. Covid-19 had forced me into slowing down and sitting with myself. A less active body became a more active mind. I truly saw how much pain was still there and I wanted freedom. I just knew I was ready to finally commit to freedom and that led me to White Raven Center. What has happened in my RTT sessions was just that, a rapid transformation and healing of my pain. I have been able to achieve in a few short months what I could never come close to in traditional talk therapy. I have been able to go back and access my earliest memories and traumas that were never resolved, only touched upon, and was able to finally face them and start to heal. All of those earliest emotions that I tried to avoid for so many years were there, waiting for me to feel, move through, and release. Traditional talk therapy had been somewhat comfortable for me, it was much easier to intellectualize my emotions and talk about experiences rather than to go back into those experiences and feel the emotions. I could talk forever and intellectualize for years, that is where I hid from my pain.
I have the incredible fortune of living in Anchorage, AK, and a 15- minute drive from White Raven Center. I started working with Marianne in weekly sessions. This was my first experience allowing someone to witness my most vulnerable moments of deep pain and to express what I really believed about myself. I could clearly see and feel the deep- rooted beliefs I absorbed as a child, and that I held onto and lived by for most of my adult life. Lying on a mat, with my eyes covered, Marianne gently guided me through my breath to the experiences my body wanted to take me to. I was (and am) a master at shutting down and going numb, and each time Marianne would guide me back to my breath and to the emotion and experience that was there, waiting to be acknowledged and finally felt fully. Each session would take me to a certain age, a certain traumatic event, where parts of my soul had frozen and remained. During my sessions I would travel back to these periods in time, allow myself to feel the emotion of the event, and to see myself as a child, teenager, young adult, or wherever I needed to go to heal. Sometimes the experience would bring up profound grief and I would allow myself to sit with that and cry deeply. Many times, I felt profound anger and I would use a plastic bat set up in the room to release all of the rage I had tried to keep at bay for so long. I was able to connect with myself, frozen at various ages during trauma, and call my soul parts back to me. These parts of my soul were coming back in pieces, and it was the most healing and profound experience I have ever had. Marianne created a very safe and nurturing environment that was absolutely loving and free of judgment. It allowed me to feel safe in expressing myself fully, but she also encouraged me to go deeper because she knew I was ready. That was so essential to me in healing. I eventually started to work with Marianne’s husband Floyd. Floyd is extremely intuitive and like Marianne, radiates acceptance and love. He guided me easily to certain memories and skillfully facilitated moving me through them. It was such a profound experience, and so important for me personally, to work with a man who I absolutely trusted with my whole heart and my most vulnerable emotions.
Rapid Transformation Therapy has changed my life. I feel whole and authentic. I have retrieved parts of my soul that had been stuck in the past and I no longer waste energy trying not to feel or remember. I have an acceptance and love for myself that I have never experienced before. My relationship with my kids is authentic. I am able to listen to them and allow them to share themselves fully with me and I can share myself with them, without trying to fix anything or deny emotions. I still have feelings that crop up of fear, anxiety, guilt, shame, and the urge to caretake but it is no longer something I try to manage or deny or get rid of. I can observe emotions and accept exactly where I am without being overcome by them. I look forward to digging deeper and moving through whatever comes up and I don’t beat myself up for imperfections. I have found beauty in exactly who I am and where I am on my own path. Probably the most profound indicator of my healing through RTT is that I am no longer attracted to people or situations that feel toxic to me. I no longer feel compelled to recreate childhood trauma over and over again in my adult life. I am drawn to people who treat me with love and respect; a true reflection of the love and respect that I have found for myself by going within and doing this incredible and profoundly beautiful work. I truly believe that this is the work that can change the world. It will happen with each individual going within, healing themselves, and ending the acting out of personal pain through external destruction, judgment, suffering, and lack of connection. I have referred many people to White Raven Center and RTT who have come to me in pain, and they have all reported profound healing and relief. I will continue to highly recommend RTT to anyone seeking who is ready for true healing.