by Barbara Roux-Levrat (Switzerland)

‘The idea of being alone terrifies me… makes me feel ashamed. I feel abandoned, like it’s the end of the world. I feel dead… unseen, unheard…. like I don’t exist.’

Why would a 37 year old European woman living in a safe society experience such distressing emotions at the thought of being alone?

Meet my client Emmi (name changed). She has come to me because she has ended her relationship with her boyfriend and she feels absolutely broken.

Today is our second session.

She explains to me that she has woken up in the middle of the night with a sense of panic. She feels terribly alone and has the feeling that everyone has disappeared.

When I hear of such strong emotions in a person, I immediately know that these feelings are not new and have very little to do with what is actually happening in the present. For emotions to be so strong and be triggered so easily and so often, there is only one reason: they are the result of deep trauma experienced in early childhood.

So, I invite her to do an exercise with me.

She closes her eyes, and I guide her to relax and in her mind go back to a time when she was a small child and she had this feeling for the first time.

Her earliest memory is of being a baby, around one and a half years old. She feels alone. Her parents are in the room, but do not pay any attention to her. They are shouting, arguing among themselves, and fail to notice that she needs them.

In her words, this makes her feel ‘unseen, unheard, disconnected, lost, alone… as if I don’t exist… as if I’m dead.’

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Would you like to experience something like that for yourself? Then let’s find out what you need: https://www.emotional-strength.com/appointment

Source: iCN Issue 31  (Life Coaching: Personal & Professional Empowerment); pages 73-75

About Barbara Roux-Levrat

Barbara is Europe’s #1 expert in teaching women who are ‘too nice’ how to become kick-ass! She used to be herself a woman who was ‘too nice’, a co-dependent, until she managed to get out of toxic patterns in her life and break free from a long relationship with a narcissist.

She has been a coach for the last 10 years and is also a speaker and expert on Emotional Strength. She has helped many women turn around their lives, and she wants to help many more! She is a native of the Dominican Republic and has lived in Europe for more than 20 years. She is currently the President of the Geneva Coaching Support Group for Noble Manhattan Coaching.