One of the tools of my healing modalities when working with clients recovering from Narcissistic Abuse and childhood attachment trauma is the practice of shamanism. The word "shaman" is  a healer who can access non-ordinary states and work with energy, symbols and archetypes in the service of healing clients. I offer "shamanic" work for my interested clients as a way to support and facilitate transformation, and we weave the learnings back into our "regular" psychotherapy work. Often a single shamanic session can greatly quicken transformation as well as provide a lasting resource and reference point.

Hidden and painful traumas often force the psyche to suppress difficult feelings to carry on, but this takes its toll on the soul, the personal life choices and liveliness.

Traditional shamans view this “soul loss” - the fracturing and wounding of a person’s spirit due to trauma - as a leading cause of physical and psychological dysfunction.

The often unconscious impulse to numb one’s feelings in such circumstances is the psyche’s survival strategy at that time. However, no more fitting to the current age and life’s experience.

The shamanic approach to healing this serious condition is to  use soul recovery & spiritually journey into the unseen world, locate the trauma, find the lost part of the soul, ask for permission to retrieve it, and reintegrate it into your current life with a powerful commitment to return to wholeness.

Shamanism and Healing Trauma 
Shamanic practice is one of the oldest treatments for trauma. Trauma is said to be "soul loss" and refers to when a vital, essential part of ourselves must be split off and put on the shelf in order for us to survive. Example, a girl must put away her strength and her voice in order for her to not get hurt by her father, then she grows up still believing in and enacting this strategy when she no longer has to. At the time it was the wisest choice, in order for her to survive. But later on it becomes limiting. We talk about this in various orientations of modern psychotherapy as clients living more from their defences and limiting beliefs than from their true selves. Developmental trauma arises when the developmental needs of a child aren't met which allow him or her to feel safe and have a sense of belonging, be able to ask for and receive support, be able to be autonomous and be able to be loved and seen. Shock trauma from abuse, neglect, death, illness, and accidents are also major factors in "soul loss." 

A shaman can help clients clean out unwanted cords to energies or people, to break the "bargains" they made in order to survive, and to be reunited with their essential, unique soul qualities (strength, artistry, confidence, delight, freedom, etc). 

What Do Shamans Do? 
A shaman helps clients make shifts at both a "mythic" or archetypal level (letting go of limiting stories and telling new and nourishing stories), and at an energetic level (unbinding and helping energy flow through not only the body, but the entire energy system, freeing the soul to pursue its truest course). 

In the modern world people are used to wanting a quick fix. Shamanic work does not cure with a single wave of healing, but can offer a felt-sense and experientially visioned shift in the client that can greatly facilitate healing, provide unexpected resources, help build a foundation of self, and support the expression of a client's unique gifts. A shamanic healer can help a client who wants to find their path put their foot forward and walk it in a tangible way. 

Shamanic healing techniques are very human, ancient practices that ask us to be ready to change our lives completely in order for us to be who we are authentically. In stepping onto the path of the True Self clients may be asked by Spirit and their Higher Selves to make significant changes—to sit with what is most scary or uncomfortable, leave a relationship or job, or take a risk to do what they've always longed to do so that they can be filled with joy and creativity. 

When a client is ready, they may find someone like a shaman,  to help them facilitate their transformation. A shaman doesn't change anything in a client, a shaman helps the client embody whatever aspect of their true nature the client is ready for at a given session. 

The shaman has specific energetic and symbolic "technologies" to clear out conditioned behaviour that is no longer needed and to invite in what is full of life. The shaman is like a midwife at the birth of that which is new for the client. Being human, we may be ready for a change, but we often are blinded on to aspects of who we truly are—the split-off parts. What clients most really long for.

Shamans have a practice of setting ego aside and entering into a right brain mode, a non-ordinary wise-heart state, that enables them to "see" or "sense" or "feel" metaphorically the limiting story that the client has been living by, the bargain the client made in order to survive, bonds to unhelpful energies or people that need to be shed, and what the client is longing for and reunite them with that essence—the soul parts that are ready to return.

What are the symptoms of Soul Loss?

The symptoms of soul loss can range from depression, dissociation, fatigue and lack of motivation to anxiety, anger issues, restlessness and chronic pain. Joy, clarity, resilience or creativity may have vanished since the incident, to be replaced by a nagging feeling that “something is missing”. In shamanic healing work that missing x-factor is known as the soul-part or soul fragment, which broke off and went away to a place in spirit, in order to protect itself from the difficulty of the experience. Our aim is to retrieve the lighter, more positive soul energy that feels absent.

How can you tell if you have a soul loss?

Many of my clients complain of feeling detached, empty, devoid of purpose; they think they are living an aimless life and are unable to concentrate with no hope. Some deep experience depression and have suicidal thoughts. Many simply, have suffered a memory loss of crucial years from early childhood. Some say that their heart is closed and they can’t feel love. As one client said once, “I feel as if there is a hole in my heart.”