Transform Inside & Out

19/02/2026

"SHAME HAS TO CHANGE SIDES" (Gisèle Pelicot)

I am reposting my sharing below from over 6yrs ago, having been reminded of it by the story of Gisèle Pelicot, who had the amazing courage to waive her anonymity in the trial of her case of longterm sexual abuse by her own husband (& other men invited by him).

What happened to me was different - I was conscious, as opposed to Ms Pelicot being drugged, BUT I didn't say "No!".

As victims of sexual abuse, we often feel guilty of somehow creating the situation, ashamed, "unclean" as I did in my own situation. I was a teenager, inexperienced, naive but he was a grown up married man, a teacher (!) who knew he was doing wrong - he was a sexual predator with (ab)using many more girls than just me. The shame is HIS, not mine (anymore).

If you feel affected by this - isn't it FINALLY time to review what has happened and release your guilt or shame, lighten your load and come back to yourself fully - 'cleansed' and free??

If you are not familiar with the story of Gisèle Pelicot, there is a link in the comments to her recent interview. What a strong lady!

, ̀lepelicot,

LEAVE YOUR SHAME OUTSIDE THE DOOR.....and bring in more SELF-COMPASSION & ACCEPTANCE 💗

(Warning: this is self-disclosure about sexual (ab)use - if you think you might get triggered, and are without adequate support - either people or tools/processes - you might like to stop here.) It is also a long(ish) read...

This is me in my mid- to late teens. Although I am posing for a photographer who asked me to do that for his portfolio, even I can (now) see, in my self-expression, something was amiss. If you met me at the time, you wouldn't know anything was going on in my life, apart from the usual teenage angst, often preferring my friends to my parents, wanting to have some fun - all normal for that age group.

While I was at my grammar school, I was sexually used by one of the teachers, on and off for about 4 years.
(I subsequently learned that I wasn't the only one, and that, years later, he was expelled from the school, and assume banned from teaching elsewhere...)

I have been in training and working as a trauma therapist for about 7 years now, facing varied types and levels of trauma, including sexual abuse, and here comes the crunch...:

It was only when the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the movement came out, that I finally got it!! I realised that what happened to me was ALSO abuse, not only "use". You might ask why only then?! Because up until then, a big part of me felt responsible and ashamed for what happened, because I didn't say "No".

You might ask, what sort of a therapist are you if you can't see it in yourself? And that's exactly it - very often we cannot see things in ourselves. The shamed part of me was very strong. But guess what, I have been very good at spotting it in other people - EXACTLY BECAUSE it happened to me, I can pick up on it in people intuitively very quickly because it is "familiar".

It has also made me a very protective mother, especially of my daughter, because I can "read" the male gaze at her, wherever we go... Is this a good thing? Yes, to a degree, but the last thing I want is to transfer my own fears onto her. So all I can do is to share my story with her - for her to be aware, to have her wits about her...
(Part of that trauma is in her already anyway, because I have energetically passed it on - a subject of another post).

So why am I sharing it? Certainly not looking for sympathy or pitty. WE ALL HAVE STUFF, and most of us carry shame, imposed sense of responsibility, feeling not good enough, fear, judgement, anger, pitty ... you name it. I'd call this post a "CALL TO ACTION" - all of the above listed feelings and emotions get stuck in the body, causing havoc to your health & choices you make, impacting your life through the people you attract, own self-sabotage, allowing your personal boundaries to be breached etc. And the longer these feelings stay, the more powerful they become, the more of the same type they attract back to you - AND they keep being passed down. A vicious cycle.

WHAT TO DO?

- (re)examine and (re)visit your life's challenging times - however traumatic they are - often people "don't want to go there". However, unless you do, it stays within your system.
You cannot "get over it" only with your mind / intention - a safe and thorough approach & processes need to be employed (combining both mind & body - psychosomatic techniques). You need somebody to skilfully lead you through it, who is professionally trained - completely objective & non-judgemental.

- accept what happened. Eventually, you'll be able to forgive yourself & stop feeling shame. It is only possible when you have processed it with the right kind of support from outside. I would dare to say that it is not possible to be completely objective with yourself. There are blind spots you cannot see (self-preservation mechanisms kick in to protect you from seeing/remembering). I love the expression "compassionate inquiry", which is seldom possible for and with the self.

In my sessions, we also look at so-called Post-traumatic Growth - what you have gained from what happened, identifying the positive attributes that your experience has brought out of you - because there are always some.

As therapists, we work through our own issues ongoing - working with colleagues or other therapists, something called Personal Peace Procedure, mainly for two reasons:

- to keep our clients safe by not getting triggered ourselves in their session by their issues, which resonate with our own, so that we can stay present and hold a safe space & adequate support,

- to clear ourselves to become even more centred, calm, healthily detached, and gaining even more insight through our own experience of the self. It is not coincidental that we attract clients with similar, if not the same, issues (an opportunity and a gift to show us our own hidden spots).

BE COURAGEOUS AND FREE YOURSELF OF YOUR PAINFUL PAST - nobody else can do it for you.

If anything in this post resonates with you and you would like to share, gain some insight and / or support with me, feel free to get in touch:

E-mail: romicarr@btinternet.com
Phone: (UK) 07763 278859

01/10/2025

Such a wonderful endorsement for EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) or "Tapping", being such a safe and gentle technique in itself to process and release trauma. As mentioned in this testimonial, it also beautifully complements - and potentially 'softens' any other trauma therapy technique. Do get in touch if you'd like to have a chat about EFT, try a session :-)

Meet a Consultant Psychotherapist from the new service Flourish, who works with people living with personality disorders and trauma. Already trained in EMDR ...

26/08/2025

ARE YOU HOLDING ONTO 'NEGATIVE LOYALTIES' ?

There are many treasures within our family's energetic inheritance that can support our feelings of belonging, identity, culture, familiarity, ideally safety, connection to our roots - through language, music, literature, family traditions, iconography, the land etc. (And yes, for some, all that connection can also be the source of pain, disconnection and suffering.)
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So what are 'negative loyalties'? It is our energetic inheritance, AND unconscious retention, of 'painful ancestral legacies', which include all the extended family's suffering, that has travelled through our family tree - to us (and through us to our offspring, if not cleared before having them...).
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One of the most common 'legacies', which can weigh on us, is family secrets - such as suicides, addictions, children / pregnancies out of wedlock, abortions, marital affairs, adoption, disowned family members that are not allowed to be talked about, betrayal etc. These types of secrets carry a very heavy underlying energy of SHAME, which is one of the most negative human emotions (energetically most detrimental to our body), and this energy affects our beliefs and behaviours, as well as our health.
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There are also 'legacies' of bravery and heroism, which can include suffering and sacrifice - especially through the times of war, which is not that far behind us. A lot of our grandparents have lived through that time, some of which are still around.
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However, unbeknown to the self, we often re-enact the behaviours and feelings of shame and suffering, in the form of un-deservedness, martyrdom, victimhood, suffering, over-giving, suppression, keeping small, overdoing, oppression, fawning etc. - just because they are part of our nervous system as genetic / energetic inheritance, and out of unconscious 'loyalty to the clan'.
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When in fact, we were born into the family tree in order to shift something - to master this lesson of freeing the self, and thereby ALSO freeing our ancestors. Our ancestors wouldn't want us to suffer, re-live their pain & shame. (If any of them did, this work to release those energies is then even more important!)
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Rather than reliving their suffering, we can instead honour them by acknowledging what happened and taking responsibility for ourselves. You can:

- explore your family history to find out any past suffering & traumas

- identify what might be relating to and influencing your life today - what types of behaviour show up that hold you down, back or stuck ?

- acknowledge their lives as they were - having done the best they could under the circumstances with what they knew at the time -> create a little ceremony, meaningful to you / to your family (a good day to use to honour one's ancestors is the time of the Dark Moon - the day/night before a New Moon) 🌚

We all have the power to release the suppression, freeing ourselves and our ancestors - unless there are some hidden benefits / secondary gains we (like to) receive on the back of our suffering, but that's another story...

Get in touch if you would like to be guided through this process 💫

(Image: "Journey towards You", by Slávka Štrbová)

28/04/2025

07/12/2024

REVIEWING & CHANGING OUR (LONG-HELD) BELIEFS aka "MEMORY RECONSOLIDATION" by MEETING OUR YOUNGER SELVES

It can be quite a shock to realise that a belief we have held most of our life turns out not to be true. Even more so, if it's been a limiting belief, which has held us back till now.
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Like a house of cards tumbling down, it collapses when we realise that we misunderstood and 'made it all up' in our head all those years ago as a young child (not knowing any better at the time, not seeing the whole picture).
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Believing we are not good enough is one of the most common limiting beliefs. One potential scenario, amongst many, could be that we might have felt rejected by a parent (or both of them), perhaps feeling our sibling being favoured, when, in fact, there might have been other external factors we were unaware of at the time, at that age, which caused our parents paying more attention to our sibling in a given moment / or regularly. It is only that which is imprinted in our memory.
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Everything connected to our individuality while growing up is significant to forming our identity and contributes to forming the foundations of our self-worth & our sense of agency.
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Through the assisted process of EFT Matrix Reimprinting, we can be safely & objectively guided back to our younger selves to revisit and explore the event / or a regular family pattern in question, and 'rewire' our feelings about it.
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If you have never done it before, this process of 'travelling back in time' is very powerful, can be very emotional and surprising to us by:

- how tenderly we are able to connect with our younger self - it is a beautiful and very moving moment,

- how much more objectively we can perceive the whole scenario in question as the adult we are now,

- how differently the whole issue feels by looking at it more objectively, with time and from a "distance",

- how our child-self's belief we'd formed at that time has been driving us all this time,

- how relatively easy & fast it can be to re-write (effectively "rewire") our given belief(s), given the length of time we have lived with it.
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The newly found realisations and feelings about ourselves, about the situation in question, our parents, our siblings, our ongoing life choices, can bring a mix of emotions, including -

- sadness about the 'lost time' - all these years holding ourselves back, maybe feeling jealous of our siblings - our family relationships having been affected all our lives

- newly found joy, elation and a sense of "lightness of being"

- a realised opportunity to improve / elevate our sense of self, our relationships, attract different people and situations into our lives.

It is NEVER too late to 'start over' 😇

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(Image by Antoine Paikert)

11/10/2024

Yesterday, I was reminded of this video from 4 years ago by someone who watched it recently for the first time. It is heartwarming to know that it is still being accessed, offering an insight into how to become more compassionate with self & others through the process of the so-called "shadow work" .

I am sharing it again for anyone interested in understanding the process of exploring their own "shadows" and what it entails.

Get in touch for a free chat & taster if you are interested in a deeper understanding of your own inner challenges.

Join me for this insightful and fascinating conversation with Romy Carr, the founder of Transform Inside & Out.Romi shares some of her wisdom of how to bring...

25/07/2022

THE POWER OF LANGUAGE IN HEALING IS DEEPENED BY USING YOUR MOTHER TONGUE...

Being a therapist, addressing, and releasing, my own past traumas is my ongoing personal practice - it is ongoing for everyone willing to heal & evolve.

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Ironically, having lived away from my home country for the last 30 years, I am now better able to express myself in English than in my own mother tongue. It used to make me sad, and sometimes it still does, but I accept it now and know that if I moved back, my first language would fully come back to me.

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Last week, I had the opportunity to process a particularly upsetting event from my early 20's. An important recognition, and subsequent affirmation arose from that process - in English. Having journalled about it later, I said (aloud) and wrote the same affirmation in my mother tongue to deepen its effect - and really felt it. What also aided the process was addressing my past self in my full maiden name, as that's who I was at the time of the event.

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This process can heal your trauma further / deeper, or / and it can bring up other valuable insights / aspects of it that you were not previously aware of being present.

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So, if English is not your first language and you do any healing work in it, try to use your mother tongue and feel its power. This can be very helpful when, in the process, you address your younger self, or whoever / or whatever has caused you any harm (physically or emotionally) at the time.

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Even if your therapist doesn't speak your mother tongue, you can ask to express the relevant moments with powerful words, which have a deeper connection for you in your first language, especially if those past events in question took place "back home".

PS:
Every event / issue has numerous aspects to it, which show themselves in various themes and life situations. So you could be working on a past painful event & the memory of it, which (still) sits in your system, and yet, feeling like you have cleared it before, the same event can come up again relating to a different scenario in your life now. Don't give up, such is the nature of trauma release & healing.

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26/04/2022

WE DON'T NEED TO KNOW EVERYTHING AT ONCE... TRUST INSTEAD

"I am grateful for what I see and I am grateful for what stays hidden because it is Thy will..."

This quote by Thomas Hübl really struck a cord (see his expanded post below), both for my work with clients, as well as when working on myself.

In order to release some challenges in our current life, we need to explore our past, especially childhood. There is a lot of fact-finding - looking for hidden triggers from any traumatic past, which are still active today. The following can, and often does, manifest:

- our memory might not always stretch to all the details in question when asked, or

- we might omit to mention something because, in our mind, it might not feel relevant, or

- we might feel scared / ashamed to tell the truth, AND

- there is a higher intelligence in operation - a self preservation mechanism, which can 'kick-in' whenever we approach something very painful from the past, in order to protect us from being re-triggered.

Often people ask me about how many sessions they might need in order to resolve whatever issue they came with. This is an impossible question to answer, as everyone is different and it is not obvious at the start as to how much there is 'under the surface', including how much is withheld - both consciously and unconsciously (as mentioned above).

Instead, we just get on with the work and both myself and the client acknowledge the fact that :

- we go at a pace that the client can handle / is ready for

- only what is ready to be seen presents itself - we deal with what is presenting in the here & now

- everything mentioned is relevant : a big 'aha' moment can stem from a seemingly 'minor' realisation, or a resurfacing of a forgotten fact or a moment in our memory - yet this 'connecting of the dots' can result in a 'firework display', with a powerful knock-on effect of shedding light on other similar scenarios or themes in life - effectively 'knocking down a house of cards', which has been a block / in place for years
..and we anchor:

I'm grateful for what I see and I'm grateful for what stays hidden because this is Thy will.

Once a prayer came to me in the Himalayas at one of our meditation retreats, it says, 'And I'm grateful for what I see and I'm grateful for what stays hidden because this is Thy will, and that's why I am here.'

It's easy to say, 'I'm grateful for what I see,"or what I am aware of in life, but it's not so easy to say, "And I'm grateful for what stays hidden.'

And that's not that it should stay hidden, but it means there's an intelligence in the hiding, in the shutting down, in the numbing, in the absencing, there's an intelligence at work that we needed more than to stay open, because it was too painful.

And if I understand that, then I see, wow, right, if I learned to listen to absence, if I learn to listen to numbness, if I learn to listen to dissociation, I make that power my friend, instead of my enemy.

Collective Healing Journey 2022

19/04/2022

WHAT DOES YOUR ARMOUR LOOK LIKE / IS MADE OF...?

I am talking here about learnt behaviours - out of fear - as coping and self-preservation mechanisms - although they might not seem like it. We all have them in different forms and amounts.
They can show up as:

- self-sabotage = fear of failure/criticism,
- compulsive lying = having been punished in the past when telling the truth,
- addiction of any sort = running away from / avoiding to face something, soothing some pain,
- constantly looking for yet failing at close relationships = fear of being hurt or abandoned, and many more.

It can also show up as so-called negative emotions, for example Anger - do you know a person who is always angry or is easily triggered into feeling angry? Anger is commonly a response to perceived danger - such as being 'found out', feeling threatened, not valued / overlooked, feeling humiliated, 'pushed into a corner' etc. (I use the analogy of a rat being cornered - it will attack to save itself.)

The reaction is triggered by a perception / association of something which in the past resulted in some sort of compromise - physical or emotional hurt.

All of our senses are the primary detectors to help us survive, and this includes our intuition. They help us detect what we need to survive but also what is potentially life-threatening. This process is referred to as "neuroception" - our nervous system is a l w a y s on the lookout, and especially for 'danger'. The point is that certain things might 'seem' dangerous, because of an association with a past 'danger' (memorised in our brain, namely the amygdala).

Certain smells, sights, sounds, look on a face or body language of a person, hearing certain words, voice intonation or volume of another ... can all be cues for our body to "get ready for potential danger" (fight / flight / freeze / fawn), being unconsciously, reminded of the original event. And this happens in splits of seconds, before we have time to consciously think about it, and with anyone / anything that poses the said 'danger'.

How strong an armour (and how many layers of it) depends on the strength / depth of a threatening experience that we have been through when growing up - and how much we were able to process it and feel safe & supported (a process called 'co-regulation).

Even if nothing 'major' has happened to us, this can also apply to long-term ongoing insidious atmosphere we lived in, for example (resulting in 'developmental or compound trauma'), or have witnessed something happening to another person / favourite animal or a precious object / space (so-called 'vicarious trauma').

It is also worth mentioning that "trauma" is not what happens on the outside of us, but how our own nervous system responds to it, i.e. being traumatised 'within', and the opportunity / amount of the above-mentioned process of 'co-regulation'. Less or no co-regulation = deeper trauma.
(A group of people witnessing the same event will all respond differently to it, based on their own inner resilience / nervous system predisposition.)

Processing past traumatic experiences - and releasing them from the body / the nervous system - helps us to generally cope better with life and the people in it, being less triggered by external events, both around us and in the World. We can:

- stop attracting the same seemingly detrimental situations and people (that particular energetic match of a "pull" having been dissolved)

- feel overall calmer and less tired (it is energetically very costly to our system/body to keep us on high alert all of the time)

It goes without saying that the more traumatic our childhood had been, the more dangerous life / the world / the people in it can seem / feel.

Our nervous system is incredibly intelligent - which is useful to remember when we might feel frustrated about a traumatic memory or trait that we're trying to clear and it stubbornly stays. There are always several layers / aspects to every trauma response mechanism, so patience, compassion and benevolence with the self is paramount.

Often, we don't particularly want to revisit any painful memories because it feels too much, or we feel "we are over it / learnt to live with it", yet unable to see for ourselves how much all our coping mechanisms can hold us back.

If we invest only in various courses to e.g. overcome self-sabotage, achieve higher productivity, or how to better dress for business (which are all valuable in their own way), - those hidden preservation mechanisms, unless found and released, will always keep us "safe" by holding us back.
"The infected wound needs to be healed, not another plaster on top, which eventually falls off..." Trust me, I have been there.

(Photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash)

07/06/2021

Whoever you see for therapy, any treatment, healing or coaching is always “only” your guide.

For sure, there’s great skill required but at the end of the day, you as the client have to want to and ‘allow’ the change, healing, evolution growth... You might think, “of course I do, that’s the whole point of seeing someone..?!”

You would be surprised how many stumbling blocks can pop up in the form of sub-/unconscious resistance and deep seated fear of change - however paradoxical it sounds.

The truth is - no one else can do it for you - so stick with it, work deeper till a breakthrough - with patience, determination & self compassion 👍🏻🙏🏻

"Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.
You must travel it by yourself.
It is not far. It is within reach.
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know.
Perhaps it is everywhere - on water and land."
Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass.

Nicolae Grigorescu - Andreescu at Barbizon - 1880.

05/06/2021

Beautifully expressed 🙏🏻❤️

For many of us, our generational "curse" is avoidance. We come from people who just act like "it" didn't / doesn't happen. But pain demands to be felt. And somewhere along the line, a child will be born whose charge it is to feel it all. These are your shamans, your priests and priestesses, your healers.
You call them mental health patients and label their power as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder and the like. But these are the ones who are born with the gift of Feeling. And as we all know, you can't heal the pain that you refuse to feel.

~ Dionne Shannette Wood

[Art: Lauren Mills]

04/06/2021

INTEGRATING ANCESTRAL LEGACY IS OUR PURPOSE.....otherwise it never goes away

We cannot deny, hide from or escape what happened to us or within our ancestry. We display ancestral trauma - through our body and emotions, without necessarily "having been there" at the time - it sits in our nervous system / cellular memory.

Blame or anger about what had gone on have no use. We were born into our family tree for a reason and we can be the ones who stop the buck from travelling further into future generations. I refer to the result of this process as one's 'integrated identity'.

Besides, our ancestors also receive healing from this process, and taking responsibility for our own life is one of THE main lessons in every lifetime. Have a listen to Thomas Hübl in this short video :

PS: Collective Trauma is one of the main themes of the body of Thomas Hübl's work. There is an array of his presentations available on YouTube.

My body is hundreds of thousands of years old, because that's the time that life needed to develop the model that comes with our lifetime. We have access to ...