DAMIAN KAI NORMAN’S STORY
It is often the wounded suppressed parts of ourselves that we hide away from - unconsciously fearful of repeating the abuse/trauma/abandonment that we previously experienced - that turn out to be the greatest gifts we have to offer the world, and the key to our most profound moments of connection to ourselves and others.
This is a concept I have come to know well, even though the fear and protective parts never really go away and rather become more like old friends… And… There was a time when this perspective was so far from my reality I couldn’t even comprehend it as a possibility.
I grew up with physical and emotional abuse. And to be honest, a lot of my childhood I don’t have conscious memories of and am continuing to reclaim to this day with my therapist.
I am genuinely grateful to have a loving, resourceful, resilient mother to whom I attribute a great part of what has made me the man I am today. I also had a father who struggled with substance use, alcoholism, and outbursts of anger that resulted in both myself and my mother experiencing physical violence.
Most of my days were spent in a state of fear, confusion, and hypervigilance learning to do whatever I could to avoid the possibility of upsetting my father. I was shut down, scared, and alone. My mother had me when she was 18 and worked multiple part-time jobs to provide.
My father would be present for periods of time and would be gone for others, leaving me in a state of abandonment and relief. We lived a life of poverty, getting our food from the food bank, living in camper vans, tents in the woods, and other people’s homes for extended periods of time. I also had the generosity and love of my grandparents on my mother’s side who often took care of me.
It is important to express that I loved my father and that he loved me. He simply didn’t have the tools and capacity to self-regulate and navigate his own unprocessed trauma. After years of my own therapy and processing, I am aware that he came from a history of devastating abuse, including witnessing and being threatened with death, prison, and living on his own in the woods at a young age. I have love, compassion and understanding for my father and clear boundaries around how we show up in each other’s lives to this day.
As I continued through my young life, I continuously found myself as an outsider. I moved numerous times to new cities and new schools over the course of my childhood and teenage years. I began to learn how to listen, watch, and connect with a variety of groups and communities. Before I knew what I was doing, I was holding space for and creating safety for others. I knew how to do this as I desperately craved this safety for myself. This is how I created my own sense of belonging and connection. I was the timid nice guy who would do anything to feel a sense of love and attention from others.
In my grade 11 year, I moved out on my own
This marked a distinct shift in my life… I began to find my voice in high school by attending the drama department and discovering my passion for dance and theatre. Through the drama program, I began to come into my body, which previously was a terrifying place to be. I found a safe space to explore what it meant for me to be playful and take risks. To be in a relationship with other students in a way that felt empowering and connected.
During this time, I found myself in a friendship with a man who sexually assaulted me in my sleep. It was a challenging period of my life that was mixed with severe gaslighting, a loss of community, and consistent episodes of depression, confusion, and fear. This marked the first explicit sexual assault that I would experience in my young adult life. A few years later, I found myself in similarly vulnerable situations with older men who took advantage of my naivete, poor boundaries, dissociative and fawning responses. It wouldn't be until years later in my Somatic Experiencing Training that I would begin to unpack my father’s sexual abuse history, the possibility of experiencing sexual abuse of my own as a child, and the implicit nervous system dysregulation that my own body carried around sex and intimacy.
After high school graduation, I left for Toronto to attend The School of Toronto Dance Theatre which sent me flying into a whole new world immersed in the arts. It was a demanding, rigorous four years of intensive training, and looking back at my experience, it was the proving ground on countless occasions where I met the felt impact of my own childhood trauma stored in my body.
The number of occasions that I was cast as a dominating aggressive character on stage was uncanny and brought me into a relationship with the deep anger that had been festering in me for years. It was during this time that I also became aware of the chronic pain that I carry in my body and still navigate to this day. I also encountered overwhelming experiences of shame in relationship to my body, the ways I judged myself, compared myself to others through self deprecation, and felt as though something was inherently wrong with me.
There were days after school when my body would go into complete paralysis that paralleled the freeze states I would experience as a child, afraid for my life from the threat of my father. The psychosomatic experiences that came through me during my time as a dancer have greatly informed the way I show up as a professional counsellor to this day.
Since then, I have performed and travelled across Canada and Europe, building a life in Germany and then watching it crumble to the ground. I have been married and separated, had dreams come true and felt the utter despair of lifelong aspirations completely thwarted. I have worked for years on the downtown eastside of Vancouver and met the true face of human suffering, as well as encountering my own triggers and demons when it comes to addiction. And I have learned to trust that as one door closes, many more open. I have learned to listen to my body, my intuition, and the world around me. I have found community and perhaps for the first time in my life, a sense of home.
There is so much more ahead and I am grateful for all of the opportunities and connections to come. I have found my purpose, my passion, and my true sense of service through the work I do as a counsellor. It brings me such a deep sense of fulfilment to meet my clients where they are in their trauma and challenging life experiences. To be able to genuinely emphasize as well as offer tools, interventions, and programs to support my clients moving towards more fulfilling and integrated lives.
This is a piece of my story and I look forward to hearing yours!
A core belief I long held on to was that my voice didn’t matter
My dad isn't the only one in the family with the capacity to be loud. My entire family, especially on my mom's side, seems to speak with the volume stuck on high! The only way to get a word in is to speak over one another, or say something with greater impact, often hurtful. My role in the family order has always been 'the quiet one'.
A core belief I have long held onto is that my voice does not matter. I now understand that my nervous system learned that staying quiet kept me safe. Unfortunately, staying quiet also meant not speaking up for my boundaries or for injustice to others. It also meant keeping me small, staying in the background. Even as the most educated professional in the room, I often keep my voice to myself.
The simple yet profound practice of vocalizing during a breathwork journey has been deeply transformative for me. Giving myself permission to take up space and move stagnant energy in this powerful way has been one of the most rewarding parts of my healing journey. It is a practice I come back to often.
Since incorporating conscious connected breathwork into my wellness practices, continuing to deepen into giving myself permission to use my voice, my right to be heard, the inherent value I have to offer the world, I have seen huge strides in how I show up in my work and in my personal relationships.
I am stepping boldly into leadership roles as a naturopathic doctor and breathwork facilitator, owning the titles I worked damn hard for. I am offering treatment to my patients with a new level of confidence in myself and my skillset. It is well documented in research that a patient's confidence in their doctor significantly improves the outcomes of their treatment, no matter the intervention.
I am grateful for the journey I have been on and the gifts it has given me. I look forward to being a part of your journey.
SAMANTHA PETRIN’S STORY
I was always described by my parents as a little "angel". In order to discipline me they simply needed to raise their voice and I would immediately comply. Whereas my older brother required much more time-out, yelling and reprimanding.
At first I took great pride in being good at following all the rules; at being so well-behaved. But later in life found the same "good-girl" energy to present as poor boundaries, perfectionism, impossible self-standards, and crippling fear of confrontation.
Attachment theory helps to explain that an overly well-behaved child might actually be a sign that this child is living in a functional state of freeze. This can lead to a fear of exploring the fullness of their environment and ultimately an inability to access their personal power.
For me, it meant that later in life I would struggle to feel empowered in my romantic relationships and in my career. Instead, I experienced anxiety, overwhelm, flooding, and shutting down.
To my parents credit, they were deeply loving and devoted to raising good kids. I am profoundly grateful for the level of privilege their hard work allowed me.
My father attended all of my soccer games, dance recitals, and theater performances. His dedication to his kids was unquestionable. He wasn't given the same effort from his father, an Italian immigrant who preferred drinking, smoking and playing cards with his buddies over having dinner with his wife and children. What he did inherit from his father was a reactionary tone that elicited in me, his baby girl, the little "angel", immobilizing anxiety.
Since working with a counsellor in my adult years to address maladaptive anxious behaviours, the thread often finds its way rooted in a memory of my dad speaking in a loud angry tone. In these memories, I feel my throat tightening, as if it were a towel being wrung. I feel a tightening in my chest, heavily weighted, my breath small and quick. I feel a flushing of heat rising from my chest, up the front of my throat, to behind my eyes, threatening to release a tidal wave of tears.
This same somatic response became my default mode of reacting to any stressful circumstance. What I termed as "sadness" was for a long time the only emotion I thought was accessible in my system. Exploring the full range of human emotion, especially anger and healthy boundaries, through a variety of embodiment practices has been truly a gift in expanding my own resilience and my capacity to hold space for others.
Anger was especially inaccessible in my body, or so I thought. For a long time, I was proud to claim that "I never get angry". Attachment theory suggests that an overly well-behaved child might have not had the chance to push boundaries and express healthy aggression. My nervous system never learnt how to contain and utilise the energy of a fight response. This presented as my adult self with a complete intolerance to anger, leading to a freeze response. My body would immobilise, my voice would cease to produce sound, my thoughts remain rampant, but on the outside I would be a shell of myself.
