PLUS monthly articles on relationships, trauma and counselling.
Author Archive
Shame and Disconnection
Shame and Disconnection
Shame is an intensely uncomfortable feeling that arises as a result of failure. If our failure is met by others with comfort and understanding we can transcend our shame and learn from mistakes and limitations. Otherwise shame gets under our skin and starts to infect our sense of self and our relationship to others. This article discusses the relationship between shame and disconnection as important to our understanding of how shame develops and how we can heal from it. Read the rest of this entry »
The Importance of Being Recognized
The Importance of Being Recognized
This article examines the importance of being recognized to how we express ourselves and whether we experience ourselves as valid or not. We know that when we focus on some aspect of our experience it comes alive with details and nuances we didn’t know were there. Similarly for others to show us recognition communicates we are indeed here, that we exist and allows us to see our experience more fully. For example how many times has someone noticed a gesture or expression that we made just outside our awareness that when it was brought to our attention allowed us to experience ourself in a new way.
Alternatively, when we are not recognized or validated we become at odds with ourselves; there is no feedback that confirms the truth of it. This article will identify how the basic splitting of our experience into good and bad starts with recognition. This is an important process in one’s development for an infant and child to learn who they are in the world.
Creating safety
Why do I feel so unsafe when nothing much is happening?
How are we suppose to feel safe in a world full of danger and impermanence? Why is it that some people can breeze through life with confidence and calm, while others are consumed by thoughts of danger and betrayal? Believe it or not, our health, and the quality of our lives, are affected by the degree to which we feel safe. In this article we will explore what is important about feeling safe and how we create that in our lives.
Lets start with our nervous system which is designed to react to danger in order to survive, to connect and form intimate bonds, and to shut down the heat when it all gets too much. Some of the answers to creating our sense of safety lie here. Three main parts of our nervous system work together to help us deal with and make sense of the world around us. When we are in danger and threatened all three parts of our nervous system will come into play.
I don’t know where that came from! Dealing with psychological splits
I don’t know where that came from! Dealing with psychological splits
A number of clients express how they often experience themselves acting in ways that don't feel real or emotions that take over. They describe how they become ‘a crazy person’, angry and destructive, clinging and needy or insecure, when they don’t feel this way most of the time in their lives. They can’t understand how they could behave in these ways and feel terribly ashamed of themselves and the problems it causes in their relationships. They have come to see these reactions as ‘not them’ and the ‘normal’ calmer in control self as who they really are. They may come into therapy looking for a way of getting rid of this part of them, that somehow there may be tools that they can learn to control themselves. The split between these two parts of a person and how that develops in our family of origin, is the focus of this article.
Moving on from family dysfunction
Moving on from family dysfunction
Moving on from your family dynamics is a lifelong task and the result of family of origin work. The concept of differentiation is central to the ability to live your own life and form healthy adult relationships. In this article I provide a couple of definitions and identify ways you can develop differentiation.
Differentiation is the active, ongoing process of defining self, revealing self, clarifying boundaries, and managing the anxiety that comes from risking either greater intimacy or potential separation.
Murray Bowen defined differentiation as the degree of resilience to the interpersonal contagion of anxiety.
Consequences of family of origin betrayal
The consequences of family of origin betrayal.
This article examines the main consequences of relationship betrayal that we experience growing up. I will define what we mean by relationship betrayal and then talk about five consequences that can happen.
Relationship betrayal happens when our needs, feelings and desires are betrayed by the people we are dependent on or have a significant attachment to. These relationships include those with family and those we rely on through institutions such as school or health. Extensive betrayal is traumatic because we become overwhelmed by the emotional pain and our safety and trust is threatened.
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How is therapy transformative?
How is Therapy Transformative
So many times people come into therapy wanting to know what happens, how does it work? What are we doing in therapy?;
I think one of the important things we are doing is encouraging people to have a more intimate relationship with themselves. Without that relationship it is very difficult to:
- make decisions,
- create the life we want,
- share ourselves and to love others.
This relationship involves our whole body. We experience life by what flows through our body. It is not just an intellectual knowing, thinking about I am this or that, but taking in the whole of who we are. We self-reveal when we are aware of a flow of emotions, and sensation without being overwhelmed. We can then feel alive with the richness and complexity of our life. We can notice the nuances of our experience and discover the meaning
Somatic Psychotherapy
Somatic Psychotherapy
Trauma is held in our nervous system and bound together in symptoms.
Focusing on sensations/movement/energy/feelings in the body begins to tease apart that bound up energy. Sensations lead us to the wisdom of the body and to releasing the trauma. The story of the body allows us to access the ways in which the trauma is held in the nervous system.
The verbal/cognitive story has less impact on the body but can be an indirect way into the trauma. We do less analyzing and more experiencing. We work with what is happening in the present moment
Focusing on body sensations and awareness has to be done in a manageable and tolerable way. Experiencing sensation needs to be accompanied with the support of the relationship with the therapist, and building resources and regulation of the nervous system.
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Letting Go of Trauma
Letting go of trauma
I want to share an experience recently of some personal work I was doing that completed and let go of an early trauma. I want to share how powerful working from a mind-body approach can be. I have always been fairly inflexible especially around my hip area. As years have gone by my thigh muscles have become chronically tight. I would stretch them out and it was like an elastic band, they would stretch and then snap back in. This has caused me a lot of pain and discomfort for many years. I had the opportunity to do some work with someone who works from a somatic based psychotherapy approach to working with trauma. It was on a training I am doing in working this way. The legs and arms are important for our survival. Legs carry us and move us away from danger, and these movements are part of our ’survival instincts’. If we are not able to leave then that instinct becomes thwarted and tension will develop. This is one way that trauma will be held in the body.
Dealing with Shame
Shame and Disconnection
Written by Delyse Ledgard
Shame is an intensely uncomfortable feeling that arises as a result of failure. If our failure is met by others with comfort and understanding we can transcend our shame and learn from mistakes and limitations. Otherwise shame gets under our skin and starts to infect our sense of self and our relationship to others. This article discusses the relationship between shame and disconnection as important to our understanding of how shame develops and how we can heal from it. Read the rest of this entry »
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