If I Asked You To Make A List

If I asked you to make a list of the things you are not saying, what would that bring up? What would make that list?

Could you keep an ongoing list open so you can add more items when you realized on random days and random moments that you were holding something else in?

Maybe some things on that list you do say or will eventually say but I think we can still acknowledge that it’s not easy. If it was easy, you might have done it by now.

If there was no price to pay, you might have done it by now.

What keeps you from saying those things? We know that not every emotion and thought needs to be acted on. How do you decide what to express and what to hold in?

What feels like shameful secret and what feels like a sacred truth…or maybe a shameful truth and a sacred secret?

How honest are you with yourself about the things that are your truth? Is it uncomfortable to feel that your truth and your identity don’t always align? Is it uncomfortable to notice how much energy you put into the image of yourself - the story, the version of you - that you’ve curated to hand to others?

Are you proud of the fact that you can have enough emotional intelligence to know that not everyone gets to see or hear the real real - the underbelly of your being - or do you feel the pain of disconnect because it feels like there is distance between your true self and others?

Would telling someone in confidence and privacy help - maybe someone not in your personal or professional life? Would writing it down help? Would writing it down and then burning it/shredding it/trashing it help? Would keeping it forever locked in your mind help?

Would it set you free? Would it help you realize how you really feel? Would it destroy everything? Would losing everything give you a chance to rebuild?

I have no answers for you - but rather questions to explore in self discovery.

If I asked you to make a list….

Therapy Today Isn't Your Parent's Therapy

Trauma treatment has changed over the years. Psychoanalysis was everything - talk therapy was everything. Since the 90's we are incorporating neuroscience and mind/body work to calm the nervous system.

Trauma can be anything that shakes up your world and unsettles your nervous system - and there are different degrees of it. Your nervous system sends information to the brain and back to the rest of the body. It can impact your digestion, muscle tension, memory, etc.

All of our reactions are normal and wonderfully wired to keep us alive. It’s only when we get stuck in those states of survival - for example hyper alertness or numbness - that we need help.

Working with a therapist, you will explore your stories and experiences. And you will also practice tuning into the body. How does your body feel right now? What emotion(s) are you feeling? You can use the emotion wheel (below) as a resource to find a close enough word. Where in your body are you feeling it?

Connecting to your body, noticing and naming your experience can help to calm your nervous system after it has a reaction to something that happened - good or bad.

Practicing 1-3 techniques that calm the body a bit can then help to take you from a reactionary freaked out state (“what is going on?!!!”) to a mindful state (“I’m noticing” “I am in this moment”). That mindful (being present in this moment as it is) state can then provide information on how to proceed.

There are hundreds of techniques to help calm the body. You practice the ones that work for you. Your therapist is there to help with all of that.

When you increase your window of tolerance - you can tolerate a range of emotions - you are more in control.

With (1) awareness, (2) non-judgment over your experience and (3) somatic practical techniques to center again - now you can get (4) strategic. What’s the next best move that is in line with your current values?

Your nervous system might still be trying to keep you safe and alive so don’t get mad at the process. When we don’t heal our traumas, the activated or numb state can even last years. Taking time to calm the nervous system allows healing to happen.

We move from trying to survive and coping in the short term to investing in long term tools that help heal throughout all of life’s pain and suffering.

Psychedelic treatments are now coming back into research and we are seeing some interesting developments in the trauma world. Stay tuned….

Emotion Wheel

You are not your body, your actions or even your emotions

Who Am I?

I know I've met my perfect client match when I hear someone ask this question. It is the question of all humanity since the beginning and until the end. Every philosopher, thinker, creator, artist surrounds their energy with this question. 

Most of us answer this with what we see outside of ourselves. I am the family role that I play (mother, father, child, sister, grandfather, etc). I am the way I earn a living. I am the way I treat others. I am how other's see me. I am the money that I earn. I am the neighborhood where I live or the group of people I connect to.

For some, the realization that "I am not those external things" happens when those things are taken away. This is often the experience of trauma. When what I know and how I define myself gets ripped away, demolished, destroyed and I am left flailing in nothingness.

Then we must ask again....Who Am I?

You are still here even though you are no longer anchored by that external sense of self. So "you" must be something else.

While there are a lot of resources out there on how you are not your body or your actions/behavior, I focus here on emotions since, for most of us, that's the hardest to wrap our mind around. And it's a topic I encounter often in my work supporting others in their quest to live more authentic, rich lives.

I believe "I am not my emotions" is the most abstract concept because it does come from the internal. "It is my internal world. These are my internal reactions therefore it must be me." However....if one thing makes you sad, another happy, another excited, another drained....if that same thing can create different feelings at different times...then "you" are being emotionally triggered but "you" don't change.

Here's the Bottom Line: Pretty much anything you can observe is not "you". You are the observer.

Now why is this important? 

If you truly grasp that you are not your emotions then you can experience any emotion and not lose sight of your sense of self, your life vision/purpose, your inner compass.

Imagine feeling depressed, anxious, overwhelmed and letting that wave pass. Observing it and labeling it for the experience that it is BUT not being swept away by it. Imagine not losing days, weeks, months or even years fighting to get back on track to the things that really matter to you.

Separate your sense of self from everything external to you AND your emotional reactions to things...and you are set free. You set yourself free.