Infants expect and require abundant joyful, loving touch. They continue to need the physical presence, warmth, heartbeat, and nervous system activity that surrounded them in the womb. When that drive to be held, rocked, soothed and comforted is met with enough touch and care, the child develops secure attachment. Insecure attachment If adults respond intermittently,… Read More
Articles
Good Enough for Mistakes
How do you respond when you make a mistake? Do you take it in stride? Crumple in shame? Panic? What we count as a mistake and how we respond depends on our current resources as well as how mistakes were treated as we grew up. Inexperience Children naturally make a lot of mistakes. As we… Read More
Consider Additional Truths
Ideally, as we grow up we learn to balance consideration for others with consideration for ourselves. We see the adults around us treating others and themselves with care. We experience being treated with care. We are directly taught to lift our attention from our immediate concerns to include the concerns of the people around us…. Read More
Celebrate Small Steps
Acute trauma forces sudden, overwhelming, drastic change on the body. It is natural to expect that some equally drastic treatment can undo the change and restore health. Chronic trauma can be an accumulation of sudden blows, or a long-term lack of essential nurturing and care. Unlike trauma, healing is slow, gentle, and incremental. Healing from… Read More
Intervene for a Better World
Be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle. —Ian MacLaren The dearest hope of many survivors is to fit in smoothly with society, to look and act “normal“. We want to interact with other people skillfully. We want to be liked. We want to be heard. We want to give and receive courtesy and… Read More
Careful Conflict
Children growing up in abusive families not only associate conflict with violence and abandonment, but also miss out on learning about healthy conflict. Resolving friction Healthy conflict is about resolving friction between different people’s needs and preferences. People in healthy conflict share goals to resolve a problem or repair a ruptured relationship. They may be… Read More
Support a Friend in Crisis
Many of us (especially if raised female) are socialized to only feel valuable when we are helping someone else. We might leap in to rescue a friend in distress, without regard to our own limits. We might get enmeshed in a helper role, always seeing the other person as someone who needs help. At the… Read More
Make Room for Grief
Grief is emotional pain in response to a loss. “Something is missing!” It can be knife-sharp and overwhelming, or a dull ongoing ache. Unlike sadness, which can be about something happening to someone else, grief is visceral, personal, immediate. It can include heartbreak, bitter disappointment, and rage at the unfairness of loss. Wail aloud Grief… Read More
How to Leave Your Practitioner
Leaving a long-term practitioner is a skill, one we do not get a chance to practice much and probably did not learn growing up. We might learn the polite, “I don’t think this is a good fit,” while we decline to reschedule with someone we saw once or twice, but it is harder to know… Read More
Elements of Refuge
Unresolved trauma acts like an internal abrasive, leaving the survivor’s nervous system feeling raw. After trauma ruptures both emotional and physical boundaries, the survivor feels exposed and endangered. Each change in the environment has to be evaluated as a possible threat. Healing practitioners can provide a calm refuge for overwhelmed survivors by offering a stable… Read More