Feeling Safe

Help people feel safe and you will change the world.
-Stephen Porges. 

I have been really focused on safety and what it means to feel safe. I was talking about this in the last several months after finding polyvagal theory and its application to children living out of parental care. Many of the people I see are children involved with Children's Services. In the case of many of these children, they have been neglected to different degrees and witnessed violence and intoxication. 

Their brains have adapted for survival first. They do not have the same trajectory of brain and holistic development as a child who has been raised in a felt sense of safety. For these kids, their brains are so adapted to survival, that even when they are moved to a safe home they don't immediately feel safe. It can take months of stability and predictability and caregivers in small moments of therapeutic intervention and providing corrective experiences for the trajectory to shift a few degrees into a new direction.  

And what happens when all of their adults begin to feel unsafe? These children are like the proverbial canary in the coal mine. They will respond faster than others to the sense of tension in the air. And the air is full of tension this week- especially in larger group care facilities. It's a steep learning curve with information changing daily.

We humans in the Western world are not used to high and on-going levels of uncertainty and safety. The exceptions are plenty and these kids I described are the example. For most of us though we have multiple places where we feel relatively safe. For example, maybe work is challenging, and your supervisor is mean, but when you go home to your children or partner or you go to the gym you feel safe. You see people you know and you re-set through small or significant social interactions. We feel better about our self when we have social relationships that mirror the best aspects of our self. 

Now, we are all home. We are all feeling unsafe and tense- intermittently between feeling calm enough, distracted or simply numbed out. When our nervous systems have been activated and we can no longer sustain that level of activation we collapse. Likely many of us are hopping between activated and collapse. At least the people I've been speaking to who are juggling uncertainty on multiple fronts. 

So how do we find a way to become safe again. Is it okay to feel safe when we are (in that moment) in fact safe? How do I help my body know that it is safe? 

First, remember you deserve to care for yourself as much as anyone else deserves your care. Next find two minutes and a quiet place. 

Close your eyes and imagine a place that is calming for you. By the ocean or lake on your last vacation... or in the woods or maybe swimming lengths at the pool. Any place you have experienced as feeling calm and safe. 

Take a few deep breaths. Don't worry about counting. Just begin to slow your breath- each time going more slowly-- inhale, hold and exhale. If you feel drawn to taking long breaths and holding longer and exhaling longer, do that. If it is harder to take your breath out of your chest and into your belly, breathe as deeply as you can. No shame. No judgement. 

Feel your feet on the ground. Imagine there are roots coming from the bottoms of your feet. With every exhale you can breathe out through the bottom of the feet and release any tension…down down…. down from the bottoms of your feet and into the earth. Allow the earth to take that energy to recycle it into something else. You can let go of anything you no longer need to hold on to. 

Allow yourself to stay in this state for a few minutes. Give thanks to what or who moves you to do that and tell yourself: I'm doing the best that I can and that is enough. 

The last thing any of us need at this time is shame and judgement. Shame is frequently the emotion that fuels the anxiety/ stress/ feeling of unsafe. We are all in this together. We are all worthy of love and belonging. We all deserve support and to be seen for a human who is trying their best in these interesting times.  

Take care friends. 

Counseling in the age of physical distance

I feel like the Italians I watched on video last week-- they are in isolation talking to the "me from 10-days ago". And here we are 8 days since large events were cancelled and 5 days since the schools, libraries and rec centres closed. 

I'm not going to lose my job. In fact my job just got busier and more complex for not only the next several weeks as we are isolating, but for the next several years. It's hard for most people to see how far into the future the long-term social implications will reach. So many families rely on separation into different daytime activities; the use of recreation centres, lessons, the public library for managing the fabric of their family life. And my feminist allies know, the brunt of the mental and emotional work will fall to the women. 

And that's where telehealth on-line counseling comes in. You don't need to struggle and suffer alone. We all require someone to help us make sense of our experience and when our go-to friends are also struggling, it can be hard to feel there is space for our issues.

Consider reaching out to arrange a video counseling session. It can help you vent, have your emotional states and thoughts untangled and reflected back for you to decide their meaning and help you to re-group and start again. There are rougher seas ahead (as much as I don't want to admit that) and you don't need to sail alone.

Self-Acceptance: The North Star of Personal Work

You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere.You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.                      ~Buddha

I love this quote. "You... as much as anybody...deserve your love and affection." 

Self-acceptance is the ability to, on one hand, hold our struggle, our imperfect messy human-ness AND on the other hand, hold the recognition that this is where we are right now.  It is a recognition of our efforts and a loving compassion for our human self who is struggling. 

As soon as we struggle without self-acceptance, we are likely to judge ourselves and fall into the shame pit. Judging, as in assessing and checking ourselves, is not without it's merits of course. As grown adults we should be able to take a moment and take stock of our behavior in any given situation, own up to our mistakes, take responsibility and move on. That's not what I mean when I talk about judging ourselves. This is the process I mean: 

Struggle (no self-acceptance) -->  judge like the harshest critic--> feel like shit --->  act like an ass/ be mean.

When we judge our self through the struggle, we are in the shame pit. We will most likely do one of two things: treat our self like shit or treat someone close by like shit. That's what I mean when I say, "act like an ass/be mean". (Yeah, some topics require swearing.)

Taking a moment to take stock of our behavior can still occur WITH self-acceptance. It actually won't be very productive if we are taking stock of our behavior and judging it like the harshest critic. This is how it works when we are a struggling as a messy imperfect human AND hold some self-acceptance. 

First, I struggle. I snap at my partner, I cut someone off in traffic, I harshly dismiss a child. (These are all immediate behavior examples, but you can use larger and harder struggles and it still works.) 

Second, I see I'm struggling and I say something like: "Ahh, look at me acting like a messy imperfect human." Maybe I can see myself with a little compassion and a little critical awareness. For example, "I'm feeling so frustrated or left out or unheard by that interaction earlier. I don't feel able to continue with my responsibilities (deal with said partner/ traffic/ child etc) and I want to just rest and reflect a little. This is hard. I'm struggling."

This is the MAGIC STEP and it actually has three sub-steps. 

1. AWARENESS: an active decision is made beforehand to be aware of my feelings/ behaviors with an open curiosity. 

2. PAUSE: I catch my self in the struggle and take a moment. 

3. RECOGNITION: I see what the struggle is (as in, the feelings and behaviors) and I name it.  

Third, I touch the place that's just below the struggle. I feel the tears well up or the long exhale. I find what is below the struggle and I hold my Self with a little reverence and compassion. "I'm trying. I am doing the best that I can. What can I let go of for right now so I can meet my needs for few moments?" 

Fourth, I can take care of my Self. I can see the unmet needs of the child or adolescent within. Maybe I need a tender touch from someone who loves me or maybe I need some solitude or a sense of freedom or fun. Can I meet this need in a small way right now? Can I look at how to get some long-forgotten needs met on a regular basis? 

THEN, fifth. I can take stock of my behavior and take responsibility. I can return to my partner or child and apologize. I can remember to let someone in next time there is heavy traffic. This is where the 'judging as-in assessing' comes in-- after self-acceptance. It's the only way to avoid the shame-pit.

But before you begin to tell yourself how unworthy you are because you just can't find your way to hold self-acceptance through struggle, let me say: This is a North star philosophy. Self-acceptance

through struggle, sits like the North Star in the sky. We will know if we are facing towards it or if we are facing away from it, but its not about reaching it. We don't reach an enlightened place of self-acceptance that feels like rainbows and sunshine and then call it a day. [Dusts hands] "Good, I can cross self-acceptance off my list!"

Self-acceptance is a cultivation and a practice. We move in the direction of self-acceptance. We face that way. We look for and find the North star even on the darkest nights and that is what self-acceptance does for us. It provides a direction within the dark times of struggle, self-loathing and despair. To be human is to struggle. There are always problems of some kind to move through. Finding the North star of self-acceptance in the struggle, that is the key to avoiding a fall into the shame pit.

Self-acceptance is something that we all long for. Our desire for it is so deep that we often look for it from outside our self. However, acceptance from others can never exceed the extent that we can accept our Self and so we must start there. 

Warmly yours,

Heather.

Heather@pointonthepath.com
www.pointonthepath.com

Adaption to pain & the integration of Self

Humans are adaptive animals. For 200,000 years we have evolved to maximize our chance of survival. So much of our brain is devoted to surviving. We have had a very short history of doing more than surviving. It's only been recently that people question their happiness. As creatures who have survived this long, we have become very good at adapting to changing circumstances and very Hard Times. When each of us go through Hard Times, we find ways to cope. Initially a very good survival mechanism is to take what has happened and put it behind us. We move on to the next thing or taking care of any of the fallout of the Hard Times. This ability to take what happened and put it behind us is a kind of compartmentalization. It's adaptive. For example, if you are a small child watching your parents shout at each other or seeing physical violence between your care giving adults, you wait for the storm to calm and then you move on. Is your mom happy now? No. Okay, what can you do to fix it? Happy now? Ok, good. Move on. Put that scary event behind you. This compartmentalization is adaptive-- necessary for the child to survive in the family.

If a Hard Time happens and a Trusted Adult comes in to help you sort out your feelings and validates your perception, you may have a different way of understanding and processing the experience. It might not be a Hard Time because there were Trusted Adults to help. In my experience, this rarely occurs. The norm is that the child is meant to follow the family cycle and pretend everything is normal even when nothing feels normal. "We're good now, right? Ok, move on."

And so the child moves on. The brain allows that Hard Time event to be put in a box and put behind us and we move forward... until one day there is so much behind us, it may be hard to move forward. 

How do you possibly unpack that closet of hazardous material created through the unprocessed Hard Times?

What most "adaptive" adults will do is try to numb it out. 

Numbing looks like: keeping busy; never slowing down; drinking too much; spending too much; trying to control all the little things in life; being critical; watching a lot of TV; hiding in a room away from the people you live with; having a small life, but wanting more....and a multitude of other behaviors done to excess and with little pleasure. Numbing is about managing the pain of emotions that would otherwise arise. 

Numbing is an "adaptive" way to survive. It prevents the emotional pain from coming up. We worry that if we didn't numb, the naturally arising feelings would overwhelm us or others. We worry that the feelings could have violent consequences and we could hurt ourselves or others. Numbing is a natural response to having experienced Hard Times without the guidance and care of Trusted Adults. 

The thing is, numbing is survival. It's not living. It's not creating. It's not fully loving! 

This is where intervention starts. 

Same story of Hard Times: the small child who watched their parents shouting at each other or witnessed physical violence only needs to be collected. She only needs a little recognition of her needs. He only needs some validation of his feelings. The child inside is the resilient and soft part of the person who learned to adapt. What an amazing gift! That child kept herself safe through Hard Times. That child found ways to please the adults and try to smooth over tension to find peace. That child was strong, but now it's time for that child inside to be cared for.

Spirit is found in the care. Spirit is found in the resilience. Spirit is found in the bigger, stronger, wiser part of yourself who can show up in a kind manner for that child. 

Adaptation is about survival. Spirit is about integration of the parts of Self and coming into a place of wholeness. This is the path of healing: Moving from pain (which requires numbing) and suffering (the internal struggle to get through until numbing can occur) to integrated wholeness.

Counseling is the facilitated process of healing where the counselor is the Trusted Adult there to help the child process the feelings. The healing process allows for the collection of the child left behind and the reclamation of the whole Self. In my way of thinking, the Whole Self is the place of spirit. It is the re-claiming of our selves as spiritual-humans as we transcend and integrate all the parts of self. To me, this is the journey and the purpose of life! Perhaps the greatest adventure you'll ever have will be completely inside your Self. 

You can search...

You can search throughout the entire universe for someone

who is more deserving of your love and affection

than you are yourself,

and that person is not to be found anywhere.

You yourself, as much as anybody

in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.

~Buddha

The messy spiral of Self-growth

The spiral is a scared nature-based image. I'm using it here as a framework for understanding how we move through higher states of consciousness by revisiting core issues.

I drew a picture (below)-- my first time trying this so it's a bit rough! This is the teaching of the spiral. We start at the bottom. The first X represents that point of feeling alone or in pain related to some core issue of the Self. In previous blogs, I've described the shape and shame. This starting point is the place of this core shape/ shame issue.

We find some way of significantly moving away from this pain. We seek out some counseling or use body-based treatments; learn meditation; work on our pain through art or writing.  There is some intervention that moves us far enough away from this pain that we feel like we left it behind in some way. We may even have the relaxed experience of "ahhhh...." in the exhale of relief of our understanding. At this point in managing a core issue, we will feel like we're done. [dusts palms together] "Glad I figured that out!" (We can be a bit arrogant at this stage.)

What happens though, as you will see by reading the points on the spiral from the bottom to the top, is that we circle back into a core issue. We will feel like we're exactly where we were before-- in the pain that is represented by all the points on the left hand side of the spiral. There will be some event or interaction or relationship that will push at our core issue or move us into that shape we worked to release and we will be shocked: "How can I be here again? I solved this issue."

In fact though, we can never really return to the same point. We are always at a new place of increased consciousness and understanding Self. It will feel like a familiar misery, but it is different. The spiral shows us that we are not in a circle or a repetitive pattern if we are moving toward an increased understanding. Sure, it may feel like a continuous loop, but it likely isn't as much of one as it feels (1). Every time we circle back to the left side, we gain new understandings and insights and so move upwards toward the right. Each level of the spiral is a new level of consciousness and understanding of the Self.

Recently someone I love very much had a significant event occur. I thought I had done so much work on my own core issue: 'filling needs for others when I have my own unmet needs', but in one rug-pulled-out-from-under-me event, I felt like I was back in a place from many years ago. I couldn't see my own needs. I didn't have my own boundaries. I was a mushy mess without clarity working overtime to care for others beyond what was expected or needed.The overtime work extended beyond the person I loved and went out everywhere. I was back in my shape and reacting to the world the way I did a long time ago.

I found some trusted helpers (our own stuff is at the end of our nose; we all need trusted people to help sort it out) and I began to pull my Self back together. In the process, I was able to find my self-compassion again and s l o w down and meet my own need: to admit my struggle, show my vulnerability and express my emotions. I understood (again!) that I am the one who makes space for me. The people who love me want me to make space for my Self. It's me who, in the most pain-filled moments, will default to staying small and working on behalf of others to my detriment. I know that staying small and denying my own  needs is a form of self-harm. As much as anyone, I deserve my love, care and compassion.

This latest turn around the spiral has led me to greater understandings and allowed me to take even bigger risks in being real. This is the path. We are messy imperfect humans and it's our human experience that gives us the best material for cultivating spiritual growth. It's not about avoiding pain; it's about the transformation of that pain into greater understandings and higher levels of consciousness.

Heather.

(1) If your experience truly feels like a circle, then you are idling at the point of the first X- doing loops in one spot-and you haven't yet begun on the spiral. Your work is to find the first step to change-- come in for counseling and we'll get you on your way. You can also dig deep on your own and seek out others if things become too clouded-- but get off the circle and into greater understanding.

How to Manifest

There are many words that become misconstrued over time due to misuse.  Manifest definitely falls into that category. The way I understand the term manifest directly relates to how to create one's reality. From my own experience, I know that what is happening externally to me (my experience of reality) is based on what is happening internally (my emotional reality).

I caution that in my way of thinking, I don't buy into victim blaming. Shit happens. Bad shit happens to good people. Nothing of value comes from saying to a person that they caused their cancer or their car accident. Or that there must be a reason they called the cancer or the car accident into their lives. No.

It's about understanding the blocks that created a dam and skewed the path. What are the blocks that prevent your life from flowing easily? Let’s look at those.

When a little baby is born, it is born without shame or apology. A baby is a little drop of spirit-life who spits-up and poops and without knowing they should apologize for having such human needs. As the little drop of spirit-life grows, the world (via parents) soon teaches them that they do in fact need to mold their self around expectations. This is an experience that their value of belonging is contingent on their rearranging their Self to meet the needs of others. This harsh reality is the beginning of internalizing: "something is wrong with me!" The implicit messages become internalized: I need to be a certain way to have value.  Don't cry too much. Don't have big feelings. Don’t be __[fill in the blank]___ or I won’t be accepted. Don’t have needs that are inconvenient for others. And so we grow from the unashamed little drop of spirit into a shame-based human.

Some of the messages that lead to this idea of needing to mold around people, to the point of denying our own Self, include:

-Productivity leads to personal value (you are of no value on your own sitting around, you have to do something)

-There is a lack in the world: don't take up to much space; don't take too much food; don't be too loud. Stay small. (Brene Brown refers to this idea as the culture of scarcity.)

-There is suffering… and an obligation to keep going anyway. Life sucks. Suck it up. Keep going.

-Meet the needs of others even it means your needs aren't met.

You can argue about whether you got these messages growing up or not. You can probably relate to a couple of them. There are unique messages you got in your family, too. These messages are both explicit and implicit through an adult’s responses to events in life or from your observation of family relationships.

How do any of us know who we are without the mirror of relationships to show us? Our first mirror is our family of origin. The way we are looked at from the beginning, is how we grow to see ourselves. Our self-talk grows out of the way we were talked to early in life.

Let's use a more extreme situation for the purpose of example. A child raised by a depressed mother or a violent father is going to carry messages of: "I'm not good enough"; “The world is unsafe"; "I can't trust that I'll be okay." As this child grows, the messages might become less apparent and more buried within a way of being. Perhaps the child continues to engage in difficult relationships as an adult or perhaps the child becomes highly successful and achieves great things. It's not about success or failure and what that means. It's about how the self- talk continues.

If there is no room in my own Self for acknowledging my feelings or meeting my needs, then I am not likely to bring good things into my life. When I set out to create a fortune or to find love, I will be doing so from a place of low worth. How can I manifest wealth or acceptance, if I carry in my own self-talk: "I don't deserve good things."; "I am not worthy of being loved."

These messages are not on the surface most of the time. There can be an internal emotional experience that isn't filled with negative self-talk, but there will be emotions. The underlying emotions are often fear, shame, sadness and grief.

So, how to manifest?

1. Get an alignment between: 1) how you think about your Self; 2) what you want; 3) how you live.

2. Cast out your intention of what you want through writing it out. Be specific in the description of the future picture that you want. (Do not write out the steps to get there. Manifesting is not goal -setting.) In this picture, how will you feel? What will it look like?

3. Let go of attachment. Manifesting requires we practically forget about it. We don't work actively to think it through or to worry about how to get what we want. We just let it go. Like a stone into the water and we stand back and notice the ripples, but the stone is gone.

4. Live in the alignment.

Here’s an example. If I want to lose weight, I must first think of myself as "a healthy person" despite my current state of health. Then I cast out the intention of being a healthy person. Then I live like I am a healthy person. The alignment is between perception of Self, a clear desire (want) and the actions or behaviors based on that.

That might seem oversimplified or ridiculous, but once the blocks are cleared out, manifesting an outer world is this easy. First, you need to understand the blocks. Why can't you get what you want? What are the specific hooks in beliefs that are holding you back? They are the messages that you were given. They are the legacy that you are carrying around from your family and early experiences. Unpack these untrue messages and the emotional logic that weighs you down and you will create a life of wonder! You will feel like a hungry human who has found a free buffet! Your life will be yours to live freely.

                                    The world is but a canvas to our imagination

                                                                              ~ H. D. Thoreau