Posted on Jun 23, 2023
My healing journey this month took me on a detour I wasn’t expecting. At first, I assumed it was just a depressive episode hovering, waiting to land, due to having dysthymia (a low mood disorder with major depressive episodes now and then). While that may still be the case, there was a trigger: Father’s Day.
In the meantime, I managed the hovering depression with physical labour (working on projects for my 1926 fixer-upper house) and music. I also was open and up front with certain people about what was going on for me. Normally I turtle. I hide. I isolate deep within myself until the episode passes. Not this time. I wasn’t worried about making people uncomfortable or trying to fix me. They simply understood where I was coming from and respected any boundaries I may have set. I wasn’t pushed to be anything other than what I was in the moment.
As I write this, I realize that was an emotionally corrective experience for me. In the past, my depressive episodes were considered a weakness and not to be acknowledged, something to overcome and get out of the way as quickly as possible. Other people were not to be inconvenienced by my depression. Yet, depressive episodes are not “all bad.” When my depression was its worst, before it was diagnosed and medicated, I was the most creative. I wrote poetry and short stories. I made attempts to draw and paint. That creativity has dimmed as I’ve aged; but it’s still there, dormant. Or emerges if there is a practical application for creativity. I have yet to rediscover being creative just for the sake of being creative.
Depressive episodes are also times of deep reflection and introspection. If I pay attention, depressive episodes have potential to heal cavernous inner wounds. That is, if I don’t get sucked in to the shame messages that also lurk in the darkest shadows. But if I pull those shame messages out of the murky depths, then I can inspect them and decide if they get to stay or not. In the better times, they get thrown out and the depression lifts—maybe not completely, but definitely the darkness lightens.
It took about a week to let the depression “do its thing.” I spent quite a bit of time yesterday journalling. It didn’t completely clear the air; but the depression is hovering a bit higher up. Reminding me to keep paying attention. To try different coping strategies. To be open to emotionally corrective experiences, giving people a chance to respond differently than I’m used to. I’m going to have to sit with that one a bit more: the idea that I don’t have to worry about people being inconvenienced by my depression. And yes, that does tie in with Father’s Day as a trigger.
My family dynamic history is far too complicated to dive into for a public blog. You will have to wait for my memoir/self-help trauma recovery book for that. I will write it when I’m ready to write it. I recognize I have a few more healing hurdles to overcome. Suffice to say, being depressed was not “allowed” around my father. Still isn’t; but it’s the past tense of that condition that negatively impacted my development. I couldn’t control the depression. It was simply a part of me that I learned to hide as best I could in all contexts. But I was quiet and withdrawn. I have no idea if that was the depression or my personality or trauma response, or all three.
Now I try to use friendliness to hide my social anxiety and overall insecurity. I have not yet found that place within to hold myself safe and secure. But it’s coming. Lately I have had reason to look through photographs from 20 to 30 years ago. The darkest days of my existence. I pull away from that girl, adolescent, young woman. So much shame attached.
In talking with a client recently about our essence, I realized I need to explore that more for myself. I need to look at those photos and see the essence emerging and/or hiding. The essence that I am connecting to these days is the same one buried within my younger self. I have to unlearn hiding my essence (my True Self as it were or the Divine Spark), and discover ways of expressing my essence. We are all bio-psycho-social-spiritual-sexual beings. As such, our essence has a myriad of avenues to be expressed via our human bodies.
There is, of course, much more that I touched upon in my journal writing. However, to unpack it all will take some time. Hopefully as I do, the depression will keep lifting and my essence will burn that much brighter. As the uncredited image and quote assures me: In times of doubt and confusion, the phoenix symbolizes strength, transformation, and renewal. For only from the ashes of who we were, can we rise up to become who we’re to be.
How profoundly accurate. Rise up my fellow phoenixes. May your essence burn brightly today.
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Posted on May 29, 2023
This month’s blog is very late. And not for lack of thinking about it. I continue to ponder attachment needs and witness it’s importance in my personal as well as professional life. It is the key, for me, to make sense of the hand I’ve been dealt. Trauma recovery, also, is simplified through this lens. In a way, it forms a worldview for me.
Unmet childhood attachment needs influence the core beliefs we develop to help navigate life. A common one is that if my primal needs go unmet by the (un)responsible adults in my world, there must be something wrong with me. As children, our brains haven’t developed the ability to think rationally or abstractly. The world still revolves around us. So when things go awry, we assume it’s our fault.
We cannot yet use the minimizing statement: my parents did the best they could with what they had. Or lay blame at the feet of the truly responsible parties (and sometimes this is generational abuse/trauma–not only learned behaviours passed down, but also on the cellular level).
The only way our little child minds can understand our basic needs for affection and attention going unmet is to presume that something is wrong with us. Ergo, we try to determine what we can do better to rectify that by such efforts as perfect tests scores or flawless playing of a musical instrument or monitoring and managing the emotional equilibrium in the house. The list is endless. None of this is conscious. It is part of the way our brains develop. Neurons firing and wiring together. Making connections and neuronal pathways that govern how we function in the world as we understand it. Another ‘side effect’ of this process is that our core beliefs become self-limiting and self-fulfilling prophecies. Every failure or bad experience is understood through these filters that we are bad or somehow deserve bad things happening to us. So to our developing brains, these beliefs are reinforced rather than corrected or counter-balanced–hence becoming part of our structural being.
One of the challenges of recovering from unmet attachment needs is to unpack these core beliefs that formulated in less-than-ideal circumstances. As we unpack them, we can determine if they are worth keeping, tossing, or adapting. My work ethic is one I wish to keep but must be adapted to my current reality. Work must be its own reward, not the definition of my essence. As such, I am a recovering work-aholic. It was my crutch against the barrage of internalized shame messages insisting I was worthless unless I could be productive and perfectly at that. I had to ‘prove’ my worth. It wasn’t innate.
When we choose to toss a core belief—such as I am worthless unless I ‘perform perfectly’—we need to create a new neuronal pathway. We have to break the old connections, the old pathway, and get new neurons firing and wiring together. Find a new way to define our sense of worthiness.
One method is Daily Affirmations. These are statements we create that help counter the old messaging by establishing a new way of thinking. Similar to a mantra, these statements are left in a prominent place we see daily, such as by the bathroom mirror or coffee maker. Repetition helps create a new neuronal pathway. These statements are simply read, not argued with. That is a bad habit that is not helping retrain your brain. When the arguing starts, it must be stopped and redirected to the affirmation, the new core belief that is being built and reinforced.
One of the first affirmations I used was: I am worth the effort. Initially meaning my own effort to make positive change in my life (namely trauma recovery which requires a great deal of effort). As I gained confidence, I was able to tackle other beliefs and corresponding affirmations. One that came a few years later (and helped prepare me to eventually leave an unhealthy marriage) was: I count and I matter. This one was primarily geared toward unmet needs in my marriage.
Earlier this month, to my surprise, that affirmation resurfaced. This time in reference to myself. I need to learn how to plan my days with the thought that I count and matter—not just my clients and other people in my life. I tend to put others first, a coping strategy learned in childhood to keep the peace and to convince myself, and others, that I was likeable.
If I truly believe I count and matter, then the time I reserve for activities other than counselling needs to be honoured—not tossed aside simply because someone needs my help. If I have a window in which I see clients, I need to respect that boundary and not give away that time because I ‘could’ help someone. Otherwise, ‘helping people’ risks becoming like my old work ethic. There is more to me than counselling. If I forget that, then counselling also risks becoming how I define my essence, my ‘raison d’être’ (catchy French phrase for ‘reason for being’).
While counselling is certainly one aspect that contributes to how I find meaning in my life, it is not the only way. Like everyone else, I am a composite of interests and abilities. And I must remember that I count and I matter just as much as my clients, friends, and family. Something I did not learn as a child.
As I write this, I recognize by body awareness (paying attention to what I sense and feel in my body) that I have more grief and inner child work in this area. Also like everyone else, I want to gloss over the painful feelings and jump to restoration. Which reminds me of my house. If I don’t first pay attention to what’s wrong, I cannot properly fix it. I cannot simply paint over structural issues in my walls and expect my house to stand another hundred years.
As in renovation as well as recovery, we want to ‘make it pretty’ for a quick sale or get on with life. However, buried problems always rise to the surface. We all know how avoidance tends to exacerbate issues rather than resolve them. Sometimes we have to remove what isn’t working before we can make it better. In recovery work, this means holding the pain long enough to recognize it, understand where it comes from, then let it go to make room for improvements.
Recovery also requires taking a hard look at our coping mechanisms (which tend to be automatic) and determine if they are helping or hindering us. Once we establish what isn’t working, we can then choose to learn healthy coping strategies to strengthen us structurally—and improve quality of life. For that’s what the hokey pokey is really all about it, isn’t it?
What core beliefs improve your quality of life and which ones need refurbishment or outright discarding?
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Posted on Apr 19, 2023
This blog entry may have a more clinical tone than my personal intention set out in January; but its undercurrent or raison d’être is purely personal. In order to share in my healing journey, an understanding of therapeutic theory can be helpful. So what follows is the “primer” on Attachment Theory: essentially what I tell clients when putting their experience into context.
Attachment Theory is relatively new on the therapeutic scene, sprouting in the 1960s from the likes of John Bowlby and Virginia Satir (if memory serves) from seeds planted in post-war Europe when orphanages were overwhelmed with infants. The nuns would care for their basic needs as best they could; but even though the wee babes were fed, clothed, and sheltered, these infants kept dying. The theorists claim the babies were dying from lack of attention and affection in the form of eye contact while being held secure in the loving arms of a caregiver. There simply wasn’t enough staff or hours in the day.
Modern medicine now understands, even embraces, the concepts of skin-to-skin touch, eye contact, heartbeats, and loving embraces (but as we know, this was not always so). Scientists and modern imaging techniques have discovered that the lack of consistent attention and affection can detrimentally impact brain development. Establishing safety and security is an integral developmental stage.
Attention and affection are not luxuries or indulgences, but primal needs every infant innately understands at birth. However, I will spare you the brain development details even though I find it fascinating and revelatory. Developmentally speaking, we always have these needs for attention and affection (or physical contact and emotional connection). We just no longer face risk of death if they go unmet as we mature.
But unmet needs do have a way of expressing or manifesting in a myriad of ways from mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression to physical ailments like compromised immune function. The dogs who reside with me beautifully illustrate this concept. I will expound on this if there is suitable space. Entire books have been written on the subject; and I’d be happy to recommend one or two upon request. Most popular is how our attachment style affects how we relate to others—particularly in the context of romantic relationships.
So, where does my healing journey intersect with attachment theory? As noted in the previous blog, I was not blessed with affectionate nor attentive parents which deeply impacted the expression of my genetic predispositions for anxiety and depression as well as the development of OCD and PTSD. There is likely also an argument for a correlation between my developmental deficiencies and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (an autoimmune disorder like fibromyalgia or lupus).
The irony of unmet attachment needs is that it leads to relationship difficulties, but healthy connection with safe people is the only way to heal these childhood woundings. When we have anxious, avoidant, or disorganized attachment styles, we tend to sabotage relationships instead of finding the healing we so desperately need. And due to subconscious drives (which I may blog about another time), we are not drawn to those who can provide secure attachment as it is so unfamiliar to us.
As one can imagine, I fall under disorganized attachment; meaning I am both anxious and avoidant in relationships. Unfortunately, I married someone with an avoidant attachment style which was not good for my psyche but rather perpetuated the already flawed belief system under which I functioned. It has taken a lot of deep reflection to unpack the unmet attachment needs of my childhood, as well as my marriage, in order to find a semblance of healing. This is something that surfaces from time to time, with a particular resurgence in the past couple months.
Unmet attachment needs can also look and feel like a cavernous void that needs to be filled. It is no small miracle that I am not addicted to a chemical substance to “drown my sorrows.” All addicts have been traumatized, but not all those traumatized become addicts. Or what I call obvious addicts. We all develop coping mechanisms to manage the void. Sometimes I use food. Other times it’s music. Sometimes it’s maintaining a clean house. OCD is essentially a behavioural addiction that develops to appease the shame messages that haunt us: If we get “this right,” then bad things won’t happen… Once again, fodder for another blog entry. I mention addiction in an attempt to invoke compassion for those caught in its ugly embrace.
Unmet attachment needs left a huge void in my psyche: a sense of hollowness. I hadn’t really thought of it as such until I no longer felt hollow after the inner child work I’ve been doing the past couple months. I can’t explain what happened exactly. But the image that comes to mind is of turning a key in a mechanism, hearing the interior workings falling into place, and suddenly the music plays, the lights come on, and the dancer twirls.
At its most basic, it is like trading a hollow Easter bunny for a solid one. Remember those days? Fundamentally I remain the same and continue to function with my alphabet soup of conditions. I have not experienced a miracle cure or transformed from a wooden puppet into a real person. It has more to do with a felt sense of integrity in a structural sense. I feel less hollow, more solid. Less rickety, more stable. Less fractured, more sound. I feel less likely to blow away in a strong wind or crumble under extreme pressure.
The other image that comes to mind is that of a scab being ripped off a partially healed wound, allowing pus and ooze to escape. Applying the salve of inner child work (with imagined hugs, reassurances, and bearing witness to her painful experiences) has helped ease the inflamed wound. The opening is closing once again. It is less tender. I never know what will tear off the scab of a psychological wound. But if I pay attention, I can find solace from a variety of sources: from deep within myself to seeking comfort from others who have proven to be safe and trustworthy.
No developmental stage can be skipped. I’ve had to complete several long past their “best before” dates. I’ve no doubt there is more of me to develop and/or blossom. It is a wonderful sensation to feel less fragile and better able to meet what each day brings—including the positive. In my disorganized attachment style, I tend to gravitate to the muck and mire. I need to be open to the security of sunshine and rainbows as well. Not all that glitters is dangerous. 😊
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