self regulation

Trust, needs, vulnerability, & Complex Trauma

April 11, 2019 By gwynn

What makes you vulnerable makes you beautiful. ~Brene Brown

What happens when people open their hearts?
They get better. ~Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

She was a wicked thing sometimes. All full of want. As if the shape of the world depended on her mood. As if she were important. ~Patrick Rothfuss, The Slow Regard of Silent Things

We’re never so vulnerable than when we trust someone – but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy. ~Frank Crane

I’ve been feeling a lot lately. Emotions and sensations swirling around in me, creating chaos, or perhaps expressing the chaos, within. They have been happy, joyful, pleasurable feelings on the one hand. And completely terrifying on the other.

Terrifying because they are new and different.
And.
Terrifying because I am actually feeling them.

And terrifying because I am beginning to be emotionally vulnerable with another person. I am learning what that actually looks and feels like. I am doing it in small steps and most certainly keeping much still to myself, and also with each little step of expressing my emotions to them, I am finding new, not harmful ways, of caring for myself and the overwhelming feelings of all the experiences I am having.

I’m trying on adulting.
Clearly stating boundaries.
Telling the person how I feel around them.
Not running and hiding or putting all my armor on with extra reinforcements.

It has not been easy. I have probably misstepped. I know I have gotten caught up in conversations in my own head that didn’t go well and lead me to tears (hello INFJ).

And still. I am doing things differently. Which is new and different and feels strange and yes, is terrifying in moments.

As humans we have very real needs of attachment and belonging. We actually need to feel loved, adored. We need to be respected in having our autonomy and our autonomy needs to be not only respected and accepted but also rejoiced and celebrated. We need to be physically safe, and also we need to feel emotionally and psychologically safe. We need to feel connected, understood by another, and to feel they feel connected to and understood by us.

Having these needs met, to even a minimal degree, allows us to survive as infants and children. They are absolutely necessary for survival. In some ways it doesn’t matter who meets these needs. Ideally it would be our primary caregivers, but it can be secondary, or even tertiary caregivers. And we only require these needs be met just enough for our actual survival.

That means as children we can be neglected, abused, disregarded most of the time, but as long as there are moments of feeling like a person, even our abusers, actually care for us, we will survive.

As adults, the needs are the same, but the requirement to have them met for our survival isn’t as dire. As adults having these needs met means the difference between simply surviving and beautifully thriving in our lives.

We all have these needs, and yet expressing them can be incredibly delicate and feel overwhelmingly vulnerable.

And vulnerability in our culture is considered a weakness.

And when we have had childhoods where there was abuse and or neglect, expressing our vulnerability could have literally meant our deaths.

So. What are we to do, as adults, with our wounding, our pain, our fear, our trauma, to have our needs actually met?

First I want to note that it is important that others meet our attachment needs, yes. That is part of thriving in our lives and being in a loving relationship. However, it is equally important that we know how to meet these needs for ourselves too. That we are able to build our resilience when those we love inevitably hurt us in some way.

I say inevitably because we are all human. We all cause unintentional harm. We all have our own “stuff” that we need to work through. And so, part of being open to a loving relationship where another meets many of our attachment needs also means that we are open to them sometimes hurting us. It also means that we will inevitably hurt them also. What matters here is how we come back into relationship through repair.

When we are able to process the traumas we have experienced as children and are able to come back into our bodies, we learn what it actually means to fully experience our emotions and their correlating bodily sensations. We begin to learn how to titrate so we don’t go into overwhelm. We learn how to hear our bodies long before they are screaming at us.

And.

We learn to trust ourselves. To have compassion for the people we’ve been and the person we are today. As we learn to trust ourselves, we can also begin to trust others.

Learning to trust another is yet another piece of our trauma processing. So many of us were abused and or neglected by our primary and or secondary caregivers, starting at such early ages. These experiences train us to distrust those we love and those who express that they love and or care for us. Part of our trauma processing is also allowing these old distrusting neuropathways to atrophy while we build new paths that allow for us to trust, and know who to trust in the first place.

It is important to note we need to be connected to the feelings – emotions and sensations – of our body to move into deeply trusting relationships. Being embodied means we can actually hear the appropriate alarms, and trust that they are correct and act accordingly when it comes to relationships. It also means that we can trust another when those alarms don’t go off.

And once we can trust another, then we can begin to be vulnerable with them.

Being vulnerable with another person is terrifying. We are opening ourselves up to being hurt by them. We are also opening ourselves up to being loved by them and see what it feels like to be truly respected and adored.

It’s not easy. We will have many missteps. We will dip our toes in and share something deeply vulnerable and then immediately pull our toes back out and maybe even take several steps back or run away and hide for a bit. With practice this sharing of ourselves, the more raw and vulnerable pieces, becomes easier, but perhaps never totally easy (I have no idea actually, I’m still in the dip my toes in and try not to run away and hide stage!).

And before we can share our feelings, we actually need to be able to feel them.

/…/

To subscribe to my weekly newsletter go here.

To learn about my six month Trauma Informed Embodiment™ for Sexual Trauma Survivors go here. The next cohort begins April 15.

Stress, Grief, & Embodiment

October 18, 2018 By gwynn

When we contemplate the miracle of embodied life, we begin to partner with our bodies in a kinder way.

~Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection

I have a confession.

I actually love the winter holiday season.

I love all the lights and glitter. I love the promise of snow. I love the food we eat this time of year. I love the hustle and bustle and the quiet snuggling in. I do. I love it.

And.

This time of year is also challenging for me. My mother’s birthday is in mid-December and so there is a triple reminder of how she is not here to celebrate this time of year with us. I notice how certain family members don’t call. I think of friends who have moved away. I consider the things and opportunities in life that I have lost. I think about the life I wanted, or thought I wanted, compared to the life I have.

And while I do love the bright energy of the hustle and bustle of this time of year, I also am acutely aware of how that bright energy can become heavy and oppressive. How what is supposed to be fun can become overwhelmingly stressful. How one moment I may look at my full calendar with excitement and anticipation and the next I may look at it with dread.

Basically, I am human. Which means I am complex. Which means I can have a mix of seemingly opposing emotions and feelings all at once.

Just like you.

To me, it’s never a question of my complexity. Rather, it’s a question of how I hold all of me at once.

How to do I allow all my complexity to flow and be? How do I sit with the bittersweetness of this time of year? How do I not only allow myself, but also encourage myself, to feel all the various and opposing emotions, thoughts, and well, feelings?

For me, that answer is being in my body and the present. Not leaving it, not sitting or hovering outside of it. Rather, being in it, in the now, and finding ways to tolerate and process all the complex sensations and emotions that I may be having.

In short, while I love this time of year, it is also a time of grieving.

Embodiment is both simple and challenging. Coming home into our bodies, and deeply feeling and sensing our lived experience can feel overwhelming at times. It can feel too much. And also, with practice, we learn to tolerate those challenging emotions and sensations more and more.

We stop stuffing them down, only to wait for them to explode.

We stop ignoring them, only to have them crop up as various illnesses.

We start connecting to them, dipping our toes into them at first, and in time and with practice, going further and further in, finding new ways to embrace our own complexities, our own disparities, our own both ands.

I talk more about this in this 6 minute video below.

This is the third and final essay in a three part series I have put together to introduce some of the topics we’ll be exploring in my winter self-care circle, Self Care for the Holidays. If you’d like to learn more and possibly join us, you can click right here.

Did you miss the first two essays and videos in this series? You can check them out at the links below::

Holidays, Trauma & Our Nervous Systems

Boundaries: Physical, Emotional, & Psychological

Stress, Grief, & Embodiment (this essay)

Boundaries – Physical, Emotional, & Psychological

October 11, 2018 By gwynn

Boundaries define us. They define what is me and what is not me. A boundary shows me where I end and where someone else begins, leading me to a sense of ownership. Knowing what I am to own and take responsibility for gives me freedom. ~Henry Cloud

Boundaries.

We talk about them a lot. In fact we talked about them as part of self-care on the Open Office Hours call on Sunday.

We talked about what a boundary is. What they mean to us. What some of our “obstacles” may be in honoring or defending our own boundaries. What some of our stories are when others honor their own boundaries. How boundaries run both ways. How they are fluid. How they are complex.

There are many things I believe about our boundaries. One is that they are fluid and living and breathing; they change from day to day and person to person. In a phrase, what our boundaries actually are depends on All The Things.

In my experience there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to boundaries. What may be a firm boundary with person A today may not be a boundary at all tomorrow with person B. Many of our personal boundaries change with time, and some never change at all. This is part of life – we all change and grow and it makes sense that our boundaries would do so too.

I also deeply believe our emotional and psychological boundaries,are directly tied to our bodies and our physical boundaries. What I mean by this is that I believe we can sense when a boundary is being violated long before we are fully consciously aware of what it happening. Our body reacts, in one way or another, to this intrusion. It could show up as a knot in our stomach or literal pain in our neck. It could show up as suddenly feeling agitated or anxious, without any “real” or “logical” explanation. It could show up in any number of ways. The point being, our body is giving us information, long before our brain can comprehend what is going on.

Our boundaries are also tied to our histories. If we have trauma in our past, how our caretakers modeled boundaries when we were children, both inform what our boundaries are as well as how we react when our boundaries have been violated.

Our culture also informs our boundaries, and more importantly, how or if we defend them. We all have messages about “being nice” and “not hurting people’s feelings” in our psyches and bodies to unravel.

We have all been told in one way or another that our Noes don’t matter, aren’t valid, and should never be voiced.

Most of us learned at a young age that when we say no to someone or something we are giving them a message that we don’t love them. And of course, while we internalized this direct message, we also internalized the reverse :: that if someone says no to us it means they don’t love us.

Again, boundaries go both ways. There are our own boundaries for us to connect to and consciously and intentionally decide to defend (or not!) and there are the boundaries of others that may stir up some of our own stories of worth and value and instigate an unconscious response from us.

There is so much for each of us to unravel around our boundaries, including becoming consciously aware of where they come from and when and if we want to honor and defend them (and I’ll tell you now, the answer isn’t always yes, there can be many different reasons why we don’t defend our boundaries and none of them have to do with us being “weak” or having “poor judgement.”)

I talk more about this in this 7 minute video below.

This essay is the second in a three part series I have put together to introduce some of the topics we’ll be exploring in my winter self-care circle, Self Care for the Holidays. If you’d like to learn more and possibly join us, you can click right here.

To read the other essays in this series click on the links below ::

The Holidays, Trauma, & Our Nervous Systems

Boundaries: Physical, Emotional, & Psychological (this essay)

Stress, Grief, & Embodiment

If you’d like to sign up for my weekly newsletter, you can do so here.

The Holidays, Trauma, & Our Nervous Systems

October 4, 2018 By gwynn

When we self-regulate well, we are better able to control the trajectory of our emotional lives and resulting actions based on our values and sense of purpose. ~Amy Leigh Mercree

We are entering into that time of year again. That time here in the northern hemisphere where the light recedes and we enter into more and more darkness as each day passes. It is also the time of year of the fall and winter holiday celebrations, which can for some of us, bring their own darkness with them.

I have always declared that the winter holiday season begins with my birthday in mid-October. Then quickly follows Halloween and All Souls and All Saints Days. Next is Thanksgiving. And then we move into December when most religions and spiritual traditions have a festival of lights celebration of one kind or another. With all these holidays often comes gatherings with family – ones that we either attend or avoid. With these gatherings come all the stresses of connecting with our families, be that in person or in spirit.

There is also the truth that for many of us this time of year is a painful reminder of the people we have lost in our lives, either through death or severing of ties. It can be a reminder of those we loved who aren’t here to celebrate with us, and the grief that comes forward has its own way of showing up at a time of year we are told over and over we need to be joyous.

There are a million plus different reasons why the this time of year can be challenging in many ways and why we all need to remember self-care, real self-care, during the coming season.

One of my frustrations with our current culture is how the term self care is defined. For many this term has a very white, privileged look to it. It looks like spa days or mani-pedis, or days at the salon, or weeks at some tropical local. It’s looks like, according to many, something only the wealthy can afford.

I have a very different definition of self care.

For me, self care is first and foremost about calming and soothing our nervous systems. It is self-regulation and being able to bring ourselves back from a “triggered” or highly emotional state. This can look like many different things, including drinking water, getting sleep, any of the numerous Nervous System Soothing tips I share with you in the weekly love letter and on social media, drinking herbal tea, locking ourselves in the bathroom for five minutes of solitude… all of those things are self care. These are the small, non-glamorous things that keep us going and keep us feeling calm and sane.

And, self-care isn’t 100% regulating our nervous systems. Another big piece of self care, for me, is boundaries.

You know, that whole being able to say No thing. (I’ll talk more about boundaries as self-care next week.)

However, I do believe that before we can really connect to, and then honor and enforce, our boundaries, we need to be able to connect to our bodies and calm and regulate our nervous systems.

What do I mean by “calm and regulate our nervous system,” “triggered state,” or “activated nervous system”?

I deeply believe that all of us have trauma living within our bodies. It could be a trauma (or multiple traumas) of our personal lived experience. This could look like abuse, neglect, rape, or car accidents, surgeries, living through natural disasters. Any and all of those events that we may personally experience our bodies can experience as traumatic events.

In addition, we have ancestral trauma living in our DNA. Epigenetics has shown us how these “trauma markers” are passed down through the generations and how they are “mutable” or “reversable”. This means that the unresolved, unprocessed traumas of our parents, grandparents, and back to the beginnings of time, live in our bodies today.

Finally, there is what I call Cultural Relational Trauma. This is the trauma we experience living in a white supremacist, capitalistic, misogynist, patriarchal culture. This is the trauma of isolation, of being told we are less than, not enough, too much, that we should feel shame for who we are and for existing at all. This is the trauma that tears us from our communities and teaches us that one “group” is somehow superior to another. It is the trauma we hold in our bodies that is put in us every day.

Because we all carry trauma in us, our nervous systems are generally all out of sorts. What this looks like day to day is that we are easily irritated, or anxious, or depressed, or have rapid and far ranging mood swings, or feel like we want to crawl out of our skin on a regular basis – but with all of these things happening we can’t always pinpoint the why or what actually caused the dysregulation or what is also called an “activated” nervous system or a triggered state.

Calming or soothing our (sympathetic) nervous system brings us out of this activated state. It allows us to feel good in our bodies, to be in our frontal lobes (where empathy and logic live), and eventually to respond to stimulus (or triggers) in a way that isn’t harmful to ourselves or others (and by harmful I mean not only physically, but also emotionally, psychologically, and physiologically).

I talk more about this in this 7 minute video.

This essay is the first in a three part series I have put together to introduce some of the topics we’ll be exploring in my winter self-care circle, Self Care for the Holidays. If you’d like to learn more and possibly join us, you can click right here.

Other essays in the series:

The Holidays, Trauma, & Our Nervous Systems (this essay)

Boundaries: Physical, Emotional, & Psychological

Stress, Grief, & Embodiment

Healing Trauma or Processing Trauma?

July 12, 2018 By gwynn

Definition of heal

1a : to make free from injury or disease : to make sound or whole

…

3: to restore to original purity or integrity

Definition of process

…

2a (1) : a natural phenomenon marked by gradual changes that lead toward a particular results (2) : a continuing natural or biological activity or function

2b : a series of actions or operations conducing to an end; especially : a continuous operation or treatment especially in manufacture

Merriam-Webster online dictionary, December 2017

I stopped using the word healing as related to trauma over a year ago. I did this mostly in response to what felt like an onslaught of trauma coaches and therapists talking about how by working with them you can heal your trauma and everything in your life will be all flowers and sausages because of it.

These messages impacted me in a very negative way. At first I didn’t understand why I found the message so irritating. I mean, I used the term “healing trauma” too. So why did it bother me so much that these other folks were using this very common term?

With some quiet and self-reflection I found my answer.

My own personal experience of trauma therapy didn’t seem to “heal” my trauma in the ways that I thought about healing. Using Merriam-Webster’s definition above, if we heal our trauma, we make it go away, disappear, no longer exist.

Working with my own therapists, this was not my experience. My trauma still existed, even after years of therapies. The events didn’t miraculous not happen. The ways that they impacted me didn’t disappear. I still had memories, I was still triggered, I still had certain behaviors-some innocuous, some relatively harmful-that grew from these experiences.

My trauma was not healed. My trauma is not healed. It still exists. It’s still in me in a myriad of ways, some of which I am conscious of and I am sure some I am not.

This may sound rather hopeless. If we can’t actually heal our trauma, if we can’t actually undo what was done to us, what is the point?

What has occurred for me, through years of talk therapy, EMDR, Sensory-Motor approach, and most recently CIMBS (Complex Integration of Multiple Brain Systems – a body-centered mindfulness/somatic approach), is that I can process and learn to mitigate the impact trauma has on me and my life.

The events still happened. I am still sometimes triggered. My physical health is still impacted.

And.

I have learned how to become aware of some of my triggers. I have learned to listen to my body when a trigger is starting and then can slow down and calm my nervous system so I don’t move into a fully triggered (and out of body, back in reptile mind) state. I have learned how to actually feel comfortable in my own body, to enjoy pleasurable sensations and to tolerate uncomfortable ones.

I have not healed my trauma. And I have processed much of it and learned and am learning so much more about myself as I do it.

The processing of my own personal and ancestral traumas has been progressive. It has been both incremental, with the tiniest, almost imperceptible, shifts and it has also in some ways happened all at once, with seemingly huge changes happening in very short periods of time.

It has been a process. It will likely be a process for the rest of my life. A process of coming home to my body, of reconnecting with my Self and the world, a process of self awareness, a process of learning and unlearning, a process of soothing my nervous system, connecting to my boundaries and resources, finding my center and ground, and creating new neuro-pathways. A process of shifting and transforming into new ways of being.

I have witnessed similar experiences with my clients when we utilize my Trauma Informed Embodiment™ approach. The process is slow and gentle and also results can sometimes be seen rather quickly. This approach doesn’t make your trauma “go away,” it will not magically turn you back into the person you were before the traumatic events happened. It will give you tools and new ways of entering into your Self and your life that are more mindful, pleasurable, and joyful.

I talk more about all of this in the 13 minute video below.

This essay is the fourth and final of a four part series I have written exploring trauma, what it is, how it impacts us, and how we can begin to process it. I hope you find it helpful and informative.

This essay series is also to introduce the topics we will be exploring in my new six month program Trauma Focused Embodiment Level 1. We begin August 1. You can learn more here.

Additionally the main focus of my individual work is trauma and utilizing trauma informed embodiment with my clients. If you are looking for an individual therapist, you can learn more about me and my individual therapy work here.

Finally, I facilitate a free online group on Facebook where we explore trauma, grief, embodiment,and their intersections. It is called Trauma Informed Embodiment and you can join us right here.

If you missed the first three essays and videos their links are below ::

The Traumas Living Within Us

The Physiological Impacts of Trauma

The Psychological & Emotional Impacts

Processing or Healing Trauma (this essay)

When we contemplate the miracle of embodied life, we begin to partner with our bodies in a kinder way.

Boundaries define us. They define what is me and what is not me. A boundary shows me where I end and where someone else begins, leading me to a sense of ownership. Knowing what I am to own and take responsibility for gives me freedom. ~Henry Cloud

When we self-regulate well, we are better able to control the trajectory of our emotional lives and resulting actions based on our values and sense of purpose. ~Amy Leigh Mercree

Subscribe to Our Newsletter