"Every act of creation is first an act of destruction."
Pablo Picasso
Artwork by Jackson Pollack
Your Shadowy Parts Enhance your Radiance
The shadows in this shell delineate its lovely curves,
just as your shadowy parts enhance your radiance.
EMDR, in effect, brings light to the dark places in our psyches.
CranioSacral therapy involves "listening" to, and honoring, our pain and discomfort (and also our ease). We created the dark place(s) in an attempt to protect ourselves or others. We have needed the dark. Let's honor that. And also honor the comfort... and joy ;-)
Experiencing Healing
"Healing...depends on experiential knowledge: You can be fully in charge of your life only if you can acknowledge the reality of your body, in all its visceral dimensions."
Elvin Semrad as quoted by Bessel Van Der Kolk, in The Body Keeps the Score
Photograph by Edward Weston
It is important to me to give my clients an experience of themselves, and an experience of awareness and acceptance. I want to enable clients to feel their feelings, accept the parts of themselves that have felt unacceptable, and know their own wisdom and strength. An integral part of this process is tuning into the body.
Revelatory rant
I’m going to try something new. Baring my soul here; because I need to. No lovely pictures, no call to action, just venting. But I do hope that you might learn something or gain some insight about yourself….
My own healing goes hand-in-hand with the healing I try to bring to my clients. I learn how to “work with” myself by working with my clients, and I learn how to work with my clients by working with and on myself.
So, here’s what I learned recently and what may resonate with some of you.
I have spent most of my adult life untangling my relationship with my mother. I have realized that on a subconscious level, she wanted me to fix her. She thought that a girl child could unlock her heart. She soon realized, though, that that wouldn’t work. She was too fearful to connect; what was comfortable for her was to detach. Because that desire was never articulated, it took me a while to understand it. I did understand it, as a child, on a subconscious level however. Because ultimately I could not unlock her heart, because she was too fearful to connect, what my mother needed from me was for me to be silent, to disappear. So I disappeared. I’ve spent a lot of my life treating myself like my mother treated me — subliminally silencing myself, or shaming myself for having feelings and desires.
What I do with my clients and what I tried with myself recently was this; instead of shaming my own wounded child, I listened to her. Instead of treating my subconscious urgings as the enemy, I dialogued with it. What I realized was that my shaming part (the part of me that sounds like my shaming mother), is, and has been care-taking my mother! I have internaized my mother/daughter dynamic inside myself. I have an inner little sad little girl and I have an internal mother that silences that sad little girl.
I now FEEL the love and compassion I felt for my mother, that unfortunately drove me to negate myself in an attempt to comfort her. Sacrificing myself to save my mother? A Christ-complex?
What will help me going forward will be to know myself as a deeply empathetic and loving person, not as a dysfunctional, self-censoring, stuck person. To empathize with myself, know that I loved and wanted to heal my mother. I will stop blaming myself for shunning myself; I have shunned myself (subconsciously) to please my mother. How loving (but sad) is that?
Be Yourself (ves)
"Don’t just be yourself, be all of your selves." ~ Joss Whedon
Let's listen to our inner wounded one, our inner Queen/King, even our inner critic.
Be yourself! We're all good!
And may your Best Self preside over the
domain of You with compassion and wisdom.
Is the Law of Attraction Really a Law?
When we look at a plane, we see a sleek machine with wings. If we could see inside an airplane, we would know that most airplanes have more than one engine. Commercial airplanes have an autopilot option and flights often employ two pilots. So who is in charge and what powers the plane? It depends.
Similarly, our bodies/psyches can be powered and ruled by a variety of “engines.” So who is in charge of you? It depends. Is it your inner critic? Does she or he rule you? Or is it your inner child? Perhaps your Higher Self is in charge...until you visit your parents, at which time your inner child takes over. When we are encouraged to “think positive” or use the power of our intentions, which part of us is “intending?”
Perhaps we need to question the power of our intention. Can we really attract what we want by thinking positive thoughts or by chanting affirmations? After all, who is it that is chanting that affirmation? What happens when our conscious mind affirms that we are happy while our shushed inner child silently frets? If we continuously shush that inner child, he/she will get more insistent, more powerful. He or she will shout over the affirmations. Let's listen to our inner child, access our inner nurturer, let our capital 'S' Self overwhelm us with his/her innate optimism and positive spirit!
