Beyond Broken

Attachment

Stand Your Ground

This summer our 5 year old is venturing out into the ocean but he needs to hold hands for support when the big waves hit.  When the big wave approaches I say to him, “stand your ground, buddy” over and over again. My wish is that he remember this as metaphor for the rest of his life.  As I say it to him over and over again, I am learning to stand my ground.

Boundaries are something that did not exist in many chaotic households, or they were held inconsistently.  And I am finding that many of the people I work with have never experienced healthy, safe, flexible boundaries.  As one person put it recently, “I either shut down completely behind my wall or I am wide open with my heart fully exposed”.  The first approach is not a boundary but a defense and the second approach is a merging which is unhealthy and leads to co-dependency and loss of self.

Brene Brown has done the most beautiful work around boundaries that I have discovered.  It came out of extensive research that she did.  She wanted to know what qualities contributed to the most compassionate people.  She began by interview clergy and other known types of compassionate people.  Her hypothesis was that compassionate people were also spiritual people and that spirituality contributed to compassion.  What she found out was very shocking to her and it might be to you too.  She found that the most compassionate people are the people who have the best boundaries.

She uses the acronym BIG for her boundary discussion.  BIG becomes an amazing question.  Here is how it goes:

What Boundaries do I need so that I can be in my Integrity and be most Generous towards you?

As one friend pointed out, we often try and do GIB, and that doesn’t work.  We often think we should be generous.  Aren’t good people generous?  And then we find we have gotten out of alignment with our integrity and wonder what boundaries we might need or should have put in place and didn’t.

As I have worked with this notion of boundaries and generosity with myself and others I find this miraculous thing happens.  Let’s say there is a conflict with another person.  We are considering having it out with them.  Hashing out what is wrong, all our hurt feelings, etc.  And then we consider maybe a boundary would help.  When we energetically feel a boundary — like a transparent cloth over our hearts or a piece of lucite (letting light in and out but a boundary none the less) — everything changes.  We feel the boundary.  We are inside and the other is outside.  We have a parameter around us, there is a border between us and the other.  In this act of protection  and self designation, we instantly can feel more generous towards the other person.  The grievances or issues seem to vanish as we feel secure and unharmed inside ourselves.

I spoke to a friend about BIG yesterday and as she carefully took in what I was saying she said she felt I was talking about creating order.  Boundaries do create order where otherwise there is the potential for chaos.

Try standing your ground first with a simple boundary based on your own integrity and watch your generosity and true compassion grow.  It is straightforward and easy and works instantly.

 

 

 

“If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it” Richard Rohr

or, “The Doom Loop of Righteous Indignation”

I have been having a lot of encounters with people lately who have very strong opinions about our political and humanitarian situations and global issues threatening our planet.

The thing is, I usually agree with whatever they are saying, since we all typically surround ourselves with those who think like us and agree with our point of view.  But I hate the conversations.  The energy between us feels negative before I have said a word and I begin looking for distractions or ways to change the subject.

As the conversation progresses (mostly one sided) I get more and more desperate to escape. Then, if it is a good day,  I am able to find my curiosity and wonder what pain is driving this negativity.  I look into the eyes of the person talking and they look angry and somewhat vacant.  They are not really connecting with me, they are spewing rhetoric or perhaps well reasoned thoughts. But why the rant?

If I ask, (or they may tell me anyway), they say “We have to take a stand, we have to make a difference.”  And I wonder how more righteous indignation and pain will make a difference in our world.

I listened to an inspiring dialogue yesterday between Russell Brand and Brene Brown.  Their conversation spanned many topics, but inevitable led into politics and planetary concerns.  They discussed how politics can never be separated from spirituality (Brene defines spirituality as love, compassion, kindness and oneness.)  They conclude that since our politics are about humanity they must include these very human qualities.

The Pathwork teaches us about hard and soft pain.  First we feel soft pain, then we cut off from these tender, vulnerable feelings and split into hard pain, kind of a doom loop.  I see it as continuous loopy, angry, orange spirals.  The hard pain keeps us thinking dualistically, saying  “either there is something wrong with me or there is something wrong with you.”  And it is repetitive and can be both addictive and disheartening.

We split from the soft pain because we have trained ourselves not to feel it and it requires the ability to bring together the dichotomy of both positive and negative qualities of the self and others into a cohesive, realistic whole.  Splitting is a common defense mechanism.  Most of us split into black and white thinking or good and bad thinking.  But this is simply a strategy to avoid pain.

The way out of this doom loop is to notice when you are in it and trace your steps back to the soft pain.  The anger and indignation turns to sadness,  the grievances turn to grief.  The magic of this process is that when we feel the soft pain it moves through us and settles us.  We are now in our real selves, in our present moment.  It is a relief and it is both simple and takes a lot of effort to do this over and over again each time we find ourselves hard and unfeeling.

Brene Brown suggests that what we are seeing today in our world is the last stand of “white male power-over” dynamics. She points out that last stands are always ugly.

One of my dear friends has made many trips to Wounded Knee in South Dakota, the site of a massacre of around 300 men, women and children.  It is a pilgrimage for her.  She is quiet about it but just keeps going back to one of the places of pain strongly symbolizing the dominance of “white male power-over” in this country.  She seeks a deepening of her spirituality and she turns to a painful place for this.

What if we made pilgrimages to painful places instead of devotional shrines or aspirational holy ground?  What if the painful place is the holy ground of being human? What if it leads us to know our humanity and that of others, versus pretending that our humanity is uniquely ours but is not granted to others, especially those different from us?

Look at the image at the top of the page closely.  Under the self assured man and women with their fingers pointing are little struggling, suffering, sweaty beings.  When I find myself in the unpleasantly indignant conversations I try to tune into the suffering one under all the bravado and strong opinions. They are often obfuscated by all the noise but I feel them anyway.  It is painful.

 

 

 

The Spiritual Significance Of Relationships

August 22-25 in Burlington Vermont

Our deepest human relationships ask a lot of us. We must meet our partner with honesty and humility, physically, mentally and emotionally.  We must accept both our own imperfection and theirs. To do so exposes our deepest vulnerability. When we can muster the courage, take this risk, for ourselves and with our beloved, we may experience a profound deepening of our well-being and sense of fulfillment. We grow closer to our real selves, we grow closer to spiritual fusion – we grow closer to God.

In this 4-day workshop, our hope is that each of us will —

  • Deepen our understanding of what we bring to relationships, from wounds of the soul and of childhood, and the unconscious choices and beliefs that follow. We will hold them with compassion and re-align them with real love and connection.
  • Experience the truth that we are designed to reach out to another and to a greater consciousness than our own; that we are designed to love.

This workshop is open to individuals and couples familiar with Pathwork. Interviews may be required.

To Register online: https://pathworkvermont.org/workshops
For more information, if you have questions, and/or to receive a registration form, contact Jeannie at awakeningheartvt@gmail.com or 802-793-1552 – Deadline is August 12th.

Wendy Hubbard – has been practicing the Pathwork for 21 years. She is currently a Helper in the Mid-Atlantic Region. She is also trained in Hellinger Family Constellation Work, and Somatic Experience Attachment and Trauma Work.

Tom Hubbard became a Pathwork Helper in 2003 following ten years of intense Pathwork study. He has taught Pathwork at every level, from the first year of the Transformation Program to Helper Training. Tom has had careers in social services and business.

Wendy and Tom’s marriage has thrived as a result of Pathwork study and practice. They are now passionate in helping people find meaning in the patterns that arise in them in relationship, finding their way to joyful connection emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually.

 

 

 

Honoring The Effects Of Trauma In Our Lives – a few spaces left register by April 10th!

Download the full workshop flyer here.

Releasing the Grip of Trauma Using Structures Work, Personal Stories and Group Work

“It is one thing to process memories of trauma, but it an entirely different matter to confront the inner void – the holes in the soul that result from not having been wanted, not having been seen, and not having been allowed to speak the truth. Structures fill in these holes.”
—Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D.

Class Format —
Pre-course On Line Class — Saturday April 20th 3-5
In Person One Day Class — Saturday April 27th 10-6
Post course On Line Class — Saturday May 4th 3-5
Cost — $150.00

A workshop participant:
“Wendy, when I am with you, I feel that you understand and are able to hold a space that most people are unaware exists. This is powerfully magnetic and comforting.”

Structures enable a person to go back safely into the traumatic memory with crucial support that was missing then, and it offers fresh options – an alternative memory – a different outcome in which your basic human needs are met and your longing for love and protection are fulfilled.
This reconstructs inner implicit memories maps in the brain and helps people become viscerally acquainted with feelings that were lacking early in their lives.

Limited to 12 Participants so register early. To register or for more information contact Wendy Hubbard – whubbard0@gmail.com

Larry Goldstein is a group facilitator that utilizes psychodrama, playback theater, the therapeutic spiral method, theater direction and coaching in his group work. Larry has trained with Kate Hudgins, Jonathan Fox, the Coaches Training Institute and worked in day hospitals, private practice with individuals, couples, families and groups. He often leads retreats for non-profit boards and other work groups.

Wendy Hubbard is a Pathwork Helper. She has studied and practiced the Pathwork for 25 years. She teaches the Advanced Levels of Pathwork, leads groups and individual sessions. She is also certified in Hellinger Family Constellation Work and trained in Attachment and Trauma Work. This rich mix of modalities and trainings informs her work and enables her to bring hope and healing to her clients. Her website and business is
www.beyondbroken.org.

Attachment Hell

What is Attachment and why is it Hell when things go wrong?

attachment

If you had an ideal childhood where your consistent parents celebrated your uniqueness and each of your achievements as you moved through your developmental stages, then this blog does not apply to you.

“However, most of us had a childhood that was far from this ideal. Our young, vulnerable nervous systems were not protected and regulated by ideal parents. We often felt overwhelmed and alone, and to buffer ourselves from these recurring feelings of overwhelm, we developed survival patterns”, says Steven Kessler in The 5 Personality Patterns.

These survival patterns can stay with us our whole lives and we identify them as ‘us’.  However they are a series of defensive postures that help us regulate energy and events from the outside world. The real ‘us’ of us — our essence — is lost, since it was not activated by attunement when were were young. The good news is we can recover our truest selves, but it takes work.  We have to begin the process of attuning to ourselves, attending to those overwhelmed and lonely parts within.

If your parent or parents were there, but not consistently, you will believe that if you ramp up your nervous system and attention to others, maybe that will make them stay with you longer.  You live a very vigilant, anxious life in a terrible quandary: your need for others is so large, but your capacity to take it in is so small (since it was not there sufficiently when you were young). To heal and find your way back to your real self you will need to practice receiving and containing.  You have what you need now to fill up your system and regulate yourself but you will have to work at it.  You also have to pay special attention to letting in the goodness that comes your way, letting it land in you. You will have to reverse your focus from outward to inward. You will feel whole and settled as if you have finally come home.

A testimony to this work –

“So first, I would say I am healing from my attachment wound.  Part of this process is knowing my vulnerability to the story/feelings of being left, especially in my closest relationships.  When I am getting pulled to the old pattern of relating, I know I need to slow down and hold myself with love and compassion so I don’t abandon me.  This allows me to be intimate with myself and my real needs while creating opportunity for intimacy with the other. I risk asking for what I need.  I am clear about what is a true request versus a whiny demand or manipulation.  If I’m feeling whiny energy, this needs to be held and explored. And surprise to my younger self:  My requests are usually met with a yes!  And when they are not, it allows me to open to other paths to getting my desires met.”  Anonymous

If your parents were not available especially emotionally, you will stop expecting anything from others. You will live life in your own bubble. You will overrate your opinions and views of the world and discredit others. You will not allow yourself to have any needs since they will not be met, but your quandary is that, to do this, you must make yourself numb. This numbness helps you regulate difficult, overwhelming experiences but you will also be numb to joy and much of the pleasure that life offers. To heal you will need to take the risk to slowly step our of your bubble and notice that there is nourishment for you there. You will have to slowly let your body feel again and risk having your needs. You will feel more of everything: love, joy, pain and your old drab life will take on unbelievable colors.

A testimony to this work –

“Understanding my attachment style has allowed me to accept actions and beliefs that I previously thought were an unchangeable part of ‘who I was’. Not accepting them kept these patterns of behavior in place and created a profound sense of isolation and personal failure. As I have grown to accept these patterns as legitimate outcomes of my childhood experiences, new possibilities are opening up to choose differently; choosing connection rather than isolation and hopelessness. I now have a loving partner who both understands me and yet is available for a deep intimacy that I have never previously known. An inner gate has opened and although my old responses and patterns occasionally show themselves, I recognize them for what they are: ghosts that no longer have power to bind me to past vows. I have a real choice now and I choose love more and more often. True and justified hope is now mine. ” Jack Bodger

If your parents, who you needed to love you, also hurt you — well then you are really in trouble.  Your quandary is the belief that love = harm or hurt. This will make it very challenging for you to form healthy lasting relationships as an adult. You will be drawn to the love and repelled by the harm. You are like a magnet turning towards the attraction of love and then flipping over and repelling that connection out of fear. Unfortunately, some of us in this category experienced child abuse in the form of physical and emotional harm. Others of us experienced neglect which creates tremendous hurt in a young child.

This is what happened to one dear little one who was subjected to treatment by heartless immigration tactics, separated from his parents with no warning for 73 days. He experiences this as extreme neglect. His mother is there one moment and then gone the next. His master regulator of all those overwhelming and lonely feelings is suddenly gone. He becomes extremely dis-regulated, and this may last throughout his life. You see this dramatically in the news video of his reunion with his mother. He will repeat this in every relationship for the rest of his life. This clip, from the CBS New “60 Minutes” program, includes commentary from two psychiatrists.

To heal this pattern it will be necessary to begin to de-couple the hurt and harm from the love.  The body needs to experience them as two separate streams of energy and not all muddled together.  (You may also have to do the work of the previous two patterns because you have used all the patterns to cope with so much distress.)

A testimony to this work –

“What shifts when moving from a perspective of enduring or surviving life to a perspective of thriving and moving with life, being in mutuality with life?  When in survival mode, the body feels tense and painful and is always on guard for danger. Emotionally, there is a feeling of needing to protect against hostile outside forces (which could be anything or anyone). Spiritually, there is a sense of hopelessness and despair that anything will ever change and that there is nowhere to turn for help. 

When a sense of thriving is available, everything changes. The body sinks into a grounded calm, with soft belly and easy breath. Emotionally, there is a sense of curiosity about life, which spurs playfulness and vulnerability to anything or anyone that is currently present. Each moment feels like an opportunity to experience the precious gift of life, whatever it brings. Spiritually, there is a joy, an outward facing energy, an embracing energy that enfolds everything and everyone in my sphere.” Ann Rebera

All these patterns or adaptations influence how we see ourselves and the world. They become our reality — not actual life itself.

As you read the testimonies I hope you feel a profound sense that healing is possible for you.  Each of these people are dismantling their patterns and it is working!  This takes time.  It is not a quick fix.  But this can be our healing task in this life time. I hope our three year old friend Emmers finds the help he needs.