Is talk therapy really helping?

A year ago, I had the privilege of a relationship ending and offering me time and space to really examine myself. My behaviors internally and externally. This was deeply painful in many ways and it was a sweet gift to learn how I want to love and be with others relationally. This started with my relationship to myself. The ways I wasn’t in integrity with myself and the ways my own self-abandonment created abandonment in my relationship. This slowly started to show up in my therapy practice. I noticed that I was having a deep visceral bristling when a client would insist on a narration of pain that allowed for the feelings of helplessness and hopelessness to continue. The deeper I went into my own healing, the harder it was for me to bracket my response to the clients narrative.

I found myself slowly growing more resentful of my work. I didn’t feel like I was actually helping my clients by “meeting them where they were at” when they were in hopelessness. Granted, it isn’t my place to rescue and that was not my desire either. I felt really stuck with ways I wanted to show up authentically and in alignment with my work. I slowly realized that the story we tell is what holds us captive. Yeah, not a major revelation but one that brought my curiosity back to the surface.

What I really found was that I want to work with the body’s stories. This is done through deep, slow, quiet movement and listening. Not through the head and talking. As I have delved deeper into this work with clients we are stopping the talking and moving towards less of the “whats the story” and more towards “what are you desiring?” When the body can talk and ask for the desires it holds we are able to move through more, care more fully for ourselves, and be in more present relationship.

This brings me to the question of “does talk therapy really help?” well…yes. To a point and then we can get caught in a different cage. Talk therapy helps us learn to examine our thoughts and can help us to see the ways we create stories that hold us in victim/hero, good/bad, black/white spaces. Talk therapy can certainly help us live in the grey zones of the psyche. However, the body may still be holding on. When we change our thinking and not our responses we create a new form of dissonance. A new mind/body split. We start to gaslight ourselves into regulation and “okayness”. This is a different form of dissafety in the world and our bodies. Our narratives have to learn to hold the both/and of “I’m responding and I am ok.”

I am finding that many of the clients I work with are trying to make sense of their worlds, mitwelt, umwelt, and the eigenwelt, and these worlds are not aligning. This is where slowing down, tuning in to the quieter resonances, and doing something different in their response is truly where the work lies.

When Feeling Misunderstood...a meditation on cancel culture

I have had a few small and interesting moments of feeling misunderstood in the past week and they have left me with a question of “what is this reaction all about?” I experience this clenching in my chest, my eyes feel teary, I want to defend myself, I want to run away…no…disappear…

With each of these experiences, I have been able to stop anything from moving forward and watch my response as it surfaces. I am able to integrate Internal Family Systems (IFS) into my curiosity with myself and discover a young part who is afraid of being exiled from the group because I haven’t held the status quo. This is both my personal young story and the story of queerness and embodied work in community. I realize that the young part can be cared for rather easily with a recalibration to the current space and people I am with. The queer part is terrified because of cancel culture.

My experience with the intersection of queerness and cancel culture began in my 20’s when I didn’t feel “queer enough” because I had been married to a man and had a child. I was aware of the people who wouldn’t accept me. I had some gold star lesbians tell me they would never date me because they had learned their lesson with “straight girls”. I didn’t have much in common with my peers because I was a young, single, parent. I compensated by staying up to date with pop culture and going out as often as I could so I seemed “cool”. I was exhausted and lonely.

Fast forward to organizing work…the way that fellow organizers would police each others actions, words, presence…I was disregulated most of the time and desperately trying to figure out how to be a part of things while also not loosing my internal footing. I failed, a lot. I ostracized good people in my life and I found that I was not in integrity with myself and my community when I would watch, or worse, join a cancellation campaign.

Now, I am in a different stage of development. I have been cancelled by different groups for different reasons. My actions were not innocent. I did harm, I didn't listen to myself and I let a lot of my own boundaries fall to try to keep others happy. I was so afraid of the outcome that inevitably happened anyway.

Here are a few of my take aways:

• If I am wavering in my sense of self or belonging it is time to sit back, disengage from the rhetoric and get curious with myself.

• If I can name what is coming up for me, do it with a trusted source who is able to hold nuance and a balance of perspectives.

• reflect, reflect, reflect…What is familiar? What is the fear? What story am I telling myself? What narrative am I clinging to? as I start to get clarity in these ways…

• Surrender. Can I drop? Let go? Stop? Sit back? What do I need to put down?

• From here, I usually have clarity of my asks or my pivots. Often times, it is something I need to do internally. Sometimes, it is a community or relational effort.

I still sit with the fear of being cast out of the groups I am a part of. I am still being pushed out and moving away from groups I care about. I am learning and fumbling. I try to always fail forward. Always remembering that I will fail and others will fail me. With that knowledge in hand I ask “How do I want to do this with love and relational being at the center?”

I would enjoy hearing about how you have experienced or created ways of change with failure, love, and relationality all held central.

The Embodiment of Shame

Shame is a sensation that I work with often. In my client work, my personal work, and with beloved people in my life. I find that shame is an emotion that quickly escalates in the body and mind, telling stories that isolate and control the individual in such a way that it feeds itself. I also find that in many spaces shame is mirrored relationally which maintains a grip over the person experiencing shame.

Shame tells us we are out of alignment with our beliefs, values, desires, and actions. It is a way that we invite ourselves back to ourselves. I often witness when someone is feeling shame they are acting out (literally acting out of alignment with their true self) and the people around them often reject this version of them (feeding into the shame cycle). When this happens the ruptures can often become so deep that people have a hard time coming back to repair. Thus leaving an incomplete cycle and a shame postule raring to burst again.

Often, when someone is in a shame response they will be defensive or shut down. These can be difficult expressions to navigate when in relationship with another person. It is always ok to lovingly walk away for a minute or ask for time to process what you are experiencing and its also incredibly healing when you can come through shame together. Easy ways to talk to shame when you are with someone who is acting out of alignment with the person you know is to show curiosity. Ask questions. That didn’t feel very good, would you like to try again? Can you try saying that a different way? Are you feeling in alignment with how you want to be relationally right now?

As the person experiencing shame, it can be hard to right the ship in the moment. Shame builds on itself. If possible, invite curiosity to yourself. What am I wanting to convey in this conversation? Is there something that could help me soothe in this moment? If some clarity comes forward act on it. Give yourself permission to ask for or receive the care in this moment. Take a beat and move your body. Shame often holds us in a freeze state in the body. We feel under attack so there is also fight present. Shake it off. Breathe and move. Clear it out so you can find your alignment back to self.

Body Autonomy and parenting

I am being invited into remembrances of parenting and embodiment in multiple ways at this stage in my journey. It is a beautiful and peaceful place to be called into. The ways that I have moved into embodiment throughout my parenting journey has had so many iterations and growth points. There is deep resonance and gratitude for the ways that parenting has allowed me to get to know myself deeper.

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending Prentis Hemphill’s book release event at Seattle Public Library. An audience member asked “what has changed for you about the ways you experience embodiment since becoming a parent?” and Prentis answered, “I have become less of an individual. It has changed the parameters of my own being.” Prentis went on to talk about the ways that listening is a fundamental element when raising a child. When we turn away from the ways that a child communicates needs to us (verbal or non-verbal) we teach that child that there needs don’t matter. My inner child cried out in this moment. It struck deep into a core wound that I have been healing for years. I struggle to name needs and when I do, I often name them with such downplay that they aren’t heard as needs. Thankfully, I have many friends and beloveds who know this and actively hold these parts of me with grace and love. These relationships are allowing me to do deep healing work that may not otherwise exist in my life. This is one part of body autonomy that is new to me. Having, naming, and knowing that my needs matter.

My body has belonged to someone else for most of my life. I was a child, of a single mother. I had a father who was intermittently in the picture. The ways that each of my parents let me know that my body didn’t reflect what they wanted from me were consistent. Sometimes subtle and sometimes overt. I knew I was queer but I didn’t have the language for it in the 90’s in Reno, Nevada. I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina after graduating high school (my first act of body autonomy)…I immediately found a boyfriend and we moved in together within 3 months of knowing each other. We got a dog and I decided I wanted to move back to Reno. He came along. A month later I was pregnant. Did my body ever have a chance to be just mine?

I loved being pregnant. I took care of myself. I learned my limits and I named them. I took my breaks at work and slept and ate. I was almost 2 weeks over my due date. I was induced. 21 hours later the baby was in distress and and I underwent an emergency c-section. I was told I couldn’t hold my baby because I risked dropping them due to the drugs…This story goes on and on…fast forward and we are at home. I am healing, breast feeding, caring for this beautiful and vulnerable little being. I was so in love that I didn’t pay attention to my needs anymore. I treated my own body as a commodity made to house this precious soul and was now just a vessel to feed and be in attendance. It was alomist 12 years before I ever thought about how the birth affected me.

I did therapy to talk through the birth story. I did scar tissue release work to work through the trauma stored in the scar. I worked with healers of many types to release the pain and fear of a 19 year-old who went through a medical crisis and was sent home with little information for my own healing care. I launched my baby into adulthood, jobs, apartments, autonomy…and I eventually offered the same to myself.

I had top surgery. My body became mine. I was protective and excited. I showed everyone and beamed with pride at the body that was finally mine. My time became my own. No dating, no partners. My time was mine. My decisions were mine. I guarded this so fiercely…I still do. As I learn to move through the world as someone with an adult child, a trans body, a queer soul, and a powerful heart I am reminded every day that this took years of learning. This took a lot of effort and finally it took total surrender. I had to listen to my deepest fears, desires, and needs to be able to find the introduction to my body autonomy.

Embodied Movement Coaching

Earlier this year I had a very clear boundary arise in my body. This boundary stated that I could not do another election as a therapist in the ways I have done in previous years. This coincided with getting top surgery and rethinking the way I'm building conscious community. I really sat with the question, “what ways do I work that feel deeply aligned with the world I want to be a part of?”

What came out if this was a combination of somatic IFS (internal family systems), polyvagal theory and understanding how nervous system states change our perceptions and actions, fascial release work, and utilizing building blocks of personal training to engage the body more fully. These ideas are what I weave together to deepen healing work. Largely, we move away from narrative building to listen to the knowledge of the body.

What I’m seeing with clients, as I do more of this work, is a deeper level of self-acceptance, authentic relationship to self and other, and more presence and engagement in everyday life.

I truly believe that the more we are able to allow intuitive and felt experience to come through, without judgement and attempts and meaning making, the more we are able to genuinely connect. This is the world I want to be in. The community building I am here for. If you are curious about this work please reach out. Co-conspiritors, collaborators, and clients are welcome to join as this adventure begins. Please join me!

Here we go...

It has been over a decade since I last wrote a blog post and I am both excited and nervous to jump in. It is funny to me that the blog I wrote for was about parenting and sexuality and now, here I am, thinking about and starting a blog post with that same topic again. I went down a rabbit hole hoping to go back and read younger me’s version of parenting and sexuality but the company I wrote for has deleted the blog from the internet…so, for now I will write from a current perspective with the knowledge of my younger self reminding me that I enjoy putting words into the world even when my voice (or hands) shake.

In the past week I have had multiple invitations to think about and explore the way that body autonomy, parenting, and sexuality all interplay and change with time. I am now the parent of a fully adult human. I live alone, I am unpartnered, I am dating (sort of)…my time, body, money, and decision making is my own. I have little effect on the lives of others in my little moment to moment decisions.

This is new to me. I had my child at 19 years old. I got pregnant less than 3 weeks after my 19th birthday. I was barely an autonomous human. I definitely did not know what I was or who I was becoming and I was responsible for another life. We grew up together. It was not always easy (for either of us) or fair to them. I had to learn about my boundaries while trying to lead another being into their own. I came out, first as queer, then as poly, then as non-binary. I struggled with the unfairness it was for my child to navigate these changes in a parent. Within themselves and with society. But we did it. We made it to adult hood. We have circled back, came to each other and chosen to be peers, friends, and family.

This is the introduction. I want to write about the process of relating through choosing. I want to write about body autonomy. I want to write about my work and the many ways that healing happens in relationship to ourselves and others. I want to be brave and vulnerable. If you are interested please join my mailing list. I will not spam you. This will be an occasional musing and list of things myself and people in the community are doing.