A deficiency story or core belief is formed early in life and involves negative judgments about ourselves. Common deficiency stories include “I am unlovable”, “I’m stupid”, “I’m not good enough” or “I’m disgusting”. There is a sense we are inherently
I am comfortable doing hard things. Say it out loud. What is your response? I can have a difficult conversation with someone even though it is uncomfortable. I am capable of sustained effort and working hard to do what aligns
Like Pavlov’s dog, we are all conditioned. All the way through human history, our likelihood of survival has been higher when we are included in the family or immediate community. We will do pretty much anything to not get kicked
We’ve had the rug pulled out from under our feet. Within one week in March, everything suddenly changed leaving us afraid and upset. Three weeks ago we reached a breaking point around police brutality against Black people. Millions of people
Resmaa Menakem is a therapist in Minneapolis, and author of My Grandmother’s Hands, Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. I interviewed him in 2019 and Krista Tippet in March of this year. I highly recommend his book
What would happen if you had no rules about being a good person, a nice person, or a valuable person? Would you naturally care about people? Would you want to be decent and kind? What would you do with your
Do you find yourself going along with something even when you feel uncomfortable? Compliance is a form of freeze with elements of fawning to someone perceived as more powerful. Do you automatically reject doing what you are told? Defiance can
Off and on during the two months since the pandemic really landed in North America, I have noticed a heaviness in my chest. When I sit with it, it feels like grief: for people dying alone in hospitals without their
If there was ever a time when it matters how other people think and behave, it is now! All cultures have a version of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Individually we
What gets us through hard times? Reflect for a moment on other times in your life when you were struggling to stay afloat. What helped you then? For many people, a sense of community, knowing we are in this together,
Self-care is especially important now, as we are moving from short term shelter-in-place into the weeks and months ahead. When we’re on vacation, we might throw out all the rules and drink and eat in a way that isn’t healthy
We all feel fear. We don’t all feel powerless. The way we experience this crisis is not the same, and we have power to change our response. We are in this together. I am not alone. I can do my
Don’t get between a mother bear and her cubs! Her protection is swift and merciless. If she sees you as a threat, she takes you out. Our fierce inner protector has more options than the mama bear standing on her
Something that is difficult for many people right now is to be alone. Some of this is fear about how terrible it would be to be in the hospital without people we love at our side. We feel for people
We are all experiencing trauma right now. Our nervous system knows we are facing a life and death threat, and is doing its job by alerting us to danger through fear, tight shoulders and catastrophic thinking. It activates our survival
Two weeks ago, it felt like we were in a hurricane watch. A week ago, we’d been upgraded to a warning, with an ominous sense of impending doom looking at the reports out of Italy. This week, we are hearing
We now live in a different world from the one we lived in last week. Many people were already highly stressed before the virus reached our country and community. This week fear has intensified. We do not know what will
Do you feel safer alone? What happens to a person who fears connection and longs for authentic relationships? Looking at social anxiety, lack of emotional attachment and isolation through a trauma lens, we can see the effect of having been
We all have a list of “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” inside our head. We share many of these. Children who are hungry or hurt. Animal cruelty. Greedy people amassing fortunes while ruining the environment. Some things make the list because they
This week I had my 67th birthday, my dog Shantih turns one, and I celebrated my one year anniversary of living in the forest at the ocean. This morning in daily practice we did a gratitude practice. Neuroscience tells us
It’s simple really. We need to be cared for. We need someone to see us, and love us, and keep us safe. When that doesn’t happen our nervous system knows that it’s not happening. Cognitive understanding is important. We need
An emotional flashback is an emotional state of distress not necessarily experienced with specific memories or images. It is not like a memory from the past, in which we have an image of ourselves at a certain age, the people
The dictionary defines an outsider as a person who does not belong to a particular group. We are all outsiders from most groups. I am an outsider to marathon runners, medical doctors, and chess champions. That’s neutral for me. I
A recent Being Well podcast featured Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson’s wonderful new book The Power of Showing Up: How Parental Presence Shapes Who Our Kids Become and How Their Brains Get Wired. Being Well Podcast: The Power of Showing
What comes to mind when you think of someone who is free? Free to be themselves. Free from fear and shame. Someone who doesn’t second guess themselves. Someone who isn’t afraid to be authentic. Take a few minutes now to
There are two things I say that people are skeptical about or outright don’t believe. The first is that looking at our lives through a trauma lens reveals that most of our reactivity, compulsive thinking, anxiety, depression, fear and dread
A beautiful result of healing trauma is that we have less fear in our day-to-day lives. Our nervous system is less reactive and we are less afraid. We are drawn to authenticity in ourselves and others. We admire people with
Some of the people I interview on the Radical Recovery Summit have a very similar understanding and approach to mine. Irene Lyon is one of those people. She synthesized her training and experience into her program SmartMind SmartBody where she
When we feel afraid or anxious, we are responding to a threat. When we experience social anxiety, we are almost always responding to the abundance of associations & memories from past social interactions. We have a primitive brain and survival
Malcolm Gladwell’s new book Talking To Strangers highlights a behavior that may not be immediately evident in our polarized world. Cooperating with others, forming communities where we look out for each other, is an evolutionary advantage. Two qualities that make cooperation easier
Hurt people hurt people. This is obvious to us when we see physical, sexual, emotional abuse or severe neglect. Children are also hurt when parents are too stressed, busy, distracted or depressed to get to know them. To really feel connected,
This is one of my favorite times of year. Not because of the change in season. I prefer the warming days of spring. It is because I get to interview passionate people about their innovative, radical work healing trauma and
We have an understandable and not helpful mechanism of blaming and pushing ourselves. We think this will help us fix things. It is rooted in our survival instinct and primitive brain. When we are children, we blame ourselves for everything
When a group of adults don’t get enough sleep, it’s like a meeting of tall two-year-olds. Family get-togethers often feature too many people in a small space, staying up late, and too much noise, alcohol, and sugar. Add in entitlement,
Who is on Your Inner Nurturing Committee? Contempt is the most destructive negative behavior in relationships. In Dr. John Gottman’s four decades of research, he has found it to be the number one predictor of divorce. The voice of our own
Mindbody insights into healing can be used to shame us. People don’t generally say that there is something wrong with us if we don’t heal ourselves, yet it is a common interpretation and experience. There is complexity and nuance in
“I sit down to meditate and my mind explodes with catastrophic thinking. I don’t get a moment’s peace from my mean inner critic. What’s the matter with me? I even fail at sitting still with nothing to do.” Said by every
Some of us have big T Trauma. Some of us also have ordinary trauma. Some remember what happened. Some have blocked out the memories yet we sense there is something fundamentally wrong with us. Big T Trauma is easy to
September 30th is Orange Shirt Day, commemorating children who were forced into Canada’s Indian Residential Schools. Today on Facebook I saw the list of 2,800 children who died in these schools. There are at least 1,600 more unnamed children who
When we have been hurt by people, we are understandably wary of giving them another go at us. Our nervous system remembers the pain and puts up barriers to protect us. The problem with letting our survival mechanisms and primitive
Do you ever go along even when you feel uncomfortable? In my experience, compliance is a form of freeze with some fawning to someone perceived as more powerful. This could be in a situation of feeling peer pressure. We do
Do you remember being in your teens and thinking about being old? It was disturbing to me to imagine my young healthy body morphed into a body that is arthritic, stooped over in pain, old, and wrinkled. It never occurred
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Summer Day, by Mary Oliver Mary Oliver was someone who was very tuned in to her system and to the natural world. Many of her poems
“The effect of trauma is that we disconnect from ourselves, our sense of value, and the present moment.” Dr Gabor Maté We need a basic understanding of the trauma response and nervous system and of the particular way we have
When I was a teenager, people often commented I looked just like my dad. Not a welcome thought for a teenage girl! Later he researched the Frasers and gave us pictures of our grandfathers four generations back. I can see
I am a small-town girl from Saskatchewan, a prairie province in Canada that most people wouldn’t know how to pronounce let alone know where it is. I grew up in a home where I was well cared for physically. No
Our survival system calculates risk and the option least likely to lead to our death. One response to danger is flight. We run. We get out of there! We physically leave the scene. When we can’t remove our body from
We need parents who are attuned to our needs. Nurturing emotional interactions with parents are an indispensable requirement of human brain development. Children in non-attuned relationships may feel loved but do not experience feeling appreciated for who they really are.
We are cheated out of childhood when our experience is one of fear, abuse and neglect. Before we move into understanding and compassion and into being reasonable and fair, we need to acknowledge the truth of our own experience. I was
The Adverse Childhood Experiences Score (ACES) This study is one of the largest investigations ever conducted (mid 90’s) to assess associations between childhood maltreatment and later-life health and well-being. It has since been studied in several states with similar results
We’ve all been there, at the wheel or in the passenger seat. We’re driving along and someone does something inconsiderate that sets off a flare of rage. They roar up beside our car then cut us off, forcing us to
What is happening right now in the space your body is occupying? There are sense perceptions, of the air or clothes on your skin, sounds, wetness in your mouth and the movement of your body with your breath. Are you