Disorganized Attachment
When we had finally eaten in the breakfast room, with Daddy presiding, it was off to school with a high probability of arriving late, for which, of course, I was regularly scolded, and sometimes punished. It was only after this milestone that I could begin to relax into the new day. It is difficult to convey the quality of domestic chaos which kept me in a constant state of tension, anxiety, and hyper vigilance…
Fawning
Fawning is an unconscious attempt to manipulate the reaction of others to ward off danger and maintain connection in an unsafe environment or relationship. This behavioural pattern can become habituated, appearing like personality, without us ever being aware of its traumatic origins. The term fawning was coined by Pete Walker, a psychotherapist who specializes in complex trauma (synonymous with developmental, relational or childhood trauma). Walker saw fawning as the “Fourth F” of trauma reflexes: Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn. It is particularly common among people who have had, or are experiencing, long-term, developmental trauma…
Healing Wounds
On holidays with the extended family at his beautiful holiday home in the west of Ireland, I was tagging along behind Grandpop, effervescent, eager for connection, wanting to learn from and share some emotional intimacy with this great man.
Unluckily for me, the great man must have been somewhat agitated on this sunny summer’s morning. At some point, as we were walking along the riverbank in the bright sunshine, he turned on me suddenly and, looking down from the heights of a six-foot man, told me that I was a case of verbal diarrhoea, instructing me to put a plug in it. Perhaps 6 or 7 years old at the time, I was devastated…
Solitude, Community, Service
Community is, in essence, solitude greeting solitude. The Great Spirit in me speaking to the Great Spirit in you. To be in community means to build a home around the essence that rests at the core of each of us. This beautiful translation of the Sanskrit term „Namaste“ expresses it best: „I honour the place within you where the entire Universe resides; I honour the place within you of love, of light, of truth, and of peace; I honour the place within you, where, when you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us“…
Rewilding the Spirit
Instead, with recovery over time, we come to the realization that nobody, no relationship, no success, no shining toy, is coming to rescue us and heal what’s broken on the inside. In this new-found clarity it dawns on us that we already have our very own garden which contains everything we have been seeking and all we need. That garden has always been waiting for us. An inside job beckons…
Reparenting
Looking back, it emerged that the family in which I grew up had thought me to deny my true feelings in the service of a pain adverse and emotionally illiterate dysfunctional collective dynamic.
How de come out of denial about our traumatic childhoods and regain the ability to feel and express our emotions? The short answer is to accept and befriend the feelings, allowing them to bubble to the surface, and to simply be, without manipulating, wallowing in, or fuelling them, in the trust that `This too shall pass´…
Into Action
For my emotional sobriety, I avail of a variety of resources such as the Twelve Step Recovery Programme, the PQ Mental Fitness modality, and further elements from ancient spiritual to most recent neuroscientific practices, including many body-based therapy forms which have emerged over recent years. These help me retain, and where necessary, regain my balance, always following the principle of `progress, not perfection´…
Carcinogens
Further, more detailed data on these rising figures published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that from 2010 to 2019 in the United States, breast cancer accounted for the highest number of cases in the under-fifty population, while rates of gastrointestinal cancers were rising the fastest. This dramatic increase in gastrointestinal cancers alone demonstrates the implications and risks associated with our modern culture…
Resurrection
The necessity of `dying to the old´ is the crux of the challenge. For, no matter how we have matured, an old script etched on our psyche keeps admonishing us to avoid the dangers and pain of death at all costs. Better the devil we know than the devil we don’t know, the Saboteurs declare. They also incite blame and resentment, which perpetuate the old. Forgiveness is the product of Sage, an indispensable component of relinquishing the old, to make way for the new: Father, forgive them for they know not what they do…
Food?
Evolution is a slow process. Our bodies have evolved over thousands of generations to extract and digest proteins, calories, and vitamins from organic food in a certain way; ultra-processing interferes with that. It’s not necessarily that we’re eating too many calories (which we are) and engaging in insufficient regular exercise (also true), it’s that those calories, now synthesised, are coming in a way that our bodies cannot effectively assimilate. This is the advent of the Super-Size-Me Effect…
