FLOWING to Wellbeing: (Part 5)

I for Integration

In the FLOWING Recovery model described in Unkind Gifts: An Insider’s Guide to Recovery from Trauma and Loss, the final three letters - ING - refer to active efforts and processes for maintenance of our survivorship. It might be argued that the I in the model which stands for Integration is the most important element.  Instead of taking a “get over it” approach to recovery, effective integration efforts require consistent, supported engagement on a neuro-physical level, within an extensive series of interactions, to bring the process to fruition.  While this description may sound complicated, the process of integration is ongoing at a subconscious level, and can be furthered by self-awareness with positive intentions.  In simple terms, integration is a journey of self-discovery.

The word integration is defined as a process of combining one thing with another to make a (new) whole, e.g., Integrative Medicine purports to add holistic elements to standard western medical practices.  However, when the term relates to healing at the level of our nervous system it is less about adding something, and more a matter of removing/releasing that which blocks access to best functioning.  When we FLOW (Feel, Listen, Open to and Witness), developmental effects and distorted perceptions that result from traumatic events can be engaged with and released, allowing us to experience a new sense of self.  Into that newly opened space, we can expand and update life lessons and engage in repair, by direct participation in the naturally occurring processes of integration. Once the toxic secrets are out, the present moment can be attended to and considered as it is – no longer being filtered through past associations with negative meanings and influences.  

Our mindbodies are always seeking their own repair, and it is from a sense of being neglected or underserved (according to our nervous system’s preset/default mode) that symptoms of unbalance arise and are, all too often, reinforced by our interactions with family and society.  Negative implications are especially likely to influence our self-perceptions, as they tend to have the stronger “survival based” filters.  It is at the level of those negative understandings that the golden key to recovery is found.

Integration is both the umbrella for, and the outcome of, all mindbody recovery efforts; it is the essence of secure attachment.  Dr. Dan Siegel points to the match between attachment theory’s “secure” status and the outcome of mindfulness-based integration (Mindsight, 2009).  In childhood, responsive caretaking, family resources (education, nutrition, emotional availability) and environmental safety are the building blocks of secure attachment, but in the absence or disruption of these - most meaningfully those supporting emotional regulation within our closest developmental relationships - our attachment status will suffer significant damage.

Advancements in brain imaging have contributed greatly to an understanding that despite such developmental disruptions, the nervous system stays amenable to repair across the lifespan.  In addition, energy directed toward change can improve its likelihood.  As we attend to internally held meanings, we can locate physical and emotional markers of imbalance and reactivity, allowing for more focused exploration and expression of previously blocked receptors.  For example, the memory of a time of loss, when attended to, can offer validation and context (past vs. present) to compassionately heal and release those exiled emotions that initially established the blockage.  Those pockets of exiled energy exist in all of us, having been based upon the availability of emotional /physical/relational resources at the time of the disruption (loss or trauma).  These complex exiles tend to exist in a sort of time warp of un-integrated, often child based energy.

Working with the FLOWING model, multiple levels and areas of awareness and expression can be addressed over time.  Attending to body energies and thought processes that we so often ignore or dismiss for fear of the emotions that may be carried there, can offer us ongoing access to integration.  Each element of the FLOWING model holds its own inherent integrative properties and opportunities.  When we FEEL we connect meaningfully with muscles, bones, circulation, as well as the nervous system and the emotional cues held within, down to the cellular level.  The implications of this practical focus extend even to genetics and internally held attachment effects.  LISTENING mindfully engages our attention on a level of symbols (images) and meanings to direct access to our own heart-felt truths, some of which were in “cold storage” awaiting such an opportunity for release.  Emotional access does not simply emerge casually at the earliest efforts to engage after long, hard experience at protective withholding - often under heavy guard.  The road to our heart-truths often winds through dark places, requiring great courage and patience.  Maintaining an OPEN receptivity to knowing about the pain and loss suffered along the way and releasing them, once WITNESSED, is the essence of engagement in INTEGRATION as a life-long practice.

In support of integration-as-practice, the elements of the FLOWING model each suggest creative expression of mindbody experiences as release, and as resource.  Attention to the microlevel of our own sense of “safety vs. harm” (as determined by the nervous system), along with deliberate efforts to connect with and express those events/objects/images, will help us to sustain integration on a regular and flowing basis.  From this point, we become more able to NURTURE our practice through routines, rituals, and celebrations. Further, we can expand them to include compassionate engagement with others, through a process known as GENERATIVITY.  These N and G elements the model bring recovery from a mere survival struggle, to fully expressed, continually renewed, integration, as will be explored in the next two essays within the FLOWING to Wellness series.

Ellen C. Ranney, PhD. Is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in private practice. She specializes in work with trauma survivors and their families.  Dr. Ranney is the author of Unkind Gifts: An Insider’s Guide to Recovery from Trauma and Loss, (c)2016, available at www.unkindgifts.com.

Flowing to Wellbeing, (Part 4)

W - Witness

Within the FLOWING model described in Unkind Gifts: An Insider’s Guide to Recovery from Trauma and Loss, the fourth letter holds the balance in recovery and wellness efforts.  As we look at the word FLOWING, the shape and placement of the letter W models a balance between alternatives.  Lines are interconnected at the bottom and rise-up in multiple directions, teetering on twin points, arms out like the scales of justice.  Taking a position of Witnessing requires that we attend to the specifics of meaning and the hierarchy of needs in any given situation.  It is not enough just to look, then turn away – to do so in any relationship is to demonstrate disinterest, wearing away trust and triggering natural fears of being left behind.

Having worked through earlier elements of the acronym – Feel, Listen and Open-heart – we are already familiar with the twin tasks of engagement and expression of physical and emotional processes as essential to wellbeing.  It is important to add that without the deeper meaning of those expressions being grasped and truly acknowledged, any mindbody release may be fleeting or restricted by an expected dismissal, a return to “normal” avoidance and to the overriding of pain cues.  Without a depth of continued attention, it can never be safe enough for us to approach change.  Recovery means actively exploring one’s own forward path, “one step at a time.”  This can only happen in the presence of trust, the natural response to compassionate witnessing.  Notice that the word compassion contains “compass” suggesting a tool for orientation and guidance.  Compassionate witnessing allows the Self to be our guide.

Witnessing is the point at which general mindfulness practice may shift into something more purposefully therapeutic.  Emotional access in a safe, calm context, will yield to deeper exploration and the opportunity for representation.  When received by a witness, old or disorganized ‘scripts’ for life can be released and space made to take in soothing corrective updates.  The same is true of internal, Self-led witnessing; Parts carrying the story of who you are - based on how you have been treated by life and circumstance - need consistency of attention and genuine presence to risk the journey of change.

When we broaden our attention to a range of options for Witnessing, including monitoring our body’s felt responses to cues in the environment, we will discover access to intuition as a reliable guide for assessing safety.  Instead of pushing past unease or discomfort, we can note the things that need attention or action, rather than being guided by reactive responses to outdated emotional cues or ‘triggers.’

If the letter W is our visual example of open expression of shared experience – the “we’ in FLOWING” then its opposite, the letter M can be a model of a closed, “walled-in” system, as in “me” and “mine.”  There is an illusion of security within the protected space of the solid wall, but by cutting-off contact with the normal cycles and frequent shifts in our relationships, our communities and our culture, suddenly the “protective space” is nothing more than a hiding place, a place of isolation, vulnerable to surprise “invasion” by unknown or misunderstood forces.  In the case of trauma, those surprises can take the form of “flashbacks,” where un-witnessed experiences and emotions emerge unexpectedly.  With no opportunity for validation by a witness, we may find ourselves confused and reacting to this displaced information as if it were a present moment crisis.  Such a response can lead to negative repercussions since the reaction is out-of-synch with our real-time situation.  In this way, our ‘protective’ wall becomes a prison of isolation – Me, alone, instead of We, witnessed.

There are many ways to witness: artwork, music, story and other shared experiences are among them.  Representations of our shared humanity is essential to wellness.  In more profound experiences of trauma, we might do well to seek professional supports to help us witness the internal sense of isolation, perhaps with the inclusion of physical release options for mind-body healing.  From this release comes opportunity for Integration, tearing down the walls to make space for gardens where all Parts of our Self-system, and our larger community, can be tended and allowed to flourish.  We will turn to the topic of Integration, the I in FLOWING, in or next entry.  Until that time, offer yourself and those around you the gift of Witnessing. 

Ellen C. Ranney, PhD. Is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in private practice. She specializes in work with trauma survivors and their families.  Dr. Ranney is the author of Unkind Gifts: An Insider’s Guide to Recovery from Trauma and Loss, (c)2016, available at www.unkindgifts.com.

FLOWING to Recovery - O for Open Heart

In this third essay about the FLOWING recovery Model which is at the heart of my recently published book, Unkind Gifts: An Insider’s Guide to Recovery from Trauma and Loss, we will explore the letter O for Open Heart.  Having described the need to Feel our bodies and emotions, and to Listen mindfully for information about the meanings they contain, we now turn our attention to offering the non-judgement of an Open Heart.

              The defining element of an open-heartedness is compassion.  While many of us may strive to held compassion for others with varying degrees of success, it is when we try to direct that compassion toward ourselves that we often “hit a wall.” Yet it is only possible to truly practice compassion from the center, from our own open-heart.  Such openness implies accessibility and to many, may suggest a level of vulnerability that feels dangerous.  But it is possible to maintain a position of acceptance of oneself and others without becoming defenseless.  Remember that the heart is at the center of this practice and is a finely tuned receptor in our interpersonal environment.

While our true nature as human beings is open and receptive, those receptors tend to respond more acutely – for reasons of survival – to negative events that to positives.  This biological predisposition leaves us watchful for potential threats in our environment and in cases where there is unprocessed trauma, creates a “negative filter” through which we view our world.  If we are to access recovery from loss it becomes necessary to challenge those old filters and to modify them for a more open view.

Compassion toward the self is the most problematic aspect of open-heartedness, and because we must begin there to have true compassion for others, it is the most crucial.  Although every faith teaches some variation of “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” there is generally more emphasis placed on self-sacrifice and less on self-care.  In practical terms, such an imbalance is doomed to a choice between burn-out and “selfishness” since the necessary flow of energy between the input and output is unavailable, so energy inevitable runs out.

The other main problem with compassion (for self or other) is a fear of attending to the inevitability of suffering. We spend billions of dollars in the country trying to distract ourselves from the realities of pain and loss.  But as we’ve all heard in the Disney movie “It’s the circle of life,” and those very elements of suffering are what makes the joyful moments so precious. 

A powerful way to explore self-compassion is to focus calm awareness on the area known as the heart chakra.  Chakras are energy centers located along the midline of the torso and head.  The seven major chakras identified is ancient times each pertain to different aspects of physical and emotional energies and like most structural systems, build upward from the base such that weakness at the lower levels create instability at upper levels.  While this essay is about the compassionate energies of the heart chakra, all chakras need attention to support essential functions and balance.  In addition, cutting edge work in neurobiology supports the overall validity of energy and information transmission along the midline of the body, in studies of the endocrine and nervous systems, most significantly the poly-vagal theory of interpersonal social response. (Porges, 2016)

If we are to access and maintain compassion, we must first connect with those parts of ourselves that may have suffered confusion and loss in the past.  To ignore this important step is to work from an incomplete “script” leading to inevitable miscues.  Our own story is the single most powerful source of information about the effects of similar loss on others.  If we keep our story a secret from our own awareness, we risk inserting misinformation into the experience of the other. (This is especially problematic for those of us in professional healing fields.)  If instead, we are clear about what happened to us along the way, we can sort through that information to clearly access what is like or unlike the situation being experienced by the other.  For instance, if my own story included complicating factors like someone manipulating my experience of loss to push blame on me for my own suffering, it is likely to be quite different than the friend’s situation where the loss is more clear cut, and while they are in pain, the level of bitterness or resentment I may have felt, may not fit their story.  To misjudge the circumstances of their loss, is to lose track of the very aspect of hurt they most need my support with.

So before reaching out to try to help the other, first breath and check in with how you feel about the friend’s situation, notice if you have had a loss of your own that still feels raw or easily triggered.  Of if you find yourself reacting strongly to an event that seems less activating to others, take the time to explore your own heart-space to see whether something is unfinished or otherwise blocking your vision about the situation.  If there is a feeling of loss of safety or increased anxiety about this task, perhaps it is time to seek the support of a helping professional to help structure your exploration.  Noticing where in your body the tension is held, or where the feeling of distance is strongest, may lead to important information about this potential threat.  From there you can explore and express your concerns in a compassionate manner, offering unconditional support for your own recovery.  Using creative expression, mindfulness and body awareness, there is opportunity for release and re-balancing your system, bringing new flexibility and new resources to yourself and to those you care for.

In the next essay of this series, we will pick up the W in FLOWING to discuss the importance of truly witnessing to validate and release the bonds of held trauma.  In the meantime, may you have a powerful sense of abundance and Open-heartedness in the weeks ahead.