Therapists increasingly recognize that talking about past abuse or neglect in therapy may not of itself help people to move beyond such experiences. I am always interested and excited by innovative techniques and approaches that come along, which aim at changing the self-destructive behaviour patterns that are often the mark of someone who has been abused or neglected.
One such method which I am now exploring is called Lifespan Integration. It is a gentle method which works on a deep neural level to change our self-attacking scripts, and people report that it has enabled them quite quickly to feel…
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I find this a moving anecdote from ‘Learned Helplessness’ by C. Peterson, S.F. Maier & M.E.P. :
On its two floors, the Arden House Nursing Home had about 100 patients in residence. Their average age was eighty. Two psychologists, Judy Rodin and Ellen Langer, decided to introduce some additional good things to this particular nursing home: movies and decorative plants.
At a meeting on the first floor, the director told the patients:
I was surprised to learn that many of you don’t realise the influence you have over your lives here. It’s your life and you can make of it whatever you want. You made the decisions before you came here, and you should be making them now. I want to take this opportunity to give each of you a present from Arden House. [Plants are passed around, and each patient chooses one.] The plants are yours to keep and take care of as you like. One last thing, I wanted to tell you that we’re showing a movie two nights next week, Thursday and Friday. You should decide which night you’d like to go.
I have spent a lot of hours in therapy group settings over the past 15 years. There have been tears, there have been laughs, but nothing quite like this bizarre depiction, which gets better every time I view it. It’s from Israeli tv show ‘Ktzarim’:
If you get a chance, do consider joining a therapy group, short or long term. A safe, confidential group led by a skilled psychotherapist fosters the appropriate desire to speak and be heard. It supports dignity, self-respect and self-responsibility, and there’s an enormous need for that in this world of indignities and irresponsibility.
Therapy groups sutbly alter the expectations we’ve inherited from our family and schooling. They’re rare, invaluable spaces where we can try out new and different ways of relating and become saner, healthier social animals.
Opening Up My Heart To My Home by Denise Dupont
Coming home. Coming home to me. This is the way I would like to be. To walk in my home with love, integrity Honour, respect for myself and respect for others.
Coming home to myself, means I take Notice of me, my skin, my smell, my shape, My hair, my sensuality and sexuality. My dance and my love My love for myself and my love for others
Coming home to myself is opening up my Heart to the core of my existence My essence, my beauty, my creativity My soul and my roots.
Coming home is being able to say to myself I LOVE YOU.
I Do Not Love You by Jeffery Lane
I do not love you because you are not good enough.
I do not love you because you do not deserve love.
My love is not something I will give you freely.
My love is something you must earn.
You want to know what you must do in order to be loved, and only I can tell you.
If I tell you what to do and you do it then you’ll expect me to love you.
So I won’t tell you what it is you must do, so you cannot do it.
How can I prepare for a fulfilling life? (letter from an enquiring girl, aged 15)
Virginia Satir wrote this reply:
As the New Year reminds us of our gradually advancing age, let’s just consider the not inconsiderable, brighter side (with gratitude to Anthony):
How you feel about yourself is a major factor in the quality of your intimate relationships. Trouble in a relationship almost always involves a problem with self-esteem.
Self-worth is a natural product of receiving appropriate validation, attention and approval as we are growing up. You need to be confident about your competence, your mastery of the world. Beyond that, you need to feel that you are loveable, someone that others would want to be close to – competent or not – just by virtue of existing.
When you don’t have a lot of self-confidence you tend to be so preoccupied with questions of self-worth that when you interact with someone else, especially someone who is important to you, you may not perceive what is going on very accurately. Questions like:
One of the things we have to do to develop our sense of self and greater self-esteem is to accept who we actually are, as opposed to who we are trying to fool ourselves or other people into thinking we are. This means experimenting, trying on different hats and finding out which one feels comfortable, exploring new activities to see which we enjoy and are suited to, taking chances, opening ourselves up a step at a time, allowing ourselves successes as well as failures, seeing mistakes and crises as opportunities to learn and grow. For many of us it means abandoning the belief that the alternative to being perfect is being awful.
This is from Marianne Williamson’s A Return To Love. There’s a myth around that Nelson Mandela quoted this passage during his inaugural presidential speech. Just a myth. No matter – I don’t think it needs anything to add to its lustre!
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
