Transgenerational or intergenerational trauma has been a part of my personal and psychotherapy work recently. I read that large numbers of children of holocaust survivors sought mental health treatment, grandchildren were overrepresented by 300% among referrals to child psychiatry clinics in comparison to the general population. Trauma transmission to offspring happens unintentionally and unconsciously. One study examined the intergenerational trauma through a synthesis of literature on the effect of chattel slavery on the culture, identity, and souls of African American male youth from the inner city. Showing that along with learned dysfunctional patterns, the trauma of slavery can indeed be transmitted intergenerationally through indirect and direct methods that can impact daily functioning. 

My sense is that we are deeply connected to our family soul and that no matter how far we move away or how well we individuate, our relatives and ancestors are bound to us. We carry the undigested horror or pain of our families. Exploring the complexities of our lineage- the secrets, truths, losses and traumas shows you the narratives and energies that bind you together. Only through the acknowledgement of what is, are we able of releasing that which does not serve us and create a more conscious connection with the family soul. 

I have been thinking about the transformative justice work that people are doing and how powerful it is to confront an issue from the personal as well as the political. below is a link to an organization that is working to end childhood sexual abuse within five generations. It feels right to set intentions for our future generations.

http://www.generationfive.org

Has your therapist been to therapy?

I ran across an article in the NY times about client's feelings around their therapist's therapy. While some felt that their therapist would be able to empathize with them more having had the experience of being a client, others didn't like the thought of the person they are coming to for help may need help too. We all have work to do and I want my therapist to do their personal work. As a therapist, it is so important that I stay engaged in my own growth and unfolding- it makes me better at holding space for others.

Creativity

Creativity and Archetypal energy are my bread and butter. Elizabeth Gilbert speaks to the creative process in this video in a way that connects these concepts. I am at my happiest and most jazzed when I make space for the muse with all of her mystery and synchronicity. I know that it is important to to remember our humanity when dealing with such charged, divine, creative energy. Marion Woodman said that at the end of the day, the literary god, Shakespeare, could put a period at the end of the sentence and then go down to the pub and have a beer with his friends and just be little Will Shakespeare. I have been considering the problems that come with confusing the archetypal realm with our humanness.


Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity | Video on TED.com

focusing

I have been in love with focusing lately. I attended a weekend retreat and have been a member of an ongoing focusing group. There is something so healing about unobtrusively following inner experiencing and cultivating a “focusing attitude” of curiosity, welcoming, allowing, and gentle entering into inner body space.  I am learning to focus is on what wants to come. I really get that we have to go at the same pace as the most hesitant place inside of us. The cues about what this pace is going to feel like come from deep presence and attuning. Working with the whole self means that we have reverence and respect for any “parts” that emerge as well as a deep sense of our entire being.

About gestural leads... the body is doing what it needs to get back to that uninterrupted going on being, which means an integrated psyche soma. Following gesture and feeling into the wisdom of that gesture seeks to repair the mind body split. I think this is how to reconnect with the flow of living in ones authentic self. We are alerted to repressed or split off parts of ourselves that need a voice in order to be integrated.

The most valuable outcome of the whole body focusing is the sense of “all of me here” or presence. The body then becomes a safe and grounded support for whatever wants to come. I think of this as love bringing up anything unlike itself for healing. In this way, we are able to contain and work with our own wounding. Containment involves cognitive, physical, affective regulation and also spiritual holding. This is where the cultivation of presence comes in. For me, this means grounding in my body and to a spiritual connection or secure base.

In my own and the work I do with clients, I want to be able to allow the formless to come into form, but my ego wants to do this in the opposite order and be directive or do an intervention.  I have no idea what will happen in the session and my only way of preparing is to get as grounded and present as possible. This kind of awareness makes the room, the client, their experiencing and mine sacred and beautiful.

get your evil twin on!

the numinous field of the transcendent funtion

 

Relational Sandplay Therapy
Author: Linda Cunningham
"The first book on sandplay to focus on the clinical relationship, Relational Sandplay Therapy provides both beginners and experienced sandplay therapists with a new perspective on the healing power of sandplay/sandtray. This perspective is relational, intersubjective, and deeply explores the interwovenness of mutual unconscious processes and how they may be harnessed in...  more » the service of healing. In a truly creative synthesis, Linda Cunningham, Ph.D. brings to the forefront the importance of the therapeutic relationship in sandplay, and also explains in detail how to work within the relationship. Focusing on the importance of the therapist's subjective experience, she describes four archetypally based fields of human experiencing: Original Oneness/Merger, Twoness/Rupture, Differentiated Oneness/Transitional Space, and the Numinous Field of the Transcendent Function. The first two fields shed light on preverbal trauma revealed in more difficult or stuck sandplay therapies and how to understand it symbolically through the therapist's subjective experience. Through vivid clinical examples, Cunningham illustrates how silent understanding and containing may be the other--and at times the only--source of the symbol."

Cunningham's fields relate to development in personality- these are self states as well as positions. The first has autistic-contiguous qualities; there is a mama baby oneness here, felt in the body. The second; twoness/rupture is paranoid schizoid. The third is differentiated oneness and relates to Klein's depressive position. I think of psychotic, borderline and neurotic levels of functioning... oral, anal, oedipal. There is so much to say about these positions. Read the book!

 

Most interesting to me here is the numinous field of the transcendent function. Jung's thinking on this was that when the unconscious and conscious meet a third space is created. The mandala is a symbol of this meeting place where the tension between two opposites are brought into a complementary relationship. I think of this as the rare golden and light filled moment in the work where therapist and client have a very cosmic simultaneous aha moment- both feel timeless- the lighting is good and everything is slowed down, in synch and very beautiful.

underpinnings of gestalt therapy

The I-Thou is the foundation of the clinical relationship in Gestalt therapy. The term comes from Martin Buber’s book I and Thou. Buber was an intersubjective existentialist and his idea was that when we meet another from a place of authenticity and consciousness, this meeting is a holy relationship, bringing one into relationship with God, who is the eternal Thou.  So, a Gestalt therapist works with this notion and holds the concept of self along with the understanding that self is inseparable from environment. There is an attention to all that is me, all that is not me and the unity. Attention to present moment is also important to Gestalt therapy. Perls’ basic premise was that life happens in the present – not in the past or the future – and that when we are dwelling on the past or fantasizing about the future we are not living fully. Through living in the present we are able to take responsibility for our responses and actions. To be fully present in the here and now offers us more excitement, energy, and courage to live life directly. Gestalt's paradoxical theory of change contends that we change only by deepening awareness and acceptance of how we organize our experience. The therapist does not seek to remove or interpret behaviors, but to bring them into awareness, with the goal of supporting new organization and self-regulation by the individual.

Contact takes place at the contact boundary, where the organism and the environment meet. We usually think of a boundary as separation, but in Gesalt, union is implied here as well. So, we can think of one person as the sand and one person as the ocean and the contact boundary as the shoreline or meeting of the two. An interruption or distortion of contact is called a boundary disturbance. These are ways in which we break contact and this can be a defense if it is unconscious or part of normal functioning if is conscious. Most of the clinical work in Gestalt therapy centers on these interruptions, as they occur in the moment at the contact boundary. In Gestalt therapy every symptom or defense is viewed as an attempt to solve a problem through creative adjustment. The only goal is awareness. Using this method, I usually ask my clients to check in and see what they notice in their bodies, to get a sense of how they are. I like to remind them to come back to this noticing if they get too far off in story telling or intellectualizing. Awareness in the present moment becomes an anchor for the work. Jim Doak, a local gestalt therapist that I did personal work with said, "Improving perceptual contact, working to allow greater sensation in the body and defining with sensitivity one's  wants and preferences are all building blocks for a more creative life. Out of knowing what is, internally and externally, our lives begin to unfold in a way which more truly reflects our uniqueness, changingness and in the end results in our contribution to the world"