For the next few weeks I will be busy in Australia, teaching and learning at the Australasian Systemic Constellations Intensive (and hopefully getting a little beach time, too). I look forward to reporting back with new inspirations when I return!
While I am here, I am teaching two workshops. I’d like to share a bit about what their content, and also share two short videos for you get a feel for this work, and maybe walk away with an aha! or shift for yourself. Enjoy!
Alternative Lives Constellations:
Working with “Fork in the Road” Life Events
This workshop is about those times when life irrevocably changes, and yet we continue to feel more identified with the life we can longer live, and so we feel incongruence in a persistent and deep way. This affects people who’ve had big, unexpected, adult changes – like losing a child, a sudden loss of ability, a sure path that is suddenly closed.
But it also applies to all of us in a more subtle way – think about the self you would be if you’d never had alcoholic parents, or your grandparents hadn’t died in Germany, or your mother hadn’t been bipolar. The solution is to find peace with the “alternative you,” who’s life you can no longer have. I’ve found this work has brought great, unexpected peace to people who didn’t really understand what was driving their inability to settle into their own lives fully.
Enjoy this video explanation:
Working with All the Emotions for Better Client Outcomes
Our culture gives us two exaggerated messages about our emotions: 1) Either emotions are untrustworthy, and need to be repressed to make sure we act rationally; or 2) all emotions are good and need to be expressed fully at all times in order to be healthy. Both of these positions have wisdom, and both have some limitations.
In trauma, we very intense feelings, but we learn that they cannot be met or fulfilled or finished. We continue to have the feelings, but they end up asserting our helplessness, and they can’t take us forward anymore. The good news is that the deeper primary feelings are right underneath, waiting to be seen and heard. When these are given a place, we feel stronger, and trauma can begin to heal.
It’s important for practitioners to understand the difference between these two types of feelings – otherwise, healing work can simply go in intense, emotional, not-very-helpful circles. And as individuals, we can use these insights whenever we feel ourselves “caught” in an emotional loop, and regain the dignity of our true emotions.
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