How I work
I am informed by and use three main therapeutic modalities in my work - Attachment theory, Polyvagal theory and Internal Family Systems.
Attachment
I am deeply influenced by attachment theory and consider it to be the foundational bedrock of my work.
When a secure trusting relationship is present in therapy, a client can begin the process of learning to truly relax into themselves and engage in the necessary work of healing. Without this foundation we will unconsciously direct much of our energy into securing the safety of the relational environment, much as we did as children when survival often meant sacrificing authenticity for belonging. This secure relationship develops over time through responsive emotional attunement and compassionately repairing any misattunement. Clients learn that my acceptance, care and regard for them is unconditional. All feelings and parts are welcome and make sense in the context of the person's life. The therapeutic relationship is sacred and not threatened by the feelings and needs of the client and can be held safety within the therapeutic boundaries.
I meet my clients with curiousity and compassion and gently guide them to notice their patterns of attachment, and how those enter the therapy space, explore their origins and impacts and see them for the intelligent adaptations they have been. I assist clients to uncover and move towards their innate programming of secure attachment that they were forced to disconnect from, but was never destroyed. I am an empathic companion on the journey as clients meet their pain and grief and the longing for the developmental needs that could not be met for whatever reason. I celebrate with them the reclamation of the feelings, ways of being and parts of themselves that they had to sacrifice to navigate the safest passage they could manage through life.
In short, I would love to support you to give space to all your experience and move towards wholeness.
When a secure trusting relationship is present in therapy, a client can begin the process of learning to truly relax into themselves and engage in the necessary work of healing. Without this foundation we will unconsciously direct much of our energy into securing the safety of the relational environment, much as we did as children when survival often meant sacrificing authenticity for belonging. This secure relationship develops over time through responsive emotional attunement and compassionately repairing any misattunement. Clients learn that my acceptance, care and regard for them is unconditional. All feelings and parts are welcome and make sense in the context of the person's life. The therapeutic relationship is sacred and not threatened by the feelings and needs of the client and can be held safety within the therapeutic boundaries.
I meet my clients with curiousity and compassion and gently guide them to notice their patterns of attachment, and how those enter the therapy space, explore their origins and impacts and see them for the intelligent adaptations they have been. I assist clients to uncover and move towards their innate programming of secure attachment that they were forced to disconnect from, but was never destroyed. I am an empathic companion on the journey as clients meet their pain and grief and the longing for the developmental needs that could not be met for whatever reason. I celebrate with them the reclamation of the feelings, ways of being and parts of themselves that they had to sacrifice to navigate the safest passage they could manage through life.
In short, I would love to support you to give space to all your experience and move towards wholeness.
"We are born in relationship, we are wounded in relationship, and we can be healed in relationship."
Harville Hendrix
If you are interested in exploring Attachment further I recommend Diane Poole Heller's work:
Book - "The Power of Attachment"
Insights at the Edge podcast episode - "We are designed for connection"
Book - "The Power of Attachment"
Insights at the Edge podcast episode - "We are designed for connection"
Polyvagal Theory
Polyvagal theory is basically the science of safety. How our autonomic nervous system takes in information constantly (mostly outside our conscious awareness) and assesses the information for cues of safety or danger. It reacts to those cues before our cognitive or thinking brain catches up and responds according. We don't get to choose our preferred means of response to a sense of threat. Our intelligent nervous system chooses for us based on what has been safest in the past in situations that the nervous system percieves as similar to our current experience. Part of my work with people can be helping them understand the intelligence of their own nervous system and how it makes the best choice given the person's history, situation and resources available.
When we experience any kind of adversive childhood experience (e.g abuse or neglect) or even did not get adequate emotional attunement or support to cope with the "normal" challenges of childhood, we can find self soothing difficult. This is because our nervous systems have become primed to expect danger and are more sensitive to threat and we feel more easily stressed. If we weren't helped to navigate our experience, our own feelings can become a source of threat for us and send us into one of the nervous systems survival response of fight/flight/freeze/fawn (seeking approval at all costs). As Gabor Mate points us to an important question: "When I felt sad, unhappy, angry, confused, bewildered, lonely, bullied, who did I speak to? Who did I tell? Who could I confide in?" In other words, who was available to help me process my feelings and experience? If the answer was noone or the availability of someone was inconsistent, then chances are we will have some degree of challenge in regulating our nervous systems.
Thus attachment and nervous system regulation are closely connected as it is through secure attachment and the experience of our caregivers essentially loaning us their own regulated nervous system, to move us from distress and dysregulation back to calm and regulation that we develop our own ability to do this. Co-regulation with another is the prerequisite for growing the capacity to self soothe or regulate. In a virtuous cycle secure attachment leads to a regulated nervous system and a regulated nervous system leads to secure attachment. Of course the cycle can also be a reinforcing negative one if secure attachment or nervous system regulation are absent.
From a polyvagal perspective, my role in working with people is to anchor myself securely in the social engagement or ventral vagal part of the nervous system so I can be a resource to help coregulate a clients nervous system when necessary. Through being in this state, I create an environment where the clients nervous system picks up signals of safety and can relax. I help clients develop the capacity to notice their own nervous system and the patterns and shifts within this, and as Deb Dana would put it, "become an active operator of their nervous system".
I provide people the knowledge and skills to shift state as needed. For example to up regulate from a collapse or freeze response so they can access the energy needed for life, or down regulate from a fight/fight state to a place of less stress or agitation. This practice leads to more nervous system fluidity. Tapping into the the defensive states when needed but not getting stuck there, instead returning to a prosocial baseline of calm and connection, while still having access to the vitality of the sympathetic nervous system and the rest and reparative function of the parasympathetic branch.
When we experience any kind of adversive childhood experience (e.g abuse or neglect) or even did not get adequate emotional attunement or support to cope with the "normal" challenges of childhood, we can find self soothing difficult. This is because our nervous systems have become primed to expect danger and are more sensitive to threat and we feel more easily stressed. If we weren't helped to navigate our experience, our own feelings can become a source of threat for us and send us into one of the nervous systems survival response of fight/flight/freeze/fawn (seeking approval at all costs). As Gabor Mate points us to an important question: "When I felt sad, unhappy, angry, confused, bewildered, lonely, bullied, who did I speak to? Who did I tell? Who could I confide in?" In other words, who was available to help me process my feelings and experience? If the answer was noone or the availability of someone was inconsistent, then chances are we will have some degree of challenge in regulating our nervous systems.
Thus attachment and nervous system regulation are closely connected as it is through secure attachment and the experience of our caregivers essentially loaning us their own regulated nervous system, to move us from distress and dysregulation back to calm and regulation that we develop our own ability to do this. Co-regulation with another is the prerequisite for growing the capacity to self soothe or regulate. In a virtuous cycle secure attachment leads to a regulated nervous system and a regulated nervous system leads to secure attachment. Of course the cycle can also be a reinforcing negative one if secure attachment or nervous system regulation are absent.
From a polyvagal perspective, my role in working with people is to anchor myself securely in the social engagement or ventral vagal part of the nervous system so I can be a resource to help coregulate a clients nervous system when necessary. Through being in this state, I create an environment where the clients nervous system picks up signals of safety and can relax. I help clients develop the capacity to notice their own nervous system and the patterns and shifts within this, and as Deb Dana would put it, "become an active operator of their nervous system".
I provide people the knowledge and skills to shift state as needed. For example to up regulate from a collapse or freeze response so they can access the energy needed for life, or down regulate from a fight/fight state to a place of less stress or agitation. This practice leads to more nervous system fluidity. Tapping into the the defensive states when needed but not getting stuck there, instead returning to a prosocial baseline of calm and connection, while still having access to the vitality of the sympathetic nervous system and the rest and reparative function of the parasympathetic branch.
If you are interested in exploring Polyvagal theory further I recommend Deb Dana's work
Book - Anchored: How to Befriend your Nervous System using Polyvagal Theory
Insights at the Edge Podcast episode - Become an Active Operator of your Nervous System
Book - Anchored: How to Befriend your Nervous System using Polyvagal Theory
Insights at the Edge Podcast episode - Become an Active Operator of your Nervous System
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
IFS views the mind as a system of parts and multiplicity of mind is considered normal. If you have ever found yourself saying: "A part of me wants to do this (for example go to therapy) and a part of me (or maybe the rest of me) doesn't", then you are already somewhat familiar with the model.
Just as a family is made up of different people, so too our mind is made up of various subpersonalities, or parts. Although parts are valuable, with each contributing something necessary to the system to achieve balance or homeostasis, parts can become burdened. These burdens occur when a person experiences overwhelming experiences (trauma) that they could not integrate which results in harmful limiting beliefs.
Parts can carry burdens, but they are not their burdens.
Parts are helped to release their burdens through being fully seen, heard, understood, witnessed and supported within the context of a secure attachment relationship. Once this happens, they are able to return to their original naturally valuable state and the energy that was channelled into survival or protection can be freed to serve life and connection.
Internal Family Systems has been described as Attachment turned inwards. This is because healing occurs via the reestablishment of a trusting relationship between the clients parts and their core Self. Self is the energy or being that can not be damaged by negative life experience, although it can be covered over and made largely inaccessible. Once this energy is reaccessed, parts no longer have to be in their survival state and they can access the support of the life force that is Self. This Self energy is the wise part of us, the unconditionally loving being that can serve as the hub of the wheel and link parts into a harmonious interconnected system. Within the model the Self energy I describe can be thought of as the spiritual aspect to us that can offer unconditional support, while the parts are our humanity and are necessary for engaging with the world.
I consider this work to be a form of spiritual reparenting, as secure internal attachment relationships are built and nurtured. To do this I help people become curious about, and open towards their parts. Getting to know individual parts, the relationships they have with each other, the roles they occupy and to discover what they are trying to achieve. It is believed within IFS that there are no bad parts, just misunderstood ones. The impacts of what parts do can be harmful but their original intention is always good. In IFS we free parts to have the roles they actually want and are suited to, rather than the roles they were forced into due to life circumstances.
Just as a family is made up of different people, so too our mind is made up of various subpersonalities, or parts. Although parts are valuable, with each contributing something necessary to the system to achieve balance or homeostasis, parts can become burdened. These burdens occur when a person experiences overwhelming experiences (trauma) that they could not integrate which results in harmful limiting beliefs.
Parts can carry burdens, but they are not their burdens.
Parts are helped to release their burdens through being fully seen, heard, understood, witnessed and supported within the context of a secure attachment relationship. Once this happens, they are able to return to their original naturally valuable state and the energy that was channelled into survival or protection can be freed to serve life and connection.
Internal Family Systems has been described as Attachment turned inwards. This is because healing occurs via the reestablishment of a trusting relationship between the clients parts and their core Self. Self is the energy or being that can not be damaged by negative life experience, although it can be covered over and made largely inaccessible. Once this energy is reaccessed, parts no longer have to be in their survival state and they can access the support of the life force that is Self. This Self energy is the wise part of us, the unconditionally loving being that can serve as the hub of the wheel and link parts into a harmonious interconnected system. Within the model the Self energy I describe can be thought of as the spiritual aspect to us that can offer unconditional support, while the parts are our humanity and are necessary for engaging with the world.
I consider this work to be a form of spiritual reparenting, as secure internal attachment relationships are built and nurtured. To do this I help people become curious about, and open towards their parts. Getting to know individual parts, the relationships they have with each other, the roles they occupy and to discover what they are trying to achieve. It is believed within IFS that there are no bad parts, just misunderstood ones. The impacts of what parts do can be harmful but their original intention is always good. In IFS we free parts to have the roles they actually want and are suited to, rather than the roles they were forced into due to life circumstances.
"What's in the way, is the way"
Mary O'Malley
If you are interested in exploring Internal Family Systems further I recommend Richard Schwartz work:
Book - "No Bad Parts"
Insights at the Edge podcast episode - "No Bad Parts"
Book - "No Bad Parts"
Insights at the Edge podcast episode - "No Bad Parts"
Sourced with permission from www.calmheart.co.uk
How I bring Attachment, Polyvagal theory and IFS together
By being aware of my own nervous system state, I can maintain a calm regulated nervous system and become a resource for coregulation with the client. Through this calm open state I am able to emotionally attune to the client accurately and build a secure trusting relationship and therapeutic alliance. This warm responsive connection creates the secure foundation neccessary to go inside and explore the inner system safely and begin to repair the internal relational world.
Parts express themselves and carry out their protective functions in ways that include using the body and nervous system, and Polyvagal theory helps to recognise, understand and work with parts. The burdens parts carry can be understood as stuck survival energy that can shift when new movement is experienced through shifting dynamics within the system.
I consider Social work and Internal Family Systems as a complimentary partnership. Social work is concerned with the impact of external systems and forces on people and how to respond to these to better meet a clients needs, while IFS addresses issues in the internal world. Both work with systems and I consider myself a systems thinker. I don't believe we can truly understand anything fully, if we do not look at the larger context and environment. We are part of complex systems with many forces both conscious and unconscious working on us. This work makes more of the unknown known and as Sir Frances Bacon said "Knowledge itself is power". In this context I would say - self knowledge is empowerment.
Parts express themselves and carry out their protective functions in ways that include using the body and nervous system, and Polyvagal theory helps to recognise, understand and work with parts. The burdens parts carry can be understood as stuck survival energy that can shift when new movement is experienced through shifting dynamics within the system.
I consider Social work and Internal Family Systems as a complimentary partnership. Social work is concerned with the impact of external systems and forces on people and how to respond to these to better meet a clients needs, while IFS addresses issues in the internal world. Both work with systems and I consider myself a systems thinker. I don't believe we can truly understand anything fully, if we do not look at the larger context and environment. We are part of complex systems with many forces both conscious and unconscious working on us. This work makes more of the unknown known and as Sir Frances Bacon said "Knowledge itself is power". In this context I would say - self knowledge is empowerment.