Guided Visualization Meditation to Build a Sense of Safety

by Abby Birk, LMFT

Recently, many of my clients (and I) have desperately needed to revisit our regulation skills. Skills that bring us back to a sense of calm, ease, relaxation or restoration in our bodies. In today's world, this state of being can be elusive between the go-go-go pace of life and the incessant call to be more and more productive. The need for intentional mindfulness and somatic regulation keeps increasing as we fall more and more into the trap of "I just don't have the time" day after day.

Below, I've written out the script I use to walk my clients through a visual meditation called Safe Place, to cultivate safety and security in the here and now. Many have their own version of this skill; here is the one I utilize in my sessions. My hope is to demystify these types of skills and make them accessible for practical, everyday use. As you continue, I recommend reading through (or listening to) the entire script at least once before trying it on your own with your eyes closed or gaze lowered.

Listen to the audio below:

Or read the script here (and maybe record it for yourself, or have a loved one record it for you!):

Find a comfortable seated, reclined, or supine position. Whatever position you choose, make sure you are not holding any tension to support this position, rather lean into and feel the support of your chair, floor, or object you are resting on, in, or against. It's best for grounding purposes (if you are in a position that allows it) to rest the soles of your feet on the floor. Let yourself get weighty and heavy as you allow your body to rest fully supported. You may place your hands wherever you'd like, on your thighs, in your lap, or on your heart and chest.

Now draw your attention to your breath. Do not seek to change anything yet, first observe with gentle curiosity the quality of your breath, the parts of the body that move or don't move as you breathe, the speed or sound of your current breath cycle...

As you observe, you might notice your breath starting to change anyways, that's okay. You can soon begin to intentionally lengthen your inhales and exhales. For this visualization meditation, we want to focus on elongated our exhales more than our inhales to better turn on our vagus nerve and calming parasympathetic nervous system.

Take a few rounds of deep breaths with longer exhales.

Minds wander, that's what they do. Label your thoughts as "thoughts" or "thinking" and return back to an aspect of your breath that can provide a bit more focus: the quality, speed, depth, length, feel, temperature, movement, etc.

Now you will select a safe place that you can imagine or think about for the rest of this exercise. It can be real or imagined. A place you've been to or never visited. It can obey the laws of physics or not. Whatever place you choose, you are in control here, you decide what is in the scene and what is not: if there's anyone with you, the weather, the way you feel here. You are completely safe and at ease in this landscape of your choosing. Take a minute to select a place or try a few different images to see which serves you today.

You will then explore your safe place through your 5 senses, starting with sight.

As you imagine looking around in your safe place, what can you see? How far can you see into the distance? What living things are around? What colors? What's the weather like? What buildings or people or nature fill up your space, if any? What surrounds you, what do you sit or stand or lay on? Once you've taken time observing, take some deep breaths simply enjoying the sensations that arise just by being in this place and looking around you.

When you're ready to move along, we'll continue our exploration through our sense of touch. What textures make up your safe place? Is there sand running through your fingers? Water? Are you surrounded by cozy blankets or laying on a fuzzy rug? Petting an animal? There are no wrong answers. Take stock of what you can feel on your skin, temperature, breeze, weather, etc. Take a few deep breaths once you're done observing with your sense of touch to enjoy the sensations that arise from the textures of your safe place.

Next, imagine closing your eyes in this place, identifying all that you can smell. If there are no naturally derived smells in your safe space landscape, you can invent some: maybe pulling in some of your favorite smells from different parts of your life like perfume/cologne, essential oils, warm drinks, nature, candles, etc. Take a few more deep breaths enjoying how the sense of smell in this place interacts with your body to create more safety and relaxation.

Now, you can continue imagining your eyes closed as you pay attention to the sounds that exist in this safe place. Further ground yourself into this landscape by singling out various sounds around you. Maybe you prefer your safe place to be silent, that is okay too! Whatever you find, just give yourself time to experience it fully and pay attention to how your body reactions to what it can hear in this space.

Lastly, we will engage with your sense of taste in this space. Like smell, you may have to manufacture a taste in your safe space if one is not naturally derived. You may pull from favorite foods, flavors, crisp, clean autumn air or the taste of the air after rainfall. Let yourself enjoy, with a few deep breaths, whatever flavors show up in your safe place.

Integrating all 5 senses in this imagined location allows for further grounding and experiencing of this beautiful internal resource. It allows your brain to fully simulate what it is like to exist in that safe, secure, relaxed state.

Take a few more breath cycles allowing yourself to simply exist in this safe place, remembering to see how your body feels. You will end the meditation with a body scan -- checking in slowly from head to toe (as if you were going through a scanner) for any sensations, feelings, emotions, etc. that arise. Then, you can wiggle your toes, eyelashes, and fingers: opening your eyes to fully come out of the meditation.

Remember, you are the author and originator of your own safe place, which means you have access to this space whenever you need it. Come to ground, regulate, relax, or restore yourself anytime you'd like! Visit when you need and just because you can, even allowing yourself a visit once daily or weekly. The more often we practice skills like these, the better utilized they will be when we actually NEED them in a difficult moment. Your safe place can change however you'd like or remain the same, time after time; don't forget, there are no rules, no "right" or "wrong" way to do this exercise. The important part to keep in mind is that YOU have full agency and autonomy over your safe place. View this guide as an invitation of cues to further ground you in your own experience -- which is all you, baby! Allow this guide to remind you of your own internal resources that you can avail yourself of anytime you'd like. Enjoy!

If you’d like to meet with a therapist to build a safe place together, or to further process stress in your life, Riverbank Therapy has therapists with openings, in person and virtual! Click here to schedule your free 20 minute consultation.

5 Tips for Sharing Big Feelings

by Bobbi Smith, LICSWA

“Big Feelings” is my term for the feelings that aren’t fun to feel- sadness, grief, pain, worry, etc.  It’s true that joy, love, contentment, and other positive feelings are just as big, but it tends to be easier to share those with others.  We may worry that if we share something negative we will be a burden, ruin someone’s day, or make the feelings bigger.  But it’s important to talk about them.  It actually builds community and connection.  Other people have Big Feelings too and sharing them helps make relationships more authentic.

 Often, we can share our big feelings, but end up intellectualizing them instead of really feeling them.

“Intellectualizing” means turning feelings into thoughts, either to explain why they’re happening or to try to find a way out of them by turning them into a fully mental experience.  Intellectualizing can be helpful because it can help us think through conflict without blaming anyone or can help us understand ourselves and our experience more.  It becomes a problem when someone uses reason and logic to avoid uncomfortable emotions.

Here are 5 tools you can use to share your Big Feelings with those around you more effectively:

1)  Choose who to share with

This step will require discernment about who might be someone you can trust.  Here are some tips for how to identify a trustworthy person to talk to:

• They show interest in you by asking how you are doing or how your day was

• When you respond, they show they are listening by acknowledging what you shared or offer their own experience in kind

• They don't often share stories about other people

• They don't tell other people's big secrets without permission

• They talk about their role in a situation, not just other peoples

• They acknowledge their Big Feelings:  sadness, anger, grief, worry

• They don't say bad things about groups of people as a whole

• You have all ready talked about some other things, so you have an established relationship

For more information about how to tell who is trustworthy, please look into the BRAVING framework by Brene Brown.  It is really helpful!  

2) Take a sip of your Big Feeling

This is a concept called titration.  Titration means to slowly acknowledge little doses of the feeling instead of being overtaken by it.  Think of it like this:  Your feeling is inside a big pot.  The big pot represents everything there is to feel.  You are simply taking a spoon and slurping the taste (unless slurping is too rude).  That’s it.  You don’t have to jump in the pot, you don’t even have to eat a full bowl.  Start with one spoon and slowly sip.  We are wading into this pool- not jumping in.  

3) Lead with the feeling

This is the part where you confide in someone else.  This might have a quality of breaking the ice.  It might even have a quality of bringing up something taboo.  You might be going against the grain.  There’s some risk involved, but ultimately the prize is worth it.  Leading with the feeling means focusing on the feeling itself instead of the story you have about it or the meaning you’ve made of it.  This is the hard part.  Here are some tips for breaking the ice:  

• When someone asks you how you are, take a sigh before you reply- this will signal to the other person that you’re not doing well even before you use words.

• Use a familiar greeting: “I don’t know dude, I’m just feeling a lot of…”

• Be direct:  “To tell you the truth, I’m…”.  

Of course, you can give one or two sentences to provide context to the other person, but don’t get too lost in that.  Remember your spoon.  

If you’re unsure how to describe what you’re feeling, check out this blog on steps to feeling your feelings.

4) It’s okay to say “I don’t know what to do”

Intellectualizing can become so normative that it might be expected that you have a strategy to address the feeling you’re having even as you experience it.  How will you make it go away?  You don’t have to know yet.  You don’t have to have a sophisticated plan.  Just stay close to the feeling.  Experiment with different language to float the fact that you’re not trying to come up with a solution right now- you are titrating, not fixing.

5) Observe the conversation while it’s happening

Perhaps someone will respond with mutual recognition:  “Me too… I’ve been feeling the same thing.”  Perhaps not.  If they do, here’s a few things to pay attention to during the conversation:

• While you are sharing, keep returning to the pot with your spoon.

• Notice the words being used.  If you end up talking about theories or high level strategizing, or planning how if someone would act differently the feeling would go away, you are likely intellectualizing.

• Feel for deep and simple truths:  conversations that center on universal human experiences are often an indication that the conversation is anchored in the right place.  

• Notice the spoons they hand to you, and the contents of their pot, and respond in kind.  If you don’t know what to say, take a pause.  You can say:  “I’m so glad we’re talking about this.  It feels hard to talk about.”  “I really care about you, even if I can’t understand your experience.  I want to help.”

Conversations about feelings like this are vulnerable.  When you have shared your Big Feelings mutually and receptively with someone, there will be a natural shift in tone.  You might feel a bit tired from doing emotional work.  Also, the conversation might naturally change to humorous topics and become more spontaneous.  These are signs you have accessed your common humanity and might feel safer around each other.  

Lastly, if it doesn’t work, try again.

Any new strategy contains inherent risk.  There is a reason patterns become engrained.  It makes sense to avoid pain or rejection and risk.  If for whatever reason the person or people you open up to don’t respond or attempt to reform the ice, it’s okay to extend your spoon again.  They simply might not have noticed the first time.  

Try with another friend, a different group, or in a different situation.  Take a risk.  Without risk, there is no reward, and no growth.

Happy Ice Breaking!

If you’re interested in sharing and processing some Big Feelings in therapy, we have therapists with both in person (in Seattle) and virtual (across Washington state) openings here at Riverbank Therapy. Fill out our contact form here to get your free 20 minute consultation scheduled.

What is somatic therapy?

by Bobbi Smith, LICSWA

More and more, somatic therapy is being integrated into therapeutic techniques.  But what is somatic therapy?  And where does it come from?  In this blog entry I will attempt to give an overview of what somatic therapy means, and how to approach a therapist about integrating somatics if you are interested.  

As always, we start with context:  all the way back in the 1600’s (yes really) there was a French philosopher named Rene Descartes who was quite taken with examining the relationship between the human mind and body.  Since his work as a philosopher was pondering things, he began to think about the process of thinking itself, which he believed took place in the mind.  He theorized that the mind and body were separate organisms, and that the mind had dominion over the body.  This theory was known as Cartesian dualism, or sometimes mind-body dualism.  

Though there were always people that opposed Cartesian dualism, when what we now know as Western medicine began to form and institutionalize, it carried the legacy of Cartesian dualism with it.  Treatment of bodily ailments and treatment of mind ailments developed as distinct disciplines.  We don’t know if this is what Descartes intended, and can’t say for sure how he would react if he were alive to comment on it, but it unfolded this way anyway.

For generations, psychology has had the task of treating what western medicine firmly categorized as ailments that are located within the container of the mind, and therefore should be treated in that location, using the vehicle of thoughts to transfer a cure from the psychologist to the patient.  The most famous of these is “the talking cure” developed by Sigmund Freud.  In this approach, the psychologist would aggressively analyze the patients every word, which is 1. Deeply unethical and 2. Super annoying.

I’m getting to the somatic stuff, I promise.  

Let’s jump forward.  For decades now, some doctors, therapists and clients have questioned the utility of Cartesian dualism to truly address the complexity of mental and physical health conditions, and have been developing treatments that integrate both mind and body.  Soma means body.  Somatic therapy means incorporating some dimension of work with the body into treatment for ailments that used to be considered to be solely of the mind:  depression, anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder, and more.  

There are many traditions of what is called collectively somatic therapy- Sensorimotor Therapy, Somatic Attachment Therapy, Somatic Internal Family Systems, and more. There is no singular type that is agreed upon as the best approach.  Therapists that integrate somatic therapy into their practices are trained in and draw inspiration from traditions designed by many different healers, and that is a good thing.  Just like every other type of therapy, there is no one size fits all.  In addition, there are many, many traditional healing methods practiced across the world that include some type of body work, to which western somatic therapy traditions owe great honor.

The tradition I myself am mainly trained in is called Somatic Experiencing- I am not certified but simply studying it.  Somatic Experiencing was developed to treat PTSD, or what is now mostly called simply trauma.  The thesis behind Somatic Experiencing is that trauma can cause wear and tear on the autonomic nervous system, and so, trauma treatment should include the autonomic nervous system.  The autonomic nervous system is a component of the peripheral nervous system that regulates involuntary physiologic processes including heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, digestion, and sexual arousal. It contains three anatomically distinct divisions: sympathetic, parasympathetic, and enteric.  The autonomic nervous system lets us be relaxed, spontaneous, and socially engaged in a safe environment, or prepares us to fight, flee, or freeze in response to a threatening one.

Our human brains have evolved with add-ons to other species' brains, but we didn’t lose anything from them.  Basically, we have new apps but not a very different operating system.  As such, we have instincts to respond to harm or perceived harm in ways similar to other species.  Somatic Experiencing considers humans, aka homo sapiens, part of an evolutionary lineage that shares bodily features (such as an autonomic nervous system) and bodily instincts (such as fight, flight, or freeze) in common with other animal species that are evolutionarily older than us, and honors the innate intelligence of those similarities. In a threatening situation, animals either run to get away, fight off the threat, or if those don’t work, play dead (freeze) to appear unappetizing to a predator until it wanders away.

As animals, if an instinctual survival response sets off an alarm in our autonomic nervous system telling us to fight, flee, or freeze, it is important that that protective response is allowed to fully play out in service of its goal:  to get to safety.  If that response is prevented or constricted, the unresolved instinct can remain trapped in the nervous system as a chronic trauma response, or PTSD.  That can mean someone can feel trapped by the instinct to constantly fight, flee, or freeze, even if they aren’t in an unsafe situation anymore.  That is because even though our mind can cognitively register when a threatening situation is no longer happening, at the level of the organism (or body) there is no real proof of that, because all the nervous system knows is that it couldn’t do what it needed to in order to protect itself.  The nervous system doesn’t know time.

If that response were allowed to play out to its natural conclusion, our nervous system settles back into its baseline state, which is a proper flow in real time and proportional to what’s currently happening around us- not stuck in a chronic response.  We'll start in therapy by creating a safe container, building skills to cope with overwhelming emotions, thoughts, or body sensations. Then, when you're feeling ready, we may slowly approach your traumatic narrative, attending to body sensations along the way and supporting the discharge of trapped fight/flight/freeze energy.

One thing I love about Somatic Experiencing, and all types of somatic therapy, is that they acknowledge that human beings have evolved capacity for abstract thought, but otherwise are not fundamentally different from other animals per se.  Somatic therapy acknowledges the intelligence and healing instincts of other parts of our bodies besides just our minds.  Our bodies have instinctive reactions to what’s going on around us- and that means involving the body in therapy can have profound positive impacts on our sense of not only ourselves, but the world.  And who wouldn’t benefit from more wholeness and integration?

Most of our therapists at Riverbank incorporate somatic traditions into their treatment approaches. If you’d like to schedule a free 20 minute consultation with one of our therapists in-person in Seattle, or online for residents of Washington state, click here to fill out our contact form!

A Tool For Finding Comfort in Chaos

by Kelsi Davis, LICSWA

What is a Snapshot practice?

A snapshot is a journaling activity that aims to create or recreate a memory to ground yourself in the present moment. This activity can be utilized when you feel stressed, anxious, or frustrated. It is easy to get wrapped up in these strong emotions and feel stuck with them. The snapshot helps bring your focus to the present and allows time for reflection. This activity is not only grounding but can create a space for self-care.

This journaling activity is named after a quick informal photograph taken to capture a moment in time. Much like its name, this activity is done informally. You can take as little as five minutes or spend a whole hour writing out your snapshot. You can write one every day or write one when emotions are heightened. This is a personal and individualized practice.

How to Make Time?

There are not enough hours in the day to get everything done, and there is often a never-ending list of things to finish, so self-care needs to be intentionally set aside. Let’s set the scene for this journaling activity. Create a workspace that allows you to get into the mindset of self- compassion and emotional flexibility. This may look like deep breaths, going for a walk, yoga, etc.

The goal is to be comfortable in your environment. Be intentional with your time and create a space for yourself to feel. Then you can sit down and start to write or type (I like to put pen to paper). You may listen to music while you reflect or write in silence.

Why do this?

This practice may sound challenging to do when you are in a heightened place of emotion. If this is something that can’t be done in the moment of these heightened emotions, then you can set the intention to write a snapshot when you are in a good headspace. Then you can reflect on a finished journal entry when you are stressed or anxious. I suggest reading it out loud to yourself and using it as a tool to ground. It is like going to a happy place. This “happy place” can be hard to visualize, so writing can help ground your thoughts in a safe space of self-care and understanding. I often struggle to find time to fit this practice into my day. I set an intention to use this practice to remind myself to come back to it when I need it.

This is my guidance: celebrate the small moments. Self-care starts by creating space for yourself. Small things can bring joy, and we can relish in these moments.

What to Write About?

There are three paths (use one or all three!):

1. Create a new memory. Take a walk, get outside, sit with your feelings, eat your favorite food, and then write about your experience. Again, this practice is personal.

2. Think back to a memory and write about it in detail to help visualize the memory. An example of this: The first day you got a pet, your wedding day, a childhood memory that sticks out to you.

3. Reflection: ground yourself in your environment and take time to notice and reflect on something soothing in your current space.

Example One (creating a new memory)

It was cool outside, about forty degrees. It was a quiet evening. There is always something running through my mind as I tend to overthink. Life is always happening around me. My mind, as I write this, is full of day-to-day stressors. As I stand outside, I think about money, bills, and my obligations as a professional, friend, and dysfunctional family member. I think about the never-ending appointments and meetings and responsibility. As I am standing outside, I dig my bare feet into the ground and feel the dirt between my toes. I stare into the sky illuminated by streetlights and breathe in crisp cool air. I often feel like my life is nothing but things that need to be done. I am nothing but a machine. Well, the societal expectation is always to be productive.

It can be hard to enjoy the moments I do have. To stand outside in the cool evening and I ground. I hear cars in the faint background and the pattering of tiny feet from what I can only assume to be a family of raccoons. After some time in the quiet, I sat on the cool, damp grass. I was not thrilled to have gotten my pajama bottoms wet. However, it did not seem to bother me. I just ended up laughing at myself. The goal at this moment was to fully indulge in my natural setting, even when surrounded by the city. Sitting on the damp grass, I felt raindrops hit my face as I gazed into the sky. The cold drips of rain continued to hit my skin, making me feel present in my moment. I created a space where I had no obligations except to care for myself for a few minutes. To be present, to feel one with the world around me, and live in that moment.

Example Two (memory)

It was snowing hard outside. I was visiting my parents for the holidays. A time of year that is honestly hard. I was trying to enjoy the time with my parents, but I needed some time alone and fresh air. I stepped outside. My skin was warm, so it melted quickly when the snowflakes fell on me. I felt calm amidst the chaos of holiday bickering. I walked down the large stairway in front of my parent’s home and looked at the large pine trees in their front yard. The snow glistened. It glowed in the starlight. All I could hear was the snow falling until I heard what sounded like a baby crying. I looked everywhere to find what was making these sounds. I circle the property and return to the front yard, where I had been looking at the trees. I looked down, and I saw a small black and white kitten. His eyes were not open, and he was ice cold but very much alive. I took him in. This moment led to many sleepless nights of caring for this kitten. That was six years ago. One day can change your life, and the day I found Cecil changed mine.

Example Three (reflection)

I have a small plant cohabitating in my small urban apartment. I enjoy watering it and ensuring it gets everything it needs to thrive. It made me think how all people need different things to thrive, just like plants have different needs. Learning what we need and making time to care for ourselves are discussed often in popular media. However, it is often passed over about how to incorporate the practice of self-nourishment into our day-to-day.

Putting this into Practice

As you can see in the three examples, the journaling activity can be long or short. It is a practice to make your own. It can be utilized in the heat of the moment, after a stressful event, in the middle of feeling anxious, on good days or bad days. It is a practice that can be implemented at any time. I have written them on my phone to use while waiting for a doctor’s appointment or for when I’m stressed at work. The key is to return to these snapshots and embrace the emotions presented in the exercise. This activity allows us to remember the small moments and find joy in the mundane or simple. This activity may be best utilized by those who enjoy journaling. However, this may also provide a structure to try a new way to cope with heightened emotions, so I challenge anyone to give it a shot. You might find a new strategy that you love to use!

“To experience peace does not mean that your life is always blissful. It means that you are capable of tapping into a blissful state of mind amidst the normal chaos of a hectic life.” -Jill Bolte Taylor

We have several therapists with openings in their schedules right now. If you’d like to work with a Riverbank therapist, click here to fill out our contact form and our intake coordinator will help you get placed with the best fit!

What is "Family of Origin" Work in Therapy?

by Abby Lombardo, LMFT

You're searching through therapist bios and you keep coming across the term "Family of Origin work" or "FOO Work". But what does it actually mean? In this post, we try to de-mystify what Family of Origin Work means and how it might be relevant in your therapeutic journey.

To start, Family of Origin (FOO) is a term used by therapists to refer to the primary caregivers an individual had when growing up, whether they be related, adoptive, foster, or any other type of guardianship or caregiver relationship. As you might have guessed, Family of Origin work shows up in therapy sessions quite often. You are probably doing some FOO work in your own therapy or even on your own, without even realizing it!

Some clients seek a therapist to help them through these specific kinds of issues, but most clients end up realizing their family of origin work is a more central issue to their lives than they might have thought at the outset of their therapy journey. Either way, there's a reason for the centrality of this kind of work in therapy. There are few things in our lives our families of origin don't impact, for the simple reason that they are our first relationships and first experiences of the world.

As an illustration, I like to use Dr. Emily Nagoski's metaphor of a garden. Each person is born with a garden; some plants are already planted in this garden at birth--without your say so--things like a sensitive nervous system, a predisposition for anxiety, depression, addiction or even a good memory, natural resilience, and other strengths. There are some seeds that have been planted generations before you and there will be some species of weeds that everyone inherits in the garden they are born with. As you mature, you begin to choose how to tend and manage this garden, what weeds you pull, and what plants you want to start growing instead. In therapy, FOO work involves being aware of what's in your garden--what was there before you had a say--and creating intention around how you want to address, manage, or change what your garden looks like as an adult. As the metaphor implies, it can be hard, messy work. That's a major reason it can be helpful to have a therapist with you while you're doing family of origin (FOO) work.

Here are a few topics that are involved when we use the term "family of origin issues". Some of these (or all of these) may or may not be relevant to you and you might find you resonate more with some than others.

Attachment & Self Worth

Developmentally, we are dependent on our caregivers for a significant portion of the early stages of our lives. We need caregivers to survive. And depending on the caregiver, we learn we can trust our needs to be met most of the time or we learn that we cannot trust others to meet our needs most of the time (or something unpredictable in between). This sets the stage for the type of attachment styles we develop and further impacts the way we relate to others and the world around us. We derive meaning from the way our early caregivers interact with us. Our families or contexts in which we are raised give us our earliest experiences in which we learn if we are valuable, special, and matter to someone...or not. We learn how to gauge our worth or seek connection: if it is inherent or earned with achievements and accolades, athletic prowess, and academic success. We might earn it through being a "good girl/boy/child" or an accommodating and pleasing child. We might learn what is "good" and what is "bad" in our family, and so begins our relationships with shame/guilt and ultimately, our relationship with ourselves.

In therapy, identity and self-work can look as different as the clients who walk through the office doors (or open up their laptop screens) for session. Topics such as inner child work, self-differentiation, setting boundaries, re-storying old narratives, redefining and reframing values and qualities, and attachment work all address how you are relating to yourself and the world around you via the lens of your FOO and learned attachment styles.

Family Roles

Some of the most relevant FOO work I do with clients involves understanding how the roles they played in their family growing up (and now) impact their life in other areas outside of their family of origin. For example, a client might come in wanting to work on people pleasing and how detrimental that has been in her career and friendships because she's finding it very difficult to speak up for herself and ask for what she wants and needs. After a few sessions discussing her family of origin, she might realize that it all started in childhood trying to please her parents, playing peacemaker during their divorce, or caretaking their emotions. Because we are so dependent as children on our caretakers, we often will do anything to keep them around and keep our attachment to them -- even if it costs us significantly. This is how family dynamics and environments shape us. This client learned as a child that to keep her caregivers close and happy, she needed to emotionally caretake and please them to get connection. After learning this and having it reinforced over and over again in her own family, this client continues playing this role in her other relationships, but with different outcomes. Where it served her in her FOO, it does not serve her in her friendships or professional relationships. Bringing awareness, through therapy, about how these old family roles play out in current day-to-day life can help change these patterns.

Conflict & Communication

In my work with couples, conflict and communication challenges almost always trace back to differences in family of origin: my family avoids conflict and brushes things under the rug; your family likes to hash things out right here and now until someone is right and someone is wrong. My family is soft-spoken and everyone gets a turn to speak; your family is loud and boisterous and people must fight to be the loudest in order to be heard. My family does not talk about emotions; your family can't stop talking about their feelings and opinions. It goes on and on. Our families teach us certain implicit and explicit rules, especially rules around communication and conflict. Family rules are often informed by culture, religion, class, beliefs, or value systems. We learn somethings are off-limit, while others are dinner-table conversation appropriate. Often times, we are punished--usually with shame or guilt--when we break these spoken and unspoken rules, which leads to internalization of these rules and other shame-based narratives.

FOO work around conflict and communication patterns starts with acknowledging the rules you have learned and continue to abide by--usually without awareness! This new awareness then leads to decisions about what type of communication patterns and approaches to conflict you want to plant in your garden in the stead of the ones you inherited/learned.

Generational Legacies & Intergenerational Trauma

We now know that intergenerational trauma, trauma that happened to your ancestors and predecessors, can make its way into your own DNA and body (even your dreams). Some people inherit gardens loaded with intergenerational trauma caused by various stressors or challenges such as poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.--trauma and stressors they might never have experienced for themselves, but are nonetheless taught in subtle and powerful ways to the next generation. For example, hyper-arousal is a common symptom that arises after a traumatic event, where you are on alert for threats, scanning your environment constantly, or anticipating worst case scenarios at all times in order to prepare for or prevent bad things from happening. This symptom, while a typical response to trauma in someone who has experienced trauma, can be taught and passed down by vigilant parents, teaching their kids not to trust others or themselves, making the world feel like a constantly dangerous place where there is no room for rest or relaxation because one must always be on guard for the worst to happen. While this may serve an important purpose or reflect a true reality of danger, depending on the environment in which one finds themselves, the chronic stress of being in a state of hyper-arousal and threat does significant damage to the mind and body. It can be difficult for those taught this state of being to challenge it in favor of taking time to rest, relax, be taken care of by others, and to appropriately depend on others when called for. Working through intergenerational trauma with a therapist looks a lot like naming legacies you've inherited, understanding the impact of systems larger than you and your family, externalizing the blame in order to foster compassion, understanding, and validation, as well as working to challenge and heal some of the perpetuated suffering.

Gender, Power, Money, Sex, & Relationships

Our families teach us our earliest values and beliefs, before we even have a chance to form our own opinions and worldviews. In our families of origin we learn about gender, power, money, relationships, and sex. We learn that gender can mean who cooks and who works. We learn that gender can mean equality and fluidity. We learn that it can mean who is powerful and who is powerless. We learn about money and what financial security or insecurity feels like. We learn to see the world as a place of abundance or scarcity. We also learn how to share affection, what love looks like, how to act in relationship, and how to treat others. We learn what is "normal" in terms of displays of affection and physical touch. We learn what is not okay in terms of sexuality, bodies, and acting on our desires. FOO work in therapy can involve unpacking our biases and beliefs around concepts like these in order to have more agency and choice in how we relate to others. With awareness we can have more say in how we move through the world.

Our earliest experiences with our families of origin shape our biases, tendencies, and what we consider "normal." These experiences make up our gardens. As adults, through the therapy process, we learn what does or doesn't serve us anymore: what might need to be uprooted and unlearned like racism and sexism or what needs to be planted and learned like how to communicate vulnerable emotions to a romantic partner or how to accept one's sexuality. In therapy, FOO work can help unpack our earliest messages around influential constructs and breakdown old narratives we continue to perpetuate, but that don't actually serve us or fit us anymore, so that we can learn to live in ways that support our wellbeing individually and relationally.

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