Episode 30: Codependent to Co-Independent: Love Yourself Well
The Curious Counselor
Codependency is the need to make someone else happy with the expectation they will make you happy. It is driven by the need to feel loved. CoIndependent means living a life full of love and joy in yourself that you can both share with others and receive. Accepting that we are not only lovable but that the essense of what we are is love helps us realize we don't need to seek love from outside ourselves but its already there. When we learn to connect with that love in ourselves and in God (or your higher power) we no longer have a need to seek it outside ourselves. Love yourself well and...
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Episode 29: My Daughter makes me so angry! An interview.
The Curious Counselor
Most of the time when we get mad, we immediately can identify the source of our frustration, be it a careless driver, someone cutting in line, a loud child, a less than compassionate friend or coworker or partner or whatever. "That person makes me so mad..." is often our refrane. But, what if our anger is not about the current situation? What if our inability to respond as a kind, compassionate person is not about the other person? What if it is about us? That's good news because if its about us, we can do something about it. In this episode, I interview "Suzie" who's anger is often triggered...
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Episode 28: Why My Marriage Failed (and how to save yours)
The Curious Counselor
I went through an awful divorce in 2016 to 2018. I thought my wife and I were doing all the right things to save our marriage (go to church, talk, pray, go to marriage seminars, etc) but still, we ended up in a divorce. Since that time I have been doing a lot of my own trauma work, a lot more praying and had, I think, I bit of good insight. Essentially, I thought was doing all the right things (good job, good income, good, vacations, nice house, went to church, prayed and so forth). I didn't do the bad things (yell, drink, smoke, do drugs, have affairs or whatever) but what I didn't know how...
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Episode 27: Divorce, God, Sin, and Grace
The Curious Counselor
I am divorced. Am I doomed to hell? In the sermon on the mount (Mt. 5) Jesus says if you get divorced except for infidelity you commit adultry. Jesus says several other things that are a sin (including anger) then leads up to the last verse of the chapter to say you must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect (Mt. 5: 48) and if we don't keep the law as well as the pharisees and teachers of the law we will not enter the kingdom of heaven (5:20). But is that the end of it? Shouldn't there be more? What about grace, hope, love, all that stuff? If that's the end, I am totally screwed....
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Episode 26: Camilla, DID and Healing her inner Children
The Curious Counselor
In the last episode, we talked about the three (3) phases of healing your inner child: self-regulation, working with internal defenders and finally, how to connect with the inner child. In this epsisode, I interview Camilla (psuedonym), a client of mine who has participated in several earlier episodes (thank you Camilla). She has DID (disassociative identity disorder) and has to date, identified 14 internal personalities. In this episode Camilla (with the help of her parts) reflects on the last episode and how those same steps have helped (or, in some cases, not helped) her. In all...
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Episode 25: Healing Your Inner Child
The Curious Counselor
This is a summary of a workshop I recently did at PlayThink 2024 (thanks Paige Zen, it was an awesome festival). The three steps to healing are: Spend time learning how to ground yourself through B - Breathing, T- tapping, S - stretching, S - Shaking. BTSS used 2 minutes 3 or 4 times a day will help you establish a calm safe center which will serve as a foundation for a safe space to connect with your inner child. As you being to reach to your inner child, you may have blocks that prevent you from connecting. Those blocks may have protected you from the scary memories or feelings but now keep...
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Episode 23: Kind Compassionate Curious Movies
The Curious Counselor
In past episodes, I've talked about kindness, compassion and curiosity. I've had on guests to talk about different aspects of healing through kindness, compassion and curiosity. In this episode, I want to share some of my favorite movies that illustrate healing through, yes, kindness, compassion and curiosity. 1 - Forrest Gump How can an "idiot" (Forrest Gump as played by Tom Hanks) have such a successful life, make such good friends and never seem to be phased by others anger or judgment? His momma taught him the fundamental lessons of life. You are OK just the way you are (self- compassion)....
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Episode 22: Camilla DID and Breaking Barriers
The Curious Counselor
This week I am talking to Camilla about how to break out of her current living situation and move to be closer to her children. Camilla has disassociative identity disorder (multiple personalities) so making any change is hard but making a change in living situation to a totally different city is overwhelming. In this episode we explore the logistical and emotional barriers to moving to be closer to her children. While logistically, this seems pretty easy, emotionally, she has fear her husband will not support her. She has fear of rejection of by extended family (based on some broken...
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Episode 21: Camilla, DID and Safe Connections
The Curious Counselor
How can we build safe connections with others when we often don't even have a safe connection with ourselves? In this episode, I interview a client, Camilla (pseudonym) who has disassociative identity disorder (meaning she has multiple sub-parts to her personality). How has she learned to have a safe connection with herself, her subparts, let alone people around her? Sometimes its just basic self-care (breathing, stretching, drinking plenty of water, getting good food and sleep). Other times it might be finding a safe person to listen a little to see if they react in a safe, non-judgmental way...
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Episode 20: Kindness Matters
The Curious Counselor
We need kindness to thrive but unfortunately many of us did not have kindness modeled for us so we do now what we did when we were children in order to feel safe. We hide. We blame others. We yell and hit. We pretend to be happy when we're not and we try to make everyone around us happy. No wonder we don't feel feel happy. The key to joy is learning to be kind to ourselves and others. By channeling kindness through our bodies, we bring healing to ourselves and potentially bring healing to others. Even if others don't receive our kindness, we still get to feel good for channeling that energy in...
info_outlineHealing is not complicated but it can be difficult.
In this episode I review the stages of grief (shock, bargaining, anger, sadness and resolution) and look at some ways we get stuck and how to get unstuck.
The key, as always, is to be kind and compassionate to yourself and to be curious how to understand what you are feeling and how to bring compassionate energy to whatever feelings you have.
Many of us were taught that we should not be sad or angry and that we should just "get over it" or "suck it up". While well intentioned, these messages actualy slow down the healing process. When we can learn to be ok to feel whatever we feel, give ourselves permission and space to feel our feelings (something many of us did not get as children) we can move through the healing process with less pain.
Of course it will be hard to heal no matter what we do but there are ways to make it a bit less hard: being kind to self by giving yourself space and time to regularly feel and validate your feelings, taking care of your body (getting enough food, water and sleep), seeking help from a friend, therapist and/or support group and basically realizing the more we do to avoid pain now, the more pain we will experience later.
In the case of severe loss (Covenant) we can only process a bit at a time and it will take a long time to feel anything like a normal functioning human being but being ok with the fact it will take a long time and will be hard will make it a bit less hard and a bit less long.
May God grant you peace and strength as you work through your healing in whatever kind compassionate curious way works best for you.
For questions or comments, feel free to email me at [email protected].
For more information on parts therapy and healing in general, see my book on amazon, From Crisis to Calm.
Blessings,
Alan Pennington
The Curious Counselor