The Joy of Becoming More Playful As An Adult

Considering how stressful adulthood can be, learning to be to more playful is one of the best things you can do to improve your emotional well-being (see my articles: The Joy of Being Attuned to Your Inner Child).

The Joy of Being a Playful Adult

What Are the Benefits of Playfulness?

There are many benefits to being playful including:

• Relieving stress
• Stimulating your mind
• Enhancing creativity
• Improving mood
• Boosting vitality
• Improving social connections with others
• Learning how to cooperate with others
• Healing emotional wounds

How to Reconnect to Your Inner Child to Play

Usually, the words "inner child" are associated with overcoming trauma.  But reconnecting with your inner child can also mean allowing yourself to remember the best times of your childhood when you had fun (see my article: Opening Up to New Possibilities).

For people who are accustomed to being serious most of the time, this might involve getting out of your comfort zone, but it can be a lot of fun (see my article: Moving Out of Your Comfort Zone).

Many people have forgotten what it's like to have fun and they find themselves in a rut (see my article: Do You Remember What It's Like to Have Fun? Try a Little Playfulness).

Here are some ways that can help you to reconnect with the playful side of your inner child:

• Put on music, let loose, dance and move how ever your body wants to move
• Ride a bike in nature
• Sing or hum in the shower, including childhood songs you used to enjoy
• Laugh (see my article: The Mental Health Benefits of Laughter)
• Live in the moment (see my article: Living Fully in the Present Moment)
• Swing on a swing in the park
• Go on amusement park rides
• Reread your favorite childhood books or find new ones you might like
• Read a comic book with your favorite characters
• Watch cartoons
• Play with little children or pets
• Color in a coloring book and allow yourself to go outside the lines
• Draw pictures
• Notice the beauty in the world (see my article: Seeing Small Wonders All Around Us If We Just Take the Time to Notice
• Take an improv comedy class
• Take a storytelling class (see my article: The Psychological Benefits of Storytelling)
• Take a bubble bath 
• Learn something new

Conclusion

There can be many physical and psychological benefits to reconnecting with your inner child so you can be more playful.

Being attuned to your playful younger self can improve the quality of your life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT, Somatic Experiencing and Sex Therapist.

I am a sex positive therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist).

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

 

What's the Connection Between Fear of Getting Hurt and Blaming Communication?

Fear of getting hurt is often connected to blaming communication (see my article: Fear of Intimacy Can Lead to Fault-Finding, Which Can Destroy Relationships).  Blaming communication occurs  when a person communicates anger or hurt by blaming the other person instead of focusing on his or her own internal experience of what happened (see my article:  Relationships: Fear of Being Emotionally Vulnerable).

What's the Connection Between Fear of Getting Hurt and Blaming Behavior?

Examples of Blaming Statements

• You made me feel hurt when you forgot my birthday.
• You made me feel unloved when you ignored me at the party and talked to your friends the whole night.
• You were so inconsiderate of me when you made reservations without asking me where I wanted to go.
• You were selfish when you chose to make plans with your family without inviting me.

And so on.

Why Do People Engage in Blaming Communication?

As you can see, what all of these statements have in common is that one person is blaming another person without speaking from his or her experience or taking responsibility for his or her own feelings.

Often when people communicate in this way, it's because they are afraid to make themselves emotionally vulnerable by expressing their own emotional experience.

People who communicate this way in their relationship often have no awareness that they're afraid of getting hurt because the fear can be unconscious.

It's not a surprise that this fear usually originates in early childhood where children feel blamed, criticized, unloved or invalidated by their parents or other significant adults in their lives (see my article:  Reacting to the Present Based on Your Traumatic Past).

How Can People Learn to Stop Engaging in Blaming Behavior?
This fear is difficult to overcome alone or by reading a self help book.

Even if people who engage in this behavior learn to make "I statements" where they speak from their own internal experience (without blaming the other person), if the fear of getting hurt is strong enough, the fear can be emotionally paralyzing, especially if they grew up in a household where they were invalidated emotionally.

This problem can be overcome by working with a psychotherapist who knows how to gently help clients to get to the underlying issues that are causing the problem (see my article: You Can't Change Your Past, But You Can Change How the Past Affects You Now).

Once clients feel safe enough to get to the underlying issues, they can begin to differentiate between "then" and "now" in terms of being a young child with their family back then and being an adult now (see my article: Working Through Emotional Trauma: Learning in Therapy How to Separate "Then" From "Now").

They can also learn to distinguish between their family (when they were children) vs. their current relationship.

Psychotherapists who specialize in working with this type of problem often do inner child work to help that aspect of the client to feel safe (see my article: Understanding the Different Aspects of Yourself That Make You Who You Are).

Fictionalized Vignette

The following fictionalized vignette demonstrates this dynamic and how therapy can help:

Ida

Ida began therapy to deal with the loss of a three year relationship after her boyfriend broke up with her.  She was sad and upset about the loss.

What is the Connection Between Fear of Getting Hurt and Blaming Communication?

Initially, Ida said she couldn't understand why her boyfriend left her.  He told me that he was fed up with being blamed for the problems in their relationship.  This was something that he had told her many times before, but that she didn't understand.

From Ida's point of view, "I was only telling him how I felt.  I don't know why he got so upset that he left me."

At that point in her therapy, Ida was unable to see that she used blaming communication with her boyfriend.

Her therapist helped Ida to see the difference between:

"You make me feel hurt and unlovable when you don't call me."

vs.

"I feel hurt and unlovable when I don't hear from you."

When her therapist asked Ida to practice saying this, Ida froze.  To her surprised, she was so afraid that she couldn't utter the words.

What's the Connection Between Fear of Getting Hurt and Blaming Communication?

Since Ida was too afraid to say the words, her therapist asked Ida about her internal experience, on a physical level.

Ida told her that her chest was tight, her heart was racing, her throat was constricted and her stomach was tight.  She also felt light headed.

Fear: Chest tight, racing heart, throat constricted and stomach tight

Ida's therapist asked Ida to stay with those sensations, if she could, and see what else came up for her.

The first thought that came to Ida was an early memory of telling her mother and grandmother that she felt sad about her grandfather dying (see my article: Looking at Your Childhood Trauma History From an Adult Perspective).

When her grandmother left the room, Ida's mother slapped her and told her that she made her grandmother feel sad by bringing up the grandfather's death.

Ida had many early memories of being scolded and beaten for expressing her feelings, and she was able to see the connection between her current problem and the abuse that she suffered when she was a child when she expressed her feelings.

Her therapist helped Ida by doing inner child work.  She asked Ida, as her adult self, to speak to her younger self in a compassionate and nurturing way.

But when Ida imagined her younger self and began to speak to her compassionately, she felt a great deal of shame.  Then, she got angry and blamed the younger self for causing problems in her family.

Ida and her therapist had to work for a while to gradually help Ida to feel compassion for her younger self.

Ida was someone who loved children and who would have felt compassionate for a young child who was being mistreated.  But she had trouble summoning up self compassion without feeling shame.

So, her therapist had to help her to separate out self compassion and shame before she could truly feel compassionate for herself.

After a while, Ida was able to see that she could express her feelings to her therapist and there were no negative consequences.  She felt safe with her therapist, so she began to believe that it was possible to feel safe with other people if she was discerning with regard to the friends and romantic partners that she picked.

Gradually, Ida felt less and less afraid to express her feelings and she learned to express them without blaming others.  When she knew that she could trust the person, she didn't feel the same emotional vulnerability that she had felt in the past.

What's the Connection Between Fear of Getting Hurt and Blaming Communication?

Eventually, she was able to get into another relationship and express herself in a healthy way.

Conclusion
Fear of being emotionally vulnerable often starts at a young age in the family of origin.

This fear can result in your communicating in an unhealthy, blaming way instead of expressing your feelings and taking responsibility for them.

This fear is often unconscious and difficult to see on your own, especially if it has been part of your life for a long time.

Working with a therapist, who can help you to discover the origin and meaning of your fear and who can provide you with a safe place to talk about your feelings, can help you to express your feelings in a healthy way so that you're no longer engaging in blaming communication.

Getting Help in Therapy
Blaming communication can ruin a relationship.

After a while, this type of communication erodes the relationship and can lead to its demise.

If you are in the habit of engaging in blaming communication and you want to learn to express your feelings in a healthy way, get help from a licensed mental health professional who has expertise in this area.

Not only can it save your relationship, but it can also help you to work through unresolved childhood trauma that can be at the root of this and other problems.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website:

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Having Compassion for the Child That You Were

In a prior article, Psychotherapy and Compassionate Self Acceptance, I discussed some of the challenges that people often face when they start therapy.  In this article, I'm focusing on having compassion for yourself for who you were as a child.

Many people come to therapy feeling ashamed of their problems, even when those problems started when they were children.   Rather than having compassion for what happened to them as children, they have a chronic sense of shame and harsh self judgment.  Often, they believe that whatever happened to them was their fault.

Having Compassion for the Child That You Were

Shame and Self Criticism Often Develops in Childhood
Young children are naturally egocentric, and these feelings of shame and self judgment often develop during childhood and continue into adulthood.

Having Compassion for the Child That You Were: Self Criticism and Shame Often Start in Childhood

As a therapist, when I ask adult clients who feel this way about themselves if they would be as judgmental about a close friend who was struggling with the same issue, they usually say they would not.  Instead of being judgmental, they often say they would feel compassion and would try to help their friend to be more self compassionate.

And yet these clients are often unable to muster the same compassion for themselves.  They're stuck in chronic shame and self criticism.

Often, when I'm working with a client who is feeling such chronic shame that originated in childhood, I help him or her to remember and feel again what it was like to be that young child.

Usually, when a client is able to experience those feelings of sadness, disappointment and anger, as he or she felt those emotions as a child, an emotional shift takes place.  Instead of being ashamed and judgmental, the client feels a certain tenderness for the child self.

The following scenario, which is a composite of many cases with all identifying information changed, illustrates how this emotional shift can take place:

Mike
Mike came to therapy because he was struggling with crippling shame and self judgment.

To hide his negative feelings about himself from others, he put up a good front.  But putting up this front often left him feeling exhausted and disingenuous.  It also felt it was getting harder to do over time.

As he described his problems, I could feel that Mike was "reporting" his history without emotion as opposed to feeling it.  He recounted one childhood trauma after another, which included physical abuse from an alcoholic father and neglect from a mother who was emotionally disengaged.

Over and over again, Mike blamed himself for not being able to overcome his problems on his own, saying, "I should be able to get over this on my own" and "I'm just too weak to be able to handle my problems."

Gradually, as we worked together in therapy, Mike realized that his negative feelings about himself originated when he was a child.  Many of the negative things he said about himself now were said to him by his father when he was a child.  Without realizing it, Mike had taken on these critical feelings about himself, which made him feel ashamed.

Before we processed the early trauma, I helped Mike to develop the emotional resources that he needed to deal with his traumatic feelings.

After he developed these resources, I helped Mike to slow down and, instead of just "reporting" what happened, to feel what it was like as a child to experience the abuse and emotional neglect.  At that point, Mike was able to say and feel how disappointed and sad he felt that his parents were unable to give him what he needed as a child.

When he was able to experience himself as a child, he was no longer dissociated from his emotions, and he developed a sense of compassion for himself.  This was the beginning of a healing process for Mike.

From there, we went on to work through the trauma in therapy so that he could let go of the shame and harsh self judgment.

Getting Help in Therapy
Developing a sense of compassion for yourself can be challenging, especially if you developed a harsh, judgmental attitude towards yourself and you feel ashamed.

Having Compassion for the Child That You Were

Rather than suffering alone, you can get help in therapy with a licensed therapist who has experience in helping clients to overcome this problem.

Developing a sense of compassion for yourself can help you to lead a happier, more fulfilling life.

About Me:
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Also, see my article:
Healing Shame in Therapy

Inconsolable Grief for a Mother's Death in an Enmeshed Mother-Daughter Relationship

I've written about enmeshed families in prior blog posts (see link below).  In this blog post, I'd like to address the issue of inconsolable grief for a mother's death in an enmeshed mother-daughter relationship. 

Inconsolable Grief For a Mother's Death

Enmeshed Mother-Child Relationships
Enmeshed mother-child relationships often hinder emotional development for the children in those relationships.  It's not unusual for these adult children to have difficulty forming adult relationships outside of the family because the relationship with the mother has become all consuming to them and leaves little room for other adult relationships.

In this type of enmeshed relationship, when the mother dies, the adult child often feels inconsolable grief because she is so emotionally dependent upon the mother.

The following fictionalized vignette is a composite of many cases to protect confidentiality:

Ina:
Ina was an only child.  Her father had abandoned the family when Ina was an  infant, so she had no memories of him.  Her mother often said to her, "It's you and me against the world."

When it was time for Ina to start school, both she and her mother experienced tremendous separation anxiety.  Every weekday morning was an ordeal.  They would both cry when the school bus came.  Ina's mother would come everyday to bring Ina her lunch and sit with her in the school cafeteria.

Ina's teacher tried to talk to the mother about allowing Ina more time and space to form friendships in the classroom.  She tried to tell her that Ina wasn't forming friendships during recess and the lunch hour because she was so focused on the mother.  But the mother got annoyed and complained to the principal that the teacher was trying to interfere with her relationship with her daughter.  After that, the teacher backed off.

Ina made a few friends in junior high and high school, but she still preferred to spend her free time with her mother.  She had very good grades, but she didn't participate in any social activities in school.

When it was time to apply for college, Ina only wanted to apply to local colleges so she could remain at home.  Her guidance counselor advised her that her grades were so good that she would probably get scholarships to colleges outside their town, but Ina wasn't interested.  Her mother also thought it was best for Ina to stay close to home.

Ina had crushes on boys, but she had no interest in dating. When her friends talked about meeting someone and getting married, Ina cringed.  She never wanted to get married.  Her mother had spoken to her about how miserable she felt when Ina's father abandoned them, and Ina couldn't see why her friends would want to risk getting hurt like this.

After college, Ina worked as a customer service representative at a local bank.  After work, some of the employees would go out to dinner or to a movie and they would invite Ina to come along.  But Ina preferred to go straight home to have dinner and watch TV with her mother.

As the years past, Ina's manager encouraged her to apply for other jobs at the executive headquarters, but Ina wanted to remain close to home.  She was a good worker and customers liked her.  She received two promotions at the local branch, but her manager told her that she was limiting her career by only considering jobs at the local branch.  Ina explained to him that she was happy doing what she was doing, and she didn't feel the need to apply for jobs outside of their branch.

Over the years, employees that were trainees under Ina excelled beyond her because they sought opportunities at the executive branch.  Ina remained in her job as a senior customer service representative, but this didn't bother her.

When Ina was in her mid-40s, her mother was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer.  Ina took time off from work to take care of her.  Despite what the oncologist said, Ina had no doubt that her mother would recover.  Even as her mother's health continued to deteriorate, Ina held onto this belief.

When the doctor recommended hospice care, Ina became furious.  She felt he was giving up on her mother, and she told him so.  She held onto her belief that her mother would survive up to the day she died.  Then, she went into shock.

For several weeks, Ina was unable to even get out of bed.  Her aunts took turns taking care of her.  All she wanted to do was sleep.  She felt that living life without her mother was unbearable.  When she was awake, all she did was cry.  She was inconsolable.

After three months, Ina returned to work.  She felt like she was in a daze.  She had lost more than 20 lbs. and she looked pale.  Fortunately, she knew her job so well, after all those years, that she could perform her duties, even though she felt like she was living in a dream.  Whenever anyone tried to express their condolences, she would stop them. She didn't want to talk about it.

When she got home, she didn't know what to do with herself.  Everywhere she looked, she saw reminders of her mother.  She was unable to give away her mother's clothes.  Instead, she would often go into her mother's closet, hold her mother's garments to her face and smell her mother's perfume which was still embedded in the clothes.  Then, she would cry.  Her aunts offered to help Ina give away the clothes, but Ina wouldn't even hear of it.


On the fifth year of the anniversary of her mother's death, Ina's manager found Ina crying at her desk.   He closed the door and talked to Ina about going to therapy.  He confided in Ina that he had attended therapy several years ago when he and his wife ended their marriage, and he found it helpful.

By this time, Ina's grief had grown worse, not better.  She knew she couldn't go on like this, so she decided to start therapy, even though she didn't feel that anyone could ever help her to feel better about her mother's death.  Even the thought of feeling better made Ina feel that she would be disloyal to her mother.

Initially, Ina was defensive in therapy.  She only wanted to talk about her mother and the times they spent together.  She never wanted to talk about any plans for the future.  She couldn't even envision herself making plans for the future that didn't include her mother.  Although she would never hurt herself, there were many times she wished she could just go to sleep and not wake up.

At first, she resisted all recommendations about things she could do to take care of herself so she could feel better.  She didn't want to exercise or go to a yoga class or join a book club.  She didn't want to reach out to the few friends who remained in her life.  She just wanted to keep doing what she was doing, even though she was feeling miserable.

Then, her therapist recommended that they do inner child work using hypnosis.  Ina had never experienced hypnosis before, but she decided to give it a try.  She felt it was better than her therapist's other recommendations.

Much to her surprise, Ina was able to sense the younger part of herself that felt so vulnerable and afraid.  Using hypnosis, she was able to nurture that younger self, and she began to feel some relief from her grief about her mother's death.

After a few months, Ina still felt sad, but it wasn't an inconsolable sadness.  She still missed her mother, but having the ability now to nurture herself emotionally, she felt the sadness was more manageable.  She still visited her mother's grave every week and "talked" to her mother, but she wasn't crying as much as she was before.

After several months, Ina felt like she might be ready, with help, to give away her mother's clothes.  So, her aunts came to help her clean out the mother's closet.  Ina held onto a particular dress that she knew her mother really loved, and she allowed her aunts to give away the other clothes to a charity organization.

At her therapist's recommendation, Ina did her own private ritual to commemorate her mother's life.  She set up a place on her dresser with a picture of her mother, a candle, and her mother's favorite broach.  Then, she said a tearful goodbye to her mother, acknowledging that her mother was gone, but she would always have a place in Ina's heart.

After that, Ina felt somewhat better.  She realized that she would always have her memories of her mother, and she believed her mother was "in a better place."

Gradually, over time, Ina became more social.  She had some regrets that she had remained "stuck" for so long and she would never get that time back.  But she began to take her first tentative steps to make friends and, for the first time in her life, to date men.

Enmeshed Mother-Child Relationships:  Overcoming Inconsolable Grief 
In the vignette above, Ina, who is a fictional character, eventually attends therapy to deal with her inconsolable grief.  But there are many people, who have similar experiences of grief, who never even consider going to therapy. They remain stuck emotionally in their grief for the rest of their lives.  In their senior years, they often have regrets for everything they never experienced in life.

For people going through this experience who are open to therapy, they're often surprised that they can feel better.

Often, what happens is that they experience how they can internalize their mother emotionally in a new way, even though the mother is no longer alive.

Although the mother is no longer alive in the here-and-now, the adult child can feel the mother as alive in his or her own internal world.

This type of work, for people who have been very enmeshed with a parent, isn't quick.  Often, the person who feels grief has mixed feelings about letting go of the sad feelings.  There is an illusion that by holding onto the sadness, they're holding on to their dead parent in some way.

Clinical hypnosis is often helpful when there is inner child work to be done, as in the vignette above.  It helps clients to get to a place on an unconscious level that is usually difficult to get to with regular talk therapy.

They're often surprised to discover that it's quite the opposite.  Letting to of the sadness allows the person who feels grief to make room for a different experience, the internalization of the parent in a healthier way.

Getting Help in Therapy
If you've lost a mother or someone close to you and time has passed, but you're not feeling any better, you owe it to yourself to get help from a licensed mental health professional who has experience helping clients with this issue.

In most cases, people find a new way to overcome their grief that still honors the relationship with the person who died.  But it also allows the person who is still alive to transition to having a more meaningful life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist.  

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Also see my articles:
Avoiding Codependency With Your Children

Overcoming Shame in Enmeshed Families

Overcoming Feelings of Helplessness Related to Early Trauma

Many people who were helpless as children due to childhood trauma continue to feel helpless when they're adults.  As adults, they often continue to feel pessimistic and that they don't have control over their lives.  Frequently, their initial response to suggestions of how they can overcome their problems is "I can't."  

Overcoming Feelings of Helplessness Related to Early Trauma

Part of the work in therapy is helping them overcome their trauma-related sense of helplessness by doing trauma therapy work.  Another important part of the work is helping them to develop an increased awareness that, as adults (as opposed to when they were children), they now actually do have control over their lives and more choices than they're seeing.

A History of Early Childhood Trauma Can Trigger Feelings of Helplessness in Adults
Many people who experienced emotional trauma at an early age, where they really didn't have control over a traumatic situation, grow up with a sense of helplessness in many, if not all, situations in their lives.  Often, this occurs without a person even realizing it because feeling helpless has become a habitual response, and they will often approach problems as if they can only submit passively to what is going on.

Compare the two fictionalized vignettes below of two people in the same situation where one feels helpless and a lack of control and the other feels confident and that he can take steps to overcome his problems:

John
John has a supervisor, Ted, who is a bully.  Ted bullies everyone in the office, including John.  John dreads going to work every morning because he anticipates having to deal with Ted's bullying and demeaning behavior.  

Whenever John's friends suggest that he look for another job, his response is "I can't."  Then, he gives many reasons why he doesn't feel ready to look for another job.  When friends make suggestions about how he can prepare himself  to look for another job, he shrugs his shoulders and says, "I can't."

The worse part is that when Ted treats John in a demeaning manner, John takes this criticism to heart.  Even though John gets a lot of praise for his work from senior managers who are above Ted at the company, one critical remark from Ted will ruin John's day.

John grew up in a household where his father was verbally and physically abusive with John, John's mother and his siblings.  John's father would constantly tell John, "You're nothing and you'll never amount to anything."  When John was a young child, he really had no control over his father's abusive behavior.  And, now, without John realizing it, his early childhood trauma is getting emotionally triggered in his current situation at work.  John is responding to Ted as if Ted is his father and he's a helpless child again.

Larry
Larry also works for Ted.   Ted is also demeaning and bullying with Larry.  But the big difference between John and Larry is that Larry feels he has some control over the situation and that he has choices he can make.

Larry feels confident in himself.  Regardless of what Ted says to him, Larry has a strong sense of self and whatever Ted says to him doesn't change his sense of self confidence.      He knows that Ted's tactics are meant to put him down, but Ted's remarks don't affect the way Larry feels about himself.  Larry's sense of self confidence allows him to remain resilient in this stressful work situation.

Larry knows he has options.  He knows that bullying is against the corporate code of conduct at work, and he can file a complaint with the human resources department.  He also knows that, even though he doesn't have the skills yet to apply for the senior position he would like  to have eventually, he's taking positive steps to improve his skills by taking in-house courses that are offered to all employees on company time.  

While he's in these classes, he's networking and developing important relationships with senior staff to find out about other jobs in the company.  He knows that his current situation with Ted is temporary and, as soon as he is able, Larry plans to leave this department for a better job.

Larry grew up in a nurturing environment where his parents encouraged him to be curious and open to new experiences.  They also instilled a sense of self confidence and encouraged him to pursue his interests.  As he was growing up, they presented him with age-appropriate challenges that gave Larry an opportunity to learn problem solving skills and develop a sense of determination.

How I Would Work With John in Therapy
If John came to therapy because he was feeling anxious and helpless at work and, possibly other areas of his life, I would work with him to develop a greater sense of awareness of how he is responding to his situation and help him, over time, to become more resilient.

No one can change John's history of early childhood trauma. But I could help him work through the trauma using mind-body oriented therapy, like EMDR, clinical hypnosis or Somatic Experiencing, so that he is no longer emotionally triggered in his current situation by his history.  There is no quick fix to John's issues, but I have helped many clients with problems similar to work through their trauma.

Overcoming Feelings of Helplessness Related to Early Trauma

Along the way, I would help John to develop an increased awareness that he is responding to the current situation with the fear that he had when he was a child.  We might do some inner child work to help this younger aspect of himself to feel nurtured in a way that he never felt nurtured when he was growing up.

I would also help John to differentiate between what happened "then" (when he was a child) and what's happening "now" and to see that, if he chooses, he has many more options now than he did then.

Setting manageable goals would also be part of the work in therapy.  And, whenever John felt "stuck"  by a sense of "I can't," we would look at what's really going on for him at that point:  Is there a distortion in the way he's thinking?  Has he slipped back into feeling that he's helpless again, like he was when he was a child?  What else might be going on?

Developing an Awareness of How Early Childhood Trauma Might Be Affecting You Now 
It can be challenging to see when you're responding to situations with a sense of helplessness because   you're being triggered by childhood trauma. It's important to understand and work on the underlying emotional issues.

Getting Help in Therapy
If you have a tendency to feel helpless and unable to get "unstuck" in your current situation, you could benefit from working with a licensed mental health professional who is trained in either EMDR, clinical hypnosis or Somatic Experiencing to help you work through this issue.

You owe it to yourself to get help to overcome this problem so you can begin to lead a more fulfilling life, unburdened by your childhood history.

About Me

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist.

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Also see my article:  Reconceptualizing the So-Called "Help Rejecting" Client

Are You Living Your Life Feeling Trapped By Your Childhood History?

It's not unusual for adults to live their lives feeling trapped by circumstances they experienced as a child that no longer apply to them as adults, especially if that history involved difficult times or family trauma.  

Feeling Trapped By Your Childhood History

Sometimes, people who have this problem aren't aware that they're reliving their child history.  But even when people are aware of it on a rational level, they might still feel trapped in old circumstances on an emotional level.  It can feel very disturbing to know one thing but to feel another.   And the fear of making a change can be overwhelming.

The following vignette is a composite of many cases with all identifying information changed to protect confidentiality. This case illustrates how someone felt trapped by her family history, a history that no longer applied to her current life, even though she knew rationally that her circumstances had completely changed.  It also illustrates that it's possible to overcome this problem in therapy:

Mary:
Mary grew up in a family where her mother, who was a single parent, struggled financially throughout Mary's childhood.  Her mother worked in a factory, where she was frequently furloughed for periods of time before she was called back in again to work.

Her mother was always worried about money.  Mary was painfully aware that her mother could barely afford the basic necessities.  At a young age, Mary also worried a lot about their circumstances.  She was very careful to turn off lights when she left a room to save on the electric bill and she was always vigilant about not wasting money in other ways.

When Mary was in high school, her mother told her that if she wanted to go to college, she would have to get good grades to get a scholarship because there was no money to pay for college.

Fortunately, Mary was awarded a scholarship to go to college. She also worked two part time jobs.  She was frequently too exhausted to participate in social activities and she was also anxious about spending her money to go out because her money was tight.

Ten years later, Mary had a good job where she was earning a high salary, but she still felt very anxious about money.  She knew, logically, that she had the money for what she called "extras," like going on vacation or treating herself to a massage but, on an emotional level, she continued to feel "poor."

By this time, Mary's mother was married to a man who made a good living, so Mary's mother no longer had financial problems.  She also didn't have to work at the factory any more.  But she still worried about money just as much as she ever did, even though her husband reassured her repeatedly that she didn't need to worry.

Mary worked very hard as a manager, but she wasn't enjoying her personal life.  She had close friends who saw Mary scrimping on things for herself.  Seeing this, they told Mary that she was living her life based on a childhood history that no longer applied to her current life.

Mary agreed with her friends, but she didn't know how to get over her anxiety about spending money.  At times, she wondered, "Am I crazy?  Why do I know one thing, but I feel the complete opposite emotionally?"  She felt deeply ashamed about her problem.

Mary tried to override her anxiety by treating herself occasionally to fine dining with friends because she knew that what she felt on an emotional level was a distortion of her current reality.  But whenever she did this, regardless of how many times she told herself that she wasn't living under impoverished circumstances any more, she would still feel anxious.  Her fear was getting the best of her, so she couldn't enjoy the experience of treating herself.

Finally, after deciding that she no longer wanted to feel emotionally imprisoned by her family history, Mary began therapy.  And the only reason she could allow herself to spend money on therapy was because she knew her company had an insurance plan with excellent out of network benefits.

Mary and I worked together to free her emotionally from her childhood history by using clinical hypnosis and Somatic Experiencing to update her experience of herself on an emotional and visceral level.  There was no quick fix for Mary's problem, which was deeply ingrained.  But, over time, her feelings gradually became more aligned with her thinking so that she not only knew on a rational level that she was no longer poor, but she felt it on visceral level.

Mary also let go of the guilt she felt about spending money on herself.  We did "inner child" work for the younger aspect of herself that felt so undeserving.  We also worked to help Mary feel less emotionally enmeshed with her mother.

Finally, over time, Mary was able to enjoy her life and give herself much-needed self care without worry or guilt.

Living Life Based on Old Circumstances That No Longer Apply to Your Current Life
As I mentioned earlier, when children, who grew up under difficult or traumatic circumstances, become adults, they often "carry" these emotions with them and live their lives as if they were still in their childhood situation.

They usually know their current life is different from their childhood, but they don't feel it and, often, no amount of trying to convince themselves on a rational level works for them.

Getting Help in Therapy
If you're living your life based on a personal history that's no longer true for you now and you're having difficulty overcoming this on your own, you're not alone.

This is a common experience.  Rather than continuing to suffer, you could benefit from working with a licensed mental health professional who uses clinical hypnosis and Somatic Experiencing to help you "update" your internal emotional world.

For anyone who is not familiar with clinical hypnosis and Somatic Experiencing, I've included links below under Resources that provide more information.

About Me

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist.  

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

When Our Emotional Attachment to Our Possessions Becomes a Problem For Our Loved Ones

During the last few years, there have been many more articles, books, and even a TV program about hoarding.  There have even been articles about how children of hoarders have been affected by a mother's or father's hoarding. 

All of these stories serve to highlight our emotional attachment to our possessions and how possessions can become imbued with personal symbolic meaning.  Even when our emotional attachment to our possessions doesn't reach the level of hoarding, it can be a psychological problem that causes distress for the person with the problem as well as loved ones who live with him or her.  But this problem can be worked through in  therapy.

Emotional Attachment to Our Possessions Become a Problem For Our Loved Ones

The following fictionalized scenario, which is a composite of many cases with all identifying information changed to protect confidentiality, is an example of how one person's emotional attachment to his possessions can be a problem that can get worked through in therapy:

Joe:
Joe became depressed after his girlfriend of 10 years, Mary, broke up with him.  The breakup occurred four years before, but Joe still missed her everyday.  When they were living together, Mary was the neat one and Joe tended to be more messy.

But after Mary left, Joe went from being messy to accumulating clutter.  The things he accumulated in the house were mostly clothes, books, and mementos from the relationship.  Other than that, he cleaned the house and never accumulated any garbage, the place was habitable, and he had people over.  It never reached the level of "hoarding," but it was still becoming a problem and he feared that this problem might get worse.

Our Emotional Attachment to Our Possessions Becomes a Problem

When he began therapy, he talked about other big losses in his life, including losing both of his parents at an early age.  Prior to Mary leaving, Joe didn't think about their deaths as much as an adult.  But after Mary left, Joe began having dreams of himself as a child searching for his parents.

It became apparent in therapy that the loss of his relationship with Mary triggered this early childhood trauma, and his emotional attachment to his possessions took on a new meaning for him with the triggering of this early trauma.  His possessions became imbued with a personal meaning that he never felt before.  It was as if his possessions were like beloved friends and family members, and he couldn't bare to part with them.

On the one hand, having them around him gave him a certain amount of emotional comfort.  But, on the other hand, the clutter increased his anxiety.  He also felt ashamed about it.  His bedroom closet was filled with clothes that he no longer wore, but they had come to have meaning to him because they were purchased for him by Mary.  His desk and his floor were littered with books and papers that he also associated with Mary.

During his therapy, Joe mourned the loss of his relationship and the loss of his parents.  He learned to nurture the "inner child" in him that he had ignored for years and who was feeling emotionally deprived.

Joe Learned to Mourn His Losses and Nurture His Inner Child So He Could Let Go 

Gradually, he started letting go of the possessions he was accumulating.  In order to let them go, he did a simple ritual in which he thanked each possession for what it "gave" him on a symbolic level.  It was still hard for Joe to let them go, but he did.  Although it was sad for him, he also began to feel less anxious because he could now relax more in his environment.  He also began to take steps to meet other women.

When Possessions Take on a Personal Symbolic Meaning and You Can't Let Go of Them:
In the above scenario, the accumulation of possessions never reached the level of hoarding as we've come to define it.  I think it's important to recognize that people can go through stages in their lives where they develop an emotional attachment to their possessions that isn't hoarding per se but is still problematic.

I believe there's a difference between clutter and hoarding, and it's important to recognize the symbolic meaning of possessions.  Often, possessions take on a symbolic meaning of being like a friend or loved one that provides comfort after a loss.  Under these circumstances, the person usually has mixed feelings about these possessions because, even though they provide a degree of emotional comfort, the clutter also creates anxiety.

Mourning and Problems with Letting Go of Possessions that Belonged to a Loved One
Many people go through a similar feeling when someone close to them dies and they have to get rid of  clothing and other possessions.  Sometimes, they have to wait a while before they can do it because it's just too hard.  They might spend time holding and smelling certain items of clothes that still have the scent of their deceased loved one.  But, eventually, they usually let go of these things because they know they have to do it or they'll remain stuck emotionally.  It's part of the mourning process.

Not Just "Messy" - The Importance of Understanding the Meaning of Holding On
It's not unusual for possessions to take on this symbolic meaning without the person who is affected  realizing it at first.  

A person who begins to accumulate clutter might just see him or herself as "messy" at first without realizing that the possessions have taken on a new meaning.  At that point, it becomes hard to get rid of these things  because who wants to throw out a "loving friend" or "family member"?

This problem is a lot more common than hoarding.   Overcoming this problem isn't easy.  It begins with an awareness that the possessions have become imbued with emotional meaning that goes beyond their functional status.  Then, overcoming the problem involves working on a deeper level, as in the scenario above.

About Me

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist.  I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.


Children of Hoarders on Leaving the Cluttered Nest

Is Your Envy Ruining Your Relationships?

Envy is defined as the emotionally painful feeling you have when you perceive that someone has something that you want and don't have, whether it's a possession, an attribute, a relationship, a new baby, a job, and so on.  Envy is a complex emotion.

Is Your Envy Ruining Your Relationships?

There Are Degrees of Envy

Like any other emotion, there are degrees of envy.  A mild form of envy, for instance, might involve wishing a friend well for getting married, but wondering why she found happiness in a romantic relationship and you haven't.  Why does she get to have a wonderful husband while you're having difficulty meeting someone?  This is a more benign form of envy.  A more malicious form of envy might involve not only wishing that you could meet someone wonderful like your friend did, but also secretly hoping that her relationship fails.  There is a bitter and toxic quality to this form of envy that is corrosive to your sense of self as well as to maintaining relationships.

Your Envy Sets Up a Rivalry Between You and Others
When you feel envious of people close to us, you set up a rivalry between you and them, even if the rivalry remains in your mind and you never express it.  When you're envious, you see the other person as being luckier, better looking, more intelligent (or whatever other attributes you ascribe to the other person) than you.  This may or may not be realistic.  But whether or not it has objective reality often has little to do with envy.  In fact, if you're immersed in envious feelings, you might have already lost any objectivity in the matter because you're so focused on others.

Strong, Pervasive Feelings of Envy
When you experience pervasive feelings of envy, where you're constantly comparing yourself to others in an unfavorable way, you tend to see life most of the time in terms of what others have and you don't.  Your perspective is filtered through the lens of feeling that what you have is inadequate compared to others.  You tend to feel deprived most of the time and this can lead to feelings of hopelessness and helplessness.

Pervasive Feelings of Envy Are Often Related to Childhood Deprivation
When envy is pervasive in most of your life, it often stems from early childhood deprivation, whether the deprivation was emotional, physical or both.  In these types of situations, you continue to feel the longings you felt when you were a child.  At that time, you deserved to be loved and taken care of but, for whatever reason, you were deprived instead.  Your longing to be nurtured was legitimate and real.

This type of longing usually doesn't disappear when you become an adult.  As an adult, this longing, which is "carried" emotionally by your inner child, usually manifests as envy.  When it's a pervasive feeling of envy, these feelings become distorted.  What is real for the deprived inner child becomes displaced on others in a distorted way when you become an adult.

Pervasive Envy Can Ruin Relationships
Pervasive envy can ruin relationships, including family relationships, marriages, friendships, and relationships with colleagues.  If you're constantly complaining to others that you feel they have better opportunities, relationships or possessions, it's a big turn off to them.  After a while, they'll feel guarded around you and might not want to be around you.  At best, they'll see you as petty and, at worst, they'll see you as someone who is too self centered to be around.  Chances are good that they won't understand that these pervasive feelings of envy come from earlier experiences.  And, even if they do, they still might not want to deal with your envy.

People who feel pervasive envy are often not aware that this is what they're feeling.  They usually believe that their feelings are objectively true and not a distortion.  In their eyes, other people are luckier, more attractive, and so on, than they are.  Their focus is on others and not on themselves.  It can be very painful to realize that these envious feelings are distortions in their minds.  But once they develop this awareness, there's an opportunity, if they're open to it, to change.

Envy Can Become a Self Perpetuating Pattern
Living with constant feelings of envy can be a self perpetuating pattern.  The more you feel it, the more intense the envy becomes.  There are people who live their entire lives comparing themselves unfavorably to others.  They take no responsibility to change what they don't like in their own lives because they're too immersed in feeling resentful towards others.  This creates an increasingly deep sense of unhappiness and bitterness.

Getting Help to Overcome Envy
If you're someone who is stuck in the rut of feeling envious towards others and you're so focused on what other people have that you don't, you owe it to yourself to get professional help from a licensed mental health professional.  Doing inner child work can help you to overcome envy and feel better about yourself.  In addition to preserving the important relationships in your life, you can also improve your sense of self and the quality of your life.

About Me

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist.  

I work with individual adults and couples.  I have helped many clients to lead more fulfilling loves.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To  set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Also, see my article:  Is Envy Ruining the Quality of Your Life?

Overcoming Fantasies of Being Rescued

Who hasn't gone through a life crisis, at one time or another, and fantasized that someone would come along and rescue them from all their problems?  This person would know just what to say and do to make things right again.  Indulging in this kind of fantasy, knowing that it's really a fantasy and that, as adults, we're ultimately responsible for ourselves, isn't unusual. It's a little like wishing that we'd win the lottery.  We might have the wish, but then we come back down to earth and deal with the reality of our situation.

Overcoming Fantasies of Being Rescued

It's one thing to have an occasional fantasy about being rescued and it's another thing to live your life waiting for someone to come along, the proverbial "knight in shining armor," to sweep you off your feet and take you to his castle.

Often, not surprisingly, people who have rescue fantasies weren't nurtured as children, and the inner child in them is still hoping that someone will come along to fulfill that unmet need.  This isn't always apparent to the person with this fantasy or the people who are close to him or her (there are men who also have rescue fantasies).

Overcoming Fantasies of Being Rescued 

Making matters worse, there are people who have fantasies about rescuing people who find people who want to be rescued and form an unhealthy, codependent relationship.  If they remain in the rescuer-rescuee dynamic, they don't grow as individuals or as a couple.  They remain stunted in their rigid roles.  This is very different from two mature adults who come to a relationship as whole individuals and who rely on each other in a healthy way for emotional support.

Inner child work with a skilled, licensed mental health professional can help you to overcome the fantasy of being rescued.  Rather than making a maladaptive effort to heal by pinning all your hopes on someone else, it's much more empowering to develop your own internal resources to heal your inner child.

Clinical hypnosis and Somatic Experiencing are safe and effective forms of therapy to heal the inner child. A skilled clinician can guide you through the inner child work process so that you mourn what you didn't get and, more importantly, your adult self learns to take care of your inner child, and the different parts of yourself are more integrated.

As an integrated individual, you will attract healthier people and you'll be much more likely to have a happier and healthier relationship than if you remained stuck in the fantasy that someone will come along to rescue you.  But even if you're not in a relationship, you'll still feel like an emotionally healthy, whole person.

About Me
I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist. 

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Psychotherapy: Making the Unconscious Conscious

Often, when clients begin psychotherapy, they discover that there are many aspects of themselves that they are unaware of, especially if they've never been in therapy before.  One of the main goals of psychotherapy is for the unconscious to become conscious for these clients.

Psychotherapy: Making the Unconscious Conscious 

"Making the unconscious conscious" is a common phrase in psychotherapy, but what does it mean?

A couple of examples, which are fictionalized scenarios, might help to shed some light:

John:
When John began psychotherapy for the first time, when he was in his late 30s, he was adamant that he never got angry towards anyone or anything.  His attitude was that it didn't make sense to get angry, so he never felt this.  He came to therapy because he was having panic attacks.  One of the first things that his therapist observed about John was that he was very tense.  He had deep frown marks between his eyes, and the muscles in his face and throughout his body were tight.  He had frequent gastrointestinal problems, asthma, insomnia, and joint pain, none of which his specialists were able to regulate with medication.  Even though John said he never got angry, he looked angry most of the time. And, it was apparent to his therapist (and most people who knew him) that he had been angry for many years, but he wasn't aware of it.  He was defended against it, on an unconscious level, because he felt it was "bad" to be angry.  Over time, as John developed trust in his therapist, he became more open to exploring his anger.  As he worked through his anger, most of his physical symptoms, which were psychophysiological in origin, disappeared.  It was apparent that, because his anger was so unconscious, he carried it in his body--until the unconscious (in this case, his anger) became conscious.

Mary:
Mary's parents were emotionally neglectful when she was growing up.  They provided her with a home, food clothing and basic necessities, but they were emotionallly unavailable to her.  She began therapy in her early 40s, because she was feeling depressed.  Her initial attitude in therapy, which was unconscious, was that, "My therapist should make me better."  She had no awareness that her attitude stemmed from a childhood of emotional neglect and the "inner child" part of her wanted the therapist to be a mother to her.  When this didn't occur, Mary became enraged.  She almost left therapy several times because she couldn't tolerate that her therapist couldn't make her better.  She refused to do any of the work and she all but stamped her foot to demand that her therapist do the therapy work for her.   Fortunately, even though it was difficult for her, she was able to tolerate being in therapy long enough to discover her unconscious wish to have the therapist mother her as if she were a baby.  After doing "inner child" work with her therapist, with assistance from her therapist, she learned to nurture her "inner child" and her  attitude changed to one of a mature woman.  If she had not stuck it out in therapy, the unconscious would not have become conscious for her, and she probably wouldn't have changed.

Making the unconscious conscious is one aspect of therapy, but it's an important one.  It's not always easy to face, but change is often not easy.  Until we're willing to discover and explore our unconscious attitudes, meaningful transformation remains elusive.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during regular business hours or email me.