Focusing on Your Inner World to Understand How Your Unconscious Mind Affects Your Behavior

As I've mentioned in prior articles, people's behavior is often based on unconscious thoughts and feelings, so that if you want to understand yourself, a good place to start is with your unconscious mind.   Psychotherapy provides an opportunity to understand your unconscious mind and how it affects your behavior (see my articles:  Psychotherapy: Making the Unconscious Conscious, Your Unconscious Beliefs Affect Your Sense of Reality, How Psychotherapy Helps You to Expand Your Inner Awareness, and Focusing on Your Inner Self is More Effective to Overcome Shame Than Focusing on Your Outer Self).

Focusing on Your Inner World to Understand How Your Unconscious Mind Affects Your Behavior

Some people are naturally more introspective than others.  They take the time to try to understand their unconscious mind in psychotherapy by working with their psychotherapist to become aware of their underlying thoughts, feelings and dreams and how it affects their behavior.

Other people, who are naturally more outer directed, but who also want to understand the underlying issues that affect their behavior, learn in therapy how to discover the unconscious motivation for their behavior.

A skilled psychotherapist, who works with unconscious thoughts, feelings and dreams, can help clients to develop the ability to pay attention to their inner, unconscious world to understand themselves.

When you're aware of what's going on in your unconscious mind, your behavior begins to make sense.  Whereas you might not understand your behavior before you understand the underlying issues, when you've developed the ability to understand your inner world, you begin to understand that there are coherent reasons for your behavior that you weren't able to detect before.

How to Tap Into Your Unconscious Mind

Working With Dreams:

There are many ways to tap into the unconscious mind, depending upon the experience and skills of the psychotherapist.

The most traditional way is to pay attention to your dreams (see my article: Are You Fascinated By Your Dreams?).

By keeping a pad and pen near your bed before you go to sleep, you give your unconscious mind the message that you want to remember your dreams.  

In any given night, most people have 5-6 dreams.  The ones that are easiest to remember are the ones that are closest to your waking up.  

If you want to remember your dreams, upon waking up, rather than jumping out of bed or even shifting your position, remain still for a couple of minutes (shifting your position in bed makes it more likely that the dream will elude you).  

You might start by having a sense that you have had a dream.  For instance, you might still be immersed in the mood of the dream.  Or, you might remember an image or phrase from your dream.  By being patient and waiting a minute or two, the rest of the dream might unfold, usually in reverse order.

Remembering your dreams is a skill, and much like any skill, it can take time to develop.  People who are patient and take the time often remember a few dreams each morning, especially when they are in the process of writing down the dream that was closest to their waking state.  

Just like you might remember the last part of your last dream first, you will usually remember the last dream and then the one before that and the one before that in reverse order.

There are many ways to work with dreams in psychotherapy depending upon how your psychotherapist works.  

Some psychotherapists look for images or symbols in dreams that are prominent to discover the underlying meaning of the dream.

Other psychotherapists believe that every image in the dream represents a part of the client and helps clients to understand their dreams by assisting them to discover what parts of themselves are represented in the dream.

Many psychotherapists focus on the emotion on the dream:  Was the client feeling sad, happy, scared, angry, and so on, to help the client to understand the unconscious material in the dream?

Other psychotherapists work with Embodied Imagination, developed by Neo-Jungian psychoanalyst, Robert Bosnak, to work with dreams (see my article: Dreams and Embodied Imagination and Dream Incubation: Planting Seeds).

When clients are interested in working on their dreams to understand their underlying issues related to their problems, I use all of these ways of working with dreams depending upon what works best for the particular client.  Some clients have more of an affinity for working one way than another.

Working With the Mind-Body Connection

Since the body offers a window into the unconscious mind, I also use mind-body oriented psychotherapy, like clinical hypnosis, EMDR therapy, and Somatic Experiencing, to help clients to discover underlying issues (see my article: The Body Offers a Window Into the Unconscious Mind).

In clinical hypnosis, there is a technique called the Affect Bridge, which helps clients to get to unconscious issues by asking clients to use their emotions and where they feel these emotions in the body to allow unconscious material to come to the surface.

I have found the Affect Bridge to be a very good technique that often gets to unconscious thoughts, feelings and memories related to clients' problems.

Somatic Experiencing works in a similar way.  Clients learn to pay attention to their thoughts, feelings, body sensations, images or anything else that comes up for them as we are working on a problem.  

Part of EMDR Therapy, which was originally developed to help clients to overcome psychological trauma, is also now used for many other issues. For instance, EMDR therapy is also used for performance enhancement for executive, artists, performers, writers, athletes and anyone that needs help with performance enhancement.  There is a component of the EMDR therapy protocol that involves a free associative process where clients can access associative memories and unconscious thoughts and feelings.

EMDR therapy is also used adjunctively when your primary psychotherapist does not do EMDR and you see an adjunctive EMDR therapist (see my article: What is Adjunctive EMDR Therapy?).

Conclusion

Your inner world is a rich source of information that can help you to understand your behavior.

There are many ways to tap into your unconscious mind, including dreams and mind-body oriented types of therapy, such as clinical hypnosis, Somatic Experiencing and EMDR therapy.

In my next article, I'll provide a clinical vignette to demonstrate how focusing on your inner world can help you to understand how your unconscious mind affects your behavior (see my article: Focusing on Your Inner World to Understand How Your Unconscious Mind Affects Your Behavior: A Clinical Vignette).

Getting Help in Therapy

Without understanding your internal world, you're bound to continue to have the same problems because the root of your problem lies in the unconscious mind.

A skilled psychotherapist can help you to delve beneath the surface to understand the underlying issues involved so that you can get to the root of your problems and take action to change your behavior (see my article: The Benefits of Psychotherapy).

If you have been struggling unsuccessfully on your own to resolve your problems, you could benefit from working with a licensed mental health professional (see my article: How to Choose a Psychotherapist).

About Me

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist (see my article: The Therapeutic Benefits of Integrative Psychotherapy).

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.

Are You Unconsciously Choosing An Unhealthy Relationship to Fix Your Childhood Relationship With a Parent?

I've written about relationships and choosing healthier partners in prior articles (see my articles: Emotionally Unhealthy Relationships: Bad Luck or Poor Choices?, Are Your Fears of Being Alone and Lonely Keeping You in an Unhealthy Relationship? and Learning to Make Better Choices in Relationships).  In this article, I'm focusing on a particular problem with unconsciously choosing an unhealthy relationship as a way to fix your childhood relationship with your parents.

Are You Unconsciously Choosing An Unhealthy Relationship to Fix Your Childhood Relationship With a Parent?

What is Repetition Compulsion?
Most people don't consciously choose to be in emotionally unhealthy relationships.  It's usually an unconscious process based on what's familiar.  And who is more familiar to you than one or both of your parents?

The biggest problem usually occurs when people unconsciously choose a partner who is similar to one or both parents in an effort to fix their childhood relationship with their parents.

With regard to relationships, the unrecognized wish behind this unconscious process is that the repetition of a dysfunctional family pattern in a romantic relationship will provide a chance to repair what couldn't be repaired in childhood with the parents.

This dynamic is known as repetition compulsion in psychotherapy.  When people engage in repetition compulsion, they are repeating traumatic circumstances over and over again in situations where the pattern will most likely be repeated in an unconscious effort to repair the original trauma.  

People who start psychotherapy often don't see these patterns at first.  After their psychotherapist hears about the family dynamic and recognizes the same dynamic in the romantic relationship, the therapist recognizes that the client is engaging in repetition compulsion.

The person who chooses a romantic partner who has the same dynamics as one or both of his parents doesn't always see the similarity between the romantic partner and the parent.  There can be a certain amount of denial about it.  But, usually, over time, client in therapy will recognize it as the therapy evolves.

A Fictional Clinical Vignette: The Problem With Choosing an Unhealthy Relationship to Try to Fix Your Childhood Relationship With Your Parents
The following fictional clinical vignette is about the unconscious process of repetition compulsion in an unhealthy relationship and how it involves a wish to fix a childhood dysfunctional relationship:

Meg
Meg started psychotherapy because she was having problems in her one year relationship with her boyfriend, Ed.

Are You Unconsciously Choosing An Unhealthy Relationship to Fix Your Childhood Relationship With a Parent? 

During the first six months of their relationship, Meg and Ed got along well.  They enjoyed each other's company and spent a lot of time together.

After five months, Ed moved into Meg's apartment and this is when the problems began.  Then, when they were together for six months, Ed quit his job after he got into a disagreement with his supervisor.

Meg was annoyed that he left his job without finding another job first and that he was making no effort to try to find another job.

When she came home from her stressful job, she would see Ed laying down on the couch watching TV instead of job hunting.  Since she was now carrying the financial burden for the two of them, she told him that it annoyed her to see him loafing around and allowing her to take responsibility for their joint expenses.

Whenever this topic came up, they would argue.  Ed told Meg that he would find another job, but he didn't like to be pressured by her.  He said if the roles were reversed, he wouldn't complain about it.  He said he would give her time and space to figure out her next move.  And Meg argued that she wouldn't leave her job without having another job, so it was unlikely that their roles would be reversed.

Six months later, Ed was still making no effort to find a job, and Meg was furious.  She complained about it to her psychotherapist during the first two therapy sessions.  Although she was very angry, she didn't want to throw Ed out of her apartment.  She felt that it would be cruel to tell him to leave, so she allowed him to stay, but they were barely on speaking terms.

When Meg's psychotherapist asked her about her family background, Meg described a dysfunctional family dynamic.  She was the older of two daughters who witnessed their parents arguing a lot.

Meg explained that her father had problems keeping jobs because he tended to quit whenever there was a problem on the job instead of trying to resolve the problem.  This placed all the financial burden on Meg's mother, and it was a source of frequent arguments.

Although her mother complained a lot and her parents argued about the father's unstable work history, her mother frequently told Meg and her sister that she would never break up the family.  And the father spent more time being unemployed than working.  As a result, nothing ever changed, and the mother struggled financially throughout all of Meg's childhood to support the family.

As a child, Meg was closer to her father than she was to her mother.  Whereas she thought her mother was often irritable and short tempered with her, she thought her father was more sensitive, nurturing and patient.

Meg disliked hearing her mother call the father "lazy" and "inconsiderate," and she would defend her father to her mother, which escalated these arguments.  Meg would take her father's side, and her sister would take her mother's side.  This created tension in all their relationships.

When her psychotherapist pointed out the similarities between her parents' dynamics and her relationship with Ed, Meg got annoyed.  She didn't think these situations were similar at all, and she was offended that her therapist would say this.

Meg said that her father was a sensitive, compassionate man, but Ed was insensitive and inconsiderate.  For the next few weeks, Meg continued to defend her father and she maintained that her father was different from her Ed.

Meg's psychotherapist realized that, at that point in therapy, Meg idealized her father and she had a blind spot about his problems, so she realized that Meg wasn't ready to deal with this issue.

A few months later, Meg was sufficiently fed up with Ed that she decided to give him a three month deadline to either find a job and contribute to their joint expenses or move out.  In order to meet their expenses, Meg had to take on freelance work in addition to her full time job just to make ends meet, and she was exhausted.

The three month deadline came and went and Ed still refused to look for a job.  They were now arguing more than ever, and Meg really resented Ed, but she couldn't bring herself to follow through with her ultimatum.  Despite her anger and frustration, she allowed him to stay.

Her psychotherapist explored this with Meg in a nonjudgmental way to help Meg to get curious about it.  Over time, when Meg became less defensive, she could see the parallels between her relationship with Ed and her mother's relationship with her father.

Gradually, Meg developed insight into how she was looking at her father through the eyes of her younger self.  She realized that she idealized her father when she was a child because she needed to see him as being her "big, strong dad," and she was continuing to do this as an adult.

Although it made Meg feel sad to see her father's problems, she dealt with the loss of this idealization in therapy.  She also had a lot more empathy for her mother and realized that her mother was frequently irritable when Meg was a child because she was exhausted.

Meg also realized that, even though she idealized her father most of the time when she was a child, she admitted that to her psychotherapist that there were times when she felt angry and disappointed with her father.  But she never allowed herself to remain immersed in those feelings as a child because it was too overwhelming for her.  She needed to see her father as a hero.

Gradually, Meg realized that deep down she always knew, even when she was a child, that her father had these problems, but she didn't want to see it.

She also realized that she had made an unconscious choice to be in a relationship with Ed and remain in that relationship as a way to try to fix her childhood relationship with her father, "I never realized before that I thought I could fix Ed and, in a way, it felt like I could fix my dad.  My mother could never fix my dad, but I thought it would be different with Ed and me.  I really thought I could change him."

Now, she saw her father as someone that she loved very much, but she also accepted that he had problems.  She also realized that she couldn't fix her deep-seated childhood problems with her father by being in a relationship with someone who had similar problems or by trying to repeat her parents' relationship with Ed in order to have a different outcome.

Shortly after this, Meg told Ed that he needed to move out, and she no longer felt guilty about it.  By asking him to move out, in effect, this ended the relationship, but she felt better about herself.  She no longer felt like a victim in her relationship.

Afterwards, Meg dealt with the loss of the relationship in therapy.  Even though she and Ed weren't getting along by the time the relationship ended, she still recognized it as a loss.

Meg also continued to work on her childhood problems in therapy so that she wouldn't repeat the same mistake in the future by getting into another unhealthy relationship, and she could make healthier choices.

Conclusion
It's difficult to see your unconscious dynamics on your own.  Even when you're in therapy, you might have a blind spot for these dynamics before you're ready to see them.

The repetition compulsion of repeating earlier family patterns is common.

When people don't see that they're unconsciously choosing an unhealthy relationship as a way to fix an earlier relationship with parents, they can go from one dysfunctional relationship to another without seeing that they're repeating the pattern over and over again.

People often come to therapy because they're having problems in their relationship, and they believe that the problem is with their particular partner at the time instead of seeing that it's the same dynamic repeating itself with different people.

Once you're ready to explore the unconscious dynamics in therapy, part of the work is grieving for what you can't fix in your childhood history.

You will probably grieve the end of your relationship if you realize that it's emotionally unhealthy for you, but you also have a chance to make a positive change in your life and choose a healthier relationship in the future if you work through the repetition compulsion.

Getting Help in Therapy
If you're struggling with problems that you've been unable to resolve on your own, you could benefit from working with a licensed mental health professional who can help you to work through these problems (see my article: The Benefits of Psychotherapy).

As I mentioned earlier, unconscious behavior is difficult to see on your own, but working with a skilled psychotherapist can help you to recognize and change these unhealthy patterns (see my article: How to Choose a Psychotherapist).

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist (see my article: The Therapeutic Benefits of Integrative Psychotherapy).

I work with individual adults and couples, and I have helped many clients to recognize and change unconscious dynamics that were making them unhappy.

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.

Trauma Therapy: Using Grounding Techniques Between Psychotherapy Sessions

In my last article, Trauma Therapy: Using the Container Exercise Between Therapy Sessions, I discussed the importance of the preparation phase of trauma therapy and how the container exercise can help with emotional containment and coping with difficult emotions between psychotherapy sessions or at the end of a psychotherapy session.  In this article, I'm continuing to focus on grounding techniques.

Trauma Therapy: Using Grounding Techniques Between Psychotherapy Sessions

What is Grounding?
Just like the container exercise that I mentioned in my last article, grounding is a stress management technique to help you calm down and be in the present moment.

Grounding is especially helpful when you're in trauma therapy.  It helps you to transition from the memories you're working on in therapy to the present moment so that you're not overwhelmed by thoughts, feelings, images, body sensations or other uncomfortable things that might come up when you process traumatic memories in therapy.

Aside from helping you between or at the end trauma therapy sessions, ground techniques can also help you to calm down and cope when you're generally under stress or anxiety.

How Do You Know If You're Not Emotionally Grounded?
People who have experienced longstanding psychological trauma often become "accustomed" to living with high intensity anxiety and this feels "normal" to many of them.

As a result, they might not know when they're not emotionally grounded and might only see the difference once they've experienced what it's like to feel emotionally grounded or calm.

Signs of Possibly Not Being Emotionally Grounded:
Some of the following signs might be signs that you're not emotionally grounded, especially if you experience many of these symptoms:

• Experiencing anxiety and worry most of the time
• Causing or participating in emotional drama much of the time
• Being spaced out (or dissociated) much of the time
• Getting easily distracted often
• Ruminating obsessively 
• Obsessing frequently about how you look or what others think about you
• Having frequent problems falling or staying asleep
• Having chronic pain
• Having inflammation in your body
• Having poor circulation
• Feeling fatigued most of the time

The Benefits of Being Emotionally Grounded
Generally speaking, being emotionally grounded can have the following potential benefits:

• Getting better sleep
• Reducing anxiety and worry
• Improving concentration and focus
• Reducing rumination
• Reducing fears about your image and what others think of you
• Reducing chronic pain
• Reducing inflammation in your body
• Improving circulation
• Reducing fatigue

Grounding Exercises
There are many types of grounding exercises.  I'll mention an easy one, the body scan, in this article that you can practice.  This grounding exercise is often used in trauma therapy, and it can also be beneficial any time you feel the need to calm yourself.

Trauma Therapy: Using Grounding Techniques Between Psychotherapy Sessions

In order for grounding exercises to have a beneficial effect, you need to practice grounding regularly.

If you're experiencing unresolved psychological trauma, it's best to see a trauma-informed psychotherapist before you try anything new.

Before starting any grounding exercises, consult with your psychotherapist.  This particular grounding exercise is generally good for most people, but there might be a particular reason why you shouldn't do it, so speak to your psychotherapist first.

The Body Scan:  

• Sitting up with your feet flat on the floor, start by taking a few deep breaths and, if it feels comfortable for you, close your eyes.  If you feel uncomfortable or unsafe closing your eyes, pick a spot on the floor to focus on so your attention doesn't wander.

• Paying attention to your feet, which are placed flat on the floor, notice how the floor supports the weight of your body.  If it feels comfortable for you, you can imagine that there are vines growing from the soles of your feet which connect to the earth so you feel yourself securely rooted.  If that feels uncomfortable, stay focused on how the floor and the earth below the floor support your feet.  

• Focusing on the crown of your head, move your attention slowly through your body and notice where you're holding onto tension in your body.  Don't forget your eyes, which hold a lot of tension.  Allow the muscles in your eyes to relax instead of holding them fixed (this is easier to do if your eyes are closed or semi-closed).  Also, pay attention to the tension you hold in your jaw and tongue.  Allow your jaw to relax and your tongue to settle at the bottom of your mouth.  Then, proceed throughout the rest of your body.  Wherever you sense tension, picture the tension melting away or going through your limbs and out of your body.  

• Take a few moments to notice and enjoy your relaxed state.

• Before opening your eyes, picture the room that you're in with your mind's eye and be aware of the chair or couch where you're sitting.  

• Opening your eyes gently, take a look around the room and orient yourself to your surroundings.  Continue to feel your feet planted on the ground for a few moments before you transition to doing something else.

If this exercise feels uncomfortable to you in any way, stop doing it until you can talk about it or practice doing it with your psychotherapist.  As I mentioned earlier, it's always best to consult with your psychotherapist before you begin any form of grounding exercise.

Also see my articles:
Coping Strategies in Mind-Body Oriented Psychotherapy
Wellness: Safe Place Meditation
Learning to Relax: Square Breathing

Conclusion
Using grounding techniques, like the body scan, can help to calm you.

If you're struggling with unresolved trauma, it's best to work with a trauma-informed psychotherapist to resolve your trauma.

Generally, the body scan grounding exercise is safe for most people, but speak to your therapist before beginning any grounding exercises.

Getting Help in Therapy
Unresolved trauma doesn't resolve on its own.  It can be debilitating on an emotional and physical level.  We also know now that it can have intergenerational effects and affect your children and generations that follow, so it's important to get help (see my article: Psychotherapy and Transgenerational Trauma).

Rather than struggling on your own, you could benefit from getting help from a licensed mental health professional who specializes in helping clients to overcome trauma (see my articles: The Benefits of Psychotherapy and How to Choose a Psychotherapist).

After you have worked through your trauma, you'll have a chance to live a more fulfilling life.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist (see my article: The Therapeutic Benefits of Integrative Psychotherapy).

I specialize in helping individual adults and couples to overcome unresolved trauma.

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.

Trauma Therapy: Using the Container Exercise Between Therapy Sessions

Processing unresolved trauma with a skilled trauma-informed psychotherapist can be one of the most healing things that you do for yourself.  Over time, unresolved trauma can have detrimental emotional and physical effects.  It can also have unintended repercussions for your children (see my article: Your Unresolved Trauma Can Have Repercussions For Your Children).  

Although working through psychological trauma is beneficial for you and your family, you need to know how to take care of yourself between your psychotherapy sessions, which is why I'm discussing the container exercise in this article (see my article: Is Self Care Selfish?).

Using the Container Exercise Between Psychotherapy Sessions

Why is the Preparation Stage of Trauma Therapy Important?

The concept of emotional containment is very important when you're working on psychological trauma in therapy because processing trauma doesn't stop when you leave your psychotherapist's office.  It continues between sessions, sometimes consciously and often unconsciously.

Having a way to cope with whatever comes up between therapy sessions is essential and, hopefully, your psychotherapist has taken time in the preparation phase of trauma therapy to teach you various coping skills to deal with whatever comes up when you're not in therapy (see my article: Developing Internal Resources and Coping Strategies).

In my opinion as a trauma therapist, some therapists rush too quickly to process the trauma before they have helped clients with the necessary preparation work.  This tends to occur with psychotherapists who might have been trained to do trauma work a long time, before there was less of an emphasis on preparation, and they haven't updated their skills.

Also, some therapists want to respond to clients' demands that they start processing trauma immediately before clients are emotionally prepared to do the work. While it's understandable that clients want relief from the effects of unresolved trauma as soon as possible, trauma therapists need to explain why it's important to help clients prepare to do the work and assess a client's readiness.

Clients who aren't sufficiently prepared during the preparation phase of trauma therapy are often overwhelmed by processing their trauma.  If they haven't gone through the preparation phase of trauma therapy, they often don't have the skills to cope with the emotions that come up.

The worst part is that some clients, who aren't sufficiently prepared and who feel overwhelmed in trauma therapy, leave prematurely and they might be too afraid to see another trauma therapist (see my article:  When Clients Leave Therapy Prematurely).

What is the Container Exercise?

The container exercise is one way to cope with difficult emotions that come up between psychotherapy sessions.

This exercise can also be used at the end of a trauma therapy session.  In a prior article, I discussed other helpful coping strategies that might be useful to you.

The container exercise is a simple yet powerful coping strategy where you use your imagination to create a container to temporarily place any disturbing thoughts, feelings, memories, images, physical sensations, dreams or whatever is disturbing to you so that you don't feel overwhelmed until your next psychotherapy session.

Some people like to imagine that their container remains in their psychotherapist's office so that they leave whatever comes up that's disturbing with their therapist until the next time. Where you decide to imagine your container is up to you.  Choose a place that feels right.

Steps For Doing the Container Exercise

The following steps are part of the basic container exercise and you can enhance them in whatever ways feel meaningful to you:

• Begin by taking a few deep, cleansing breaths and, if it feels comfortable for you, close your eyes.  If closing your eyes doesn't feel comfortable, you can focus on a particular spot on the floor so that your attention doesn't wander.

• Now imagine a safe and secure container of whatever type, size, color feels right for you. Take whatever time you need to make this personally meaningful and decide where you want to imagine keeping it.

• Imagine yourself placing whatever is disturbing you in this container.

• Imagine yourself shutting the container and making it secure in whatever way feels right to you (e.g., locking it, locking it and burying it underground or in the ocean, etc).

• If anything else comes up that's disturbing to you during the week, you can place it in your container until you're ready to talk to your therapist about it at your next session.

Conclusion

The preparation phase of trauma therapy is an important part of getting ready to do trauma work so that you don't feel overwhelmed.  

Some clients need more time in the preparation phase than others.  This is something that your psychotherapist will assess before you process trauma.

The container exercise is one way to deal with anything disturbing that comes up between psychotherapy sessions.  It can also be used at the end of a trauma session to help you to de-stress.

Getting Help in Therapy

If you have been struggling with unresolved trauma, you could benefit from working with a skilled trauma therapist who can help you to overcome your trauma (see my article: What is a Trauma Therapist?).

There is no quick fix for overcoming trauma, especially developmental trauma, but a skilled trauma therapist can help you to overcome trauma with safe and effective trauma therapies, including:  

• EMDR therapy (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)

• Somatic Experiencing

• Parts Work

• Clinical Hypnosis (also known as hypnotherapy)

• AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy)

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist (see my article:  The Therapeutic Benefits of Integrative Psychotherapy).

I work with individual adults and couples, and I specialize in helping clients to overcome both shock trauma and developmental trauma.

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.

How Developmental Trauma Affects How You Feel About Yourself

Psychological trauma, especially developmental trauma, usually has a negative impact on your perception of yourself.  This is one of the reasons why your beliefs about yourself are addressed in trauma therapy. 

For instance, in EMDR therapy, an important part of therapy is asking about your negative belief about yourself in relation to the traumatic memories that you and your psychotherapist are working on.

How Developmental Trauma Affects How You Feel About Yourself

It's not unusual for people who have experienced developmental trauma, which is childhood trauma, to have one of the following beliefs about themselves:

• "I'm unlovable."
• "I'm powerless."
• "I'm no good."
• "I'm a terrible person."
• "I'm weak."

and so on.

Objectively, these same people might know that their beliefs about themselves are distorted but, at the same time, they still have these negative self perceptions, and trying to rationalize it away doesn't help them.

Clinical Vignette: How Psychological Trauma Affects Your Perception of Yourself
The following clinical vignette illustrates these points:

Cindy
Cindy decided to start psychotherapy because she knew that her low self esteem was creating problems for her in her personal life as well as in her career.

Whenever she dated a man that she really liked, she worried that after he got to know her, he wouldn't like her and he would stop seeing her.  There wasn't anything in particular she dreaded that he would find out.  It was more a general feeling that she had about herself (see my article: Overcoming the Fear That People Wouldn't Like You If They Knew the "Real You").

As a marketing representative, she often had creative ideas about how to market the company's products, but she hesitated to talk to her manager about her ideas because she second guessed herself.  But when one of her colleagues came up with a similar idea and received praise from the manager, Cindy regretted that she didn't speak up when she had the idea.

When Cindy started therapy, she didn't know why she had such low self esteem but, as she talked to her psychotherapist about her family background, she began to see the connection between her low self esteem and her childhood history.

She told her psychotherapist that she was aware from a young age that her parents never wanted to have children and she was considered "a mistake."

Her parents provided for her basic needs, but they weren't loving and nurturing towards her.  She spent most of her time with her nanny or the housekeeper because her parents told her that they were too busy to spend time with her (see my articles: What is Childhood Emotional Neglect? and What is the Connection Between Childhood Emotional Neglect and Problems Later On As An Adult?).

As an only child, Cindy often felt lonely.  She used to love going to her best friend's house because her friend's mother was kind and affectionate.  Her friend's mother would read stories to Cindy and her friend and play with them.

After Cindy moved out to go to college, she never moved back home again.  Instead, she and some of her college roommates got an apartment together in New York City and shared the rent.  She went home on holidays for the "obligatory family visits," but her relationship with her parents remained strained (see my article: How to Cope With Difficult Family Visits).

As Cindy and her psychotherapist talked about her memories of childhood, Cindy realized that ever since she could remember, she felt unlovable.

Even as a child, she felt that if she was a lovable child, her parents would care more about her.  She blamed herself for their emotional neglect, as young children often do.

At her psychotherapist's suggestion, Cindy chose a childhood memory to work on with EMDR therapy (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) that was emblematic of her childhood experiences (see my articles: How EMDR Therapy Works: EMDR and the Brain and EMDR Therapy: When Talk Therapy Isn't Enough).

Cindy was five years old in this memory.  She remembered that it was a rainy day so she couldn't go outside, and she felt lonely and bored at home, so she told her mother that she felt "all alone" and "bored."

She hoped that her mother would spend time with her, read a story to her or just talk.  But her mother gave Cindy an annoyed look, "Cindy, can't you see that I'm busy reading?  Go to your room and find a book that you can read on your own and don't bother me."

Cindy remembered going to her room, throwing herself on the bed and crying.  Her mother was in the next room and she probably heard Cindy crying, but she didn't come to Cindy's room to try to soothe her.  Instead, Cindy was left on her own to cry it out.

After Cindy and her psychotherapist completed the preparation phase EMDR therapy to work on this memory, as part of the EMDR protocol, Cindy's psychotherapist asked Cindy, "What's the negative belief you have about yourself?" in relation to this memory.

Cindy responded, "I'm unlovable" (see my article: Overcoming the Emotional Pain of Feeling Unlovable).

This was the first time that Cindy connected her feelings of being unlovable to how she was treated by her parents when she was a child.  Now, it made sense to her why she would feel this way about herself.

Cindy and her therapist continued to work on her feelings of being unlovable using EMDR therapy.  Many other similar memories came up as well as a deep sense of shame for feeling that she wasn't a lovable child.

How EMDR Therapy Can Help You to Overcome Developmental Trauma

After several months, Cindy and her therapist completed the EMDR therapy, and Cindy no longer felt unlovable.  Her self esteem improved so that she felt more confident when she went out on dates.  She also felt that she was a lovable person and she deserved to be loved.   At work, she was more assertive about making suggestions, and her manager recognized her work by promoting her.

Conclusion
Many people who experienced developmental trauma as children don't connect their poor sense of self and negative beliefs about themselves to their unresolved trauma.

EMDR therapy explores these feelings and beliefs directly so that clients can begin to make the connection and, eventually, work through them.

There is no quick fix for overcoming unresolved trauma.  Even though EMDR therapy tends to be more effective and tends to work faster than regular talk therapy, each person processes trauma in his or her individual way and in his or her own time.

Getting Help in Therapy
A negative belief or self perception is often linked to unresolved trauma.

If you have been struggling with feelings of low self worth, you could benefit from working with an experienced psychotherapist who has an expertise in helping clients overcome traumatic experiences (see my article: The Benefits of Psychotherapy).

Rather than suffering on your own, you can work with a skilled psychotherapist who can help you to overcome your history of trauma so you can lead a more fulfilling life (see my article: How to Choose a Psychotherapist).

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist (see my article: The Therapeutic Benefits of Integrative Psychotherapy).

As a trauma-informed psychotherapist, I work with individual adults and couples.  

I have helped many clients to overcome their traumatic experiences.

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.

Intergenerational Family Dynamics

Intergenerational family dynamics is an important factor in understanding yourself as well as understanding your family.  This includes developing an appreciation for intergenerational trauma in your family and how it affects you (see my articles:  Psychotherapy and Intergenerational Trauma and Overcoming Dysfunctional Ways of Relating in Your Family).

Intergenerational Family Dynamics

What is a Genogram?
One of the best ways for seeing and understanding intergenerational family dynamics is to draw a genogram.

A genogram is a diagram of your family for at least three generations.  It is a graphic representation with symbols for repetitive intergenerational dynamics in your family.

A Genogram is a Family Tree Where Repetitive Intergenerational Dynamics Are Added 

The diagram above shows an ordinary family tree.  To make a family tree into a genogram, symbols are added to reveal repetitive intergenerational dynamics (see below: Drawing Your Own Genogram).

One of the best books for understanding genograms is Genograms in Family Assessment by Monica McGoldrick and Randy Gerson.  This book is often used in social work graduate programs when graduate students study family dynamics.

This book also provides the symbols most used for showing family dynamics like estrangement, divorce, death, suicides, fused relationships, conflictual relationships and so on (due to the limitations of this blog, I'm unable to provide these symbols, but they are readily available online).  But you can make up your own symbols.

Understanding Intergenerational Family Dynamics From Genograms
A genogram is a useful tool when clients come to therapy to change longstanding dynamics that have played out in their family.

Genograms capture dysfunctional patterns, life changes, trauma and family triangles as well as successful and positive patterns for multigenerational families.

In Genograms in Family Assessment, one of the examples used to show intergenerational family dynamics is a genogram for Eugene O'Neill's family (see my article about O'Neill's play: Denial and Illusions in the Iceman Cometh).

These dynamics are also captured in O'Neill's most autobiographical play, Long Day's Journey Into Night.

The genogram for the O'Neill family is a graphic representation of repetitive intergenerational patterns, including alcohol abuse, drug abuse and other destructive patterns.

It also reveals a generational pattern of marital instability.  In addition, there is an intergenerational pattern of the oldest sons dying young in that family, which is depicted in that genogram.

There was also an intergenerational pattern of estrangement between fathers and sons in the O'Neill family as revealed in the book's genogram for the O'Neills, which is also captured in Long Day's Journey Into Night.

Why Use Genograms to Understand Intergenerational Family Dynamics?
As mentioned earlier, genograms are graphic representations of a family tree for at least three generations.  They include symbols between generations to show intergenerational patterns.

One of the values of using genograms in psychotherapy is that they provide a succinct picture which reveals how complex repetitive patterns evolve in a family over time.  This provides a more in-depth appreciation of why some individual and family patterns are so entrenched and difficult to change.

Drawing Your Own Genogram
A genogram is a tool.  There is no agreed-upon method for drawing a genogram.

You can start by drawing a family tree of both sides of your family and then choosing your own symbols to mark intergenerational patterns for major life events, behavioral patterns and other repetitive patterns.

You can also look at the book, Genograms For Family Assessment, where, aside from the O'Neill family, the authors provide genograms for other well-known families like the Roosevelts, Gandhi's family, Freud's family, Katherine Hepburn's family, the Bronte sisters, the Kennedy family and many others.

There are also some online programs that allow you to draw genograms.

When you have marked the intergenerational patterns in your genogram, you will have a better understanding of your family, a new appreciation of how these repetitive patterns occur over time, and why these patterns might be so difficult to overcome.

If you're in therapy or you're thinking about starting psychotherapy, bringing in your genogram to your psychotherapist will serve as a valuable shorthand to illustrate the dynamics in your family.

There are also some therapists who will draw a genogram in your therapy sessions, based on the information that you provide, to help both you and her to understand your own and your family's history.

Getting Help in Therapy
Whether you use a genogram or not, if you have been unable to resolve your problems on your own, you could benefit from seeking help from a skilled psychotherapist (see my article: The Benefits of Psychotherapy and How to Choose a Psychotherapist).

When you have worked through the problems that are holding you back, you can live a more fulfilling life unburdened by your history.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist (see my article: The Therapeutic Benefits of Integrative Psychotherapy).

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 You Shut Down Emotional Pain, You Also Shut Down Potential Pleasure

There are many people, who have a history of traumatic experiences and who could benefit from psychotherapy, but they never come to therapy.  Instead, they do whatever they can to try to suppress and avoid feeling their feelings, but what they usually don't realize is that when they shut down their emotional pain, they're also shutting down the potential for feeling pleasure (see my article: What Happens When You Numb Yourself Emotionally).

When You Shut Down Emotional Pain, You Also Shutdown Potential Pleasure

In addition, what many of people don't know is that a skilled trauma-informed psychotherapist knows how to help clients to develop the ability to expand their "window of tolerance" so they can work through their traumatic experiences in an emotionally-safe therapeutic environment (see my article: Expanding Your Window of Tolerance in Psychotherapy).

What is the Window of Tolerance?
In my prior article, I explained that, according to Dr. Dan Siegel, the window of tolerance is a term that refers to the optimal level of arousal or the optimal zone.

When clients are in their optimal level of tolerance, they are neither hyper-aroused nor hypo-aroused.  They are able to deal with problems as they come up because they're at their optimal level of arousal.

During times of extreme stress, if clients are experiencing hyperarousal, they're in the flight/flight mode, which includes hypervigilance, anxiety, racing thoughts and possibly panic. If they're experiencing hypoarousal, they're in the freeze mode, which includes emotional numbness, feelings of emptiness or emotional paralysis.

Fictional Clinical Vignette: When You Shut Down Emotional Pain, You Also Shut Down Potential Pleasure
The following fictional vignette illustrates how suppressing emotional pain also suppresses pleasure:

Rena
After Rena's mother died in a car accident, Rena would wake up each morning feeling that she had nothing to look forward to and she lacked purpose and meaning in her life.

She told her new psychotherapist that everything felt "blah" and no sooner did she wake up in the morning than she felt like hiding under the covers (see my article: Coping With the Loss of a Loved One: Complicated Grief).

When You Shut Down Emotional Pain, You Also Shut Down Potential Pleasure

She explained to her therapist that she didn't always feel this way.  For most of her life, she looked forward to the joy that each day would bring and she was able to take emotional challenges in stride.  But she was very close to her mother and after her mother died in a car accident, her grief was unbearable.

Rena realized that she had never experienced such raw sadness and anger before.  Her new psychotherapist explained to Rena how emotional numbing numbed joy as well as pain.  She recommended that they use EMDR therapy to help Rena overcome her trauma (see my article: How EMDR Therapy Works: EMDR and the Brain).

Over the next several months, as Rena worked with her therapist on the unresolved grief, her therapist titrated the work so that it was manageable for Rena.

Rena's psychotherapist worked in a way that was within Rena's window of tolerance so that, although Rena still felt very sad when she processed her grief, she didn't feel overwhelmed.

Gradually, Rena was able to expand her window of tolerance so that she could tolerate dealing with deeper levels of emotion without feeling overwhelmed.

Psychotherapy Can Help You to Overcome Traumatic Experiences 

Over time, Rena felt as if she was coming back to life again.  Although she continued to feel sad, she also had moments of happiness.  She felt like she was coming out of a period of time when everything felt gray.  Now, she was beginning to notice colors, nature, music--all the things she enjoyed in her life before her mother died.

She memorialized her mother by writing short stories about her from the time her mother was a young girl up until the time she died so unexpectedly.  This felt healing to Rena (see my article: Writing About Your Mother After Her Death).

Conclusion
Shutting down often occurs when people feel overwhelmed by emotion.  It starts as a protective defense mechanism.  Over time, it can develop into an emotional and physical numbing that shuts out pleasure as well as pain.

When this occurs, some people feel their life has no meaning.  The more they try to avoid feeling, the more exhausting it becomes to try to suppress their feelings.

There is no quick fix for overcoming an overwhelming traumatic event, but trauma therapy can help.

Getting Help in Therapy
While it's understandable that people who have experienced trauma want to protect themselves from feeling the emotional pain, avoiding feeling emotions only makes it worse.

A skilled trauma therapist knows how to work with trauma in a relatively manageable way.

This doesn't mean that there is no emotional pain involved, but an experienced trauma therapist can work in a way to minimize a client getting overwhelmed by working within the client's window of tolerance and helping the client to expand that window of tolerance (see my article: The Benefits of Psychotherapy and How to Choose a Psychotherapist).

If you're feeling stuck with unresolved trauma, you could benefit from seeking help from a licensed mental health professional who has an expertise in helping clients to overcome trauma.

Working through psychological trauma allows you to work through the emotional pain so that you can feel like yourself again and you can lead a more meaningful life.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist (see my article: The Therapeutic Benefits of Integrative Psychotherapy).

I am a trauma-informed psychotherapist who works with individual adults and couples.

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