Author: Michaela Lonning

When you’ve been betrayed and hurt by those you trusted the most…

…trusting a therapist with your deepest feelings isn’t necessarily the easiest thing to do!

And, even though you might know in your mind that you’re safe with your counselor, your feelings may be giving you entirely different signals!

Here are 6 things that my clients and I have done to build a sense of safety. Find the ones that resonate for you and bring the ideas/techniques into your own counseling!

1. Honor the part of you that’s learned to be vigilant to potential safety concerns.

I’ve learned that, when a client of mine has been betrayed, especially when it’s happened over and over again, there’s usually a part of her that watches me pretty closely. That part sometimes might pressure a client to be late, to test boundaries in therapy, or to miss appointments. I always tell the client to honor the part of them that’s looking out for their safety.

Once that part knows that I get that she’ll be watching me closely, we’re often able to work much better together. I invite a client’s protective parts to challenge me outright if they don’t like or are scared by something I say, do, or suggest. Some clients I’ve worked with say that one of the biggest changes they make in therapy is learning to listen to and appreciate the part of them that’s so watchful. It’s good that a part of you has learned to protect you and to watch out for you.

2. Let yourself pay close attention to what happens in session.

When you’ve been through a lot of bad stuff, it makes sense that you feel uncertain and might automatically “zone out,” “check out,” or feel disconnected from what’s happening for you. The problem is, if you disconnect from what’s really going on, it also makes it more likely that fearful parts of you will stay stuck in the past. In order to find out if it’s safe now, you need to take the risk of connecting, at least a bit, with what’s happening in the moment.

In order to do this, let yourself look around the therapist’s office. Notice anything on the walls. Look at the books on the bookshelf. Feel the floor or the rug under your feet. Let yourself notice the chair you’re sitting in.
Letting yourself stop to notice what’s really happening will let your body get the signal that you’re safe.

As it feels safe, notice your therapist’s reactions to you, too. What do you see in their eyes? What do you hear in their tonality?

Cultivating this awareness of the present moment also helps you to notice anything that makes you feel less than comfortable so you can speak up or get out of anything that’s not good for you!

3. Bring an object that helps you to feel safe.

Some of my clients like to always bring a beverage. You might bring a stuffed animal (a friend of mine brought a favorite stuffed animal to therapy with her for years but kept the stuffie out of the therapist’s sight in her purse. It was her own private comfort object, and that was good because it was a special, safe “secret” for her and her parts to hold, something the counselor couldn’t touch), or a blanket, or anything that feels right for you.

4. Record your sessions.

I have clients who like to record our sessions on their phones, and this helps in a few ways…

• It allows them to have a record of everything that happened in session, which is especially helpful if you have dissociative barriers or sometimes don’t remember things well. Their ability to record our sessions and to then review them and ask questions helps them to feel safe with me, and to know for sure what happened in our time together.
• Clients can listen to useful sessions over and over again, and this helps to reinforce the good stuff that’s happening. It solidifies their feeling that I care about them, because they hear that caring over and over again, in multiple ways, throughout the recording.
• It lets clients take in the session and my warmth at their own pace. Some of my clients do some of their most major work in secret, away from my eyes! And that’s okay. They can always thank me for a suggestion, and then decide later, in the comfort of their own homes, whether they want to consider it or try it!

When you find ways to feel safe in therapy and find a therapist who honors your needs to build this sense of safety, your newfound sense of safety will extend outside the therapist’s office. That will lead to more feelings of safety and connection for you, both inside and outside your therapy.

What is an emotional flashback?

Emotional flashbacks are feelings in the moment that go back to times in childhood where you felt defective, helpless, abandoned, or despairing.

They can be tricky to identify, because unlike a specific flashback with specific images, you experience very strong feelings of self-hatred, shame, abandonment, invisibility, or rage. And they’re not linked to any one specific memory.

Here’s a video I’ve made on feelings like hopelessness and feeling unlovable and identifying the possibility that you’re having a flashback. Or, if you’re looking for strategies to try right now, scroll further down and find my video that gives you three ways to work with an emotional flashback right now.

Times when you felt despair, shame, rage, futility, a sense of being abandoned or unworthy may signal a powerful feeling memory of what it was like for you when you were small.

Because these flashbacks often seem to be related to the present moment, identifying the intensity of your feelings as an emotional flashback is an important piece to healing.

Experiencing Emotional Flashbacks

Here are some things people tend to feel and do when experiencing emotional flashbacks:

THEY FEEL TOXIC SHAME

You get this sense that you are not okay. Everything about you starts to feel pathetic, or worthless, or simply not good enough.

Shame is a sense that there’s something wrong with you, something wrong with who you are. It makes sense that a sense of being so worthless would propel this next step…

THEY CRITICIZE THEMSELVES, VICIOUSLY!

This part of you, this inner critic, says you’re not worth it, you’re not good enough, that you never should have tried, or that you have no right to your feelings and thoughts.

This critic often echoes the contempt people received in childhood. It demolishes your sense of self-esteem. This leads to the next issue…

THEY ABANDON THEMSELVES, RECREATING EARLY ABANDONMENTS

You give in to your inner critic, and you give up on yourself.

Some folks abandon themselves through “spacing out,” taking care of other people compulsively (without regard for their own needs), getting into destructive or dependent relationships, turning to food or sleep to dull their feelings, or turning to addictions.

Giving up on yourself can be accompanied by suicidal ideation, compulsion/addiction, depression, and giving into the wishes of others to the exclusion of your own needs.

FEAR OF RELATIONSHIPS/SOCIAL SITUATIONS

This fear of interaction with other people makes sense when you never developed the sense that you were okay, that people liked you, and that you were worth people’s time and attention.

Emotional Flashbacks Can be Stopped, and You Can Heal!

Here’s a video I created on ways you can work with an emotional flashback right in the moment you’re experiencing it.

You might want to bookmark this page or favorite the video on YouTube so you can find it at a moment’s notice!

Click Here to Watch the Video

I coach clients from around the world via video, and locally here in Oregon.

Clients suffering from emotional flashbacks express great relief once they understand that they’re not bad or crazy and that their troubled emotions and relationships make sense.

Once you know that you’re NOT crazy or defective, you can start the work of healing.

Healing is Deeply Rewarding

As you learn to let go of toxic shame, to challenge your inner critic, to notice when you’re in an emotional flashback (and find your way out), you get to feel at home with yourself.

Life looks different.

Your anxiety diminishes, your energy increases, and you gain a sense of love, belonging, and safety.

Healing can begin to occur in a safe relationship, often with a good therapist. Read my article about feeling safe in therapy.

People recover from these feelings every day. To recover, you’ll need to develop self-compassion, challenge your inner critic, and learn to care for the child you once were. As you recover, you develop a sense that you’re okay, that you can be safe, and that you’re worth it. You stop abandoning yourself and learn to embrace who you are.

Healing happens one step at a time.

Examples of Emotional Flashbacks

Here are examples of emotional flashbacks I’ve seen:

• Mary comes to a session convinced that I won’t like her, that no one can like her. When we talk about these feelings, it becomes apparent that, even though I and many other people like her, there’s a part of her that keeps remembering the feelings of helplessness and shame and replaying the voices of her parents saying, “No one will ever want to be your friend.”
• Thomas tells me he “freaks out” every time his fiance looks at him a certain way. When he remembers what “that look” reminds him of, he recalls the sense of impending doom he had as a child when his stepfather gave him a certain look before beating him.
• Rose can’t stand for someone on the phone to say it’s time for them to go. It brings her back to a time in her childhood where she felt all alone.
• When Harry hears that his boss wants to talk to him, he immediately panics and believes that he’s going to be reprimanded. When we talk it through, he realizes that he’s flashing back to a time that his mother saying, “Let’s have a talk” could only mean bad things.

Dealing with Emotional Flashbacks

How do you resolve an emotional flashback? First, you recognize the likelihood that it is a flashback.

1. Recognizing your emotional flashbacks for what they are can save your sense of sanity. By recognizing these feelings as coming from the past, you can begin to let go of the fear or anguish now, and to be compassionate with yourself as you deal with the feelings from then.
2. Recognize that you are safe now. When you were young, these experiences could feel life-threatening. But now, you’re in an adult body with adult resources. You’re safe now. You might check out my flashback halting protocol video for a format for noticing safety in the here and now:
   Click Here to Watch the Video
3. Understand your flashback as a message from a child part of yourself. This part still needs care and attention and validation and didn’t get it when you were young. Now is the time to hear that child’s message. Rather than fixating on the current situation, focus on the feeling and tend to that child within.
4. Recognize that this flashback will pass, and life will look different then. When you’re in the midst of one of these flashbacks, they can feel eternal. Worse, a part of you may criticize you or shame you, and these criticisms can feel like utter truth when you feel this way. They’re not truth. I promise! Right now, take care of you.
5. Become an expert in emotional flashbacks. The more you know, the more empowered you’ll feel, and having the words to put to what’s going on will to keep you from getting stuck in a feeling. You can find stuff on my website and YouTube channel, of course!
6. And you can look at stuff that the guy who coined the term “Emotional Flashback” has written. His name is Pete Walker, and he offers a lot of useful information, written very compassionately. Here’s a link to his website, with articles that might interest you right on the left column.
7. Realize that you can heal from this stuff. A relationship with someone who has compassion and a clue will help a lot, especially if the inner critic or feelings of shame keep taking over your thoughts and feelings, despite your best efforts. So, consider seeking help from someone familiar with this stuff. If you already have a support network (Lots of people struggling with this stuff don’t yet have that, and that can change over time!), find someone safe to start sharing a little bit of this stuff with. And if you don’t yet have that, you might seek help from a counselor. One with compassion, and hopefully one who knows some of this stuff and can help guide you to a sense of self-compassion and curiosity. One you can connect with over time. One who can offer you a bit of a roadmap to where you are and where you can go. One who can, most importantly, offer genuineness and compassion in a way that will help you feel those things toward yourself more and more.

“I always find myself wanting to break up when relationships get to a certain point.”

“I always burn my support people out after just a few months.”

Different stories, but with some similar feelings and undercurrents.

Someone tells a friend, “I don’t know why… I just start to despise the person I’m with. All of a sudden, it’s like he can’t do anything right. It’s a different reason every time, but… it’s frustrating! Is it just that I have high standards? Have I just not found the person for me? Is my “picker” broken and I keep getting with losers? Or am I being too critical?”

Another person gets dismissed after a few months, and has been broken up with yet again, and she wonders aloud, “What is this? Do I keep picking people who are unavailable and insensitive? Or am I expecting too much?”

Sound familiar?

Some people experience this kind of thing anytime they get close to someone: friend, lover, therapist, even a group of friends. Others have lots of stable relationships, but particular ones and particular kinds of closeness elicit this kind of push-away.

The good news is, if this is your struggle, that there’s something rich to be seen, heard, learned about, right in the middle of those sticky feelings right at that 6-month (or however many months or weeks it is for you!) mark.

That mark is right where your History is probably kicking in. Those old scripts about the world and about relationships. It’s where you’re confused, disoriented, sad, angry, and pained, that you are in touch with something within that can be transformed.

I had a client once who, whenever she felt people begin to like her, would panic and feel her dreaded need again. It was an agonizing need, a frustrating place for her to be, because she would feel, suddenly, LOTS of need for LOTS of contact and reassurance.

At the same time, she felt terrible shame and fear.

She had a long history of people rejecting her once she started calling too much. Close friends suddenly were accusing her of being too much, pushing the boundaries… and she knew they were right. Yet, she didn’t know how to stop this pattern without a self-imposed, rigid exile from closeness.

Turns out that this place in her that called people so many times was a place that really DID need help. A focused kind of help and attention that somatic, connection-focused therapy began to meet. There was a very young, scared part of her that needed help to feel seen, met, held, and safe. Once she could take that in, her grownup part became capable of doing relationships differently. And that little one in her could feel the care of others without that “more, more, more” thing kicking in. Big relief!

Another person I worked with began to dismiss people when they got to a certain point of closeness. He was an expert faultfinder and could always see validly what in others was of concern.

His biggest pet peeve, however? “Neediness.” People were always too needy.

Turned out that there was a young part of him that had unmet needs, a part who had learned early on to turn away from those needs — to suppress tears, to “get alone” to find himself where there would be no ridicule.

Meeting this young part and helping the defender of this young part to relax both enabled him to embrace both his vulnerabilities and the vulnerabilities of others.

His relationships improved a lot and others remark now on how much more open, soft, he seems to be.

Relationship healing can happen.

It’s those bewildering feelings that keep coming up repeatedly that offer the clues as to what needs healing within you.

Often, what feels like intractable behavior is something covering over precious parts of ourselves with simple needs, yearnings, desires.

These places can be found, met, transformed.

And this can free you to be who you really are meant to be in relationships – to begin to have relationships that last longer, if you want them!

Feeling stuck in therapy? Change is on the horizon!

Recently, a client and I were musing together: “It’s so interesting, isn’t it? Being right on the verge of a breakthrough sometimes feels exactly like being stuck!”

And that’s the theme. When you feel stuck, it’s often because something within you is ready to move forward, to do something new. You’re tired of things being the way they have been. You’re ready for change.

That’s why feeling stuck in therapy can be a good thing. A really good thing!

But often, people feel, right before big change, like they can’t change. They don’t know how. They don’t know what’s next. Some people call this a “tipping point”: Things can’t stay as they’ve been, but they haven’t shifted to a natural new balance yet.

But other times, there’s genuinely something missing in the therapy. And how on earth do you tell the difference? How do you get unstuck?

Here are five tips for gaining more clarity about your stuckness.

1. Talk about it with your therapist!

Mention what you’re feeling. Notice the thoughts that go with the feeling of stuckness.

Work with the present moment. That means that, when you sit down with your therapist, let yourself notice what happens right then.

Do you start to tense up and get ready to tell lots of stories? Do you notice a vague sense of unease, or boredom? Do you notice that there’s something you’d really like from your therapist, but you can’t put your finger on it? Do you feel an impulse to be a “good” or “interesting” client?

Talk about that stuff — these realizations make for some of the richest sessions!

One of my clients calls this a focus on “form rather than content.” For her, it makes a real difference when we together shift our attention to how she’s speaking and how she’s feeling as she speaks, rather than focusing solely on the story.

How do we do this?

When a client tells me a story, I will listen to what they’re saying and acknowledge the story, and I’ll also remark on the telling of the story: “And as you talk about that, it looks like you’re on the edge of tears,” or, “Your body went very still right when you started talking about your ex,” or even, “I begin to feel angry on your behalf when you mention how he hurt you.”

You can do this for yourself, too, with practice! Start noticing what happens in you as you talk. And see what new directions that can lead you. Because really, all of you is right here in the present moment as you speak, and we can learn so much together by listening below the words – to that activation that keeps emerging, or the tears that seem to want to fall but can’t, or the anger that gets blocked, or the yearning in your eyes or the holding in your chest, or SO many things you and your counselor will find if you look at the moment together.

SO much is happening and working with any one of these present moment things can do a lot to help you to get unstuck.

2. Do something different!

Sometimes, the feeling of being stuck in your therapy is maintained by doing the same things over and over again.

That can include the little things: sitting in the same place, talking on the same topics, doing everything the same way. So, getting unstuck can be pretty simple, and you can get the momentum going again by doing most anything differently: sit somewhere else. Talk on different topics.

Do something, anything, differently!

3. Either go lighter or go deeper!

Sometimes people start to feel stuck in therapy when their feelings are becoming so intense that they’re feeling overwhelmed. And then, something inside of them starts wanting to put the brakes on the feelings, and that looks and feels like being stuck.

In fact, it can be a natural impulse to “come up for air,” and it can be very helpful to support this sense of wanting to lighten the talk for a bit.

Therapy doesn’t need to be all about hard stuff, and sometimes, it can be very helpful to spend a whole session focused on resources in your life, or things that you love to do, or the things that are working well for you, or on something you’re interested in.

You don’t want to do this week after week, perhaps, but talking about something lighter can give you a chance to connect with yourself and your counselor from a different vantage point, and it can give you a sense of relief that supports going deeper, but with more resources.

On the other hand, if all you’ve discussed recently is daily life stuff, or the same old stressor, or the same story, you might ask your therapist to get beneath the surface, and to talk more about your emotions, or beliefs you hold about yourself, or a feeling or pattern that comes up for you over and over again.

4. Ask your counselor what they think!

Maybe your therapist and you both feel ready for a change. Or you’ve both gotten into a sense of routine, and it can help you both to talk about how best to move things forward together.

You’ll learn something new about your therapist and about the quality of your collaboration together when you bring up your sense of stuckness. That is a good thing.

5. Maybe it’s time for a change.

Feeling stuck for a few weeks, or even for a month or two, can be the beginning of deep change, especially if you keep landing on the same difficult feeling, and you and your counselor continue to work with that. But if the feeling of stuckness is staying or deepening despite your hard work on it, it might be time for a bigger change.

Sometimes you might be in a therapy that was great for you a year ago, but no longer fits with where you are now. Part of how you can find this out is by discussing what’s happening with your counselor, and by seeing if things start to gain momentum. If they stay pretty much at a standstill, it might be time to say goodbye. When this move is done in the right time, the goodbye is a great chance to honor the work you’ve done with your therapist, and to have a solid goodbye done from a grounded place of knowing that you’re making a good decision for yourself. And that you’re empowered to do your next piece of healing in a new way. This is good news.

You can be surer that you’re making a solid decision by avoiding a hasty goodbye and really sitting with the feelings the prospect of goodbye elicits. This can lead to a deeply healing ending, or to a beginning into a deeper, richer direction with your same counselor.

Do you ever feel like you keep playing out the same old script…?

…having the same old relationships, or the same relationship patterns?

Have you married some variant of the same person over and over again, and do you consistently shrink yourself or fight in the same old ways?

In therapy, you may also notice some of that “old stuff” seeping in. You may feel yourself withdrawing from me the way you withdraw from others or find yourself talking lots and connecting little – or find yourself suppressing your own needs or feeling overwhelmed by them.

The beauty of a therapy that works well is that you get to bring those patterns with you.

And we both can have a real curiosity about your experience in the relationship here.

We may make new discoveries together. And we may get to find options beyond that script you’ve played out in relationships a million times.

Pat Ogden, author of “Trauma and the Body,” calls these scripts “procedural memory.” Your body and your mind are used to going through a sequence of steps in relationships — much like how your body and mind just “know” how to drive a car without thinking through each move, your body and your mind also instinctively respond in old ways in relationships.

In counseling, we can be curious about these “memories” you relive together — and we can find gentle and compassionate ways for you to interrupt those “old scripts.”

Here are some examples:

• Every time a particular client feels misunderstood, she starts to withdraw, to “go into her own world” and to think about leaving the relationship. She feels misunderstood in my office, starts to “zone out.”

  Something new happens when I ask her to take me with her, to help me to understand where the misunderstanding happened. I work with her with feeling her feet on the ground, being aware of her own experience, and with telling me where I “missed the boat.” We talk the misunderstanding over — and she feels herself come back to life. We both feel closer than we did before the misunderstanding — and her body and mind have also replaced an old script, as for a moment, she feels like her voice and her feelings matter, like she can share them instead of running away.

• Another client is used to talking…and talking…and talking. He often gets lost in his own words, talking faster and faster.
  I ask him if it would be okay to notice the speed of his thoughts, to notice his breathing, and to take a moment to just sit with what’s happening within him. As he and I make eye contact and breathe together, he feels a release of some emotion, and is able to feel more connected than he did when he was “just talking.” He’s replaced, just for a moment, that old script of hiding himself behind a wall of words.
• A woman shares an important piece of her history with me, and then starts to talk about something else. I ask her to let the words she just spoke sit with both of us, and I ask her to take in my response to the depth of what she’s just said. I may even ask her to repeat her words and let herself feel them.

  She realizes that she hasn’t felt safe to let herself share deeply with someone for some time, and that by letting herself register my response to her sharing, new possibilities emerge within her — for feeling the importance of her own words, for feeling that she can be heard. She’s let go, for a moment, of that old script of feeling like no one can understand her.

When clients can try, even for a moment, to play with a new way of being, of hearing, of speaking, of moving, they can start to identify their old scripts – and to learn ways to go outside their same old lines.
This builds the foundation for new types of relationships, new ways of sharing, new ways of being in the world.

No one should be confined by a script or two that they learned a long time ago.

We all have the potential to learn new lines, to discard scripts that no longer work for us, and to try out new ways of being. Sometimes, it just takes the right support in being mindful of your old scripts and trying out new ways of being.

The old script will always be there if you need it. But you can develop more options. And that’s the point – to have a choice about how we respond. To get to see what maybe wasn’t there before: Safety. Caring, kind people who want to hear us. The ability to make room for ourselves and room for others.

I love helping people to discover their old scripts and to find their authentic voice outside all those old feelings and those “old lines.”

If you’d like to talk about working together and you’d like some help to identify how your old scripts could be getting in the way of your current relationships, click here.

I’ll be delighted to support you in having a new experience.