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Many of the clients who come to see me are, in their social circles, the shoulder for others to cry on. The one people come to for help, to vent, for help problem-solving, for affirmation.

For people who have unmet needs for  connection that go a long time  back, they can wind up in a bind where they  both want connection and fear it. They struggle to take in nourishment, because they’ve learned it will go away. If you have some of these struggles, you may cycle between caretaking and clinging.

When a person is rejecting toward the depth of need you express, you may wind up in a self-fulfilling prophecy where you believe your needs are too much, so you suppress them. But then, someone comes along that makes you feel that yearning. You express it, they pull back, and it seems to confirm that feeling you had all along anyway: “See? No one cares about the real me. I best just pull back and be what others want.”

And of course you’d feel bitter — what the people you give to don’t see, and what maybe you don’t always see either, is the heartbreak that this kind of chronic giving and dissatisfaction comes out of.

It’s not just that you give to others. It’s that you take from yourself. It’s not just that you surmise other people’s feelings. It’s that you’ve given up on expressing (or even knowing) your own.

And it’s not just that you care for others: You may, deep down, feel that others cannot be depended upon to care about you if you’re anything other than attuned to them. You’re afraid to miss a cue from someone, afraid not to dial in the “person they seem to want.”

This strategy, coined by Lawrence Heller as the “Attunement Survival Style,” isn’t borne solely out of compassion. It’s borne also out of deprivation. It originates in a very small person who has cried for help, has voiced hunger, has asked for comfort — and has been rejected or ignored often enough to assume that *no one is coming to help.*

If you have this style, you limit your own needs — “I can make do with whatever’s available.”

You limit your awareness of your own needs – why be aware of a need if your deepest belief, borne from your youngest experiences, is that they won’t be met anyway?

You may have learned at this same young age that the people who were not available to give you the care you needed actually did seem to want something from you. We do what we need to do to maximize the love and care we can receive.

If, for whatever reason, your parents just weren’t able to meet your young needs and wants, they probably had unmet needs and overwhelm of their own. And whether they meant to or not, they leaned on you.

You learned that it was best not to express yourself. But that you had much to gain by learning to anticipate others and to give what they wanted.

As a grown-up, you have considerable capabilities. You know how to give. You know how to sense what others want. You know how to read a room. You appear to know how to regulate yourself — if people don’t recognize that this “regulation” is a heck of a lot less like relaxation than it looks like — and a heck of a lot closer to simply deflating or shrinking yourself to fit what appear to be the needs of the people around you.

How does this style show up in the counseling office?

If you are struggling with this style, you probably are pretty watchful for what your therapist might want. You’ve learned to find the need others have and meet it.

Of course, this is tricky if what your counselor is pulling for is authentic communication from you or for you to express emotions — because you’ve learned that that stuff doesn’t work! Clients who struggle with this may appear poised, attentive to the counselor.

Or they may appear a bit resigned — leaning toward sadness and a sense of resignation or futility. A bit of “eeyore” can show up in people with this need — “No one will care anyway; why even try.”

It’s a challenge to express or even feel a strong emotion. You sometimes come to counseling and are super eloquent about the needs of everyone in your life, putting apt, colorful words to the feelings of others. You can empathize all day long.

Then the counselor, hearing all this insight into others, asks you how *You* feel — and all of a sudden, it’s as if feelings are a foreign language. It’s easy to talk about others — almost impossible to talk about you.

Or you may feel a pull toward the counselor, a desire for them to find you. But then the most confounding thing happens when they do seem to “get you” — you either find yourself wanting an increasing amount from them — or you find that their care is just not “good enough.”

It’s not your fault. It’s not their fault. It’s a memo from your young self, a feeling memory, a warning: “Hey, don’t let this person get too close. Because they won’t stay.”

“Hey, you should get every drop of care you can, because it’s all going to come crashing down real soon.”

It’s a frustrating bind to find yourself in, wanting care, fearing care. Wanting attunement from someone else, fearing that it will go away.

You fear it will go away because, a long time ago, it did.

You may fear it going away too because it’s gone away so many times since. It’s gone away because people couldn’t meet the young place in you that had so many unmet needs.

So what do you do if you have this style? How do you learn to express your authentic wants when you’ve learned they won’t be honored?

How do you feel when you’ve learned it’s best not to?

How do you formulate hopes and dreams for counseling if you’ve learned that hoping and dreams just lead to more devastation when you weren’t ever helped to fulfill them before?

Well…..Building compassion and an awareness of the deep intelligence in both your pull-back and your “neediness” are important. Often, people are so deeply ashamed of their “needy” side — but if we can look at it as the authentic experience of a very young place in you, it will help to diminish the shame. If we can help you put words to all the desperation of that place, and to understand it for the feeling memory it is, it will help you differentiate that from the here and now.

Counseling for this style also involves finding your anger and your grief. It’s as if a part of you has been frozen in time, way back when you were too young to even put any of this into words. And that part has stayed stuck, still, inhibited — waiting for someone to show up and help. Despairing that any help will ever stay or be enough.

So we get to know that part. And we help you to find your grief, your anger. We help you to stop collapsing and resigning yourself to scraps. We help you to find what *you* want apart from what others want.

We help you to find you. And to take in the care from others that is available, and to give in ways that feel truly balanced — that don’t cost you your own life force.

This isn’t an easy process. But it’s deeply satisfying.

What I know about you, if you have this style, is that you have depths of joy and depths of passion you’ve never really seen before and that others don’t know.

And as we get to know you, a delightful person will emerge. You won’t feel like a shell or a robot trying to fulfill others. You’ll find what you want.

You might learn to disagree with your counselor, even, to express an opposing viewpoint.

You might find that you have anger you’ve never really realized, and that that anger is a cue to things that were or are unfair in your life. And this will let you advocate for yourself more powerfully.

You may discover even simple things — like what you like to eat, what kind of movement feels nourishing to you.

You might reclaim an old hobby.

You will most likely find much deeper friendships as you begin to share more of your own true passion and vitality.

And you will most likely have a whole lot more energy as you learn to stop shrinking away from your true self.

There is help for attunement survival style. It’s gentle. Kind. And it helps you to tune into yourself.

“It’s like I was invisible.”

“I could speak up, but I’m not sure it would matter. What would I say anyway?”

From the time we’re young, we ideally start to learn about our impact on the world. Think of the baby who throws their spoon on the floor from their high chair. Mommy picks it up — and the baby gleefully drops it again.

Or the toddler who puts some pressure on a block and….it falls! Cause/effect. More to the point, “I made a difference. My actions make a difference.”

Then there’s the emotional impact we make. We smile and someone coos at us. We cry and someone consoles us. We form a fist and someone names our feeling: “You’re feeling angry.” And they help us understand why. “You’re angry that Timmy took your toy away.”

Through millions of interactions like this, we learnt that our feelings are comprehensible and our behaviors make a difference.

But what if these interactions are short, or blaming, or confusing?

People who had inattentive caregiving get a feeling that their words and actions don’t matter. When you feel that nothing you do matters, when you know in your bones that your reactions are unlikely to get results, you fade out and stop feeling like you are a mover of your own world. You may flail about in life or in tasks, because the feeling that your actions can’t matter makes whether you complete any one strand or not irrelevant. Your thoughts, your words, your feelings, and your very essence are almost choked out of being. Instead of a sense of moving your world, your vitality gets locked within you.

Since your feelings and impulses are held in instead of being expressed out here, they get expressed inside you through a morass of suffering. Tension. Pain. Restlessness. Inexplicable worries. You live in a haze of feelings divorced from their cause, instincts divorced from a sense of agency to act. But the feelings don’t evaporate so much as they amorphize — you feel “awful” or “tired” without knowing why.

People who had scary caregiving get a sense that they have an impact but that fails to come as a relief. Imagine that a kid drops his spoon from his high chair. His mom, who last time responded with glee, now responds with indignation. “How could you do this to me?” Or an older kid speaks up with an idea and is slapped down: “No one asked you.” If this is our world, we become frightened of our place in it. It’s as if our actions create all kinds of unforeseen consequences, many of them bad. As kids, we just don’t have the perspective to look at these people who take us out of context and to say to ourselves, “Wow, I was really doing something good — and then these people got angry. They must be threatened somehow by my competence.” Or, “Hmm, I was feeling happy and then I got slapped down for something trivial. Perhaps I’m in a shaming environment because of some kinda fear they have of letting me become my true full self.”).

In the neglectful environment, a kid doesn’t think, “These people aren’t responding to my emotions or my behaviors. This is obviously an indicator that they’re limited in some ways.”

Kids can’t assimilate that information. They instead decide some very damaging things: “My happiness is a bad thing.”

“My anger is destructive and will push people away.”

“My words don’t matter.”

“What I do makes no difference.”

It doesn’t help that we’re also not trained to look for the why to how we feel or don’t feel. Our culture is one of surface explanations without any comprehensive look at root causes. We have diagnoses but no clarity. We can come to believe that our sense of shiftiness or pain or restlessness or exhaustion are the whole story — not a symptom of energy that got cut off somewhere. We will give you words for your robbed vitality, but we will not ask who robbed you or look at how you can reclaim your sense of self.

(Of course there are disorders that impact people’s physiology. Of course! This article isn’t about that. This article is about being given a diagnosis of “fatigue” without a look into the cause of the tension giving rise to it in the first place, whether that’s physiological or emotional or some combination. We’re trained to say, “I have chronic fatigue” as if that’s a cause when it may well be an effect: “I’ve had the vitality drained out of me.” It’s like diagnosing a car as “motionless” without checking to see if it’s out of gas or if something else is going on.)

Say that you got these ideas from the time you were young — these ideas that you don’t matter. That your feelings don’t make sense. That your anger itself is destructive, or that your tears garner withdrawal or scorn instead of the comfort you deserve.

Perhaps you find yourself in counseling and you’re that “motionless car.” You know you’re stuck. You know you feel “bad.” But you’ve lost the framework for the feelings. You come in with beliefs that it’s hopeless.

You also come in with beliefs about relationships, and this is a really big deal in counseling.

Because every time your therapist responds to you with the attuned response to what you are truly feeling and doing, you get a sense that you matter. That your feelings have a cause. That your behavior and your thoughts and feelings have an effect on you and on others.

But any time your therapist misses what you say or fails to note a shift in you or a reaction to what they say, they may accidentally play into this very old story you carry inside. This story that you don’t matter or that your feelings, the shifts in your behavior and energy, are not worth looking into.

It doesn’t matter how amazing the modality is that your therapist works with at this point. They can help you to expand within yourself, to breathe more deeply, to learn coping skills. But your sense of having an impact, of mattering, doesn’t shift. So you remain in hiding.

On the other hand, say your therapist just lights up when you walk into the room. Say that they look at you with curiosity, and when your eyes shift, their eyes take that shift in. They look at you with regard. And they treat your feelings as if they matter and as if they are being caused somehow in the here-and-now with them. They say, “You just pulled back there, and changed the subject pretty fast. Can we take a look at what happened just now to cause you to pull back here with me?”

Say your therapist responds with some level of real emotion to your interaction with them. They are moved by your words. They shift in response to how you are with them. They help you map out the cause and effect in a non-shaming way. They are helping you to restore a sense that you matter. And that another person can hold their own with them. You learn that it turns out that your vitality, your feelings, are not too much. They’re not invisible nor are they dangerous. You come to embody yourself in a new way because you know you matter.

Diana Fosha refers to this as “feeling felt”. Your therapist feels on your behalf and they feel your movement toward and away from them.

This helps restore your sense of cause/effect in a really hopeful energizing way.

Unfortunately, so many times, therapy unintentionally becomes a confirmation of some old story of our feelings and our actions not mattering.

Say that you’re talking with a therapist and they echo back everything you say. “I feel scared.”
“Yeah, you’re frightened.”

“Yeah, I guess I don’t know what to say here. Uh….”

“Yeah. You don’t know.”

You have learned nothing here! Your words aren’t being mapped to a real interaction happening right now in this moment.

They’re giving you nothing to work with.

Or say that you come in to your therapist and they have some cool modality and they’re positive their method works. They fit you into some kinda category, give you some kinda treatment, and you sit there letting them do this thing “to” you. They don’t note the waves of anger or withdrawal or feeling you show unless it fits into their idea. You learn to fit yourself to their modality. You do not learn that you matter and that a person’s actions are contingent on yours.

This even happens by accident. You get this sense that your words don’t matter, and you have a hard time forming goals for counseling. So your counselor quits asking you what you’d like to work with. They fail to address it that somehow, for some reason, you seem to wait for others around you to tell you what to do. This position in life robs you of a lot of opportunities. You don’t take initiative. But worry now with this therapist — for they have a flipchart! A protocol! A way of understanding you without you having to talk.

No matter how good their flipchart or their understanding is, your passivity isn’t looked at. You don’t learn how going helpless and small impairs relationshps. You don’t learn to understand that compliant behavior as a response to a world where you learned that to move was dangerous or ineffectual. You repeat the same pattern. People stuck in this mode will go to multiple life coaches, therapists, healers, nutritionists, self-help seminars — because they’re still the victim of the notion that their movement is ineffectual, that others must be hired to move “on” them rather than with them.

Good counseling will help you to get a sense of cause and effect. You’ll feel your actions mattering to your therapist. You’ll begin to notice the links within you between your emotions and your nervousness. The links between your impulses and your fatigue when you suddenly deflate or the link between your repressed feelings and your sudden outbursts when the feeling suddenly whoosh out.

They’ll help you know that your movements, your actions, your interactions, matter to them.

If you feel like you’re going around in circles in your life or you have feelings or do things that seem sourceless, you’re living in a less than fully realized life. Out of touch with yourself, your feelings don’t get to become words that can make an impact. Your passions don’t turn into projects that support a bigger vision. Your life is drifting by. You’re sitting on the sidelines, afraid to be disregarded or pushed down.

Good counseling can help you get a sense of you again. Good counseling can help you to see and feel that your feelings have causes and meaning. That what you say makes a difference. That what you do matters. That what others do and say matters to you. You begin to care how people treat you. You begin to treat yourself differently. Inexplicably “misery” becomes much clearer: I’m feeling angry because that person didn’t keep their word” or “I’m having an idea and I’m going to express it.”

You don’t have to keep going through different healers. You can if you want to. But if you find a sense of your impact in the world and a sense of the world’s impact of you and how to move within that, you won’t feel that constant need for “one more fix.” You’ll be living from who you are. You’ll be experiencing emotions that make sense and lead to actions — actions you take on your own behalf and on behalf of the world. Good therapy teaches us not that feelings lead to therapy — but helps us find how to transalte our feelings into actions.

This is content from a newsletter I sent out that I decided to make available here on my website too. I hope you enjoy!

Hi there!

Readers of my website have been giving me feedback, and I’ve been discovering which of my writings seem to sing to people most. Lucky for me, those are my writings about connections. Attachment. The tangles that happen. The beautiful hopes and yearnings we have for connection, and how we can also feel so much conflict, ambivalence, even rage, in the middle of those yearnings.

Lately, I’ve been learning on two different framework on working with these tangles. One of them focuses on tracking second-by-second changes, to notice what helps each client to feel connected, seen, heard, safe. We actively make sure that we feel together in our work, that you feel connected and not alone. One of the premises of this work is that we can work through most any pain, except when we feel all alone with it. So we work to undo aloneness, second by second. We work to help the client to find the deepest yearnings, how to gently work around anxieties, holding the fear without letting the fear have the final word…..And this work helps you to find your deepest truths. About yourself, about connection. About who you truly are and what you truly want.

The other training is an extension of a training that those of you who’ve worked with me found SO helpful: A somatic approach. The last training I took was about how to recognize and work through trauma as it may show up in your body and your life today. It’s offered clients a profound understanding of how to embrace your body, how to regulate yourself — recognizing the signs of triggering, finding ways to resource yourself, finding ways to find your center and to find calm and safety when those storms from the past infringe on your present.

The extension on that I’m taking now goes SO much deeper, and offers profound ways to recognize and work with struggles around identity (Who am I?) and connection (Is it safe to connect? Is it okay to be vulnerable? Can I get my needs met? Are needs even okay?!).

This work also helps us to identify those kinds of hurts that can come before we have words. We find ways to compassionately find those hurting places that sometimes need something more than “talking about it”. We work with ways for your grown-up and me to together find those parts — and offer them a new experience. One of protection, perhaps, or connection, or resonance, or arms reaching out to welcome them.

Or one of having someone else big enough and strong enough to help, to take charge, to organize the work at hand. So that it’s finally safe to rest and stop feeling that ever-present need to be “all together” and “all grown up” (Which is exhausting for those of us who started to take that role on when we were little!)

That dang pattern of self-reliance can be a big deal. Lots of us who help others a lot and have learned to attune to others have learned this self-reliance — and many of us know how to practically run our own therapy (been there, done that!)! The lovely thing about this training is it’s teaching those of us in it to see right through that — and to recognize that the way to intervene kindly is also to be firm, focused. It’s new for me, and gives me scope beyond that “warm fuzzy helper” vibe. It’s been so fun! Transformative for me, transformative for clients.

I’m also returning to school this Fall, which makes for some schedule changes. But for now, I do have openings! You can schedule with me right on my page online – I’m here for you!

I’ve been enjoying discussing with some of you how my work differs from “Mental health treatment” – and it’s pretty simple. There’s a clear agreement I make with you that we’ll work with helping you to feel at home in your body and in your relationships – more connected, more authentic, more you. And that I’m happy to support you in finding different help if you want or need something more along the lines of “diagnosis and treatment”.

Thanks so much to all of you who have been supportive, loudly (with your impassioned emails!) or quietly. I so appreciate you, and would love to hear from you about what you might like to see more content about.

I’ll be in touch!

Warmth and Excitement,

Michaela

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.

“Why do I always end relationships just when we’re getting close?”

“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.