Why Attunement is Crucial for Children (and Parents too)

As a trauma therapist, I hear some truly awful stories. Very sadly, some of my clients endured the worst kinds of childhoods imaginable – and, as adults, find day-to-day life a real struggle, because the wounds of their childhood are so hard to heal. When we hear the word ‘trauma’, these are the kinds of experiences we think about, but it’s important to understand that much milder, albeit highly painful experiences, also shape children’s personalities in surprisingly powerful ways.

I’m currently writing a book on healing childhood trauma (not due to be published until 2026 I’m afraid, but watch this space for details), so am thinking about these kinds of problems non-stop. What is it that causes childhood trauma? Why are some kids profoundly affected by seemingly quite mild problems in the family? How much of that is nature and how much nurture – meaning, are these vulnerabilities primarily genetic, because of the parenting we receive, or a mixture of the two?

There is obviously a lot to talk about here and the answers to these questions are nuanced and complex – that’s why I’m writing a book about it! But I would like to focus on one key idea for this post, which is the concept of attunement. This refers to the ability of your caregivers to attune to you, from birth onwards. The focus here is often on the mother-baby relationship, because our mother is often our primary caregiver, especially in our early years (if someone else fulfilled this role for you, like a father, older sibling, grandparent or adoptive parent, please adapt the language to fit your experience).

How secure attachment forms

Let’s bring in a related concept, which is that of attachment. Ideally, your attachment bond with your mother would have been secure, helping you form a secure attachment style for the rest of your life. Research consistently shows that around 50 per cent of children are lucky enough to experience this, while the other 50 per cent normally have either an avoidant or anxious attachment style. If you were one of the lucky ones who experienced secure attachment, being in your mother’s arms would have felt like the safest, most delicious place in the world. (There’s a reason researchers call this state attachment bliss, because it feels wonderful for both the little boy or girl and their attachment figure).

She would have fed you, kept you clean and dry, comforted you when you cried and entertained you when you were bored. This is how secure attachment forms, because you would have felt warm, happy and deeply connected to her, with an in-your-bones kind of trust and safety. And attunement is the skill your mother would have needed for that secure attachment to form.

That would have meant attuning to you, on a moment-by-moment basis, to figure out what you needed. Especially in your pre-verbal years, this would have been tricky, because of course you couldn’t let her know whether you were too hot/cold, hungry, wet, bored, needed a nap, scared of the dog, dazzled by those bright lights, overstimulated from too much play, mad at your brother for stealing your favourite toy, or whatever else may have been going on in your little mind and body. As any parents out there know, learning to interpret what your baby’s noises, movements, body posture and facial expression means is no easy task!

But good-enough mums – and dads too, of course – are able to attune to their baby, learning their language before they have the power to express it with words. And when your caregivers were not able to attune in this way, I’m afraid it can be subtly but profoundly hurtful and cause lifelong problems. I call it a subtle ‘missing’, when your mother doesn’t really listen to you, is always a bit distracted or simply lacks this crucial parenting skill, probably because she never received it from her mother when she was little.

The impact of feeling unseen

Think about that: not feeling seen, heard, understood or validated over and over again, thousands of times throughout your childhood and adolescence, into your young adulthood and probably right up to this moment. One of my mentors called this ‘the air we breathe’ as children – not something bad that only happened rarely, but a lack of warmth, kindness, care or attention, happening all the time in your family.

So if you now struggle with low confidence or self-esteem, have negative self-beliefs about not being good enough, likeable or lovable, find intimate relationships baffling and unsatisfying, or feel like there’s a big hole in your chest that can never be filled, no matter how much love you get as an adult, this subtle but repetitive missing could be the reason.

If you are struggling, you might find my Insight Timer practice, Taking in the Good: IFS Meditation, helpful. This guided imagery practice will help you take in positive new feelings and nourishing beliefs that will help ease that feeling of not being enough, in some way. Repeated exercises like this, perhaps alongside the help of a skilled therapist, will start to undo the years of misattunement you experienced as a child, and so help you feel more confident and build a sense of inner peace, warmth and self-compassion, which you so deserve.

Love,

Dan ❤️

What Can We Learn from Autumn? That Life is Beautiful, But Impermanent

Image by Jeremy Thomas

What’s your favourite season? They all have their pleasures and joys, but for me it’s a toss-up between spring and autumn. Spring is hard to beat, especially after a long, dark winter. The vibrancy and effervescence of life bursting forth as the first green shoots appear, the frothy joy of blossom, that delicious day when your winter coats get banished to the back of your wardrobe. Who doesn’t love spring?

But autumn is surely close behind. The colours – the colours! Even in my decidedly urban slice of north London (well, for now anyway) the roads are lined with trees clothed in glorious shades of yellows, oranges and reds. It’s just so lovely and keeps cycling through new palettes daily as the leaves morph from luscious green to lifeless brown, before drifting languidly to the pavement below.

As I often write in these posts, we have a great deal to learn from the man we call the Buddha, who lived in northern India 2,500 years ago. His teachings, wisdom and guidance on how to live a happy, meaningful life remain as fresh and true today as they did millennia ago. One of his core ideas was that of impermanence: that everything, including us, is in a state of constant flux and change. Like those beautiful leaves, nothing stays the same, however much we might want it to.

We are all connected

Another of the Buddha’s ‘three marks of existence’ is that of interconnectedness. As with all the Buddha’s teachings, this concept is a bit complicated and it’s easy to get lost down internet rabbit holes if you try to research it! What I think he meant is that all life is interdependent, none of us existing in isolation. Those trees on my street can only exist because the water cycle creates clouds and then rain, because there is carbon dioxide in the atmosphere plants can breathe in (luckily for us, allowing them to breathe out oxygen), because there is just the right amount of sunlight, and so on.

Like the trees, we too are interdependent – on all living beings, but especially other humans. One of the sad things about our angry, polarised times is the idea that there is an ‘us’ and ‘them’, members of our tribe to be welcomed and cherished, while outsiders should be shunned and kept at bay. In reality, we are all ‘us’. You, beloved reader, are part of my family – if we traced our family trees back far enough we would reach a common ancestor, from whom we both descend.

On a more intimate level, we are interconnected with those in our immediate families, our colleagues and neighbours. Humans are tribal animals and we do well in loving, supportive connection with a web of other humans. This is one reason loneliness is so painful for us, because we are not designed by evolution to live alone. That’s why calm, loving people help soothe your nervous system, because your brain, nervous system, hormonal system and every other part of your body is designed for attachment, connection, relationship. Buddhists knew this long before Western psychologists discovered the idea that human-to-human attachment is key. (Of course, the idea of attachment is a tricky one in Buddhist theory, but that’s for another post).

Pain is inevitable, suffering is not

The third fundamental aspect of existence, according to the Buddha, was that of dukkha. This has many translations, but among the most widely accepted are ‘stressful’ or ‘unsatisfying’. Meaning, life is inherently painful and, unfortunately, we can’t escape that hard truth. I love autumn and don’t mind winter overly much, but many people I know just hate it. They struggle with seasonal affective disorder, their mood dipping with the temperature and light levels. For these folks autumn brings a tinge of dukkha, because it leads inevitably to winter, and so months of struggle before spring ushers light and hope back into their lives.

Although I have great compassion for anyone who struggles in this way, I do think it’s an example of the Buddha’s teaching about how humans turn inevitable pain into avoidable suffering. Some aspects of winter – cold, dark days; wild, destructive storms; leaden grey skies – are certainly painful. But suffering comes when we think ‘I just cannot abide winter – I wish it were spring!’ on 1st November. Thinking this way every day for months will of course lead to low mood, unhappiness and frustration, which could also be called suffering.

Instead, it’s far more helpful to remember that change is inevitable and a normal part of life. We are all connected, in countless magical webs of life, to the trees, each other and all living systems on Earth. And that pain – illness, ageing, loss, many things not being as we wish them to be – is also part of life. When we resist this, fight against it or fervently wish it was not so, it becomes suffering. Life is hard enough already without doing that to ourselves!

The practice

You might find my Mountain Meditation helpful, as a practice to experientially explore some of these Buddhist concepts. I adapted it from the brilliant Jon Kabat-Zinn’s guided meditation and it’s one of my most popular tracks on Insight Timer. A deep bow to him, for being at the forefront of the mindfulness revolution for decades – and helping millions of people experience the transformative power of mindfulness.

I hope it helps – and that you enjoy this glorious, ever-changing season as much as I do.

Love,

Dan ❤️

How to Resolve Painful Inner Conflict

Image by Jonathan Meyer

Have you ever felt like there is a battle raging inside? Feeling a powerful urge to do something, while an equal but opposite force urges you not to? This battle is often fiercest when we are trying to give something up, like comfort-eating food we know is not good for us, or trying to quit smoking. One force inside says, ‘Eat the cake!’ or ‘Just have one cigarette, you know you want to. You can always quit tomorrow.’

But the opposing force responds, ‘Don’t be an idiot! You know how much you want to lose weight before your wedding,’ or ‘Are you kidding me? You watched your grandpa die of lung cancer. How could you even think about smoking again?’

And this internal battle plays out, over and over. Sometimes one side wins, sometimes the other. And it’s so frustrating, isn’t it? Whatever you do, it can feel like you’re at the mercy of forces more powerful than yourself. Eat the cake, don’t eat the cake. Just have one cigarette, don’t have a cigarette. And on it goes, until you’re exhausted from all the fighting.

When parts get polarised

Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy has a name for this battle – it’s called a ‘polarisation’. This means that two parts (or sometimes teams of parts) get polarised inside, trying to protect you with completely opposing strategies. Let’s look at this through the lens of someone trying to drink moderately, after years of problematic drinking.

Imagine you have, finally, taken steps to reduce your drinking. Your partner and family have been worried about you for years, but you resisted their entreaties to cut back, insisting you didn’t have a problem and drinking helped you blow off steam from your highly stressful job. Your doctor has also started expressing concern, after tests showed early signs of liver damage. After years of denial, you must face the truth: your drinking has become a real problem and if you don’t cut back, your relationships and health will suffer.

You go out for dinner with a friend on one of your newly designated sober days. Unfortunately, he is one of your old drinking buddies and thinks everyone’s making a big fuss about nothing. He orders a bottle of your favourite wine and, before you can stop him, pours you a large glass. ‘Cheers!’ he says with a mischievous glint in his eye, raising his glass for a toast. And the internal battle that has been raging for months starts up again.

Inside you hear two voices, one saying ‘Go on, what’s the harm? You know you’ll love it. And think about how stressed you’ve been all day. Your boss was a nightmare and you felt like you were having a panic attack in that big meeting. One glass will really take the edge off.’ With this siren song comes a powerful, visceral urge to pick up the glass and take a big gulp.

But another voice stops you. ‘What the hell are you thinking?’ it says in a worried, urgent tone. ‘You know what the doctor said – keep drinking and you’ll end up with cirrhosis. Your wife will leave you and you’ll lose everything. And you’ll feel so ashamed after you drink it, won’t you? Like you’ve failed, yet again.’

See the polarisation? One protective part, which is called a Firefighter in IFS, wants you to drink the wine to numb out all the stress and anxiety of your day. The other protector, called a Manager, has the exact opposite strategy for avoiding painful feelings like embarrassment and shame. The irony is that both parts have the same goal – avoiding painful feelings – but try to achieve that goal using diametrically opposing strategies.

Who are they protecting?

Imagine an upside-down triangle, with these warring parts at the top two corners, pulling in opposite directions. And at the base of that triangle is another part – the one they are trying to protect. This is almost always a young, hurt little kid who is feeling all the painful feelings above: stress, anxiety and overwhelm about your job and potentially embarrassment and shame about drinking when you swore not to.

So this is the part who needs help. Sadly though, as long as we’re laser-focused on the protectors, we lose sight of the only strategy that will actually work, and end this war – identifying, connecting with and healing the hurt young part. There are many routes to this inner-child healing, but my favourite is following a number of ‘healing steps’ in IFS. After we heal this young part, we go back to the protectors and see if they are willing to give up their extreme roles – usually they are, which is great.

Next time you’re struggling this way, especially in an ‘addictive process’ involving the compulsive use of some substance or activity, think about the upside-down triangle. Remember there are at least three parts involved in the process, even if you can only see one. And remember that, at the root of your problems is a small, scared, upset or lonely child, who just needs comfort, love and a big hug.

If you would like to start working on any polarisations in your inner system, try my Fire Drill meditation. This is a highly effective way to approach one of these polarised parts with curiosity and compassion, rather than frustration and hostility. You can listen now, for free, by clicking on the button below.

I hope it helps – and sending you warm thoughts if you are struggling right now, for any reason.

Love,

Dan ❤️

Vote for Hope. Vote for Kindness. Vote for Compassion

This is a post about how to save democracy. It is also a post about kindness and compassion. And about how to create a better world.

We live in challenging times, as humanity faces an unprecedented array of problems. Biggest among these is the climate crisis, which makes all other problems we face pale into insignificance. If we don’t stop burning fossil fuels and treating the natural world like a resource to burn through, we are in big trouble. Linked to the global impact of climate change are problems like mass migration, rampant inequality, racism and other forms of ‘bad othering’, in which we look for simple solutions to complex problems, blaming groups of people we don’t like for issues that have nothing to do with them.

And all of these problems cause trauma, individually, societally and systemically. This is one of the many reasons I love internal family systems as a model, because it directly engages with these societal problems, aiming to heal not only individuals but, bit by bit, all of humanity. This may sound overly ambitious, but I passionately believe it to be both possible and essential. The rise in populist parties around the world is driven by fear, which is then exploited by unscrupulous politicians. If we can help more people – and their frightened parts – become less scared, more loving and accepting, we can fix our broken politics too.

Vote for humanity

That’s why I am urging you to vote in the general election wherever you live. If you’re in France, please vote on Sunday to keep the far-right out of power. For those of us in the UK, this Thursday I would encourage you to vote Labour, or for the progressive candidate best placed to win where you live. If you’re in the US, choose the Democrats come November (and yes, that may mean Joe Biden, with his many faults and frailties).

I am passionate about politics, because to me there is no separation between mental health and trauma, and wider social issues – they are completely intertwined. I was raised by parents who dedicated their lives to social justice, feminism, climate activism and improving the lives of those who were suffering. I have always followed their lead and done all I could to advocate for politics of love, kindness, fairness and justice. That said, I have complete respect for those who disagree with me and choose to vote differently – that’s what democracy is all about, after all, which is why it’s so precious.

But I think most people reading this would like a kinder, fairer, more compassionate world. One in which everyone had the chance to live in peace, to feed and house their family, for their children to be happy and safe. A world in which we cherished and lived in harmony with the natural world. And one in which we could co-exist peacefully, respectfully, tolerating our differences, not hating any person or group because they are ‘them’ and we only care for ‘us’. There is no them and us, just billions of humans who, as the Dalai Lama would say, all want to be happy and do not want to suffer.

Vote for a better world

I know that no political party is perfect. Certainly none of the ones I am advocating in this post. Our leaders are flawed, imperfect human beings – just like us. So I would also urge you to choose a good-enough party and good-enough leader. Remember your vote is so precious, hard-won by our ancestors who fought and died to protect freedom and democracy. Squandering that right is a disservice to those brave souls.

So please vote this week, in November or whenever your country’s elections are held. Vote for love. Vote for peace. Vote for a better world. And if you’re not happy with the choices your leaders make on your behalf, shout loud and clear so they can hear you and change direction. But opting out of voting is not the answer, because that lets the forces of darkness win. They are gathering strength around the world right now so we all need to do everything we can – peacefully – and vote, donate, sign petitions, organise and march to protect our freedom and human rights.

Thank you for reading – and for your support, as ever. It means the world to me.

Love,

Dan ❤️

How is Trauma Passed Down Through Generations?

Image by Markus Spiske

As someone who specialises in helping people with childhood trauma, I have long told my clients that trauma gets passed down from generation to generation. This always made sense to me, when I heard someone’s story about the trauma or neglect they experienced in childhood, and the painful experiences of one or both of their parents, their grandparents, and so on. The pain clearly cascaded from one generation to the next.

Heartbreakingly, we can see this trauma being created before our eyes in war zones around the world, as well as countless angry, chaotic, impoverished, substance-abusing, harsh, cold or otherwise unhappy families all around us. As much as humans can be kind, loving, altruistic and compassionate, we can also treat each other with great cruelty. Sadly, these two forces – light and dark – do constant battle in our minds and souls. Too often the dark side wins.

But it remained a mystery to me to understand exactly how trauma moved between generations, until I read a brilliant book by Mark Wolynn recently – It Didn’t Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle. Wolynn is a family therapist and explains the various mechanisms through which trauma passes along a human chain, from parent to child, through the ages.

Some of these mechanisms are common sense – for example, if your father had a terrible childhood and grew up to numb his pain with alcohol, his drinking will almost certainly inflict suffering on his own family, especially his children. He might come home from the bar in a drunken rage, being violent to his wife and children, smashing up the living room before passing out in a stupor. Clearly, his traumatic childhood shaped the man he became, who then inflicted suffering on his poor, traumatised wife and kids.

The genetic inheritance of traumA

Wolynn also explains the way trauma gets expressed through your parents’ genes, which is somewhat mindblowing but also makes sense if you think about it. Let’s say your mother grew up in a high-stress, high-conflict family environment. Her bloodstream would have been awash with stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline, her fight-flight-freeze response would have been triggered on a daily, if not hourly basis, her brain and nervous system would have been dysregulated and on high alert for danger, all the time. Then she grew up, traumatised child becoming a traumatised adult, got pregnant and passed her genes (as well as your father’s) on to you, as you grew from a collection of cells into a baby in her womb.

In evolutionary terms, to optimise your survival your gene expression (which of those inherited genes were switched on and off) would have prepared you for a stressful, hostile world. It’s like you were born ready to survive, prepared for a dangerous environment, not a calm, placid, happy one. And that is how trauma gets handed down genetically, because it shapes us to be hypervigilant, on alert, pre-stressed before we even encounter anything stressful. Your genes created a little human born ready for battle, not peace.

You can break the chain

Something I also tell my clients is that, although their trauma was passed down a long chain of ancestors, they have the power to break that chain. And you do too. Because if you get help from a skilled trauma therapist, you can heal the wounds of your childhood trauma, so you choose not to pass them on to your children and grandchildren. This is vitally important, because we can help the forces of light in our world flourish, bringing an end to senseless war, violence and cruelty, by healing the world’s trauma – starting with our own.

Like a ripple in a pond, your healing profoundly shapes your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and on through the generations, forging a chain of healing, not harm. We live in a time of such enormous challenges – escalating war, rampant inequality, climate change and more – that it’s our responsibility to do everything we can to promote peace, harmony and flourishing for every human on this planet.

Let’s all break that chain, starting today.

Love,

Dan ❤️

What Happens to Your Body When You Repress Emotions?

Image by Kira auf der Heide

I have never understood Western medicine’s separation of mind and body, as if they are two distinct entities. How can this make sense? Your mind is generated by your brain, an organ in your body. Your moods and emotions are regulated through the production of hormones. And you feel those emotions, where? In your body, usually in your chest and gut but also in the flushing of your skin, tensing of muscles or clenching of your jaw. In countless ways, both large and small, your mind and body are intertwined. In fact, it’s more helpful to think of mind-body symptoms and experiences, combining rather than artificially separating them.

Your mind, brain, nervous system, hormonal system, organs, musculoskeletal and many other systems all work together, every second of your life, to help you think, speak, move, digest food, sleep, breathe and countless other things beyond your conscious awareness. So you are a system, or rather a system of systems. All, ideally, working as one.

This helps explain the impact of your thoughts and emotions on your body, something which is explained with customary skill and clarity by Dr Gabor Maté, in his seminal book When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress. I am currently re-reading this book and finding it gripping, because Dr Maté makes such a strong case for the impact of both chronic stress and emotional repression on the body.

Why we repress emotion

I have explored the impact of chronic stress in numerous recent posts, so today let’s focus on the all-too-common problem of emotional repression. As with so many of the problems we experience as adults, this repression usually begins in childhood – and often as the result of trauma. If you’re told, again and again, that you are too emotional, too sensitive, naughty, or difficult when you get sad, scared, angry or hurt, over time you will learn not to show those emotions, especially to the person who is shaming and criticising you for having them. At the same time you might be praised and complimented for being rational, grown up, nice, sweet or caring, as long as you maintain a sunny, compliant, smiling disposition.

So you learn to swallow your emotions, bit by bit. For many of my clients the most common emotion to be repressed in this way is anger, which was deemed too much, too intense, and generally unwelcome in their family of origin. Over time, this emotional repression also serves to repress other systems in the body, especially your immune system (remember that these systems are interlinked – make changes in one and you inevitably affect the others). So your immune system becomes compromised, leading to a whole host of ailments, from vulnerability to viruses and infections, to skin complaints like eczema, migraines, digestive issues like IBS or acid reflux, and more serious autoimmune diseases such as MS, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

It’s important to be clear that, if you are suffering with any of these ailments or diseases, it’s not in any way your fault. I have a number of them myself, so I’m not blaming anyone – including myself – for their struggles with physical health. Also important is that there are a whole host of other reasons we become ill, from genetic inheritance to our diet, sleep, smoking, alcohol consumption, toxic chemicals in the air we breathe and water we drink. It’s just helpful to understand that chronic stress in general, and emotional repression in particular, clearly have an impact on your physical wellbeing and mine – so we should do all we can to address these problems.

The practice

Because so many of my clients struggle with their emotions, in a whole host of ways, I created this practice to explain, in a step-by-step way, the optimal way we should feel, process and release our emotions. It’s called The Four Fs and you can listen to my talk and practice in my Insight Timer collection.

Many clients have told me they found it useful in understanding how they were supposed to feel emotions, how to notice them in their body, release them and then find comfort, for example with a soothing hug. I hope you find it helpful too – and do check out Dr Maté’s book. He is a remarkable teacher, so if you haven’t soaked up his wisdom yet, I strongly recommend that you do.

Love ❤️

Dan

Should You Quit Drinking for Your Mental Health?

Image by Pesce Huang

Giving up drinking was a slow, organic process for me. I had been drinking increasingly moderately for over a decade, mostly sober with a few glasses of wine at the weekend. But I increasingly felt that my body had just had enough. And the turning point came at a friend’s party, when I was still getting over a bout of Covid. I drank half a glass of prosecco and it tasted weird. I felt weird. And everything in me just said, ‘No!’

I literally felt like I was drinking poison – which, of course, I was. Research increasingly shows that any amount of alcohol, however small, is detrimental to your health. This all sounds a bit dramatic, but it just felt like an epiphany. I knew I had to make a change. At first I thought I would give it a month and see how I felt. ‘Never say never – I might have the odd drink,’ I would say, or ‘I’m just giving it up for a while and let’s see how that goes.’

But as time went on I realised that I was done. Enough. And that this was part of my spiritual journey, wanting to be calm, clear and mindful all the time. I try to live my life according to the five Buddhist precepts, one of which says, essentially, don’t drink or take drugs. And in recent years I have found that, even after one glass of wine, I just didn’t feel quite like me. I said things that felt a bit off, or clunky, or made jokes that didn’t land. And the next day I would wince at the memory, wishing I hadn’t said/done the things I had.

The rock ‘n’ roll years

A little context would be helpful. From the age of 17 I was pretty hedonistic. I grew up in north London and everyone I knew drank, partied and had a bit too much fun. And I kept being hedonistic for decades, sometimes really struggling with my drinking/excessive partying with friends, especially after traumatic events like bereavements and divorce. It was only when I retrained as a therapist, started meditating daily and met my lovely wife, Laura, that I was able put those hedonistic years (what I call the ‘rock ‘n’ roll years’) behind me.

And, although I now see all that madness through the lens of internal family systems – that the parts who drank and partied were just trying to numb my pain the only way they knew how – I still feel a deep sense of regret, even shame about it. Even though I managed to reduce my drinking to normal, moderate, middle-aged levels, something in me knew I just needed to quit.

Getting sober at 56 feels like an act of deep self-compassion. It’s been three months now and I feel great. I love being clear and fresh all the time, especially in the morning. I no longer berate myself for silly comments I made the night before. It just feels… calm. And right. I only wish I had given up sooner.

Should you quit too?

It’s important that I say here, I’m not putting pressure on anyone else to quit the booze. It’s a personal decision and we all have a different relationship with alcohol. You may drink moderately, enjoy a glass of wine with dinner sometimes, and that’s totally fine. Enjoy that Rioja!

But for people like me – with a history of childhood trauma and decades of working on my mental health – I do think sobriety is a powerful, healing choice. At 56 I’m just done with beating myself up. I have engaged in more than enough of that for one lifetime! My Critic can take a well-deserved rest too.

I still have parts which are very addictive, so have a compulsive relationship with other things – coffee, sugar, work, tech. I’m working on those, but I reckon one thing at a time. Let me bed in this newfound sober lifestyle first, because although it’s mostly easy, there are definitely wobbles and moments when it feels a bit tough. I’m off to Barcelona this weekend, which was always party central back in those crazy years, so let’s see how I manage that! I’m sure it will be fine, but it’s amazing how much context matters – being with the people you used to party with, or going to places that have somewhat hazy/regret-filled memories. It will be good to have fun and come back with brand-new, entirely clear, positive memories to replace them.

If you do struggle with addiction, to alcohol or anything else, I strongly recommend the IFS approach to treatment. It’s warm, kind and accepting – as well as offering a revolutionary way of thinking about and managing addiction of all kinds. My colleague and dear friend Claire van den Bosch is a brilliant therapist, thinker and teacher, as well as being a leading expert in this area, so do check out her site at www.atimetoheal.london

And whatever path you choose in healing your addictive processes, as they are called in IFS, I wish you love and strength on your journey,

Dan ❤️

What is the Point of Anxiety?

Image by Francesco

If you struggle with high levels of anxiety you may, understandably, wish you could never feel anxious again. If there was a big switch marked ‘Anxiety’, you would probably flick it to the OFF position and hope it stayed that way for the rest of your life. And no wonder – anxiety is a horrible feeling, especially when you experience it intensely and on a regular basis. No-one likes feeling anxious.

But when I am helping my clients with chronic anxiety, one of the first things I do is explain why humans experience anxiety, the function of this uncomfortable emotion both in terms of evolution and neurology – how it shows up in your nervous system, including your brain. The first thing to understand about anxiety is that it’s supposed to feel uncomfortable. That’s so you can’t just ignore it and carry on with your day.

To understand this properly, let’s jump into a time machine and journey back 10,000 years, to meet one of your ancestors living on the African savannah. She would be living with a small tribe of hunter-gatherers, in a village surrounded by a fence constructed from the spikiest branches they could find. Why? Because outside that fence would be very large, very hungry animals who wanted to eat them.

Anxiety is an alarm signal

Let’s say your ancestor left the village with two other women to forage for berries, roots, plants and whatever they could find to feed their families that day. As she walked across the savannah, she noticed the grass to her left start rustling. And she froze, as the threat system in her brain first detected the threat and then – in split seconds – decide how to respond. Thinking it might be one of the lions that often hunted near this spot, her brain cycled through the options of fight, flee or freeze and decided fleeing was her best chance of survival.

So her amygdala – a small structure in the brain whose primary job is mobilising the rest of the brain and body to deal with threats – gave her a massive jolt of anxiety to signal, Run! At the same time, the amygdala engaged with other parts of her brain to give your ancestor a shot of adrenaline and cortisol, quicken her breathing and heart rate to pump oxygenated blood to the major muscles in her arms and legs. And she ran, fast, until the potentially-a-lion threat was far behind her.

And this is what anxiety is for – to tell you that:

1. There is a threat.

2. And you should do something about it, urgently.

For your ancestor, this whole mind-body process might just have saved her life. And even in our 21st-century world, which is far safer than the one she lived in, anxiety will probably have saved your life, or the life of a loved one. This is why we should never try to get rid of anxiety completely, even if we could, because it can quite literally be a life-saver.

Calming your nervous system is key

I hope that gives you some idea of why you feel so anxious – and why that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The problem is, for most of us, our anxiety is not triggered by lions in the grass, but by a nasty email from your boss, warning letter from the bank or critical comment from a family member. These are all threatening, hence the spike of anxiety they trigger, but not in the life-or-death way those rather primitive parts of your brain are designed to save you from.

So rather than trying to shut down your anxiety, or get rid of it, the key is first learning to accept this normal, healthy and in fact vital emotion. Then finding tools and techniques to bring your dysregulated nervous system back into balance, calming, soothing and reassuring parts of your brain like the amygdala that are yelling ‘lion!’ when there is none.

If you are really struggling with your anxiety, I would encourage you to find a skilled therapist to help heal whatever wounds from your past are making you feel so anxious right now. And this therapy, as well as any other healing tools you employ, should focus on helping calm and soothe your overheated nervous system. You can do that right now, using this Compassionate Breathing technique I recently blogged about.

I would also recommend anything that feels calming or soothing for you, like self-help books and podcasts from therapists/other healers you trust, yoga, tai chi, hugs from your beloved pet/partner/kids/close friends or family members, relaxing massage or soothing music/TV shows/movies. Really anything that helps you feel calmer, safer and more at peace will be good for your anxious brain. Over time, this will reduce the flow of stress hormones like cortisol into your bloodstream, while increasing pleasurable, calming hormones like oxytocin and endorphins.

If you would like to know more about anxiety and how to manage it you may also find my latest Insight Timer course, Easing Worry & Anxiety with Internal Family Systems, helpful – if so, just click the button below to find out more.

And my Insight Timer collection has a wide range of meditations, breathwork techniques, guided imagery, sleep stories and much more to help with problems like stress, anxiety and depression.

I hope that helps – sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

Feeling Anxious or Stressed? My Colour Breathing Practice Will Help

Colour Breathing is a highly effective technique to help when you’re feeling stressed, anxious, upset, angry or any other negative emotion. In this short video, I guide you through the practice, which will help you feel calmer, more relaxed and at peace. Used daily, Colour Breathing will help calm your mind, body and nervous system.

I hope that helps – for more techniques like this, including breathwork, self-compassion, IFS and mindfulness techniques, visit my Insight Timer collection by clicking on the button below.

Love ❤️

Dan

Announcing My New Course: Easing Worry & Anxiety with Internal Family Systems

Image by Giulia Bertelli

I am pleased to announce the launch of my second Premium Audio Course for Insight Timer – Easing Worry & Anxiety with Internal Family Systems. If you sign up to this six-day course today you will learn why you feel so anxious, starting with the evolutionary and neurological roots of anxiety, explaining why it’s a crucial emotion for us all to feel, because it alerts us to threats and helps us react to them, quickly if need be.

Understanding why you feel so anxious is a key step in learning to accept it, because anxiety is something we all feel and is an important alarm signal when things need our attention. And then helping you ease it over time – this course will help you start to feel calmer, safer, and more at peace, step by step.

Over the six days you will also learn about internal family systems therapy, which is one of the fastest growing and most popular models of therapy in the world right now. As an Internal Family Systems Therapist, I use this warm, compassionate, and highly effective treatment approach with my clients and in my teaching, because it offers a revolutionary way of understanding problems like chronic anxiety.

Meeting your young, anxious part

You will learn that this anxiety comes from an anxious young part of you, holding painful thoughts, feelings, and memories of difficult experiences in your childhood. To ease your anxiety, you need to learn how to connect with, understand and soothe this anxious little boy or girl inside.

I will also teach you that worry comes from another part of you, called the Worrier. Again, you will learn how to accept and even value this protective part, because it’s just trying to help, even if the way it does so can be stressful and exhausting at times.

I hope you join me on this transformative six-day journey, which includes theories and techniques drawn from my many years of helping clients better manage their anxiety. As well as trauma-informed teaching about the mind-body source of problematic anxiety, I will lead you through powerful calming techniques including breathwork and guided-imagery exercises, drawn from IFS and other trauma-informed therapy models.

The course is free if you become a Member Plus Supporter. This costs just $60 for 12 months of high-quality content like this on the Insight Timer app from me and thousands of other leading teachers. ⁠

Try it now by visiting my Insight Timer collection or clicking on the button below. ⁠

I hope you find it insightful and healing. ⁠

Love ❤️⁠

Dan

Feeling Stressed? My Compassionate Breathing Practice Will Help

Here is a video of my Compassionate Breathing practice. You can use this any time you're feeling stressed, anxious, upset, agitated or if you're dealing with any kind of difficult emotion.

I hope you find it helpful – you will find this practice, as well as many other breathing techniques, mindfulness, self-compassion and IFS meditations, as well as guided-imagery techniques, in my Insight Timer collection: insighttimer.com/danrobertstherapy

Love ❤️

Dan

Try this Powerful Exercise to Manage Difficult People in Your Life

Image by Nik

One of the frustrating aspects of being human can be dealing with other humans. Not the nice, kind, reasonable ones. But the annoying, rude, disrespectful ones – I’m sure you have a few of those in your life. And managing these tricky customers is not easy, especially if they are partners, family members, close friends or colleagues. If someone says or does something hurtful or annoying, you may respond in all sorts of unhelpful ways, like firing off an angry message, giving them the silent treatment, people-pleasing or suppressing your own needs, desires and opinions to keep the peace.

Viewed through the parts-based lens of internal family systems therapy, we can take a more compassionate view, as everyone (including me!) has tricky protective parts, who might get angry, judgemental or even hostile to protect your younger, more vulnerable parts from being hurt. This may be especially important for you if you were harshly criticised, bullied or shamed as a child – that’s when those protectors came online for you and why they will fire up with great speed and ferocity if they sense something similar happening to you now.

So when you are in conflict with someone, it’s like a war between their protectors and yours. Their angry protector fires up and says something hurtful or mean. So your angry protector gets activated and fires a verbal volley at them, which comes back at you and so it goes until somebody ‘wins’ or backs down. Entirely understandable, but not usually very productive, because one or both of you could get hurt, or you might damage a relationship that’s important to you. Many marriages end in divorce precisely for this reason.

There is another way

Happily, there is a more productive, kind and effective way to resolve conflict. In order to do that, you need to approach this difficult person from your Self, asking your protectors to relax and let you (strong, confident, adult you) handle the situation. I have written a few posts about Self, but as a refresher, in IFS Self is described as you who is not a part, or who you are deep down. This is the you who is calm, sturdy, robust and resilient. When you are in Self you also feel authentic, compassionate and kind. With this energy, you can approach conflict without out-of-control anger or hostility, but a firm, steady, assertive energy that both protects you and diffuses the situation.

If you would like to see the human embodiment of Self-energy, watch the wonderful Netflix documentary featuring the late Bishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama, Mission: Joy – Finding Happiness in Troubled Times. Both are wise, kind and deeply spiritual, in their own ways. There is a deep strength to them (one who successfully fought apartheid and the other continues to combat oppression by the Chinese government) coupled with huge-heartedness, warmth and a deep sense of playfulness and joy. Two remarkable leaders and qualities we can all aspire to, or develop, the more we live in Self and are less in thrall to well-meaning but unhelpful parts.

If you are struggling with a difficult person in your life, here is a guided-imagery practice – Fire Drill: IFS Meditation – I adapted from the classic IFS meditation, developed by the wonderful Dr Richard Schwartz, founder of IFS. Click the button below to listen to the recording on Insight Timer.

Love ❤️

Dan

What Do Students Think About My New Course: Healing from Childhood Trauma?

Another satisfied student after taking my new Premium Audio Course for Insight Timer – Healing from Childhood Trauma with IFS & Self-Compassion. Over 800 students have already taken the course and found it powerful and healing, giving it consistently positive feedback like this.⁠

If you sign up today you will learn about child development, temperament, core developmental needs, schemas and the IFS model of internal parts, how to work with your Inner Critic, what we mean by childhood trauma and neglect – as well as how to heal from these painful experiences using powerful techniques drawn from schema therapy, compassion-focused therapy, mindful self-compassion and internal family systems.⁠

The course is free if you become a Member Plus Supporter. This costs just $60 for 12 months of high-quality content like this on the Insight Timer app from me and thousands of other leading teachers. ⁠

Try it now by visiting my Insight Timer collection or clicking on the button below. ⁠

I hope you find it insightful and healing. ⁠

Love ❤️⁠

Dan

Are You an Orchid, Tulip or Dandelion? Why Your Temperament Matters

Image by Zoltan Tasi

There is a Swedish term, maskrosbarn, which means ‘dandelion child’. The Swedes have long believed that a proportion of kids were like dandelions – they were hardy, resilient and could grow anywhere. Just as dandelions can grow in lawns, parks or cracks in the pavement, so these unusually robust children can manage in any family, even if from the outside they look like tough environments in which to grow up.

Psychologists Bruce J Ellis and W Thomas Boyce, when studying genetics and child development, coined a new term in 2005: orkidebarn, meaning ‘orchid child’. Unlike their hardier counterparts, orchid children are – like the flower – highly sensitive, needing just the right environment to flourish. If the parenting/family dynamic is not what they need, orchids struggle mentally and physically, and can go on to suffer from long-term mental-health problems.

In new research, Dr Francesca Lionetti and colleagues identify a third category: tulips. These are medium-sensitivity children, somewhere between dandelions and orchids. The authors write that in their study of 901 healthy adults, 31 per cent were orchids, 29 per cent dandelions and 40 per cent tulips. These numbers vary from study to study, but what is clear is that some children are born with highly sensitive temperaments (also known as Highly Sensitive Persons), with less-sensitive children at the other end of the scale, and medium-sensitive in the middle. This temperamental sensitivity, or lack of it, stays with people into adulthood.

How temperament shapes your personality

Why does this matter? As I am always telling my clients, your temperament is crucial because it shapes you from the moment of your birth (and probably before that, in the womb). It is a combination of nature and nurture – the genetic inheritance you received from your parents combined with early parenting, attachment with your primary caregivers, family dynamics, and so on. If you were born a dandelion, you would have been pretty thick-skinned as a child, managing to cope even in high-conflict, volatile or otherwise less-than-ideal family environments.

But if you were an orchid, the same families would have been far too much for you, causing you persistent stress which would, in turn, have affected your developing brain. We know, for example, that high levels of the stress hormone cortisol negatively impact brain development, starting in the womb. This can harm a tiny baby’s growing brain, affecting its shape, size and connectivity.

Put simply: if you were an orchid in a stressful, chaotic or otherwise dysfunctional family, you would have suffered. And, very sadly, that suffering might have continued throughout your life – Dr Boyce writes that orchids account for a disproportionately high percentage of every society’s physical and mental-health problems. That’s because your highly sensitive temperament made you unusually vulnerable to things going wrong at every level of your mind-body system.

Why orchids can thrive

If you – like me and most of my clients – are an orchid, this may all seem a bit depressing. You were born with a highly sensitive temperament, your family wasn’t great, so then you suffer for life, right? Wrong. In fact, research also shows that, given the right care, orchid children thrive. They do better educationally, financially and in every other way than dandelions. Just like their horticultural namesakes, these kids can bloom into the most beautiful adults, they just need a little care, the right emotional nutrients, and some time.

There are two take-home points here. First, your temperament is key, whether you are an orchid, tulip or dandelion. It plays a huge part in making you, you. It is mostly inherited, but is profoundly affected by your environment.

Second, none of this is inherently good or bad. Sensitivity is an inherited neural – and neutral – trait. Just like being short or tall, having green eyes or brown, it’s something you are born with. But unlike your eye colour, it can change because of your environment and throughout your lifetime. And the problems that high sensitivity makes you vulnerable to can be mitigated by all the usual methods of healing and change – reading mental-health blogs like this one, self-help books, podcasts, therapy, meditation, yoga, loving relationships and all the other good stuff I am always writing about.

I hope you find these ideas eye-opening. If you would like to know more, try Dr Boyce’s book: The Orchid and the Dandelion: Why Sensitive People Struggle and How All Can Thrive. It’s a great read and has helped shaped my thinking around temperament and child development.

Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

Have You Tried My New Insight Timer Course Yet?

Image by Wes Hicks

Have you listened to my new Premium Audio Course for Insight Timer yet – Healing from Childhood Trauma with IFS & Self-Compassion? Over 600 students have already taken the course and found it powerful and healing, giving it five-star reviews and consistently positive feedback.

If you sign up today you will learn about child development, temperament, core developmental needs, schemas and the IFS model of internal parts, how to work with your Inner Critic, what we mean by childhood trauma and neglect – as well as how to heal from these painful experiences using powerful techniques drawn from schema therapy, compassion-focused therapy, mindful self-compassion and internal family systems.

The course is free if you become a Member Plus Supporter. This costs just $60 for 12 months of high-quality content like this on the Insight Timer app from me and thousands of other leading teachers.

Try it now by clicking on the button below. I hope you enjoy it!

Love ❤️

Dan

What is Avoidant Attachment? And How Does it Affect Your Relationships?

Image by Beth Hope

Do you know which attachment style you have? This style, which describes the ways you think, feel and behave with current/potential romantic partners, is either secure or insecure – this is further divided into anxious or avoidant. Understanding your attachment style is profoundly important, for your mental health in general and particularly the way it impacts your closest relationships.

In a recent post, I described the impact of an Abandonment schema, which might give you a sensitivity to and fear of rejection or abandonment by your partner. This schema is often associated with an anxious attachment style, which means moving towards your partner by thinking about them all the time, messaging/calling them often, and worrying that they might be losing interest in you or having an affair. People with this attachment style can experience periods of intense worry and anxiety, until they get reassurance that everything is fine, their partner still loves them and nothing has changed.

In this post we will explore the other main type of ‘insecure attachment’, which is the avoidant attachment style. It’s thought that 25 percent of the adult population have this deeply rooted way of relating to others (with 50 percent secure, 20 percent anxious and five per cent anxious-avoidant). If you are one of them, you may find relationships – especially romantic ones – tricky in all sorts of ways.

What is avoidant attachment?

Essentially, avoidant attachment is the complete opposite of the anxious style, involving moving away from your partner, or potential partners. While anxiously attached folk constantly activate their attachment system, which helps them feel/be closer to their partner, avoidant people unconsciously suppress their attachment system all the time. They use deactivating strategies like criticising or finding fault with their partner, finding reasons not to spend time with them or have intimate conversations, avoiding physical contact and fantasising about the perfect partner – who might be just round the corner, if only they were free.

I recently read a brilliant book on attachment styles and how deeply they affect us throughout our lives – Attached: Are You Anxious, Avoidant or Secure? How the Science of Adult Attachment can Help You Find – and Keep – Love, by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller. I highly recommend it if you are interested in psychology, or just need some help in finding/maintaining a loving, supportive relationship.

One of the things that struck me was the authors’ claim that, if you are avoidant, when you hit a crisis point in your life – like a painful divorce – your avoidance can melt away and you become anxiously attached. And this made so much sense to me, when viewed through a parts-based lens. It means that people with an avoidant style have an Avoidant Protector, who keeps intimacy and (especially) vulnerability at bay.

But hidden behind that protector is a young part who craves love, support, connection, warmth, intimacy – all the normal, healthy relationship needs that every child is born with. Sadly, that protector constantly blocks these relational nutrients, so avoidant folk often feel isolated and lonely. They too want love, they just don’t know how to let people in enough to give and receive it.

Healing your attachment system

As I am often saying in these posts, the good news is that none of this is fixed or set in your brain. Your attachment style can change over the course of your lifetime. How? Well, finding an attachment-based therapist using a model like schema therapy would be one route to healing. Another is finding a securely attached partner – we know that this is often profoundly healing and transformative for insecurely attached folk. This kind of person makes relationships easy, because they are calm, confident and consistent. They just love you, no matter what, which helps your protective parts calm down enough for your hurt little boy or girl to receive all the love they have long craved.

So don’t give up. There is always hope, even if you have always avoided or struggled with relationships. Perhaps give a bit more thought to the kinds of people you typically choose, taking it slow at first so you can get a sense of your partner’s way of relating before you plunge in. Of course, if you are avoidant you will never plunge in, but you can still think before embarking on a relationship to try and find a secure person to be with. It will make a big difference, trust me.

I hope that helps – and wishing you luck on your healing journey.

Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

Be Careful What You Think: The Power of Mind Over Body

Image by Milad Fakurian

I recently listened to a radio programme about the effectiveness of smart watches – the hi-tech gadgets many of us strap to our wrists to measure heart rate, step count, sleep quality and much more. According to the presenter, they vary wildly in accuracy, especially in measuring the depth, quality and stages of your sleep.

He also cited a study that intrigued me. In this research, participants had exactly the same amount of sleep, measured by highly accurate kit in a specialist sleep lap. But one group was shown the accurate data about their slumber, while the other was given deliberately false data, showing they had a terrible night’s sleep.

What was so fascinating was that these poor souls then felt exhausted, had poor cognitive functioning and reported feeling unpleasantly sleepy all day. Purely because they believed they had had a bad night’s sleep, so their body reacted accordingly.

Studies like this are intriguing, I think, because they illustrate the power of ‘mind-body symptoms’. These are powerful physical symptoms with no biological cause – they are created solely by our thoughts. And this may be hard to believe, but these symptoms can include full-body paralysis, blindness and seizures (known as ‘functional symptoms’, or ‘medically unexplained symptoms’).

It’s important to note a couple of things here: first, people with these conditions experience the exact same physical problems as those with biologically driven illnesses. They are really ill and need compassionate help, treatment and support. Second, no doctor thinks people with functional symptoms are making their illness up, faking it or that it’s all in their mind. This is to misunderstood the nature of our mind-body connection – and the power of your mind to influence your body.

What are Mind-body symptoms?

Let’s take a better-known case – the placebo effect. Study after study finds that patients taking sugar pills – with no medicinal content at all – experience significant benefits, including pain reduction for conditions like migraines. The exact amount is hotly debated, but most experts agree that placebo plays some part in the effectiveness of any medical treatment, including surgery!

That’s because if we receive medical treatment from someone in a white coat, who seems like an expert in their field, also caring and trustworthy, we believe that they will help us. And this makes the treatment more likely to succeed than not. The opposite of this, by the way, is called the ‘nocebo effect’ – we think something will make us ill and it does, which is also very powerful.

An example of mind-body symptoms from the realm of psychology is the research into mindfulness for management of chronic pain. Vidyamala Burch is a brilliant meditation teacher, long-term Buddhist and truly inspiring person, who sustained spinal injuries at 17 that required multiple surgeries and left her with a complex back condition, chronic pain and partial paralysis. She is now a wheelchair user.

Vidyamala is so inspiring because she learned to manage her pain through daily meditation – having experienced the power of mindfulness to help with chronic pain and illness, she developed the world’s first Mindfulness-Based Pain & Illness Management (MBPM) programme, which has helped over 100,000 people around the world. She is also one of the most positive, upbeat teachers I know! Here’s her story, if you’re interested – it really is heartwarming and inspiring.

Vidyamala (her given Buddhist name) explains that we experience primary and secondary pain. So if you cut your finger with a knife, the primary pain comes from damaged tissue, and these signals are sent to your brain via your nervous system. Your brain then interprets this data, taking into account your thoughts about it – so if you think, ‘Help! I’m a concert pianist and this could finish my career!’ your brain turns up the pain dial, making the symptoms more severe so you take action about this career-threatening problem. This is secondary pain – and it is largely due to your interpretation of the injury, not the physical damage.

The takeaway here is that your thoughts have a tremendous impact – on your emotions, your internal system of parts and the many biological systems in your body, such as your nervous system, hormonal system and musculoskeletal system. This is more proof that learning to think in a kind, helpful, compassionate way really can change your life. Just ask Vidyamala…

If you would like help in developing more positive thoughts and beliefs, try my Insight Timer practice – Taking in the Good: IFS Meditation, by clicking on the button below.

I hope you find it helpful – and if you are struggling with your health right now, for any reason, sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

Announcing My New Course: Healing from Childhood Trauma with IFS and Self-Compassion

Image by Sean Oulashin

I am excited to announce the launch of my new Premium Audio Course for Insight Timer – Healing from Childhood Trauma with IFS & Self-Compassion. If you struggle with your mental health, and especially if you had a difficult childhood, I hope you will find this course calming and insightful. 

You will be guided on a healing journey with eight days of teaching and experiential exercises such as journalling, guided imagery, breathwork and meditation. The eight lessons range in length from 15-20 minutes, so are easy to fit into your busy day.

I am really proud of this course – it synthesises many of the things I am most passionate about into one short, powerful week of teaching. You will learn about child development, temperament, core developmental needs, schemas and the IFS model of internal parts, how to work with your Inner Critic, what we mean by childhood trauma and neglect – as well as how to heal from these painful experiences using powerful techniques drawn from schema therapy, compassion-focused therapy, mindful self-compassion and internal family systems.

The course is free if you become a Member Plus Supporter. This costs just $60 for 12 months of high-quality content like this on the Insight Timer app from me and thousands of other leading teachers.

Get started now by clicking on the button below. I hope you enjoy it!

Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

Is a Fear of Rejection Hurting Your Relationships?

Image by Marta Nogueira

How are you with rejection? Some people seem fairly immune to it and manage to brush it off. Others are very much affected by it, whether real or imagined, imminent or on the distant horizon. Many of my clients are in the latter camp, fearing rejection or abandonment, especially in romantic relationships.

As we try to address this problem, it’s helpful to begin thinking about it from an evolutionary perspective. Remember how humans have lived for almost our entire evolutionary history. We evolved from apes, who live in groups. And then lived as hunter-gatherers for hundreds of thousands of years, again in groups. We lived in villages with an extended network of family and others in our tribe.

These villages were well-protected, with strong fences surrounding them, because outside those fences were large, hungry animals who wanted to eat us. And neighbouring tribes, who could attack at any time. So it was very important – quite literally a matter of life and death – that you were inside that fence, especially as night fell.

And this meant that being rejected by the group in any way – shunned, banished, ejected from the village – would have been terrifying, because in that world (think the savannah, full of ravenous hyenas, lions and leopards; or forests, bristling with sharp-toothed bears, mountain lions and wolves) you would not make it for even a single day on your own.

Evolutionary psychologists think this is why the fear of rejection can be so intense, because somewhere deep in the more primitive recesses of your brain is the knowledge that rejection = death. It’s that stark.

Fear of abandonment

This is one reason why humans can be highly sensitive to the possibility of being abandoned in relationships. But there are many others, including having an Abandonment schema. This is a neural network in your brain holding ways of thinking, negative beliefs about yourself and others, powerful emotions and their resultant bodily sensations. When this schema gets triggered, you feel just awful – highly anxious and panicky, upset, angry or some other powerful emotion.

This would show up in your body as changes to your heart rate and breathing, becoming hot and sweaty, or tight, tense muscles. You might also believe things like, ‘No-one could ever love the real me,’ or ‘Everybody I love will eventually leave me.’

I have been thinking about this schema a lot recently, as I am reading Love Me Don’t Leave Me: Overcoming fear of Abandonment & Building Lasting, Loving Relationships, by Michelle Skeen. It’s a classic self-help book, drawn from the schema therapy model, so much of it chimes with my way of thinking/working. Skeen reminds us that this schema can develop for many reasons, including being abandoned as a child – for example, if your father left the family to go and start a new relationship and you barely saw him after that.

The abandonment could also have been more subtle. In this case, perhaps nobody actually left the family, but they weren’t very attuned to you or your needs as a child. They might have been good at what I call ‘practical love’. Feeding you, keeping you clean, getting you to school on time, all the important logistical stuff of parenting.

But not so good at the warm, emotional side of being a mum or dad – soothing hugs, telling you that they loved you and making you feel cherished, valued as a unique little person. In this case, you might feel abandoned, because your needs were profoundly unmet. It’s like an emotional, rather than physical abandonment.

Whatever the cause of this schema in childhood, as an adult you may struggle with relationships in various ways. You might become anxious and clingy, texting or calling your partner multiple times a day if you feel them pulling away. Or you could do the opposite, pushing them away, picking fights or even leaving them before they get the chance to leave you. If you have this schema, you might even avoid relationships altogether, because they have been so heartbreakingly painful when they fell apart.

Healing your schema

If any of this resonates with you, I am sorry – it’s such a deep and painful schema and really can make life a struggle. But remember that none of this needs to be a lifelong problem. Schemas, like so many systems and structures in your brain, are not fixed or set in any way. I often write about the concept of neuroplasticity, because I find it such a hopeful and positive idea. It means that whatever kinds of painful experiences you have had, and however they have imprinted on to your brain, they can be changed. Schemas can weaken and fade in intensity. Your attachment style (which could be either anxious or avoidant, if you have the Abandonment schema) can become more secure.

It really is all up for grabs, because your brain is shaped and moulded by experience. Think differently, over and over, and you form brand-new neural pathways. So instead of ‘No-one could ever love the real me,’ you learn to think, ‘I may not be perfect, but I am loveable and likeable just as I am.’ Over and over, until that pathway becomes wired in and the old one withers away.

Try reading Michelle Skeen’s book, for starters, because it really is very helpful and good. If this is a highly sensitive issue for you, I would recommend seeking therapy, preferably with someone who understands problems related to rejection and abandonment and can offer you a thought-through, convincing roadmap to healing.

And eventually, after doing some work on this stuff, finding a loving, supportive partner will be the most healing thing you could do. That may seem daunting right now, or even impossible, but it’s always one of my treatment goals when I’m working with abandonment-phobic people. It is doable, if you get enough help and support to make the necessary changes, trust me on that.

You could also try one of my most popular Insight Timer practices, Calming Your Parts: IFS Meditation. This will help you calm and soothe the young, abandoned part of you that gets triggered in relationships.

I very much hope that helps – sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

Find Your Own Path: Choosing the Right Approach to Healing

Image by Lili Popper

Have you ever been in therapy? I’m guessing, as you are currently reading this post on a blog all about mental health, that the answer is yes. If so, did it help? I certainly hope so, but sadly many people try different therapists, as well as different flavours of therapy, and find them either minimally helpful or not much help at all.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that all therapies are unhelpful. It’s just that, in my experience, people often choose therapists without really understanding the exact type of therapy they offer, why it’s better/worse than other approaches, or whether it’s the best approach for them.

Let me give you a concrete example. If you have experienced trauma in your life, you will probably need professional help to recover from that. And so you may find yourself a nice, friendly, caring counsellor, who says what you need is to talk through those traumatic events in great detail. But for many people just talking about what they have been through, in an unstructured way, will not only be unhelpful, but actually re-traumatising.

You would need a trauma-informed therapy like EMDR, sensorimotor psychotherapy, somatic experiencing, trauma-informed stabilisation treatment, schema therapy or trauma-focused CBT. All of these approaches will help you process your traumatic memories in a safe, structured and focused way. Just talking about your experiences, in this case, is not the way to heal them.

Let me be clear – I’m not knocking counselling here. There are some wonderful counsellors out there and the work they do is invaluable. It’s especially helpful to get you through a tough time, like bereavement or divorce, when a kind, empathic, non-judgemental person is exactly what you need. But mainstream counselling is not designed to help with trauma, which is why it’s not the right choice if that’s the kind of help you need.

Finding your own path

The longer I do this work and the more therapy models I study, the more I believe that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to healing, whatever kind of psychological problem you are struggling with. I often think to myself, ‘What does this person need, at this moment, in this session?’ And I then draw from a wide range of theories, techniques and strategies in my mind to find just the right one for that person, in that moment.

You might also find that you need different therapies at different times in your life – where a highly focused, time-limited approach like CBT may be perfect for one phase of your life, a longer-term, less-structured modality like IFS may be right for another phase, or set of problems.

With that in mind, if you are considering therapy, here are some suggestions for finding your own path to healing, happiness and a flourishing life:

1. The relationship is everything. Whichever of the many wonderful therapies you choose, remember that the primary healing agent in any therapy is the relationship between you and your therapist. This is especially true in longer-term approaches, like schema therapy or psychodynamic therapy. But even in short-term models like CBT, feeling safe in the room (or online) with someone, that they get you, care about you, are warm and nurturing, is crucial. I often tell people to shop around – if you have an assessment with someone and it doesn’t feel right, trust your gut and find another person.

2. Trauma-informed therapies for trauma-processing work. As I mentioned earlier, it’s so important to find a trauma-informed therapy/therapist if you have experienced trauma in your life. The bigger and more impactful the trauma, the more important this is. So ask your prospective therapist about their model, experience and plans to help you heal. If their answers seem a little off, or unconvincing, keep shopping.

3. Therapy is just one piece of the pie. As well as integrating various therapy models in my work, I am also a holistic practitioner. I talk to my clients about many things, but top of the list is how much sleep they are getting and whether they exercise regularly. We are only beginning to understand the importance of sleep for mental and physical health (spoiler alert: it’s profoundly important).

   And getting regular exercise is right up there with good-quality therapy, in my opinion. We need to move our bodies, in ways we enjoy, as often as possible. I’m talking weight-training, HIIT, spin classes, walking, swimming, yoga, dancing, running, vigorous gardening, rock climbing… Every system in your brain and body is built to work optimally when you’re moving, your heart rate is up, blood is pumping, your breaths are deep and skin is warm.

   Extensive research shows that exercise is a powerful healing agent for stress, anxiety and depression – the three main types of psychological problem people struggle with. Meditation is also key, as are warm, loving relationships, a healthy (ideally Mediterranean) diet, moderate drinking, a healthy microbiome, mind-opening books and podcasts… Therapy is an important piece of the pie, but it’s certainly not the only one.

I hope you found that thought-provoking and helpful. I also hope you find the right person/approach for you, as that can be life-changing.

And if you are struggling right now, sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan