Dan Roberts webinar

Why I Have Decided to Wind Up My Heal Your Trauma Project

I have made the difficult decision to wind up my Heal Your Trauma project this month. It’s very sad, but is something I have been thinking about for a long time, as it has become increasingly difficult to juggle all of my commitments. I loved running Heal Your Trauma – especially hearing from and meeting so many of you at my webinars and workshops. That was such a pleasure and I’m sure we will stay in touch.

When I started the project in May 2021, I wanted to help as many people as possible with their mental health – especially those who couldn’t afford private therapy or were on long waiting lists for NHS treatment. I hope all of the many resources we offered over the past two years helped you in some way. I am particularly passionate about helping people overcome the legacy of trauma and will keep doing that for the rest of my career.

Free resources for you

In some ways, not much will change. My website offers a great deal of free resources, especially my blog, which offers hundreds of posts about all aspects of mental health and wellbeing. Please sign up for my newsletter, using the form below, if you would like to be the first to read my new posts every week.

I will also keep recording new guided meditations, most of which are available for free on Insight Timer. I intend to design and teach courses for this excellent app in the future, so again, sign up below to get the latest news about that.

All of my Heal Your Trauma webinars are available on vimeo.com – you can purchase access for just £10, to download or stream whenever you like. Just click on the button below to watch them now.

Of course, I will keep helping people through my busy therapy practice and offering trauma-informed supervision to mental-health professionals. I also intend to write a self-help book in the next few years, so watch this space for news about that.

I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to the wonderful people who have provided invaluable help and support these past two years: Laura Roberts; Sophie Akbar, Anna Rys, Claire van den Bosch, Gina Finegan and Farrah Whitsed.

And my special thanks to you if you have read my posts, come to our events or supported us in any way.

Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

 

Now Available: Download or Stream My Webinars on Vimeo

Image by Sara Kurfeb

If you missed any of my Heal Your Trauma webinars in 2022 or 2023, don’t worry – you can now stream or download them whenever suits you. All of my past webinars are now available on Vimeo – the world’s leading video-hosting site.

For just £10, you will get exclusive lifetime access to these powerful and highly informative 90-minute webinars, which are packed full of trauma-informed teaching and experiential exercises such as breathwork, guided meditations and imagery techniques.

We consistently get extremely positive feedback for our webinars, which you can read here.

Choose from the following highly popular webinars:

  1. What is Trauma and Can it Be Healed?

  2. The Healing Power of Self-Compassion (2022)

  3. The Healing Power of Self-Compassion (2023)

  4. Not Just Mindfulness, But Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness

  5. How to Manage Your Inner Critic

  6. Overcoming Depression: How to Lift Your Mood & Feel Calmer, Happier & More Hopeful

Don’t miss out – gain lifetime access now, for just £10 per webinar, using the button below.

Warm wishes,

Dan

 

Missed My Recent Webinars? No Problem – Watch the Recordings Now

Image by Andres Ayrton

If you missed any of my recent webinars, you can now gain exclusive lifetime access to them for just £10. We record all of our webinars and upload them to YouTube – if you attend live, you will automatically get access to the private video, but we have also made these recordings available to anyone who might benefit from them.

All of my Heal Your Trauma webinars last 90 minutes and are packed with teaching about the latest theory, research and key take-home learning about each subject, as well as powerful and effective breathing techniques, guided imagery and a 15-minute Q&A, where participants get to ask me anything they want about trauma, mental health and wellbeing.

We get consistently positive feedback for all of our Heal Your Trauma webinars and workshops – you can read it here.

Highlights from 2022-23, now available to watch, include:

  • The Healing Power of Self-Compassion

  • How to Manage Your Inner Critic

  • Trauma Healing with Internal Family Systems

  • Overcoming Depression: How to Lift Your Mood & Feel Calmer, Happier & More Hopeful

  • Not Just Mindfulness, But Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness

Don’t miss out on this highly experiential and transformative teaching – gain lifetime access to each recording for just £10, using the button below.

Sending you love and warm thoughts,

Dan

 
 

Can You Turn Towards Your Suffering with Compassion?

Life is suffering. This is the first of the four Buddhist Noble Truths. Of course, life can also be beautiful. This can be in big ways. The birth of my grandchild last month, my sister’s incredible promotion after years of employment struggles, or the TARGIT-IORT breast cancer treatment research breakthrough recently.

The beauty of life can also be found in the smallest forms, far from the headlines. Being held in the understanding arms of the nurse at the hospital last week. Watching my cat rolling around in joy while my husband tickles her belly. Seeing two friends crying laughing and clutching on to each other in the station this morning.

Claire van den Bosch, Clinical Director of Heal Your Trauma

One powerful way of tending to our own suffering is to intentionally balance what we’re paying attention to, so that we’re also noticing the beauty.

Another powerful way of tending to our own suffering is – instead of turning our attention away from it – turning attention towards it. Sitting down with it, and opening up the tender heart of self-compassion towards it. And there is a form of suffering that I feel most moved to bring into focus in this post: the suffering of judging and shaming our suffering.

How often does a part of us observe the pain we’re in about something and ask, ‘What are you getting so upset about?’ Or, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Or, ‘When are you going to grow up?’ Or, ‘When are you going to get over this/stop being so sensitive/stop being such a baby?’

I’ve heard other practitioners refer to this as negative negativity or ‘the unnecessary suffering’.

The common humanity of suffering

In my experience of my own system, and my clients’, this self-shaming is a huge and extraordinarily human aspect of our suffering, and one of the most painful kinds, to the extent that shame is arguably the most painful of emotions.

The good news is that it is also the form of suffering most amenable to transformation through the healing power of self-compassion. As Kristin Neff reminds us repeatedly in her beautiful meditations, when we are suffering it’s possible to respond to our suffering – rather than with the voice of, ‘Why are you being such a baby?’ – with the voice of, ‘Wow. Yes. This is really hard right now. It’s really painful to feel like this. And it’s also deeply human. I know I am not alone in feeling like this sometimes. In this experience, may I be kind to and supportive of myself in the way I would with a dear friend who was having the same experience.’

Something I am struck by right now is that there are so many forms of suffering over which we are powerless. Perhaps the majority. This was very alive for me this week, supporting a friend whose daughter is experiencing the extreme distress of what seems to fit the description of Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, which neither my dear friend or her daughter had ever heard of.

What is Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria?

RSD (you can read more about it here) is a frequently experienced, but often misunderstood part of ADHD. It can be an excruciating experience, beyond the territory of the more familiar realms of insecurity, rejection, suspicion and fear that most humans encounter in relationship from time to time.

It can feel like an unbearable howl of devastation, like a nuclear rage, an utter determination to remove ourselves permanently from someone’s orbit, to punish, or the compulsion to relentlessly demand. It can come as an absolute conviction that we are being slighted, humiliated or secretly ridiculed. It can often precipitate self-harm – and can also ultimately prompt the sufferer to create a life that avoids any chance of feeling these feelings. Which is likely, of course, to become a life of loneliness, emptiness and shame.

It is almost inevitable that someone experiencing RSD (especially if they don’t know that RSD is a thing, a matter of how the brain is wired, and a kind of distress not experienced by everyone) will experience extreme shame about their suffering. Part of them knows that their intense feelings are out of proportion in some way to the circumstances. ‘What’s wrong with me?’ ‘I’m a hideous human being,’ ‘I’m crazy,’ ‘Why can’t I control myself?’

When diagnoses can be helpful

This is one of the reasons I believe diagnosis – of whatever we have going on – can be powerfully helpful for many of us. To discover that there is an explanation that something was never within our control, that we are suffering with something dreadful that others also suffer with – can be profoundly de-shaming. Whether it’s RSD, neurodivergence in general, the menopause, a dissociative disorder, adrenal fatigue, or any of the countless neurological, organic or hormonally caused experiences with psychological and behavioural symptoms, the discovery that our experiences are not after all evidence of a weakness of character can be a profound relief.

But in truth, none of our experiences – even the most negatively consequential for ourselves and others – are evidence of weakness in our character, if we can find the courage and external support to bring radical curiosity to them. You may find Dan’s guided meditation, Working with Your Inner Critic, helpful for this endeavour.

And nothing facilitates this deep discovery more powerfully than bringing compassion to our suffering.

In place of the ‘What’s wrong with you?’ ‘You’re so crazy/lazy/stupid,’ we can begin to cultivate the heart reflex of ‘Wow, this is so painful, this is really hard, this is genuinely a moment of suffering for me. Please may I be kind to myself.’

In this way the first suffering may remain unchanged – the anguish of RSD jealousy, the snappy reactions of the menopause – but we have transformed the second layer of suffering, the shame about the suffering, into heartfelt kindness towards ourselves and a felt connection with the rest of humanity.

If you recognise the potential benefit for you of learning to cultivate deeper self-compassion, do sign up for our webinar on 27th May, The Healing Power of Self-Compassion, using the button below.

With love,

Claire

 

Why Self-Compassion is Your Mental-Health Superpower

If you are struggling with your mental health, come along to this 90-minute Zoom webinar with Dan Roberts, Psychotherapist and Founder of Heal Your Trauma. The Healing Power of Self-Compassion takes place from 3-4.30pm on Saturday 27th May 2023 and is the latest in a series of Heal Your Trauma webinars and workshops throughout 2023.

This event offers half-price Reduced-Fee Tickets (£10), for those who need them, or please choose the Supporter Ticket option (£20) when booking if you are able to support the Heal Your Trauma project. Your support enables us to help as many people as possible with their mental health.

All of our webinars are recorded, so if you sign up you will also get exclusive free access to a recording of the event.

The Healing Power of Self-Compassion features 90 minutes of teaching, powerful exercises that will help you feel calmer and more relaxed, and a 15-minute Q&A with Dan Roberts, an expert on self-compassion, mental health and wellbeing.

In this powerful, highly experiential webinar you will learn:

  • The difference between empathy and compassion – and why one leads to burnout, while the other protects us from it

  • The key role that self-compassion plays in healing from any psychological problem, but especially trauma

  • Why, sadly, having a trauma history makes self-compassion difficult – but also why these obstacles can be overcome

  • Key experiential exercises – such as breathing, guided meditations, journaling and imagery – you will learn to help you develop your self-compassion skills

  • How self-compassion is crucial to help you deal with stress, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, being overly self-critical, eating disorders, substance abuse and most other psychological problems

  • And, during a 15-minute Q&A, attendees put their questions to Dan Roberts, Founder of Heal Your Trauma and an expert on trauma healing and developing self-compassion

Don’t miss this chance to learn from a leading trauma therapist and expert on mental health. Book your place now using the button below.

Warm wishes,

Dan

 
 

Missed One of My Webinars? Don’t Worry, You Can Watch the Recording Now

If you missed one of my recent webinars, don’t worry – you can now purchase access to all of my Heal Your Trauma webinars for just £10, to download or stream whenever you like.

These 90-minute webinars include teaching, powerful exercises like guided imagery and breathing techniques, as well as a Q&A with me, where attendees ask me questions about mental health and wellbeing.

We receive incredibly positive feedback for all our Heal Your Trauma events – you can read what participants have to say about my teaching here.

Take your pick of our highly popular recent webinars, including:

  • How to Manage Your Inner Critic

  • Trauma Healing with Internal Family Systems

  • Overcoming Depression: How to Lift Your Mood and Feel Calmer, Happier & More Hopeful

  • Not Just Mindfulness, But Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness

  • The Healing Power of Self-Compassion

Don’t miss out – gain exclusive access to this powerful teaching by clicking the button below.

Warm wishes,

Dan

 

Booking My Heal Your Trauma Workshops and Webinars

Image by Christin Hume

If you would like to attend one of my Heal Your Trauma workshops or webinars, I have responded to your feedback by streamlining the booking system. Instead of booking through EventBrite, you can now just book through my website.

You can book your place with a credit or debit card, or using PayPal, and the booking process is both simple and 100% secure.

If you would like to book for any Heal Your Trauma event in 2023, just click on the button below.

Prices remain the same – £10/£20 for webinars and £49/£99 for workshops (Reduced-Fee Ticket/Supporter Fee ticket). All of our webinars are recorded, so if you sign up you will also get exclusive free access to a recording of the event.

If you have any questions about booking, please email the Heal Your Trauma team at info@danroberts.com

Thank you so much for supporting the Heal Your Trauma project and I hope to see you at one of my events very soon!

Warm wishes,

Dan

 
 

Do You Struggle With Self-Criticism?

Do you struggle with self-criticism? If so, your Inner Critic may call you names like ‘stupid’ or ‘pathetic’, which drains your confidence and impacts your self-worth on a day-to-day basis.

Because this is so painful for us, it can be easy to think we need to get rid of our Critic, or make them shut up. Unfortunately, not only is this very difficult to do, it is also counter-productive, as it tends to make the Critic stronger and louder. Instead, we need to befriend and work with the Critic to help you understand the function of this much-misunderstood part, which is always either motivational or protective in some way (I know that’s hard to believe right now, but having worked with hundreds of Critics in my consulting room I have consistently found it to be true).

As an Internal Family Systems-Trained Therapist I use this warm, compassionate, highly effective approach with all my clients. And that’s because it is so effective for a wide range of problems, from complex trauma to anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, eating disorders and addiction. It’s also, in my many years of clinical experience, the most effective approach we have for helping your Critic calm down and stop giving you such a hard time, which in turn will help you feel calmer, happier and more at peace.

If you would like to learn how to work with your Critic, watch the recording of my 90-minute Zoom webinar – How to Manage Your Inner Critic, which took place on Saturday 25th March 2023, from 3pm-4.30pm.

How to Manage Your Inner Critic features 90 minutes of teaching, powerful exercises that will help you feel calmer and more relaxed, and a 15-minute Q&A with me.

In this powerful, highly experiential webinar you will learn:

  • What we mean by trauma and how common it is – and why experiencing trauma means we tend to develop a louder, more powerful inner Critic

  • Why Internal Family Systems is such a revolutionary model, offering brand-new ways of understanding psychological problems and how to heal them, including a road map to transforming your Critic

  • Why we all have an internal system of ‘parts’ – both young, wounded parts and protective parts which work hard to make sure those young parts never get hurt again. And why, counterintuitively, your chief protector is often the Critic

  • How to understanding the function of your Critic – almost always either to motivate or protect you – which in turn helps you approach the Critic in a more nuanced, validating and ultimately transformative way

  • You will also learn some simple, powerful techniques to help you work with your Critic – as well as the young parts that get triggered when the Critic is loud, harsh or overly negative

Don’t miss out – purchase access to the recording for just £10, to download or stream whenever you like, using the button below.

Warm wishes,

Dan

 
 

What Are Trailheads in Internal Family Systems Therapy?

Jargon can be a real turn-off, don’t you think? And the world of psychotherapy is full of it. You can’t move for initials like CBT, DBT, ACT or MBCT and daunting-sounding words like countertransference, metacognitive or subcortical. It’s a pain, I know.

So I start this post with an apology – I have one more piece of jargon for you, but it’s a useful one, so bear with me... In Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, there is a useful concept known as a trailhead. What the heck is that? Well, a trailhead is a thought, feeling, body sensation, memory, image or any other experience that we think is a communication from one of your parts. I won’t explain parts here because I have written about them extensively in recent posts, but here’s a useful guide to them and the IFS model in general.

So the trailhead is a starting point, a clue, an indication that something’s up and we need to investigate further. Let me give you an example. If you struggle with worry and anxiety, you will experience a number of somatic (more jargon, sorry! Just means you experience it in your body) sensations like tense muscles, racing heart rate, feeling hot or sweaty, butterflies or a knot in your stomach, tension in your neck and shoulders… Any or all of these could be a trailhead, because in IFS we think the anxiety comes from a scared, young part.

Following the trail

Understanding your mind, brain, nervous system and body in this way is, I think, incredibly helpful. Because if you just think ‘I’m so anxious’, or ‘I’m really panicky right now,’ it’s as if all of you is anxious, vulnerable and feeling powerless to calm yourself down. As soon as we say, ‘A part of me is so anxious,’ or ‘A part of me is really panicky right now,’ everything changes. Because you now have a scared young part who needs calming and comforting – and a you who isn’t that part, who has the resources to be calming and comforting.

This is a crucial step. I see this in my consulting room (and in myself) every single day – this simple shift can be so freeing and powerful, because many of my clients have felt paralysed and gripped by their anxiety, depression, substance abuse or whatever they were struggling with for years, as if they had no power, agency or control over these painful symptoms or behaviours.

But you are not powerless, not a victim, not helpless. There is a resource in you we call your Self, which is calm, compassionate, loving, wise and healing. And this resource can help you overcome any obstacle, however daunting. How do I know this? Because you are a walking miracle, with a billion miscroscopic processes happening inside you every single day.

Healing inner resources

You have flu, you recover. You break your leg, the bone knits together and heals. You drink the socially acceptable poison known as alcohol and your poor liver processes the toxins and helps flush them out of your body. Cells die, cells are born. Food and drink are digested and excreted. All of this happening, all the time, without any conscious input from you.

And so it is with your wounded little parts, who desperately need help – and the other parts who protect those little ones, with whatever means they have available. All of these parts need healing. And your Self can do just that, if we help you access these wonderful, rich, healing resources inside.

Not easy, but doable – for me and you, however impossible that might seem right now. Whatever you have experienced in your life. However long you have been trying, struggling, falling down. It could happen today, with the right help and support.

If you would like to experience IFS, try my Insight Timer practice, How to Comfort Your Inner Child: IFS Meditation. You can listen now by clicking on the button below.

Love,

Dan ❤️

 
 

Don’t Miss My Next Webinar: Trauma Healing With Internal Family Systems

If you missed this webinar, you can purchase the recording for just £10 – you can then download or stream the recording whenever you like.

Just click the button below to enjoy this powerful, highly experiential webinar now: