My Heal Your Trauma Project

In my decade of practising as a psychotherapist, I have worked with virtually every form of psychological problem. When you work in private practice, as I do, it’s a bit like being a GP – you work with all sorts of problems and end up helping whoever walks through your door. And that’s fine with me, because I love what I do and am passionate about helping people who are suffering, whatever form that suffering takes.

But in recent years, having trained as a schema therapist, I naturally found myself specialising in trauma therapy. That’s partly because schema therapy was designed to treat complex problems like trauma, which means that people seek me out to help them with long-term, deep-rooted problems resulting from trauma, abuse or neglect in childhood.

It is also because I believe there to be an epidemic of trauma across the globe. This was true before the pandemic but, sadly, we are now seeing a tsunami of psychological problems caused by the many layers of trauma that people have suffered because of Covid-19.

‘It would be better if it never happened, but trauma need not be a life sentence. Our bodies and minds were designed to heal, and we just have to know how to activate those powers.’

— Steve Biddulph

People around the world are struggling with grief, traumatic stress caused by time in an ICU, or the life-changing impact of long Covid, as well as the ongoing traumatic stress many of us have experienced due to living through a global pandemic. And, even more sadly, these problems will only get worse, as the impact of one of the most confusing, scary and stressful years in human history takes its inevitable toll.

Understanding trauma

Because trauma is so widespread, I think it’s crucial that health professionals like me understand the following things:

• Trauma is at the root of most psychological problems. For example, the evidence shows that for most people, what we call ‘Borderline Personality Disorder’ is actually just the impact of complex trauma. The vast majority of people diagnosed with BPD experienced complex trauma as children. And the same is true for most other complex mental-health problems.

• Trauma can be obvious, or subtle. It’s easy to see that a ‘single-incident’ trauma like a car crash or terror attack will cause traumatic stress. It’s less easy to understand the impact of day-to-day emotional neglect on a child; or how angry parents screaming at each other in front of their kids, day after day, is traumatic for those children. But it is – and the impact of that trauma can scar people for life.

• Trauma affects your physical health, too. Dr Gabor Maté is a brilliant physician and trauma specialist. His groundbreaking book, When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress, reveals the impact of childhood trauma on your physical health as an adult. Every kind of health problem you might face today – from obesity to diabetes, cardiovascular disease to cancer – is, sadly, more likely if you have experienced trauma as a child.

• If you are a trauma survivor, you need trauma-informed therapy. The treatment of trauma has undergone a revolution in the past 30 years. We now have a whole host of highly effective trauma-informed therapies, including schema therapy, trauma-focused CBT, internal family systems therapy, compassion-focused therapy, sensorimotor psychotherapy and many more. If you are a trauma survivor, please seek out one of these approaches. We know that just ‘talking about’ trauma is not a good idea, so traditional talk therapy could be retraumatising for you.

My Heal Your Trauma project

That’s why I have created my new Heal Your Trauma project. If you are a trauma survivor, or are struggling with your mental health for any reason, it will provide you with all sorts of healing resources, including guided meditations on Insight Timer, webinars, workshops and self-help books. I will develop this project over time – just like all good trauma therapy, it will be a long, slow, step-by-step process. I will start by adding resources to this site, writing posts for my newsletter and my Heal Your Trauma Blog – and do sign up using the form above to get my brand-new blog posts delivered straight to your inbox.

Through my writing and teaching I will use all of my knowledge, training, skills and experience to help you heal from your trauma, whatever it may be. I am passionate about this – it is my life’s purpose. I strongly believe that whatever you have been through, however frightening or painful it might have been, it’s never too much to heal from and it’s never too late to begin the healing process.

I know this from working with complex trauma every day in my consulting room. I see people who have been through truly terrible things make wonderful, miraculous recoveries. It is so inspiring and heartwarming to see these people heal, grow stronger, happier, calmer and more self-compassionate. This is why I have created Heal Your Trauma, so I can bring all of those healing resources to you, wherever you may be in the world.

Our core value is that we want to offer affordable help for anyone struggling with their mental health. So all Heal Your Trauma events offer half-priced, Reduced-Fee tickets for those who need them – but please do choose the Supporter Ticket if you are able to support the project.

I am so happy to start giving you all of the love, support and help that you deserve – and, as you embark on your healing journey, I will be with you every step of the way.

You can watch recordings of any of my webinars on this page.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Healing Your Inner Child

Image by Michael Parzuchowski

The idea that we have an inner child, who carries all the hurt, trauma and painful memories from our past, is not a new one one in psychotherapy. But all of the newest, trauma-informed models have a particular way of thinking about this young, vulnerable part of us. In schema therapy, this young part is called the Vulnerable Child – and is the main focus of therapy, because the idea is if we can heal this part then he or she (and so, of course, you) feels calmer, happier, stronger and more at peace.

In internal family systems (IFS) therapy, there is also a strong emphasis on working with this part of you. The main difference is that, in IFS, there isn’t just one inner child, but many. So you might have a three-year-old part, a five-year-old, a seven-year-old, and so on. And this makes sense to me, because these parts of you hold all the painful memories, feelings, thoughts, body sensations and experiences of you at the age of three, five or seven.

If we just had one inner child, then they would have to hold memories of being, say, three, 12 and 17 – ages at which we are completely different in terms of brain development, personality, ways of thinking and feeling. It just doesn’t really make sense. Far more persuasive to me, based on all the theory and my own experience of working with hundreds of people over the years, is that we have many inner children, not all of whom need help, but some definitely do.

What is a part?

This leads to an important question – what exactly do we mean by a ‘part’? In some ways, this depends on the therapy model you believe best represents our inner world. Various models have different ways of answering this question (and all think theirs is the right answer!). But let’s go with the IFS model for now, as it’s one of my favourites – and I like their answer best. Dick Schwartz, founder of IFS, says that a part is a neural network in the brain, holding all of the thoughts, memories, etc that we did at the part’s age.

Dick argues that this is how the brain creates what we perceive of as our self (or many selves). If you experienced trauma in your childhood, this is also how your brain helps you deal with that trauma. It creates one or more parts to hold those traumatic memories (called ‘exiles’). And then various parts whose job it is to keep those memories buried deep in your unconscious, so you don’t have to think about them all the time (called ‘protectors’) and can function in your day-to-day life.

Healing young parts

There are many ways to heal these young, traumatised parts of you. One way is through the relationship between you and your therapist – this is a crucial attachment relationship and will help those little kids inside you feel safe, understood and cared for. You may never have experienced this as a child, so it can be deeply healing to have those experiences in the context of a therapeutic relationship.

In IFS (and schema therapy), using imagery is also integral for the healing process. Many IFS sessions are spent ‘going inside’ – closing your eyes and imagining speaking to your parts, often through imagery, where you visualise them and engage in all sorts of powerful, healing techniques and interactions with them.

Developing self-kindness and self-compassion is also fundamental in trauma recovery. This can be tough, especially for trauma survivors, but is always possible, with the right support and problem-solving. You may find my guided meditations on Insight Timer helpful for this, or try Kristin Neff’s practices on the same app, which are fantastic. And the self we are being kind and compassionate to is usually a young one, so this is calming, soothing and restorative for them, too.

I will be writing a lot more about healing your inner child in these blog posts, as well as teaching about them in my Heal Your Trauma webinars, so I hope all of that proves helpful for you.

Warm wishes,

Dan

How to Transform Your Life-Limiting Schemas

Image by Darius Bashar

What is a schema? This is a question I have been asked many times in the five years that I have been working as a schema therapist. And my answer usually starts like this… A schema is like a blueprint in your mind, to help you do things quickly and easily that you do a lot. So you probably have schemas for making tea, tying your shoelaces, riding a bike, driving a car, reading a book, and so on.

Think about it like this – if you go to make a cup of tea, you don’t have to thumb through your tea-making handbook every time. You just think, ‘Make tea,’ and you do. That’s how schemas work. And your brain forms many (probably thousands) of these schemas, because it’s always trying to save energy. Your brain uses a great deal of energy as it’s working hard to run your body/life all day – research shows that although it represents just 2% of your body weight, it accounts for 20% of your body’s energy use..

Each schema saves a little bit of energy, so all of these tea-making, shoelace-tying, bike-riding, car-driving, book-reading schemas are very helpful indeed.

Not all schemas are helpful

In the 1990s, Dr Jeffrey Young developed schema therapy – one of a number of new, ‘third wave’ cognitive therapies springing up around the world. Central to his model was the discovery that there are 18 schemas, which are not very helpful. In fact, these schemas can be really painful for us, causing a great deal of problems in our day-to-day lives.

Let’s illustrate this with the most common schema, which is the ‘core schema’ for virtually all of my clients (and the person writing this), Defectiveness. I always tell people that this is the ‘not good enough’ schema, because it’s the one that gets triggered when you have low self-esteem, lose confidence, think we are boring, stupid, weak, rubbish or any other harshly self-critical way of perceiving yourself.

This speaks to key concept number one: that once you have a schema, you will always have it (unless it’s healed), but it won’t always be active. Sometimes your schemas go dormant, which is like them going to sleep. Then something stressful or threatening happens and the schema gets triggered and wakes up. As schemas comprise cognitive, emotional and physiological elements, this means that your thinking can become distorted or otherwise unhelpful, you feel intense feelings like anger, anxiety or hurt, which show up in your body as a burning in your chest, knot in your stomach or a sinking, heavy feeling all over.

How schemas form

So how do these painful schemas develop? Take that Defectiveness schema – if this is one of yours, it probably developed when you were a child, often between the ages of four and six, which is when we start to get ‘cognitive’ as children. Maybe your older brother was way better at everything than you, so you started to think , ‘I’m rubbish at everything - what’s wrong with me?’ Or you had a harsh, critical parent who always told you that you were lazy, or stupid, or a waste of space.

Both through your thoughts about yourself and negative messages received from people around you, the schema started to form in your brain. And neuroscientists teach us that, ‘neurons that fire together, wire together,’ meaning if you think a certain thought 10,000 times, you develop a powerful neural network in your brain, to make thinking that thought easier/energy-saving. And then, 30 years later, you don’t even know it’s a thought, this is just a fundamental truth for you – that you’re lazy or stupid, or some other bad thing.

How schemas heal

I know, this can all seem a bit depressing. But the good news is that schemas can be healed. In fact, there is a whole model of psychotherapy – schema therapy – devoted to exactly that outcome! In my therapy practice, we heal people’s schemas in many ways – through our warm, safe, compassionate relationship; by rewriting a negative, self-critical life story to make it a much kinder, more compassionate (and truthful) story; using techniques like ‘imagery rescripting’ to process painful memories and so gradually weaken the schemas they would otherwise feed on a daily basis.

Helping people with their painful, life-limiting schemas is also one reason I founded Heal Your Trauma. And is one reason I am writing this post – because knowledge is power, so reading blogs like this, attending my webinars, or of course any other helpful/healing resources you come across will all contribute to healing your schemas, rewiring your brain, healing childhood trauma, or whatever words we use to describe it.

I hope that helps – and do watch this space for future posts on this topic.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Why You Keep Falling in the Same Hole – and How to Stop

Image by Ian Taylor

My first counselling training began almost 30 years ago – way back in 1994. Although I was very young (probably a bit too young, in hindsight), I absolutely loved it. The three-year training, in Psychosynthesis – a humanistic/transpersonal model – was so stimulating and exciting. I had never experienced anything like it.

And I remember one of the trainers reading a poem to us and then using it as a metaphor for therapy, which has stuck with me ever since – I recently tracked it down and learned that it was Portia Nelson’s There’s a Hole in My Sidewalk: The Romance of Self-Discovery. I have used this poem/metaphor with hundreds of my clients, so think you will find it helpful. Here’s how it goes.

Part 1: Falling in the hole

Imagine that you’re walking down a road on a lovely sunny day. You feel fine and are enjoying your walk, not heading anywhere special, just ambling down the road. Then, bang. Without warning, you fall into a huge hole in the road.

You lie there, bruised and winded at the bottom of the hole, thinking to yourself, ‘What the hell was that? Where did that stupid hole come from?’

Eventually you manage to climb out of the hole and go on your way, shaken, sore and confused.

Part 2: Falling in the same hole

Months go by. You walk down the same road every day. And every single day you fall into the same damn hole. It’s like Groundhog Day – you never see it coming and it always takes you by complete surprise. You start really hating that hole…

Part 3: seeing the hole but still falling in

Eventually, something changes. Now when you walk down that road, you realise that the hole is there. You even see it as you walk towards it, but – and this is the most maddening bit – you still fall in! And when you find yourself, battered and bruised at the bottom of the hole, you think to yourself, ‘This is making me crazy now! How can I see the stupid hole but still fall in every time? Argh! So annoying!’

Part 4: Hole-enlightenment day

This goes on for way too long. You now hate the hole with a deep and abiding passion. Until, one day, something miraculous happens. On this special day, you walk down the usual road. You see the hole coming. You walk closer. And closer. And closer. Until, just as you’re about to fall in again, you think to yourself. ‘Wait a damn minute. I know you, hole! And do you know what? I have had enough of the falling. And the bruising. And the being shaken.’

So you do something quietly wonderful. You see the hole, decide to walk around it, then do just that. On you go with your journey, feeling deep-down-in-your-bones happy and proud of yourself.

So what does all that mean?

Here’s why I have told that story hundreds of times over the years. It’s because this is how the therapy process – and any kind of personal growth – works. At first, you get triggered by things you don’t even know are there, or are triggers, or even what a trigger is! So of course you keep falling in the same wretched holes, because you don’t know they exist.

Your holes might be the same as mine, or they might be different. So one of my holes/triggers is narcissistic people, especially men. People with this kind of personality can often be harshly critical, or demeaning, or shut you down rudely and insensitively. And one of my family members did that to me a lot as a child. So just being around a person like this is triggering for my young, hurt parts – because they expect to be hurt again.

It took me a long time (and a lot of therapy) to learn this, but now I know that this is one of my holes so I – mostly – manage not to fall in.

Achieving hole-enlightenment

Of course, the oh-so-glorious day is the one where you see the hole but manage not to fall in this time, instead walking around it and carrying on, with a huge smile on your face. But that takes time. It takes a lot of learning. A great deal of compassionate support. And all of this is especially true if you have a trauma history because, sadly, you will have more holes than most people, they will be bigger and deeper, and it will be even harder to learn not to fall in.

But, as I am always explaining in these posts, just because it’s harder for you doesn’t mean it’s impossible. I passionately believe that everyone can heal, including you. That’s because we have a range of life-changing, trauma-informed therapies at our disposal now, as well as a wealth of knowledge about the mind, brain, body and nervous system, what happens to them during trauma – and, crucially, how to heal those wounds.

If you would like to know more about all of this, start by reading my website and Heal Your Trauma Blog, which contains a huge amount of information about trauma and mental health in general. You could also come along to my first Heal Your Trauma webinar, What is Trauma and Can it Be Healed?, on Saturday 26th February, 2022. You can book your place, for just £49, using the button below.

I hope to see you there – and good luck with those holes!

Warm wishes,

Dan

Compassionate Breathing: A Step-By-Step Guide

This is a foundational practice that I use with all of my clients, to help them regulate their nervous system. You can use this practice any time you feel triggered and either ‘hyperaroused’ (high-energy states like being stressed, agitated, angry, upset, anxious) or ‘hypoaroused’ (low-energy states like being sad, ashamed, depressed or dissociated).

If you are a trauma survivor, you may experience one or both of these states on a daily basis, perhaps cycling between them – so having some simple, effective techniques to help manage that is crucial.

You can be guided by my video on Compassionate Breathing, below, but it’s helpful to read these guidelines first, to give you some idea of when to use the practice and what you are trying to achieve. The first two stages of the practice focus on calming and regulating your nervous system by adjusting the speed and depth of your breathing. I will send you a follow-up post which guides you through stages three and four, to help you generate self-compassion, sending warmth and kindness to the hurt little boy or girl inside.

It’s helpful to understand a little about the nervous system first. If you feel threatened and your brain decides that fight or flight are the best survival options, you feel either angry (signalling fight) or anxious (telling you that flight is the best option), your sympathetic nervous system is activated, you start ‘chest breathing’ (fast, shallow breaths from the top part of your lungs), your muscles tense up, heart rate increases and you get a bit shot of adrenaline/cortisol into your bloodstream.

All of this gives you strength and energy to either fight or flee – great news if you are faced with a hungry predator, not so good if you are on a busy Tube train. And if you can’t fight or flee, your brain triggers the freeze response, which can make you feel collapsed, exhausted, paralysed, spacey or numb.

This technique help you breathe deeply and abdominally, which is the opposite of fast, shallow chest breathing. And breathing abdominally stimulates the vagus nerve, which also stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system and the ‘rest and digest’ response to help you feel calmer, safer and more at peace – helpful whether you’re in a high- or low-energy state.

The practice

1. Adjust your posture. Make sure your feet are flat and grounded on the floor, then let your shoulders gently roll back so your chest feels spacious and open. Now lengthen your spine – sit upright but relaxed, with your head, neck and spine in alignment. Imagine an invisible piece of string attached to the top of your head, pulling you gently upright.

Sitting in this position helps you feel grounded, alert and stronger in your core. There is a great deal of research on the link between your posture and mood, so just a simple adjustment in posture can help you feel a bit more energised and stronger, with a subtle but noticeable uplift in your energy and mood.

2. Begin Compassionate Breathing. Close your eyes, take deep, slow breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth. Your breaths should be roughly four seconds in, four seconds out. Imagine that your abdomen is like a balloon, inflating on the in-breath, deflating on the out-breath. Keep breathing, noticing everything slowing down and letting your muscles start to relax.

Breathing this way should help you feel calmer within a minute or so, but if you have time, I recommend extending the practice for up to five minutes – it’s just deep breathing, so you can’t do it too much! I also love this practice because you can do it anywhere – on the bus, in a difficult meeting, at your desk…

Try using Compassionate Breathing every day, especially when you’re feeling triggered in any way. I very much hope that, over time, it will help you feel calmer, more relaxed and mindfully present in your day-to-day life.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Listen to My Guided Mindfulness of Breath Meditations on Insight Timer

Image by Hari Nandakumar

Mindfulness of Breath is the core meditation practice in both Buddhist and Western, secular mindfulness traditions. When you have established a regular meditation practice, it’s beneficial to sit in silence, mindfully focusing on your breath, sounds, thoughts, body or any other point of focus. But if you are a beginner, it’s a good idea to listen to guided meditations first, as sitting in silence for long stretches of time can be challenging (and will quickly introduce you to your busy, restless mind!).

That’s why I have recorded a series of Mindfulness of Breath meditations for Insight Timer: five-minute, 10-minute, 15-minute and 20-minute versions. All of these practices are free (as are tens of thousands of meditations by myself and other teachers on the InsightTimer app), with optional donations if you so wish.

You will also find Loving-Kindness practices, a Body Scan, a Safe Place Imagery, Box Breathing and Compassionate Breathing techniques, a Four-Stage Self-Compassion Practice and much more. I will continue adding to my collection of meditations on the app – including trauma-sensitive mindfulness practices. I hope you find these and my various other Insight Timer meditations helpful – use the button below if you would like to listen to them now.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Why Bullying is so Traumatic for Kids (and Adults)

Image by Kuanish Reymbaev

I was badly bullied at school. It was one of the worst years of my life – the last year of primary school, which should have been a happy time but was anything but. For some reason I’m still not 100% clear about, I got held back a year while all my friends went on to secondary school. I was then dropped, gazelle-like, into the pride of hungry lions that were the kids in the year below.

And although I have always been big, I was a sensitive, easily-hurt kid – perfect prey for bullies. So this gang made my life hell, for a year. And this experience was deeply scarring for me. It stays with me to this day, despite a great deal of work in therapy (I am finally close to healing those wounds, but it has taken a long time and much hard work).

Why am I telling you all this? Because, as with many painful psychological experiences, I know what bullying feels like, from the inside (known as emotional empathy). This is very different from intellectually understanding it (cognitive empathy), from reading books and being taught on a therapy training.

Why bullying is so traumatic

What I most remember about this awful time is the feeling of helplessness, of powerlessness. Whatever I did, or tried to do, didn’t make any difference. I told my parents, eventually, but – although of course they tried their best to help, especially my mum – when they told the teachers, it just got worse.

If I tried avoiding the gang, they always found me. I couldn’t fight back, even if I had been that sort of kid, because there were five or six of them and one of me. And this horrible kind of helplessness, in the face of attack – physical, verbal, emotional – is what turns a bad experience into a traumatic one.

I guess the silver lining of these events, which happened almost 50 years ago, is that they have helped me both understand and in turn, help trauma survivors. It’s why I always tell my clients that I understand trauma, dysfunctional families, alcoholism, bullying, depression and so much more, because I lived through it all as a child.

It has also helped me see that, as a society, we underestimate just how traumatic bullying can be for kids. I am still affected by those experiences, several decades later. And so will you be, if it happened to you. Those memories – like any kind of trauma memory – need processing, with an effective trauma-informed therapy like schema therapy or internal family systems therapy (the one I am currently having).

If you experienced bullying as a child, please don’t minimise or ignore it. The little boy or girl inside you still bears the scars of those experiences, however long ago they were.

Bullying hurts adults too

For many people, their bullying comes not in childhood, but later life. An abusive partner, horrible boss or vindictive colleague can be extremely painful, however old you may be. Again, please don’t ignore or dismiss these experiences. If you’re stuck in an abusive relationship, charities like Refuge or Women’s Aid can help you escape it – and stay safe once you have left.

If the problem is at work, and you have an HR department, speak to them about it right away. They have a legal obligation to protect you and prevent bullying or abusive behaviour in the workplace. If you’re a member of a union, tell them – they will be able to help. And, finally, if all else fails, find a new job! Life is too short to spend every day in fear of being belittled, targeted or abused in any way.

A key part of my Heal Your Trauma project is cutting through the fog of ignorance and misinformation that exists around trauma. It’s a huge problem, affecting millions of people around the world. Many experiences can be traumatic for us. And we can always do something about it, including reading blogs like this one, finding support groups, good therapy, reading self-help books, speaking to friends and family. All of those things will help – so please don’t ignore your traumatic experiences.

Get help – you deserve it.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Why Self-Compassion is a Superpower

Image by Rui Xu

Let me take a guess about you. I bet you’re a kind person. And that you’re good at thinking about, caring for and looking after other people. You may even be called ‘kind’ or ‘compassionate’ by those who know you.

But I’ll also guess that you’re not very good at being kind or compassionate to yourself.

Does this resonate for you? If so, you are definitely not alone. Most people I work with are decent, kind, thoughtful human beings. But they also find the whole concept of self-compassion at best a struggle and at worst completely alien. And this is a big problem, because there is now a huge amount of research into the beneficial effects of compassion – both for ourselves and others – and its antidote-like effect for all of the psychological problems we struggle with, like stress, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem…. and trauma.

So it’s a key skill, or set of skills, that you really need to learn. And if developing this healing superpower is a problem for you, we need to help you solve that.

How trauma affects self-compassion

Sadly, we know that people with a trauma history find self-compassion especially tough. There are a whole host of reasons for this, so let’s run through some of the most common.

First, your ability to be kind, compassionate, soothing and nurturing to yourself will be determined by the kind of relationships you had in early childhood, especially with your key attachment figures (for most of us, this is mum and dad, but can also include your siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, best friends, favourite teachers, and so on). Let’s focus on your relationship with mum, because for most of us she is the central character in the story of our childhood.

Remember that babies cannot manage their own emotions. They just don’t have the neural architecture to do that because their brains, bodies and nervous systems are not developed yet, so they literally cannot do it. If they are angry, upset or scared, they need someone else to help them regulate those emotions. And for most of us that someone is mum. If we’re lucky, we internalise her loving, caring, soothing presence (her kind facial expression, warm and soothing voice tone, kind words, just enough eye contact, lots of hugs and kisses) and eventually internalise all this goodness, so we are able to start soothing ourselves. Babies can’t do that, but older children can.

But, very sadly, many trauma survivors were not loved and cared for in this way. Their parents might have been heavy drinkers, or had a serious mental illness, or were just really harsh, cold, angry or critical. If that’s true of you, I’m afraid you wouldn’t have developed those self-soothing (= self-compassion) skills in the way that other, lucky kids did. So self-compassion would be a struggle for you from day one.

Negative core beliefs

Another problem for trauma survivors is that you may have negative core beliefs that get in the way of being kind and compassionate to yourself. Aaron Beck, the founder of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) discovered that these beliefs usually form in early childhood, from around four to six. They can either be a direct result of the horrible things people say to us, if we’re called stupid, lazy, weak, a waste of space, or something similarly hurtful. Or they are an interpretation based on the way we’re being treated, so we start to think, say, ‘Mum clearly loves Johnny more than me, so I must be unlovable.’

And these horrible, hurtful ideas about yourself then stick, so when you are 40, you still think, ‘I am stupid/lazy/a waste of space/unlovable.’ Clearly not good – and also a huge, un-climbable barrier to treating yourself with care and compassion.

Finally, some good news

So far, so depressing. If some or all of these things were true of you, at this point you might be feeling hopeless, or that you are broken beyond repair and will never develop self-compassion skills. But, as anyone who often reads my posts will know, one of my core beliefs (and a founding principle of the Heal Your Trauma project) is, It’s never too much and never too late to heal.

I passionately believe this. It’s why I get out of bed every morning and come to the office, where I spend long days helping trauma survivors to overcome the painful legacy of their less-than-functional childhoods. It’s also, incidentally, something I have lived experience of. I recently wrote a post about how I healed the wounds caused by some horrible bullying at school – one of many traumatic aspects of my childhood.

This childhood trauma led me to form some pretty damaging core beliefs – and to be really harsh, critical and unloving with myself. But through a great deal of therapy, meditation, reading and more, I now do a pretty good job of being kind and compassionate to myself on a daily basis (which is why I provide all of these things for you, through Heal Your Trauma).

I will be teaching you some of the breathing techniques, self-compassion practices and guided imagery I use with my clients (and myself) on my 26th February webinar, What is Trauma and Can it Be Healed? If you would like to be more compassionate to yourself, do click the button below to find out more.

I hope to see you there, or at one of the many exciting Heal Your Trauma events we have planned for 2022.

And wishing you luck on your healing journey.

Warm wishes,

Dan

How to Manage Your Pandemic-Related Anxiety

Image by Miguel A Amutio

As I write this, I have just had to close my therapy office again – having only started in-person sessions around a month ago, after 18 months of Zooming. It’s extremely disheartening, for myself and my lovely clients – it was such a joy to see them, as fully formed, three-dimensional humans again, instead of just a head-and-shoulders view on a screen.

But just when we thought we might be turning a corner, Omicron happened. And in some ways, it feels like we’re back to square one. In the UK, that means offices closing, people being advised to work from home, parties and dinners cancelled, back to wondering whether we will see our loved ones over the holidays. It’s hard to keep your spirits up, to avoid feeling gloomy and wondering if it will ever end.

Reasons to be hopeful

And yet, there are reasons for hope, even in these challenging times. I, like millions of other people in my country, have been triple-jabbed. I am so profoundly grateful for that – and know how incredibly lucky I am. Billions of people around the world haven’t had a single dose of vaccine, let alone three. And my remarkable good fortune – being born in the right place, at the right time, with access to miraculous and life-changing vaccines – means I am around 97% protected against the Delta variant and 75% against Omicron.

What a blessing. And, although I will have to go back to seeing my clients on a screen again, what a miracle it is that we even have technologies like Zoom! Otherwise this last 18 months would have been infinitely harder, for them and for me. Another blessing.

Also, in the UK, we have a free National Health Service. Let me say that again, for those of us who take this amazing, life-saving wonder for granted. We have a health service that is not only word-leading in many ways, staffed by the most skilled, patient, compassionate, heroic people I could ever hope to meet – but it’s free. My jabs were free. The ICUs that have saved countless lives in the UK are free. The GPs who have also saved thousands upon thousands of lives, also free. The ambulances that rushed people to receive life-preserving treatment. Free.

It’s OK to feel anxious

Please remember this and try to find reasons for gratitude, especially on the darker days. (Research shows that gratitude is a great antidote for depression, among other beneficial effects). At the same time, I don’t want you to force yourself into feeling fake-positive, if that’s the last thing you feel right now. A global pandemic is deeply anxiety-provoking for us all, in different ways and to different degrees. So it’s OK to feel anxious.

In fact, it’s healthy to feel anxious, sad, upset, lonely, hurt, grieving, angry, frustrated, down or whatever emotions might be running through you right now. As I’m always telling my clients, emotions are what make us human. Of course, we all like the positive ones – joy, excitement, love, pleasure, pride… But in order to feel the good stuff I’m afraid you also need to feel the bad, because if you suppress, detach or dissociate from your negative emotions, I’m afraid that you won’t feel many of the good ones either.

That’s because the part that detaches is a bit of a blunt instrument – it just pushes all emotion down, good and bad. So it’s fine to feel anxious right now – I certainly do. And it’s also helpful to remember that getting through this pandemic is a marathon, not a sprint (and yes, that’s what the image is for). I know it already feels endless, but it will take time for Covid to become endemic, like flu or the common cold. Time, as well as vaccinating everyone (including those billions of people in poorer countries), mask-wearing, social distancing, room-ventilating and all of the other stuff we should be doing right now.

I hope that all helps, a little. And I would like to send warm, loving, compassionate thoughts to you, whoever you are and wherever you’re reading this around the world.

Warm wishes,

Dan

What is Internal Family Systems Therapy?

Image by Thomas Koukas

If you have a trauma history and are looking for a therapist to help, it can be bewildering. There are so many counsellors and therapists out there, offering a smorgasbord of therapy models, each claiming to be the best. As a specialist in treating complex trauma, I would advise you to find someone who knows what they’re talking about – ask them whether they have trained in trauma therapy and exactly how they would help you with your trauma history. If they don’t have a convincing answer, please find someone else.

I would also recommend finding a trauma-informed therapy, such as EMDR, trauma-focused CBT, compassion-focused therapy, sensorimotor psychotherapy, somatic experiencing therapy, schema therapy or internal family systems (IFS) therapy. As an Advanced Accredited Schema Therapist, Trainer & Supervisor and Internal Family Systems-Trained Therapist, I specialise in these two approaches, which are both excellent, trauma-informed therapy models.

In this post I would like to focus on the last one, IFS, because it offers a wonderful way to heal your trauma, whatever you might have been through and however bad your symptoms are today. IFS was developed by Dr Richard Schwartz in the 1980s and, unlike most therapy models, emerged from the things his clients were telling him. Dick (as he likes to be called) Schwartz tells the story of his clients saying, over and over, ‘A part of me wants to date this guy but another part really doesn’t like him,’ or, ’Part of me wants to binge-eat cake, but a big part of me knows that’s not a good idea.’

We all have parts

Dick came to realise that his clients were giving him a glimpse into their internal world – and the many different parts of them who lived there. This idea, ‘multiplicity of self’, is at the heart of IFS. Because even though we feel like we’re just us – I am Dan, or you are Carol – that’s not how the brain constructs our personality. Instead, we all have different parts, who think differently, want different things and often have conflicting impulses. (Date the guy/don’t date the guy; binge/don’t binge).

This isn’t weird, or the sign of deep psychological issues, it’s just how we all are. And in the IFS model, we have two different kinds of parts: exiles and protectors. Exiles are the (usually) young, wounded parts of us, who carry all the painful thoughts, memories, feelings and experiences from key times in our life. They are called exiles because they are often exiled in your internal system – meaning shut away, because their feelings are deemed too powerful and overwhelming for us.

Managers and firefighters

And the parts that shut them away are called protectors – they help protect those young parts from being hurt, but also keep them shut away so they don’t overwhelm you. And there are two types of protector: managers and firefighters. Managers do a job, like be perfectionistic, worry obsessively or people-please. Their job is to be proactive – anticipating threats or painful triggers to help you avoid them.

Firefighters are reactive. So the part that drinks, or binge-eats, or cuts, or smokes weed, or gambles is a firefighter. They use any tactic available to quickly extinguish the pain felt by young, wounded parts.

Who you are, deep down

Finally, we all have a Self. This is not a part, but you, deep down – a good metaphor is the sun (Self) behind the clouds (parts). Always there, but sometimes obscured by activated parts, thinking, feeling and doing stuff frantically all the time.

So the goal of IFS therapy is to find and heal the exiles; free the protectors from their tiring, stressful jobs; and help you access ‘Self-energy’ so you can feel calmer, stronger, happier and more at peace.

I use IFS with all my clients and they love it. There is something about the model and this way of working that just resonates with people on a deep level. And it works! Even with the most stubborn, hard-to-treat problems like complex trauma.

I will be writing more about this and other models in this Heal Your Trauma Blog – and you can sign up for the HYT newsletter below, to make sure you never miss a post or one of our events.

I really hope that helps – and wishing you strength, courage and perseverance on your healing journey.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Why (Good) Friends are Key for Your Mental Health

Image by Kingsley Osei-Abrah

Imagine being an eight-year-old on holiday, making sandcastles on the beach. Then another kid shyly approaches and asks if they can help. They have their own bucket and spade, are about your age and seem friendly enough, so you say, Sure. You probably don’t talk much, just dig, fetch seawater for the moat, focus on building your indomitable sand fortress. Then mum says it’s time to go, so you take one last, longing look at your construction and wave goodbye to the other kid.

The next day, as you start over, the same kid sidles up. And again, you probably don’t say too much, but spend the whole day digging, carrying, pouring, building. By the end of that day, you are firm friends – and every day for the rest of your holidays you hang out, gradually chatting more about inconsequential stuff, but things that might seem very important for a pair of eight-year-olds.

After the holiday, you might stay in touch or you might not (that’s up to both of your parents, really). Either way, you made a friend and, whether that was a holiday friend or a long-term friend, it felt good, right? You probably didn’t think too much about it, but you both had fun, you got on, neither of you did anything especially annoying. And that was enough.

We are wired for friendship

It felt good because, apart from the simple pleasures of sandcastle-building together, something much deeper was going on. When that kid shyly asked to help, your brain quickly checked him out and put him into one of two categories: threatening or safe. If he had been a hulking teenager kicking your castle to bits, you would have put him in category one and called your parents to protect you. But this kid was small, friendly and nice, so you gave him a ‘safe’ badge and got busy playing.

This might seem simplistic, but it’s what we do, all the time, with every person we ever meet. Your nervous system is constantly checking people (and situations) out to decide whether they are threatening or safe. If they are threatening (or just seem that way) your threat system kicks in, as your fight-flight-freeze response is triggered and you act, quickly and decisively, to deal with the threat.

But if someone seems warm, friendly, open, kind, trusting, nice or is sending a whole bunch of other safe-seeming signals, an equally powerful system comes online: your attachment system. And while the threat system says, Go away! your attachment system says, Get closer. This is how we make friends, whether we are eight years old on a beach, an adolescent at school, or young adult at college.

And we are wired for this – to attach, get closer, hug, love, commit, be open and intimate. Attaching like this is in your DNA, because your ancestors on this planet have been doing it since mammals first walked the Earth, because humans, like other mammals, are wired for attachment. It’s why cats and dogs care for and feed their young, keeping them close until they are old enough to fend for themselves (it’s also why sea turtles do not, just laying their eggs on a beach before heading back out to sea – no attachment system).

When relationships are hard

Of course, for many of us, making friends and forming lasting relationships is not so easy. If you have a trauma history, this may be especially true for you. That’s because your attachment system probably didn’t get the warm, positive, loving responses it needed when you were young. If your parent or other caregiver was angry, anxious, unpredictable, unreliable or downright hurtful to you, the person who was supposed to be your warm, safe, loving attachment figure was none of those things. Instead, their behaviour fired up your threat system, which is essentially the opposite of your attachment system in terms of how it makes you think, feel and behave.

So your attachment style (how you relate to other people) is probably not secure, unlike our eight-year-old’s on the beach. This style might be some form of insecure attachment, either anxious, avoidant or disorganised (which is basically a mixture of the two). This will make it hard to form friendships and romantic relationships; it might also make it difficult to fit in and feel relaxed among fellow students or colleagues, especially if they are new. Many of my clients struggle with all of these different types of relationship.

But, as I am always telling them, the good news is that your attachment style is not set or fixed. It can change throughout your lifetime. So if you have, say, an anxious attachment style, it can become more secure throughout your life. How? Well, an attachment-based therapy, like schema therapy, is designed to help with that. A long-term romantic relationship – especially with a partner who has a secure attachment style – will also help a great deal.

Keep working and everything can change

So, as I am always emphasising in these posts, however bad it was for you as a child – and if your childhood in no way resembled that idyllic holiday scene, above – and however hard you have found it to form warm, close, long-term relationships, please remember that this is not a life sentence. It can change, if you put the work in – and get help from the right person.

Keep going, even if it’s a struggle at first. Don’t give up if you try dating, for example, and it doesn’t go well. Eventually you will find the right person for you. Keep working at those friendships too, because the rewards, long-term, are absolutely worth the effort. And better to have one or two close friends than a whole bunch of superficial friendships, or relationships with people who don’t make you feel good.

You deserve love, warmth, intimacy and happiness with your fellow humans as much as any other person on this planet. I very much hope you find all of them soon.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Trauma-Informed Guided Meditations on Insight Timer

Image by Jeremy Bishop

When I am helping people with a trauma history, I always recommend adding a meditation practice to their daily routine. We know from all the research that meditation is incredibly helpful for trauma survivors – especially mindfulness and self-compassion practices. Building your mindfulness muscles is important, because it helps you stay focused on the present moment, rather than ruminating about the past (which can cause depression) or worrying about the future (which will probably make you anxious).

Mindfulness practice also helps strengthen neural connections in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that helps you calm and regulate emotions, think more rationally, have perspective on your problems and step back to see the big picture, rather than getting bogged down in upsetting details – all crucial elements of trauma recovery.

Self-compassion is also key, even though it can be a tough skill to master for trauma survivors. You may find it hard to like or accept yourself, even if others like and accept you. That’s very common, so please don’t worry about it. There is a huge range of self-compassion resources available now, so try reading blogs like this one, listening to podcasts or using guided imagery/meditation practices. You may also find Kristin Neff and Christopher Germer’s eight-week Mindful Self Compassion course helpful.

Dan’s Insight Timer collection

I have recorded a wide range of practices for the Insight Timer app, including guided imagery and breathing techniques, as well as numerous meditation practices. I use these with my therapy clients and they also form a key resource of my Heal Your Trauma project. They are all free, with an optional donation. If you would like to try them today, you can find my extensive collection on the Insight Timer app: insighttimer.com/danrobertstherapy

I very much hope you find them helpful.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Book Your Place on the First Heal Your Trauma Webinar

If you have a trauma history, or care about someone who does, book your place on a live, two-hour Zoom webinar with Dan Roberts, Advanced Accredited Schema Therapist, Trainer & Supervisor and Founder of Heal Your Trauma. What is Trauma and Can it Be Healed? is the first of a series of regular webinars presented by Dan Roberts throughout 2022.

This event, which will be both highly informative and experiential, will take place from 3-5pm on Saturday 26th February 2022 and costs just £49 to attend live, as well as gaining exclusive access to a video of the event, to watch whenever you like.

What is Trauma and Can it Be Healed? features two hours of teaching and powerful exercises that will help you feel calmer and more relaxed, presented by Dan Roberts, a leading expert on trauma and mental health.

In this powerful, highly experiential webinar you will learn:

• Why a wide range of events can be traumatising for us, especially when we are young

• Why trauma describes both the traumatic event and its impact on the mind, brain and body

• Why it’s crucial to understand the role of the nervous system, which is often ‘dysregulated’ in trauma survivors and needs help to come back into a regulated, calm state

• Powerful practices to help you feel calmer and more at peace, including one of the most effective and fast-acting breathing techniques available

• Why it’s essential to find a trauma-informed therapist; and why standard counselling and psychotherapy can be unhelpful for trauma survivors

• The importance of kindness and compassion for yourself and others – and how to generate these powerful, deeply healing ways of thinking and feeling, even if you have found this difficult throughout your life

Don’t miss this chance to learn from a leading trauma therapist and expert on mental health and wellbeing – watch the video for more information and book your place now using the button below.

Warm wishes,

Dan

What is the Self in Internal Family Systems Therapy?

Image by Nikolay Frolochkin

I have been involved with the counselling and psychotherapy world, on and off, for almost 30 years now. In that time, I have both trained in and personally experienced a wide range of therapy models. And one of my favourite models is internal family systems (IFS) therapy, which is currently experiencing an explosion of growth and popularity around the world.

I think this is because people resonate with IFS on a deep, instinctive level. It just feels right. The founder, Dr Richard Schwartz, developed IFS in the 1980s and his warmth, kindness and humility are the foundations of this groundbreaking approach to psychotherapy. With thousands of practitioners now following in his footsteps around the world, IFS offers us a way to work with complex, hard-to treat problems like trauma that is powerful and highly effective but also respectful, non-pathologising and deeply compassionate.

IFS and schema therapy: similar but different

There are many similarities between IFS and schema therapy, but also some key differences. One of these is that, in schema therapy, one of the key aims is building your Healthy Adult mode, which is seen as weak and in need of support and enrichment at the beginning of therapy (like building up an under-used muscle). In IFS, this rich inner resource is called your Self; and it’s seen as something you are born with, so just needs accessing, rather than building.

There are many ways to think about the Self. One is that it’s the seat of your consciousness, or your essential nature as a human being. Another is that this is just a way of describing your deepest, most valuable qualities, such as confidence, compassion and courage. In fact, there are eight ‘C’ qualities attributed to the Self:

• Calm

• Curiosity

• Clarity

• Connectedness

• Compassion

• Courage

• Confidence

• Creativity

Why your self is like the sun

Because the Self is a bit hard to describe in words (and is much better experienced, in an IFS session, meditation or in various other ways), we use various metaphors to try and convey this somewhat hard-to-grasp concept. One metaphor is to think about the Self as being like the sun. So even when the sky is black and stormy, or covered in a thick blanket of cloud, if you were to fly above those clouds in a plane, you quickly see that the sky is always blue up there, with a bright sun shining down.

If you substitute ‘parts’ for ‘clouds’, you can see that even on a day when your parts are very activated (and you are feeling some kind of intense emotion, like being stressed, upset, angry, lonely or hurt) and your Self seems to be lost, it’s always there, waiting, ready to offer you all of those wonderful qualities listed above. I find this a very comforting idea, especially on days when I am feeling triggered and struggling with some of those feelings. I know that, deep down, my Self is calm, loving, kind, compassionate and peaceful, even if that’s hard to see when emotional storms are raging.

How do we access the Self?

Although describing the Self is a bit tricky, the good news is that experiencing it is not. For starters, any time you felt any of those ‘C’ qualities above, you were feeling what’s known as ‘Self-energy’. I would add other qualities to that list, such as kindness, altruism, insight, equanimity, generosity, strength, resilience and, perhaps most important of all, love.

We all feel these things, to a greater or lesser degree. If we have a trauma history – and especially if it’s a bad one – it might be harder to feel some of that stuff, which is totally understandable. Your days might be dominated by all sorts of negative feelings like fear, rage or pain. In IFS language, those feelings come from your Exiles, which are the young, wounded parts of your inner system carrying all the pain caused by whatever happened to you as a child.

‘We all have what IFS refers to as the “Self” – our core, our essence, our internal compass that possesses inherent wisdom and healing capacity’

Frank G Anderson MD

But remember that sun-behind-the-clouds metaphor – just because it’s hard to access your Self doesn’t mean it’s lost, or was never there to begin with. It will just take a bit more time, patience and probably the skilled, loving help of a good trauma-informed therapist to find and access these qualities – letting the sun shine into your life.

Also remember that any time you are, say, practising mindfulness or metta meditation, you are accessing the Self. Whenever you read a book or watch a documentary or listen to a podcast, and feel some kind of peace, or inner warmth, or have a lightbulb moment of insight, that’s your Self. So it’s kind of everywhere, all the time, if you just know how to see and experience it.

Your mind and body are self-healing

And this is all good news if you’re struggling with the legacy of trauma, or any other kind of psychological problem. Because whether you call this aspect of your inner world the Self, Healthy Adult, neural networks in the brain, Buddha Nature (or even soul, if you are a spiritual person), it doesn’t really matter. We know that you, like every other person on this planet, have powerful and innate healing systems in your mind, brain and body.

And so, as I often say in these posts, everything can be healed, however bad your experiences were and whatever wounds they caused in you. I hope that helps, a little, and know that I will be here, writing, teaching and offering all of the wisdom I can, from all of the wonderful teachers I have encountered – and, of course from my own Self – to help you on your healing journey.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Rethinking Your New Year's Resolutions

Image by Elisha Terada

Every year, as we approach 1st January, people ask me, ‘What are your resolutions this year?’ And I always tell them that new year’s resolutions are not my cup of tea.

It’s not that I’m against them, per se – if you’re making resolutions that’s great, I very much hope they go well for you. It just seems like a slightly odd idea to me – that, on one day out of 365, we set ourselves some goals, most of which are forgotten by the end of January.

For example, so many people make resolutions about getting fitter, which is great. Or losing weight, which is (usually) a good idea. So they sign up for an expensive gym membership, go every day for a week and then lose interest and never go again.

Goals for life, not just the new year

Now this doesn’t mean I am against change, or growth, or setting yourself helpful goals. Far from it. In fact, my whole life is about helping people change! I am deeply passionate about this and spend most of my waking hours writing, teaching and providing therapy sessions where I do everything in my power to help people change and grow.

I just think that these kinds of changes – becoming calmer and less anxious, say, or becoming fitter and healthier – require slow, incremental and sustained effort. The kind of effort that needs lifelong goals, not the kind that sparkle like NYE fireworks and then fizzle out just as fast. So here are a few of my guidelines for setting goals that have a good chance of surviving past February.

1. Make sure your goals are realistic. It’s so easy to set ourselves overly ambitious goals, like losing 20kg, or going to the gym every day. And then we really go for it – hitting the treadmill and weights, giving up cake, doing Dry January – but only lose 3kg, get disheartened and give up.

   If you really need, for health or medical reasons, to lose 20kg, why not aim to do that by the end of 2022? You can then lose around 2kg a month, which is a realistic goal for sustainable weight loss, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). And with each 2kg lost, you feel good about yourself, your confidence grows and that spurs you on to keep exercising and eating more healthily. It’s a win-win.

2. Set yourself kind goals. We have all been through two years now that have been unprecedented in terms of stress, anxiety and daily challenges. As someone who has (thankfully) never experienced a world war, I have known nothing like this in my lifetime. And now I think we are all just exhausted, mentally, physically and emotionally. So why not make your goals for 2022 all about kindness and compassion.

   If you don’t have a daily meditation practice, getting started now would be a great idea – I have recorded a collection of guided meditations on Insight Timer, which you might enjoy. They are all free, or payable by donation, if you wish. And there are thousands of other excellent teachers on this app, all offering meditations for free. Other apps such as Calm and Headspace are great; or you could try one of the eight-week mindfulness courses, like mindfulness-based stress reduction, which is a great way to kickstart your daily practice.

   How about setting a goal of doing one kind thing for yourself every day? Or taking compassionate action for a cause that most affects you, such as protecting the rainforest, or raising money for refugees, who arrive penniless and often traumatised on our shores. Taking compassionate action like this is a win-win, because it helps the people or cause you’re passionate about, as well as stimulating activity in your brain that will help with mental-health problems like anxiety or depression.

3. Avoid the happiness trap. I know this falls into the no-brainer category, but believing that you should be happy all the time is an easy myth to buy into and then spend your life pursuing. Happiness is a lovely but fleeting state, that by its very nature can’t last for long. It’s like a beautiful butterfly that settles onto your arm for a few seconds, displaying its gorgeous colours for your visual delectation, before flapping off again.

   Instead of spending your life chasing after butterflies (pleasurable but temporary emotional states), why not try to be happier. Less anxious or depressed. Calmer. Stronger. You get the picture. Like losing 1kg a month, this is achievable, even if you have a trauma history and struggle to feel these positive emotions. We can all feel a bit happier, with persistent effort and the right kind of support, so seek something realistic and achievable and you’re much more likely to find it than that elusive butterfly.

   And the Buddha taught us, 2,500 years ago, that a great deal of our suffering is caused by chasing after pleasurable experiences (which he called attachment) and trying to avoid unpleasant ones (aversion). Happiness is just one of the many colours of our emotional rainbow – feeling all of those emotions, without grasping on to them or trying to push them away, is the secret of deep and lasting balance, contentment and a meaningful life.

I hope that helps. And let me take this opportunity to wish you a much-improved year ahead. It’s been a rough couple of years for everyone, so (surely!) things can only get better in 2022. Sending you love and hopeful thoughts, wherever you are in the world.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Try Box Breathing to Feel Calmer, Quickly

Image by Johnny Africa

Everybody wants to feel calm, right? That’s a no-brainer. But feeling calmer, more relaxed, peaceful and at ease is not easy, especially if you have a trauma history and/or struggle with chronic anxiety, stress or anger.

These emotional states are the polar opposite of calm, primarily because they are designed to be – they’re all linked to the fight-or-flight response, gearing us up for action when we face a life-or-death threat like a hungry grizzly or hostile tribe after our territory. Of course, we rarely encounter threats like this in a modern, urban, 21st-century environment, but your brain doesn’t know that. Millions of years of evolution have primed it to react, strongly and instantaneously, to any real or perceived threat you encounter.

Having tried many different techniques over the years to help people feel calmer and more relaxed, I think that the huge variety of breathing techniques available to us can be incredibly powerful and effective. Of course, Yogis have known about these techniques for thousands of years, but we in the West are now latching on to their life-changing potential.

I have written extensively about Compassionate Breathing, my go-to technique to help soothe and regulate my clients’ (and my) nervous system. I am also evangelical about Box Breathing, which I see as more of an ‘emergency’ breathing technique, to use if you are feeling panicky, highly anxious or stressed, have a big presentation you’re freaking out about – or for any situation in which you want to feel calmer, quickly.

How it works

Box Breathing works so well because it does a whole bunch of stuff at the same time. This includes:

• Stimulating your vagus nerve and in turn your parasympathetic nervous system (the ‘brake’ branch of your autonomic nervous system, which helps you feel calm, digest food and sleep)

• Increase oxygen levels throughout your body, lower blood pressure and help you breathe as humans are designed to, most of the time – slowly and deeply

• Help you breathe from your abdomen, rather than a too-small section of your lungs (this is called ‘chest breathing’ and is how we breathe when fight-or-flight gets triggered)

• Give you not one, but two different forms of healthy distraction (counting and visualisation), allowing you to stop obsessively worrying, ruminating about something upsetting in the past, or imagining some awful thing in the future

The practice

Start by adjusting your posture, rolling your shoulders back, opening up the chest and sitting with an upright but relaxed posture. You will want to breathe, as deeply as possible, in through your nose for a count of four seconds, feeling your abdomen inflate like a balloon (just count, slowly, in your mind: one, two, three, four). Then hold that breath for four seconds (one, two, three, four).

And then breathe out through your mouth, letting your abdomen deflate and trying to get every bit of air out of your body (one, two, three, four). Hold for, you guessed it, four seconds (one, two, three, four). Then start the whole cycle again: in-breath, hold, out-breath, hold…

Close your eyes, if that feels comfortable for you, or just lower and soften your gaze. And you can also try visualising a square in your mind, lighting up from the bottom-left corner and running up the vertical line to the top-left corner for your in-breath; across, horizontally, to the top-right corner for your hold; down, vertically, to the bottom-right corner for your out-breath; then left, horizontally for your hold.

Got that? Hope so.

The longer the better

Do this for anything from one to (ideally) five minutes and you should notice a dramatic difference in your physical and emotional state. When I use Box Breathing I notice my body starts to feel really heavy and relaxed, especially if I can do it for longer stretches of time.

Try using Box Breathing every day, but especially when you’re feeling stressed, anxious, angry, agitated, hyper, frazzled, wired or tense; you need to perform in some way that’s stressing you out (driving test, first date, public speaking) or you’re struggling with insomnia, either having a tough time falling asleep or getting back to sleep in the night.

I really hope that helps. I have recorded a step-by-step guide to this technique for my Insight Timer collection, so just click the button below if you would like to listen now.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Can Your Trauma Really Be Healed?

Image by Roberta Sorge

In the UK alone, we know that millions of people have experienced some kind of trauma in their lives. I think about trauma as being on a spectrum, from mild at one end to severe at the other. So for many of these people, the trauma they experienced is probably at the milder end of the spectrum. This doesn’t mean it wasn’t painful, of course, or that it doesn’t have an effect on their daily life now. But they are still able to function, be mums and dads, have jobs and friends and do all the normal stuff of life.

If your experiences were more severe, then I’m afraid the impact on you will also be much worse. The thoughts, beliefs, emotions and physical symptoms you experience might be so intense that it’s hard to live a normal, enjoyable life. If this is true for you, I am deeply sorry – whatever you experienced was categorically not your fault, so it’s completely unfair that it is affecting you so much today.

It’s never too much and never too late

But whether your experiences were milder, more severe, or somewhere in the middle, I passionately believe that all trauma can be healed. And this belief sustains me in all that I do, from founding my Heal Your Trauma project, to writing blog posts like this, teaching webinars and workshops, recording guided meditations and in my day-to-day clinical work with clients, most of whom come to see me precisely because they have a trauma history.

Something I often tell my clients – and a useful mantra if you have a trauma history – is that it’s never too much and never too late to be healed. Whatever you have been through, whether it happened once or many times; however bad it was; and however long you have been living with the impact of those events. We now have a whole range of cutting-edge, evidence-based therapies that are proven to help.

Alongside trauma-informed therapies such as schema therapy, internal family systems therapy, EMDR, trauma-focused CBT, compassion-focused therapy and sensorimotor psychotherapy, we also have a whole range of techniques and strategies that are research-backed to help with your healing process. Some of these are thousands of years old, but have been adapted to help with the specific problems that trauma survivors face, such as trauma-informed yoga and trauma-sensitive mindfulness.

Breathing yourself better

Breathing techniques can also be incredibly powerful and helpful for reducing stress and anxiety, as well as soothing and stabilising dysregulated nervous systems (one of the hallmarks of trauma). I teach a few of these techniques to my clients, in webinars and on the Insight Timer app, such as Compassionate Breathing and Box Breathing. Again, some of these techniques (such as pranayama breathing) have been around for thousands of years, but we are incorporating them into evidence-based Western psychology and finding them highly effective and helpful for hard-to-treat problems like trauma.

It’s important to note that, especially if your experiences were up the higher end of that spectrum, you will definitely need the help of a kind, skilled, trauma-informed therapist. Programmes like Heal Your Trauma will be helpful, but cannot replace the systematic, step-by-step healing of warm, compassionate, effective psychotherapy. But attending webinars and workshops like mine, reading self-help books, meditating, listening to podcasts, doing yoga and other exercise you enjoy, having a loving partner, supportive friends and meaningful work is all part of your healing journey.

And I will do all I can to help – starting with the first of my bi-monthly Heal Your Trauma webinars on Saturday 26th February, from 3-5pm, which you can find out about in the video and book using the button below. I hope to see you there.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Completing My Level 1 Training in Internal Family Systems Therapy

I am very pleased and proud to have completed my Level 1 training in internal family systems therapy – I’m now an Internal Family Systems-Trained Therapist. It's been an intense, but hugely rewarding four months. I absolutely love this model and have integrated it with my other training to help my clients, most of whom are struggling with complex trauma.

I will, I think, always be training as long as I am a psychotherapist. And I’m always looking for cutting-edge, trauma-informed therapies to be able to help my clients with their often complex problems.

IFS is widely regarded as one of the most effective treatments for complex trauma, as working with both wounded young parts and their protectors is key to healing the wounds caused by a trauma history. I will be integrating IFS theories and techniques into my Heal Your Trauma webinars and workshops, as well as adding IFS guided meditations to my collection on Insight Timer.

Warm wishes,

Dan

What is the Fight-Flight-Freeze Response?

Image by Scott Carroll

Although many of us are now city-dwellers, living technologically advanced lives, for the vast majority of our time on Earth we did not live this way. For millions of years, humans lived as hunter-gatherers in small tribal groups. These people lived in villages surrounded by barriers to keep all of the hungry animals and enemy tribes out. Being human was a highly dangerous existence, which is one reason our ancestors didn’t live that long.

Those that did survive had extremely sensitive threat systems in their brains, which were constantly scanning for danger – hungry lions, venomous snakes or club-wielding enemies. And when the amygdala, the part of the brain that scans for threat, detected something worrying, it triggered the fight-flight-freeze response, our three main options for survival when we are under threat.

Now although you may be reading this on your smartphone or laptop, and presumably (hopefully!) you are not surrounded by hungry wild animals, your brain hasn’t changed a great deal since your ancestors lived on the savannah. And that threat system hasn’t changed at all – in fact, your threat system is the same as that of the cute deer in the photo, cats, wolves, lizards, even dinosaurs, because it works so well that evolution didn’t need to change it.

When your brain says fight

If you experienced trauma as a child, or had a single traumatic incident as an adult, unfortunately the threat system in your brain will be highly oversensitive and your amygdala will be on red alert, over-reacting to even minor stressors. This is one reason that trauma survivors are often hypervigilant, reacting to fairly neutral or benign situations as if their life is in danger. That’s because it feels as if your life is in danger, so you go into emergency-action mode to survive.

If your threat system decides a fight response is the best way to survive that threat, it gives you a big jolt of anger to warn you that something is wrong and it’s time to act. At the same time, your breathing changes to take in more oxygen and your heart speeds up to pump oxygenated blood to your major muscles. That, plus the adrenaline and cortisol in your bloodstream, gives you strength and energy to fight (or flee, which involves a similar mobilisation in your body). You fight off the hungry wolf or enemy tribesman, the threat passes and you calm down.

…Or flee

Unfortunately, if you are a trauma survivor, one of the common consequences is that your sympathetic nervous system (the ‘go’ system that helps us be energised or active) stays jammed on. So even when the threat has passed, you still feel agitated and unsafe. If you feel anxious and like you want to run, escape or avoid the stressful situation, your flight response has been triggered.

This happens when your threat system decides that running is a better option than fighting, so you get a big jolt of anxiety, roughly the same mobilising process in your body as with a fight response, and you run. This is why avoidance is inextricably linked with anxiety, because avoiding the party, meeting, first date, etc is a form of running away from it.

…Or freeze

If your brain decides that you can’t fight or run from the threat, especially if you feel trapped or helpless, it activates the freeze response. Imagine you are a small child, with an angry, shouty parent – you can’t fight them, because you’re too small. And you can’t run, because there’s nowhere to go. So you freeze, which might feel like being stuck or paralysed, your mind going blank, or feeling spacey, numb or empty inside.

This is a common reaction when people are in a single-incident trauma like a mugging, car crash or industrial accident. We can get so overwhelmed that we freeze, even though we know we should fight the mugger or run out of the factory. It’s a horrible feeling – and a common factor in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), because people beat themselves up about not taking action, which interrupts the normal post-traumatic healing process.

I will write in more detail about each of these responses, how they link to trauma, and what we can do to help ourselves overcome them, in future posts. But for now, I hope that gives you some understanding of what’s happening in your brain, body and nervous system when you respond in one of these three ways. As I always tell my clients, knowledge is power – it’s the first step in understanding and healing from your trauma.

Warm wishes,

Dan

What is the Heal Your Trauma Project?

A question my clients often ask me is, ‘I know things were difficult for me as a child, but was it actually trauma?’

And I tell them, ‘If you felt so scared, hurt or threatened that you were overwhelmed, it was trauma.

‘If you got hit or shouted at on a regular basis, it was trauma.

‘If your parents were harshly critical, cold or unloving, it was trauma.’

That’s because I see trauma as existing on a spectrum – from mildly traumatic at one end to severely traumatic at the other. But here’s the thing: it’s all trauma. Here is a brief list of some of the experiences that can be traumatic for children (and adults):

• Bullying, in the family or at school

• Any kind of abuse – sexual, physical or emotional

• Physical neglect, like going hungry or not having clean clothes for school

• Ongoing emotional neglect, such as parents who were cold, unloving or detached

• Medical procedures like surgery – even if they were carried out skilfully, the body reacts to being cut open as a highly stressful, life-or-death event

• Any kind of chronic or prolonged illness, especially if it involved separation from your family

• Being involved in a bad accident, like a car crash or fire

• Having to move home or change schools frequently throughout childhood

• Bereavement, especially if it was sudden or shocking, like losing a parent, sibling or beloved grandparent

• Having a parent or close family member who was an alcoholic or drug-addicted

• Havin a parent or close family member with severe mental illness

• Growing up in an area that was violent or felt threatening on a regular basis

• Being a refugee or asylum seeker, especially if your family escaped war or persecution

• Being the victim of a sexual assault or violent crime

• Being involved in or witnessing a terror attack, or natural disaster like an earthquake

The Heal Your Trauma project

You get the picture – many of us (myself included) experienced trauma as children or adolescents. And that trauma leaves wounds, to your mind, brain, body, nervous, musculoskeletal and hormonal systems. That’s because the chronic stress that many trauma survivors experienced as children affects every level of your mind-body system.

This is why I created my Heal Your Trauma project. As a psychotherapist with over a decade’s experience of working with traumatised people, I believe that there is an unacknowledged epidemic of trauma in our world. Millions, perhaps even billions of people around the world are struggling with the legacy of traumatic experiences in earlier life.

The first goal of trauma recovery should and must be to improve your quality of life on a daily basis.

Babette Rothschild

If you are one of those people, or somebody you love is a trauma survivor, this project is for you. Through my writing, teaching, workshops and guided meditations, I will use all of my knowledge and experience to help you feel calmer, safer and more at peace.

Please note that, for many trauma survivors, this should not take the place of trauma-informed therapy. If your wounds are deep, you definitely need a warm, kind, skilled therapist to help you heal them.

But Heal Your Trauma can either prepare you for that therapy, or work alongside it. Watch this space for new resources, but do sign up for my Heal Your Trauma Blog using the form below. I will be writing about the latest developments in schema therapy and other cutting-edge, trauma-informed therapies, as well as providing you with techniques you can use right now, to help you on your healing journey.

Warm wishes,

Dan