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

How to Stay Sane in the Age of Social Media

Image by Marvin Meyer

When you think about it, our relationship with technology is a strange thing. Sometimes I walk down the road, or travel on the Tube – and every single person I see is staring at their phone.

How did that happen? In the space of just a few years, we have gone from a species that talked to each other, read books or the newspaper, or perhaps just stared into space and daydreamed of our next holiday, or a date with that gorgeous new guy at work, to a species that is glued to some form of screen, pretty much every waking moment of our lives.

Very strange. It’s particularly odd when you also understand that the human brain is just not built for all this digital stimulation. Your brain, and mine, are built for the environment that our ancestors lived in for millions of years. Living in small bands, out in the wilderness, in total silence apart from weather, birdsong, the humming of insects and cries of larger animals.

No phones. No TVs. No radios, even. So all of our stimulation came from Nature – watching the sunset, summer meadows bursting with wildflowers, or hazy mountains in the distance. And from each other, of course. Our brains are so strongly wired to be social that many neuroscientists see the brain as something that exists both within and between us – a ‘social brain’ that needs inputs from other brains to function optimally.

The social media boom

One of the strangest – and, I think, trickiest – aspects of this digital revolution is the recent boom in social media consumption. A quick Google search tells me that there are currently 206 million Twitter users worldwide, a billion people on Instagram and almost three billion Facebook users! That’s over a third of the 7.9 billion people currently living on our planet.

In many ways, this has been a positive thing for humanity. Think about those social brains, primed to interact and share information with others. It’s one reason we use all of these social media platforms, so we can share photos of our holiday on Facebook, for example, or wedding shots on Instagram. This helps us feel bonded with those we love, which can only be a good thing.

But, as has been well-documented, all of this social-media use has some major downsides. I think many people over-share, desperately seeking likes, retweets and other dopamine-inducing activity. This worries me, as s people don’t seem to realise that once you share something on the internet it’s out there, forever.

So what might seem like a good idea when you’re 20 (all those wild festival photos, or drunken holiday antics with your mates), may not feel so good when you’re 30 and applying for some serious job.

Protecting your mental health online

As the internet, smartphones and social media are likely to be a fixture in our lives for many years, here are a few guidelines for navigating this tricky territory safely, for yourself and others…

1. You’re not always right – and other people are not always wrong. One of the most damaging aspects of, say, Twitter, is that it pushes us to adopt binary, right-or-wrong, black-or-white positions. We feel passionately about our position, as a pro- or anti-vaxxer, for example, which quickly leads to being in a camp of us or them.

   It’s fine to have strong opinions and even to express them, in whatever way feels good for you. I am a passionately political person, with strong views on all sorts of stuff. But I never get into arguments on Twitter. If someone politely disagrees with me, that is perfectly OK. If they are rude, aggressive or offensive, I immediately block them (and report them if necessary) and move on. Angry Twitter rants are destructive to your mental health and, I’m afraid, will almost never persuade them to change their minds.

2. Spread kindness, not hostility. Imagine if, instead of us all getting angry and ranty all the time, we instead tweeted, retweeted and generally posted positive, kind, compassionate messages. The ripple effect of this would be a beautiful thing – everyone actually being nice to each other, praising, liking, encouraging… (It’s a little idealistic, I know, but why not dream?).

   At the very least, we can politely disagree with those whose views are different. And I think we did, a lot more, before social media swept across the internet and into our lives. For example, I am very much a left-wing person and always have been. I have voted Labour in every election since I was 18.

   But I am always interested in other people’s views, as long as they are not too extreme or hateful. I’m curious about those who disagree with me and why they think what they do. Sometimes I have to admit that, on a particular issue, their view makes more sense than mine, however irksome that may be. If we all had a bit more tolerance of difference, the world would undoubtedly be a better, kinder, less angry place.

3. Trauma-informed social media use. If you have a trauma history, social media can be especially difficult. My first suggestion would be to go easy on the news in your feed, especially about scary or upsetting events that are out of your control. We all consume far too much violent, negative media – news stories, TV programmes, movies, books and video games. And it has an effect, particularly if trauma is in your background. So limit your news diet, especially if you are struggling with your mental health in any way.

   Points one and two are especially true for you – please don’t get involved with people who are abusive or aggressive. Block, delete and move on.

Tread lightly around areas that might be triggering for you. If you experienced abuse of any kind as a child, reading/hearing about/watching anything on that theme might be really tough, so be kind to yourself and if it’s making you uncomfortable, step away from the screen. We don’t have to know about or be on top of every issue, or breaking news story, so it’s fine to let something slide by and do something that feels more nourishing for you instead.

Finally, it’s important to figure out what the Buddha called the ‘middle way’ with all of this. Most of us use social media in some fashion, so it’s hard to go cold turkey and give it up completely. There are lots of kind, decent people online – because most people are kind and decent, even if it doesn’t always seem that way on Facebook or Twitter.

There are also lots of stories about inspiring, uplifting, hope-inducing things, so try to focus on those and go easy on the angry, upsetting stuff. Life’s hard enough already without looking at the world through a cracked, distorted, designed-to-outrage lens.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Compassion for the Planet

Image by Elena Mozhvilo

As we build up to the COP26 climate summit here in the UK, I wanted to share a few thoughts about the importance of compassion, for yourself, other people – both near and far – and all life on this planet. We are clearly facing a grave threat right now, as climate change heats our precious planet to levels that are already causing severe weather such as unusually powerful hurricanes and freakishly/unsustainably high temperatures, like the near-50C heat recorded in Vancouver this summer.

Melting ice caps, catastrophic flooding, wildfires raging across the globe… It’s easy to feel hopeless and defeated right now (and I often do, believe me – the news can be overwhelming at the moment). But I refuse to be defeatist, because I passionately believe that just as humanity created this crisis, so we can solve it. Despite our many faults as a species, humans are remarkably intelligent, creative and downright tenacious when we throw our collective weight behind solving large-scale problems.

Just look at the pandemic – humanity mobilised and developed a safe, highly effective range of vaccines in record time. I am lucky enough to have had my booster jab recently and feel both humbled and deeply grateful for the many brilliant scientists and medical staff who have come together to protect me and my loved ones from this awful disease.

Why compassion is the answer

So just giving up and allowing greedy corporations, such as the oil and gas industry, to destroy our children’s future is not an option. I think we should all do everything in our power to tackle climate change, from driving and flying less, eating less meat, buying less stuff, using less plastic… right up to pressuring our politicians and corporations to change their behaviour in every way we can.

As consumers, we all have tremendous individual power to change things, if we only realise that and use it (imagine if the whole UK population collectively boycotted Tesco, for example, until they stopped selling rainforest-destroying beef. I guarantee you they would take it off the shelves in double-quick time!).

And to do that, we all need to harness the uniquely human skill of compassion. Remember that compassion involves two steps: first empathy, so we imagine what it’s like for another person (or sea turtle, wild salmon or polar bear) to be suffering, really putting ourselves in their position and feeling that suffering from the inside. Then making a conscious decision to do everything in our power to help relieve their suffering.

The Buddha taught us that this beautiful thing, compassion, is a force we should direct to ourselves, those we love and care about, then those we don’t like so much and out and out, in ever-expanding waves, to all living beings. That means every human on this planet. All mammals, reptiles, birds, fish, insects – even microbes, without whom you could not survive a single day! And of course every plant and tree on the planet too, which are also essential for our survival (you know that oxygen you just inhaled? Mostly from plants).

Do what you can

I’m not saying that everyone has to start living a perfect life, or turn into Greta Thunberg over night. Just do what you can. It’s not that hard for us all to turn down the heating; drive less (or even better, switch to an electric car); only fly once a year, if at all; eat less meat; drink tap water instead of bottled, and so on.

You can also donate to my favourite charity, the WWF, using the button below, if you can afford it and wish to do so. So please, be compassionate. Do what you can. Show a little love for this beautiful, miraculous, life-giving planet we all inhabit. Your children and their children will thank you for it, I promise you that.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Try This Healing Self-Compassion Practice Every Day

Image by Ravi Pinisetti

I wrote a recent post about how to use Compassionate Breathing to help calm yourself down and regulate your nervous system (here’s a step-by-step practice I recorded for Insight Timer). You can use these two steps as a standalone practice, or try them as part of a four-stage practice that I use with all of my clients, which adds a couple of stages focused on developing self-compassion.

Again, I have recorded an audio version for Insight Timer – and you can watch the video, below, for a step-by-step guide to this simple, powerful practice. Before you try it, you will need to be acquainted with the vulnerable little boy or girl inside, who we direct the compassion to. This idea comes from both schema therapy and internal family systems therapy, so have a read of these pages first, if you would like. (This is not essential, but will make the practice more powerful for you).

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 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 lot of research on the link between your posture and mood, so just a simple adjustment in your posture can help you feel a bit more energised and stronger, with a slight uplift in your energy and mood.

2. 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 – try counting the in-breath for one, two, three, four… then the out-breath for the same count. 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…

3. Supportive Touch. Gently place a hand over your heart in a friendly, supportive manner. Feel the warmth under your hand and imagine it trickling down until it reaches the hurt little girl or boy inside. Imagine that’s a warm, kind, healing energy that soothes this frightened or upset part of you.

4. Compassionate Self-Talk. Now talk to your little self the way you would to a troubled friend. Try to use a voice tone that’s warm, slow and reassuring. Say things like “Oh, Little Jane/James, I know you’re struggling right now – I really see how scared/upset/angry you are... But I want you to know that you’re not alone... I’m here with you... I care about you... I’ve got you... And we will get through this together...”’

Try this every day. You can play around with just using steps one and two, which are easier and can be done anywhere. And then add steps three and four when you’re alone and have time.

I very much hope that, over time, this will help you feel calmer and more relaxed; as well as generating self-compassion, which is a key skill in trauma recovery.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Watch My New Heal Your Trauma Video: What is Trauma?

We hear the word ‘trauma’ used often these days – in the mainstream media and on social media, by experts, celebrities and normal, everyday people who have gone through traumatic events. But what do we mean by psychological trauma? Which kinds of experiences can be traumatic for us? What are the short- and long-term effects of those experiences? And, crucially, can traumatic wounds ever be healed?

In the first of a series of short webinars I will be recording for my YouTube channel, I attempt to answer the above questions. In this 20-minute webinar I explain:

• Why I think that the standard clinical definitions of trauma are too narrow

• Why traumatic events don’t necessarily cause post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD)

• How trauma affects every level of your mind-body system

• And, most importantly, why it is never too much and never too late to heal, whatever you might have gone through and however wounded you may be as a result

I am currently working on a series of full-length webinars for my Heal Your Trauma project, which you will be able to watch either live, or access the recording to watch at a later date. In the meantime, do check out my YouTube channel, listen to my guided meditations on Insight Timer, and you can sign up for my newsletter, using the form below, so you can be the first to hear about these resources as I make them available.

I very much hope you enjoy the webinar and find it helpful.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Learning to Deal with Loss is Part of Living a Human Life

Image by Valiphotos

One of the Buddha’s many great insights was that humans cause a great deal of our own suffering by constantly wanting things to be different than they are. He realised (2,500 years before Western psychology) that it’s in our nature to grasp after pleasant, enjoyable experiences; and push away and avoid ‘aversive’, or unpleasant experiences. We all do this, all the time, including me.

And one of the aversive experiences we all struggle with is that of loss. This is why bereavement is so painful for us, or the end of a cherished relationship. As I write this, leaves on the trees in my garden are turning orange, red and yellow, then fluttering to the ground, signalling the end of summer and the slow but inexorable slide into winter. As spring signifies life – green shoots everywhere, flowers bursting into bloom, days getting longer and warmer – so autumn reminds us that time marches on, summer ending, days shortening and growing colder.

Why loss is so painful

I have lost deeply loved people in my life, and felt that loss reverberate for months or even years. I have also had my heart broken many times, so deeply understand from the inside what it is to lose and why that is so viscerally painful. But I wouldn’t change any of these experiences, however hard they were, because that sorrow meant something. It meant that I loved these people deeply. It meant that losing them was big, and significant, and mattered.

It’s a cliche, I know, but to love deeply means making yourself vulnerable to being hurt. And that’s because we open our hearts, letting our defences and barriers down – because we have to, or we would never truly feel love. And what is life without love? Well, it’s safe, (reasonably) predictable and feels somewhat more in control. But it’s also lonely, flat and a bit empty, because humans are wired for love.

I have written extensively about attachment and the way we are wired to attach to our mother (then father, siblings, grandparents, and so on) from the very moment of our birth. I have also written a lot about the way our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived for millions of years – in small bands, out in the wilds, connected to each other in tight, tribal bonds for life.

Learning to accept loss

So you are wired for love, connection, attachment – it’s in your DNA. But of course, for some people, this is not easy. If you have a trauma history, forming long-term, loving, stable relationships might be difficult for you. But I would very much hope you get some help in changing that, in making your attachment style more secure. That is, in my opinion, one of the key goals of any trauma-informed therapy – it’s certainly something I aim for with all of my clients.

I also hope you work on accepting the hard fact that loss is part of living a human life. We all lose people we love. We all get our hearts broken sometime. We might lose a job, a business, our health. And, of course, in the end we all lose life itself. This is probably the hardest thing we all have to face – and it’s why Buddhists practice a wide range of meditations specifically designed to help the meditator accept the inescapable reality that we will all die sometime.

“Don’t run away from grief, o soul,
Look for the remedy inside the pain,
because the rose came from the thorn
and the ruby came from a stone.”

— Rumi

This may all seem a bit gloomy – if so, I’m sorry. But to me it’s not gloomy, it is actually deeply freeing to accept that loss comes to us all, in many guises. Because what’s the alternative? To spend our lives desperately trying to avoid the truth of our mortality? Then we also probably hate the fact that we’re ageing, spending a small fortune on this magical, ‘age-reversing’ serum or that surgical enhancement. That’s no way to live, in my opinion – we all age, whether we like it or not, so why not embrace those wrinkles, your lovely grey hair? I know it’s hard, but the alternative is much harder.

I strongly believe that we only have one wild, beautiful, miraculous life. This is it. So shouldn’t we embrace life in all its joy and sadness? Shouldn’t we learn to cherish each second, to feel everything, fully and deeply? Otherwise we may be wasting precious days and weeks and months running away from something that can’t be outrun.

Allow yourself to be sad. To cry. To grieve for the beautiful people and things that you have lost.

Only then will you be fully alive.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Listen to My Guided Meditations on Insight Timer

Image by Sage Friedman

I recently joined Insight Timer as a teacher – and will be recording and uploading breathing techniques, guided imagery and meditations over the coming weeks. If you haven’t tried it yet, Insight Timer is a free meditation app – you can choose to make a donation, if you want to, but there is no obligation to do so and you can find thousands of free meditations from hundreds of teachers.

These cover every length of practice and subject you can imagine – you will also find meditations, teaching and courses from leading figures in the trauma therapy field, such as Richard Schwartz, Kristin Neff and Dan Siegel.

I have used the app myself for many years, so am excited to be joining its global community of teachers. My first practice is the Compassionate Breathing technique I teach to all of my clients, and use myself, on a daily basis. (I wrote about this in my last post, which also features a step-by-step video guide).

This is a simple but highly effective practice that you can use any time you’re feeling stressed, anxious, angry, agitated or upset. Over time, it will help regulate your nervous system – which is important, especially if you have a trauma history – and help you feel calmer, more relaxed and at peace in your daily life.

If you would like to try this, or any of my other practices, just click on the button below.

I very much hope you enjoy them.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Healing from Trauma is a Process – Give it Time

Image by Jeremy Bishop

There are many things I find myself repeating, over and over, to my clients. Near the top of my list of oft-repeated phrases is, ‘I’m afraid there is no quick fix. Healing from trauma is a process and takes as long as it needs to.’

Of course, I understand that if you are suffering – whether that’s with depression, daily stress and anxiety, or any other painful feelings – you want that suffering to end, as quickly as possible. It’s only human to want that – if I have a headache, I take painkillers because I want to get rid of the pain as soon as I can. Nobody likes to be in pain and we are all hard-wired to avoid it, or try to reduce it in any way we can.

It’s just that, especially with long-term, deep-rooted psychological problems, healing from them cannot be rushed and takes time. That is even more true of trauma-related issues, which can affect every part of you – your thoughts, beliefs, emotions, cardiovascular, immune, nervous, musculoskeletal and hormonal systems, as well as the internal system of parts that live inside your mind.

No quick fix

Perhaps the closest things we have to quick fixes in psychology are medications like antidepressants and short-term therapies such as cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), so let’s think about these options first. Starting with medication, it’s important to understand that for some people it can be extremely helpful, but can take a long time to start working and doesn’t help everyone.

If you are really struggling, especially with depression, by all means try antidepressants and see if they help – they can also work well combined with various forms of talking therapy. But they can only ever offer symptom-relief, so – especially if you have a trauma history – they will never get to the root of your problems, because they are not designed to do that.

(It’s important to note here that, if you are taking medication, you should never stop taking it without consulting your GP or psychiatrist, as this can cause serious problems).

CBT is an excellent form of therapy that works incredibly well for all sorts of problems. I would say it’s especially good at treating fairly recent or short-term problems, or specific problems like phobias and other anxiety disorders. But again, the standard CBT model was never designed for long-term, deep-rooted problems like complex trauma. It might help with the cognitive, emotional and behavioural symptoms caused by those problems, but it won’t address your underlying issues.

The start of my journey

I realised recently that I went for my first-ever counselling session in 1992, to help me deal with the sudden and traumatic loss of my father – so I have been on my healing journey for almost 30 years! I had never really thought about going to therapy before that – and had certainly never imagined training as a counsellor or psychotherapist. But that first experience, of being helped through my grief by a kind, warm and deeply empathic person, opened my eyes to the healing potential of therapy.

This led me to my first counselling training, in a transpersonal therapy called Psychosysnthesis and – despite a winding road that led me first into journalism, before returning to the therapy world and restarting my training – it is a path I have been walking every since.

In that time I have experienced all sorts of therapy, both as client and professional, have found deep solace in a daily meditation practice, learned a great deal about the mind, brain and body, and both what harms and heals this exquisitely complex system. I now have a healthy diet, try to get plenty of sleep, don’t drink much, am lucky enough to have a loving, supportive wife and to have found work that I am passionate about and is deeply meaningful for me.

Healing is a lifelong process

But it took me most of my 53 years on this planet to get here – and I will be doing all of these helpful things, as well as learning, growing, changing and healing every day for the rest of my life. So, another thing I tell my clients (who must get fed up of hearing it!) is that healing doesn’t begin and end with a course of therapy, whether that’s CBT, schema therapy, internal family systems, or any of the many wonderful models available to us.

Healing is a lifelong process. Our minds and bodies need daily exercise, meditation, yoga, sleep, nutritious food, time in Nature, a safe place to live, meaningful work, good friends, loving partners, caring therapists, taking care of our internal system of parts, inspiring films, podcasts and books, comforting music, daily fun and laughter, awe-inspiring experiences, soul-nourishing travel… We all need as many of these helpful things as we can get, every day.

So, please try to be patient. Healing cannot be rushed, however frustrated we may feel, or urgent it might seem. Like all good things, it takes time.

But also know that it is always possible, however bad things have been for you, however much you are suffering today, however hopeless things may seem right now. I know this from my own experience and from helping people heal their trauma every single day.

Trust the process and your trauma can be healed – wishing you all the best with that journey,

Dan

The Revolution in Trauma Therapy – and Why Your Trauma Can Be Healed

Image by Frank McKenna

Over the last 30 years, there has been a revolution in the treatment of mental health problems. Gone are the days when some stern, unsympathetic psychiatrist would give you a scary diagnosis and tell you, ‘Sorry, but there’s nothing more we can do for you,’ before showing you out of his office.

We now understand so much more about how the mind, brain, nervous system and body are involved in any kind of mental health problem, whether that’s an anxiety disorder like OCD, a mood disorder like depression, or the deep wounds caused by traumatic experiences in childhood. We also understand how to treat these problems – even the most complex problems people can experience, like dissociative disorders or so-called personality disorders such as Borderline Personality Disorder.

There are now a number of trauma-informed therapies such as trauma-focused CBT, schema therapy, internal family systems therapy, compassion-focused therapy, sensorimotor psychotherapy and somatic experiencing therapy. All, in their different ways, are highly effective at understanding and treating the effects of traumatic experiences on the human mind and body.

The impact of trauma

As an Advanced Accredited Schema Therapist, Trainer & Supervisor, helping people with their mental health is my life’s mission. That’s why I specialise in treating complex trauma, because I believe that the experience of trauma, usually in childhood, is at the root of most psychological problems.

We increasingly understand this, because of research like the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) study in the US, which found that traumatic experiences in childhood (like having a parent with a mental health problem or addiction, or witnessing domestic violence in the family) made people vulnerable to both mental and physical illness in later life.

There are 10 ACEs covering all aspects of childhood trauma, abuse and neglect, including socioeconomic issues like growing up in poverty – we know that these can also have a profound impact on young people’s mental health.

Sadly, the more ACEs you experience as a child, the more likely you are to develop mental health problems, have issues with substance abuse, or develop illnesses like multiple sclerosis, stroke, diabetes or cardiovascular disease. That’s because the highly stressful experience of trauma – especially ‘developmental trauma’, which happens at a key developmental stage in your childhood – has a profound and long-lasting effect on every part of your mind-body system.

Reasons to be hopeful

When I explain this to my clients – most of whom have experienced a number of ACEs in childhood – I know it sounds really depressing. So I quickly follow it up with the good news. I passionately believe that, whatever you have been through in your life, however bad it was and whatever wounds it has left you with, you can always heal. It’s never too late to start (I have worked with elderly people and seen them make deep and long-lasting changes) and, however daunting it may seem, you can always heal, change and grow.

One reason for my cast-iron hopefulness is understanding the theory of neuroplasticity. This tells us that your brain is ‘plastic’ (which means it is malleable, like clay). So when you learn anything new, your brain has to create new wiring and even new grey matter to accommodate that knowledge.

The famous example is of London’s black-cab drivers, who have to take an incredibly arduous test called the Knowledge. This means that they have to study around 320 routes and 25,000 London streets and get to know them all by heart.

This is seriously hard! So the would-be cabbies have to store a huge amount of new information their brain. And, when they do this, a part of the brain called the hippocampus, which has a major role in learning and memory, actually increases in size. New wiring. New grey matter.

How the brain heals itself

And exactly the same thing happens when your brain heals from whatever trauma you may have experienced. Whether that is through a trauma-informed therapy like schema therapy, reading self-help books or blogs like this one, or enjoying a loving, supportive relationship with your partner, as you heal from trauma your brain is literally rewiring itself.

This helps you replace negative self-beliefs with more positive and helpful ones. It increases your ability to regulate painful or overwhelming emotions. And it helps you process old trauma memories, so they don’t plague you in the present and can be consigned to history, where they belong.

My desire to help you with this journey is why I created my Heal Your Trauma project and why I write this blog. I aim to share all of my knowledge and experience with you, distilling my 10-plus years of clinical experience, during which I have helped hundreds of people overcome their mental health problems. Pass on everything I have learned from studying with some of the world’s foremost trauma experts. Share with you the incredibly powerful theory and techniques I have learned from cognitive therapy, schema therapy and many more trauma-informed therapy models currently available.

And give you powerful, effective techniques you can start using, right away, to regulate your nervous system, soothe the hurt little boy or girl inside, develop greater self-compassion, and start feeling calmer, happier and more peaceful day by day – do sign up using the form below to read my latest blog posts, hot off the press.

Helping you heal your trauma

When healing any kind of psychological problem, I strongly believe that knowledge is power. So do read my blog posts, where you will find a huge amount of information, available for free, forever. In the future I will be offering a whole host of other resources, like guided meditations, workshops and self-help books. But you should start with my blog, which will be updated regularly and is packed with a wealth of resources to help you on your healing journey.

Whether you experienced trauma as a child or some other painful experience, such as emotional neglect, I look forward to helping you with the most important project of your life – freeing yourself from the painful shackles of your past and embracing a kinder, more compassionate, more meaningful present and future. I will be with you every step of the way.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Try This Imagery Technique to Feel Calmer and More Peaceful

Image by Jailam Rashad

If you have a trauma history, you may struggle to feel calm and safe in the world. You might find that you only feel safe in your home – or that even there you often feel anxious, or a sense of dread, as if something bad is always about to happen.

Although, of course, this is horrible, it’s not unusual. In fact, if you have grown up in an environment that was not safe, or where bad things often did happen, it makes total sense to feel this way as an adult – the little boy or girl inside you still feels unsafe, even when the traumatic experiences happened many years ago.

As part of the long, slow process of helping my clients feel safer, I always include the Safe Place imagery. This simple but powerful imagery technique was developed by Paul Gilbert, the founder of compassion-focused therapy. It is often incorporated into schema therapy as it is so helpful for people struggling with anxiety or trauma-related feelings of threat, or for those struggling to feel safe, even in apparently safe environments.

I have recorded this imagery for Insight Timer (listen to that recording here), but here is a step-by-step guide you can either read and record for yourself, or get a trusted friend, family member or therapist to record for you so that you can play it whenever you need to.

Safe Place Imagery

• Start by imagining a safe place. This might be somewhere you have visited, such as a beautiful beach, forest or mountain meadow. It could also be somewhere that feels safe and comfortable for you, such as a cosy room in your house, or a place in Nature where you walk your dog. Sometimes, especially if you are a trauma survivor, you might not be able to think of anywhere that feels safe – in that case, create an imaginary place that feels as safe as possible.

• Ideally, you should be alone in your safe place, with no potentially triggering people visiting; although feel free to take pets or calm, supportive people with you. And it should be warm, as warmth is soothing and comforting for your brain. Close your eyes and ‘be there’ as vividly as possible. Explore your safe place, using all of your senses – what can you see, hear, feel, smell, taste and touch? If it’s a beach you could visualise the beautiful turquoise sea, golden sands and blue skies, hear the gulls and breeze rustling palm fronds, feel the sand between your toes… The more sensory information the better, as this convinces your brain that you are actually on that beach, or in the beautiful meadow.

• Keep reminding yourself that this is your safe place, using words like ‘calm’ and ‘peaceful’. Mindfully focus on the somatic sensations of calmness, peacefulness and safety in your body. Also, remember that this place itself takes pleasure in you being there (many trauma survivors were never cherished or shown love, so this often feels very good).

• End the imagery by reminding yourself that this place is always here for you, just waiting for you to visit. If you’re feeling stressed or anxious, you can just close your eyes and visit for a minute or two (like having a mini-holiday) before re-engaging with the world. Then let the image fade away until it’s gone, take a deep breath and open your eyes.

I hope you find this imagery helpful – and that, over time, it helps you feel a little calmer, safer and more at peace in your day-to-day life.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Weekend University Lecture on Schema Therapy and Trauma

I am giving a lecture on Schema Therapy & Trauma for The Weekend University, from 1-3pm on 26th September 2021. This is one of three lectures from experts in the trauma field, as part of A Day on Healing Trauma, Part 2. The lecture is part of my Heal Your Trauma project, which involves teaching, webinars, workshops, guided meditations and self-help books, as well as training and supervision for mental-health professionals.

If you are a trauma survivor, this will help you understand a great deal more about complex trauma – what causes it and how it affects every level of the mind-body system. I will also guide you through some powerful experiential techniques to help you feel calmer and more at peace.

And if you are a mental-health professional or just interested in psychology, the lecture will provide a unique insight into one of the most powerful therapy models available, which can heal even the most complex or hard-to-treat trauma-related problems.

A Day on Healing Trauma, Part 2 is charged on a sliding scale, starting at just £26.99 for the full day. If you are interested, you can find out more or book your place at The Weekend University using the button below.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Why You are a Trauma Survivor, Not a Trauma Victim

Image by Ben White

I am often amazed by the strength, resilience and innate healing capacities of my clients. They truly are an inspiration to me – and are one of the reasons I am so passionate about my work. Trying to help people like them is also why I write this blog, so I can reach out to many more people than those I am able to work with, one-to-one, in therapy.

I think all of my clients are incredible people, but especially those who have survived the most awful childhoods. These are people who have endured some of the worst things life can throw at you, whether that is some kind of trauma, abuse, emotional neglect, or cold, unloving and punitive parents.

And of course these people carry the wounds of their trauma. Many of them have struggled with lifelong bouts of depression, one or more anxiety disorders, volatile or unhappy relationships, and often deep-seated feelings of shame or self-dislike.

Trauma survivors may also need extreme ways of coping with their extreme, painful emotions. That might be using substances such as weed, alcohol or other drugs to numb out painful feelings. If you are coping with the impact of trauma, you might use food as a way of coping, whether that is restricting or over/comfort-eating. You may also use activities like gambling, shopping, obsessional use of TV/internet/social media to distract you from the hurt little boy or girl inside.

You are stronger than you think

But if you are reading this, whatever horrible or hurtful things you have been through in your life, you have survived. You have endured. You have persevered. And that is why you should think of yourself as a trauma survivor, not a trauma victim. Surviving trauma takes strength, resilience and tapping into the miraculous, wonderful healing inner resources we all possess.

That is why I always tell my clients that all of the problematic behaviours in their lives are probably coping responses they learned as a child. And in schema therapy, we see those coping responses as parts of the person (known as modes), which as a child were absolutely healthy, adaptive and necessary to survive your trauma with mind and body reasonably intact.

What is your survival story?

If you are struggling with the effects of trauma you endured, either as a child, or what we call a ‘single-incident trauma’ in adulthood, such as a violent crime or car crash, here is a technique that might help. You can write this by hand, in a journal, or type it, whatever works best for you. But I want you to think about your ‘survival story’.

For example, if you were unlucky enough to have cruel, unloving, harshly critical parents, that will of course have left a mark. You might feel extremely anxious, suffer from depression, or have problems with your self-esteem. But you also drew on a rage of inner resources to help you survive that traumatic childhood.

Maybe you found a grandparent, favourite aunt or teacher at school who could give you some of the love and care you so badly needed. Perhaps you survived by retreating into a fantasy world, imagining a happier family life, where your parents actually showed their love to you. Or maybe your imagination ran wild, conjuring up visions of living on Mars, or inhabiting your favourite cartoon or TV series.

Coping against all the odds

You may have lost yourself in Nature, or video games, or books, where you felt safe and could forget about your horrible parents for at least a short time. What this tells us is that you used incredible creativity, resourcefulness and determination to make the best of things; to be independent and self-sufficient; to cope, the best you knew how.

This is your survival story, so please write it down. I want you to see yourself as the hero of this story, because, if you are reading this now, you survived whatever horrible things life through at you. You made it through – battered and bruised, but still alive, with a whole host of wonderful qualities, despite your struggles.

And this tells a different story than the harsh, self-critical one about everything that’s wrong with you. It tells a story of courage, of strength, of incredible resilience and of survival. And the more you believe this story, the stronger and better you will feel – because you deserve to, as much as any other person on this planet.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Is Modern Life Making You Sick?

Image by Nico BLHR

If you are struggling with any mental health problem, whether that’s anxiety, chronic stress, addiction, depression or a history of trauma, it’s important to think about two levels: your internal and external systems. I wrote about this in my last post, on relationships, but I want to take a deeper dive into the way that those external systems can affect – and even traumatise you.

Just to clarify, your internal systems would be your mind, brain, nervous, hormonal and musculoskeletal systems; they would also include the system of parts that we work with in trauma therapy (child parts, protectors, critical parts, and so on). We could also think about your habitual cognitive (frequent worry, rumination or obsessional thinking) and emotional (often feeling sad, lonely or anxious) patterns as part of this internal world.

Your external systems would include your family (both biological and chosen), friends, colleagues, working environment, community, society and the global, economic, social and environmental systems we are all an interconnected part of. If you want to get really deep you could even say that all of the trillions of stars in the known universe are part of your system, because every atom in your body was forged in those stars billions of years ago. You are, quite literally, made of stardust.

The stress of 21st-century life

But in this post I want to focus on the way that these systems make up modern, 21st-century life – and its impact on us all. Think about it like this: for the vast majority of human evolution (that’s 3.5 billion years since life evolved on Earth; six million years of some form of human running around; and 300,000 years of our kind of human, homo sapiens) we lived in Nature. For all but the last 10,000 of those those six million years, we lived in small, hunter-gatherer bands in the jungle, on the savannah or the forest.

Ten thousand years ago, the Agricultural Revolution transitioned most humans from hunter-gathering to farming, so we stayed in one place, built permanent settlements and civilisation as we now know it began to take shape. Still, we lived a life revolving around the natural cycles of night and day, the changing seasons, sowing and harvesting crops. And we spent much of our time working outdoors, living intimately with plants and animals.

Unnatural living begins

Then things changed radically during the Industrial Revolution, which only began around 250 years ago – 250! So this life most of now lead, in huge cities, crammed in like sardines, with constant noise, light and general hubbub, is less than 300 years old. That really blows my mind. And, I’m afraid, yours too – because your brain and body is just not adapted to live in the 21st century.

Evolution doesn’t work like that. It is a glacially slow process (with occasional bursts of faster change), so your brain and body are supremely adapted to that hunter-gatherer lifestyle, because urban life is just too new for evolution to adapt to. It seems like every week I see a new study about how stressed out we all are, rising levels of depression, anxiety, obesity and addiction. It has to be said, humans are not doing well right now (and this is all pre-pandemic, which is causing whole new levels of stress to the global human population).

If you are struggling with stress, say, it’s helpful to ponder how much of that stress is caused – or at least exacerbated – by your 21st-century lifestyle. And some psychologists theorise that modern life could actually be traumatic for us as a species, because it is so alien and jarring to our sensitive brains and bodies. This is not to ignore the impact of childhood trauma, which is a huge and under-reported problem. But we could also say that much of that is caused by parents who are exhausted, stressed out, disconnected from their emotions and bodies – all of which is, in part, due to modern life.

What you can do

As ever, we start by understanding the cause of your problems and then think about what you can do to change them. So here are a few ideas of small, achievable changes you can make to reduce the traumatic impact of modern life:

1. Reduce screen time. I am writing this on my computer, while glancing occasionally at my iPhone to check for messages, so please don’t think I have cracked this one! But I know that the more time I spend not looking at some kind of screen, the better. One tip is to buy an old-fashioned alarm clock, so you can switch your phone off an hour before bed, then not look at it until you have got up and (ideally) meditated. This links to my second suggestion…

2. Spend time in Nature. The more the better. If you’re lucky enough to have a garden, spend as much time as you with your beautiful plants, watching bees feed on your lavender, or birds swooping about. It’s easy to dig a little wildlife pond, so your kids can get involved too, watching water boatmen, insect larvae, aquatic snails and (if you’re lucky) tadpoles do their thing. Go to the park, walk in the woods, climb mountains, wild swim, hike along cliff paths… spending time in Nature is so important for your mental health that GPs now prescribe it, like they would medication.

3. Move your body. Again, I am writing this sitting on my butt, which is where I spend far too much of my working life! But I did just go for my daily walk. And I did also exercise in my living room before work. And I also went to the gym yesterday. None of this is to boast or make myself out to be some kind of perfect human specimen. I am definitely not that. But I do know that when it moves, my body is happy. And it took years of chronic back problems to get me exercising every day – as I often tell people, pain is a great motivator! So walk, run, cycle, swim, dance, garden, lift weights, do yoga, Zumba… it’s all good. And it’s what your body is, quite literally, made for.

I know this is all common-sense stuff. But it’s also realistic, achievable and the kind of thing we all know we should do, but forget to actually do. So give it a try and find small, incremental ways to live a life your beautiful, exquisitely complex body was made for – rather than the somewhat unnatural one that humans have created.

Warm wishes,

Dan