Our society is built around the idea of free will, that we have the ability to choose how we behave and the course of our actions. We can “choose” to have a positive attitude or a negative one. Bad people “choose” to do bad things. If our lives our chaotic, miserable and out of control, that is on us.
But here’s the thing, as we learn more about the brain, it’s becoming apparent that for many of us, at least some of the time, we don’t really have choice. Old traumas and ancient survival patterns are playing out in our brains and it is they, not us, who are running the show.
So what choice is there? When we have behavior we don’t like and can’t control, whether it’s violent, compulsive, self-destructive, isolating or just plain unloveable, what can we do about it? How can I help you change things for the better?
The work I do is focussed on developing your capacity to regulate your emotions in difficult situations and also, on reducing or eliminating the reactions that are keeping you stuck in old patterns. When you can do this, you’ve created a space for healthier, life serving choices.
You’ve probably heard about “fight or flight.” The idea that when we are confronted with a life threatening situation, our bodies go into a state of hyper alert, a survival mode where we can run or perform feats of strength or violence without conscious thought and that may be out of character for our ordinary selves. The part of our brain that acts as the gear shifter for our nervous system and which can send us into fight or flight is called the “amygdala.”
The right amygdala is an almond shaped part of the brain in the right hemisphere behind the eye. In addition to being the “gear shifter” for the nervous system it’s also the repository for all our memories that have a strong emotional charge associated with them, especially traumatic memories. When this part of the brain is activated, we are upset to one degree or another.
You know what happens when you get upset – you “lose your cool,” “blow your top” or one of those other metaphors for losing control. What happens in the brain is that the prefrontal cortex, the area behind our forehead, the part of our brain responsible for higher reasoning, compassion and wisdom, goes dark. We literally have no access to those functions when our amygdala is sufficiently aroused.
Here’s another thing about memories held in the amygdala – the amygdala has no sense of time. It’s the ever present past for the amygdala. So, when something reminds us of these memories, no matter how old they are, we are right back in it. At its simplest, this is what PTSD is. An extremely traumatic memory, held in the amygdala, that when activated by something that reminds us of the original event, throws us back into the memory, back into fight or flight, where we have no access to rational thought, self control or compassion. It feels like our lives are in jeopardy every bit as much as they were the first time.
I like to think of the amygdala as the brain’s “baby.” It’s small, emotionally reactive, there’s no reasoning with it and when it starts screaming nothing else get’s done until it’s needs are met. But here’s the thing, this “baby” isn’t alone. Surrounding the amygdala are fibers that automatically soothe the amygdala by releasing a calming hormone (oxytocin), the “fibers of attachment.” These fibers, which I like to think of as our internalized “mother” are well developed in people who experienced a strong connection with a responsive, loving parental figure in infancy and less well developed in those who did not.
A person who had a strong connection with a responsive parent as an infant will have the capacity to automatically and unconsciously calm their amygdala as their fibers of attachment (internalized mother) automatically release oxytocin in response to amygdala activation and soothe the baby almost before the upset is detected.
This simplified explanation of the inner workings of our emotional brain suggests a couple of ways that we can work with our brain to become less reactive, more emotionally stable, compassionate and wise. We can 1) soothe the “baby”, 2) move triggering memories from the amygdala to elsewhere in the brain and give them a timestamp, and 3) strengthen the fibers of attachment so that self soothing becomes automatic.
I believe that the better we understand the inner workings of our brain, the more we are able to hold ourselves and others with compassion. Our brains are all doing the best they can to help us survive and thrive. Everything our brains know comes from our experience of the world, the most significant and influential experiences of which happened before we had language or conscious memory.
We make sense – all of us. I can’t emphasize that enough. Even when we don’t see it or can’t even begin to approach what’s going on, there’s sense to us. Every crazy thing our brain does, no matter how seemingly dysfunctional and maladaptive, it does for a reason. Figuring it out and finding a way out of it is the challenge and the adventure.
Another thing about the brain is, it can change. It’s “neuroplastic.” New memories can be made, old ones can be held in a different way. Our internalized mother, the fibers of attachment, can strengthen and develop, even into our twilight years. If our actual experience of our parents as a small person was one of neglect or even abuse, we can still develop a strong “internalized mother” as adults. If we have a hyperactive amygdala from a traumatic childhood, we can process these memories as adults, time stamp them and free ourselves from their power to dictate our behavior.
How do we calm our amygdala right now? Before we can even consider approaching our traumatic memories we need a way to get calm and stay safe in their presence. There’s not much use to doing anything that’s going to send the “baby” off on a tirade – bye bye reason, bye bye wisdom, bye bye self compassion – unless we can calm it right down so we can continue focussing on the work. This is where somatic empathy is very helpful.
If I were to describe somatic empathy in it’s essentials, I would say it is the act of listening to and regarding someone with resonance, allowing myself to feel what they feel, to share their experience no matter how difficult, upsetting and traumatic, while staying connected to myself and my own inner wisdom. And, to do this in a way that is effective and supports you in resolving trauma.
Somatic Empathy has its roots in the work of Marshall Rosenberg’s Non-Violent Communication and the language of feelings and needs. Neuroscientists have discovered that the simple act of naming the emotion that is causing amygdala activation triggers the release of oxytocin and the soothing of the amygdala. Experience has shown that naming the unmet need underlying the emotion results in additional calming of the baby.
Much of Somatic Empathy consists of listening with curiosity and occasionally making guesses about what you might be feeling or needing. They’re guesses, because I can’t know your experience of the world. Only you can.
The somatic part of Somatic Empathy focuses on the experience of the body. When we are able to experience and name body sensations, we are in connection with the right part of our brain where strong emotions are held. The body is also where we experience resonance. When someone is able to name body sensations that I can feel echoing in my own body, then I know that a resonant connection has been established and that healing is possible.
Somatic Empathy is a tool that I use in all the work I do to establish resonance and maintain the equanimity of clients and myself in the face of triggering experiences. It’s also something that I receive in a formal way several times a week. The more Somatic Empathy we can experience the more we strengthen our fibers of attachment and the more we are able to stay calm and centered.
In order to be emotionally healthy we need strong resonant connections with other human beings. It’s how we are wired. We cannot do this alone. If we didn’t get it from our parents, we can get it from others. But we need to get it, a lot of it, as much as we possibly can.
A breakthrough for me in my own healing process was when I asked my first teacher, Sarah Peyton, how many times she’d gotten empathy in the last week. Do you know what the answer was? Seventeen times! This was a revelation to me. Before that I was getting empathy from her once a week and getting some in my NVC class or in workshops. It just never seemed like enough. I kept being frustrated about how needy I was and wondering when I would be done. It makes me smile now to think of it. I want to go back in time and tell younger me, “You will never be done. The best thing that will happen is that you’ll stop wanting to be done.”
Now most of those empathy sessions Sarah was talking about were short, ten minutes or so. What Sarah does when she’s feeling triggered is she goes down her phone list of people she trusts and calls until she gets someone who has time. I have four empathy buddies that I do hour calls with each week. I could probably use one more buddy, but most weeks, four is enough for me. This seems to be pretty typical.
Everybody has to figure out how much empathy they need and how much they are able to give and the format. Some people do very well with one session a week.
An Empathy buddy relationship can be a bridge to more satisfying personal relationships for people who struggle with intimacy. They teach us how to give and receive empathy and how to be in resonant connection with another human being. And of course they are a practical way to make the healing process more affordable.
Constellation work is the modality I use that deals most directly with the triggers in our amygdala, the traumatic memories of ourselves and our system (family, societal, professional, universal) and enables us to understand and process them. When we’ve examined a traumatic memory stored in the amygdala, while staying safe and grounded, the memory is actually processed, time stamped and will eventually move to a different part of the brain. When we do constellations we create new neural connections that create new options for how we can be in the world and in relationship with others.
I find the most helpful way to think about money is as “capacity to meet needs.” We have a lot of needs and money enables us to meet many of them. That’s it. Money is simple and good. More money equals more ability to get things that we need to survive and thrive. Oftentimes though our relationship with money seems very complicated. My guess is that this happens when our relationship with money becomes a proxy for our relationship with our own needs.
Money can play a very helpful role in our healing process. In relationships with friends and family there are unspoken rules about mutuality and a balance of giving and receiving. We generally don’t feel comfortable with someone who isn’t a parent or older relative listening to us with love and infinite compassion unless we can return the same. So when our actual parents aren’t capable of being this way and, as a result we aren’t really able to do this with others, money can enable us to be comfortable receiving more understanding and compassion than we are capable of returning.
Additionally, when the work we need to do is very painful and requires a degree of vulnerability we would be uncomfortable experiencing with someone in our everyday life, money can actually serve to sever the resonance so that there is no ongoing relationship, allowing you far more emotional freedom.
Money also creates boundaries. Oftentimes, when we grow up in a family where love is absent or blocked, people are looking for connection wherever they can get it, sometimes in ways that are inappropriate and unsafe for children. People who come from these kind of families have difficulties with connection in later life, sometimes asking too much and other times retreating behind high walls. Money creates safety and provides a clear container to the connection by making it a transaction. Something that everyone in our society has some experience with.
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