CoBegeleiding Integratieve Psychotherapie, Coaching en Counseling

05/03/2025

28/01/2025

A very gentle reminder. Trauma is not about 'the event', or the experiences we may have had, or not had. It is 100% about our RESPONSES to those experiences.... look to the many adaptations, schemas, habits, illnesses, belief systems, attachment patterns, body moves, 'people-pleasing' behaviors, perfectionism, avoidances - strategies called by many names: "parts", defenses, addictions, complexes - so beautifully created to 'cope' with those responses, and often created in a split second to quite literally Stay Alive.🎯
It's quite a 'body of work' when you think about it!

So give yourself 'credit', and a megadose of self-compassion.

'Healing' is easier said than done, don't let anyone tell you otherwise,
but healing most assuredly can be done. If it wasn't possible we humans would have died out long ago! Remember that. 🙏

18/01/2025

17/12/2024

We're sharing this poem for those who are coping with grief over the holidays. This may be a tough and isolating time for you, but remember to look after yourself and love yourself. ❤️

This poem is from Donna Ashworth's beautiful book of poetry "Loss".

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02/09/2024

01/08/2024

15/07/2024

Since I was very young, I lived with excruciating feelings of unworthiness, failure and unloveability deep within me. I felt rotten to my very core. Ugly, unwanted, sick and damaged beyond repair.

No matter what I did, or didn’t do, these feelings haunted my every waking moment. I hated myself and wanted to run.

And so I addicted myself to work, to food, to computer games, to over-thinking, to living in my mind, existing in fantasy and false hope. No matter what kind of success I achieved on the outside, no matter how much praise and approval I received, these dark feelings festered on the inside. I felt like I had been poisoned.

Then, one day, I discovered that freedom could only be found through turning to FACE the monsters within. This was my ‘breakdown’.

I stopped running and turned towards my pain. There was no other choice. I invited the shame to come into the light of consciousness and be felt fully. I took the risk of feeling more unworthy, more of a failure, more unlovable than ever. I thought these feelings would kill me, they were so intense! But finally, I was FEELING them! Making room for them. Allowing them to move in my being. I was the space for the darkness, I was the great Light that could illuminate all these 'unloveable' parts. I was the sky and the feelings were the weather. I breathed into the pain, let it know it was allowed to live, that it had the right to life.

I showered my internal victim with love. Infused my addict with great compassion. Saturated my darkness with this great light of awareness.

I was not running any longer. I was not splitting myself in two. I was a vast space in which feelings of shame - unworthiness, unloveability, failure, ugliness, despair - could come and go. They were only feelings – they could not hurt me, could not control me, could not define me any longer.

I was not ashamed, I was not 'the shameful one', I was the space for shame, its loving parent, its Home.

I felt a lot of love for these misunderstood parts, these inner children! They became my dear friends, companions on the path. They were not mistakes. They had only been seeking my love and understanding.

Now, if and when these friends arise, I can greet them with open arms. Celebrate them, let them express themselves, and let them fall back into Presence.

- Jeff Foster

02/06/2024

Om even bij stil te staan

01/06/2024

Over geluk....

02/05/2024

Food for thought