Hero’s Journey Therapy

03/07/2024

Posted • Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor’s warning in her dissent yesterday:

“When [the president] uses his official powers in any way, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution.

Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.

Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless....

Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done. The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”

Where do you stand?Chances are, you care about the rule of law,
just like me. Chances are good that you care about justice for all, even if there’s a long way to go, just like me.

The Buddha taught a lot about actions (karma) and their consequences, about cause and effect. It is very clear that no one is above the law of the Dharma.

Repost

01/04/2024

April Newsletter - https://mailchi.mp/herosjourneytherapy/april-newsletter-new-article

30/03/2024

Wonderfully said…

Much of our wounding occurs prior to the acquisition of language and is not able to be healed through the questioning and reorganization of patterns of thinking. In other words, we can’t think our way out of trauma, attachment, and narcissistic injury.

When our capacity to process unbearable terror, panic, and shame is overwhelmed, unmetabolized pieces of soul are held subcortically and in our cellular circuitry, unreachable by thinking which is a layer removed from the fires of the alchemical body.

Encouragement to “just get over it, it’s just your ego, just let it be, it isn’t who you really are” is experienced by an inflamed nervous system as the activity of empathic failure, aggression, and psychic violence.

It’s like a neural form of gaslighting and reflects a deep misunderstanding of relational wounding and implicit memory, and only contributes to the intergenerational transmission of trauma.

In addition to shattering and unendurable experience – which is painful and terrifying enough – there is a profound sense of aloneness that goes with this, the disorganizing reality of the missing Friend, and no accompaniment into the dark night. “I am alone in this.”

This is devastating to the soul.

When the lost orphans of psyche and soma come surging to be held, they’re not all that interested in our crystal-clear analysis, detached witnessing and fantasies of “mastery,” or powerful spiritual insights.

They’re longing for something else… for you, for your heart, for your holding. To know that you will stay near, that you will not abandon or shame them, that you will do your best to provide sanctuary and safe passage for them to come Home, to be helped out of that frozen, crystallized state and to live once again.

30/03/2024

Psychedelic psychotherapy represents a paradigm shift in healing, one that promotes self-integration and whole health. These shifts in internal health are correspondingly reflected in enhanced empathy, improved relatedness, and increased capacity for social connection. Much of human suffering and disregard for the planet is a reflection of our own collective inner impoverishment, fundamental disconnects, and unaddressed trauma. Psychedelic psychotherapy offers a healing approach to restore beauty and health to both the inner and outer worlds we inhabit.

Background We are confronted with dire statistics that document our current mental health crisis. New treatment modalities are desperately needed to address esc...

31/12/2023

How Old Emotional Wounds Play Out in Adulthood. - https://mailchi.mp/herosjourneytherapy/how-old-emotional-wounds-play-out-in-adulthood

12/12/2023

December Newsletter - https://mailchi.mp/herosjourneytherapy/december-newsletter

14/09/2023

03/09/2023

Understanding Avoidant Attachment - Shutting Down - https://mailchi.mp/herosjourneytherapy/understanding-avoidant-attachment-shutting-down

31/08/2023

Does this resonate with you? How does this land for you?

30/08/2023

Posted • All of our past experiences are stored within our brain and nervous system as “data” that we draw from every time we enter new and unfamiliar encounters.

On a first date, in a new job, when we’re traveling, having a conversation, going through a life transition or meeting a new person… our system scans this “database” to see if we have past experiences that might apply to the current one.

For example, we may go into this database when we enter a relationship and retrieve memories of our overly critical mother or our emotionally unavailable father and unconsciously are reminded that that is “normal”. Or perhaps we pull “data” that reminds us of the high stress and intensity in our household growing up that primed our nervous system to be wired towards intensity and as a result we continue to find every partner that is safe and secure to be “boring”.

Depending on our unique lived experience, our nervous system will almost always choose a familiar chaos over choosing an unfamiliar peace, an unfamiliar security, an unfamiliar joy. Because our system perceives what’s unfamiliar to be unsafe.

So it’s only natural for us to unconsciously avoid what we perceive as threatening, as dangerous, as unsafe.

This is why tending to our negative self belief, to our trauma, to our anxiety, to our self image, to our relationships all require us to first tend to our nervous system. Because no matter how much we can cognitively understand what we should be doing or choosing, our body doesn’t speak a cognitive language, it only remembers what it feels like to experience what it did.

This is why Somatic Experiencing and body-first approaches to trauma, chronic illness, and relationships are so incredibly important.

Inside of my nervous system focused course, Return to Regulation, we let our body be our guide. We move slowly, and invite our system into new experiences gently and with great care. If your curious to explore this work, I invite you to head to the link in my bio to learn about the course or book a 1:1 session ❤️

22/08/2023

For a better understanding of Attachment Wounds, you can check out the blog article: https://www.herosjourneytherapy.com/post/attachment-wounds-yes-you-have-one

10/08/2023

09/08/2023

08/08/2023

30/07/2023

beautifully written.

It is so easy to take for granted that tomorrow will come, that another opportunity will be given to bear witness to a sunset, take a walk in the forest, listen to the birds, or share a moment of connection with the one in front of us.

But another part knows how fragile it truly is here, how tenuous, and the reality that this opening into life will not be here for much longer.

Before we realize it, we can so easily fall into the trance of postponement. The spell of tomorrow looms large in the personal and collective psyche.

At the end of this life – which is sure to come much sooner than we think – it is unlikely we'll be caught up in whether we accomplished all the tasks on our to-do lists, played it safe, healed all the wounds from our past, or wrapped up our self-improvement project.

Inside these hearts there may be only one burning question: how well did I love?

One day we will no longer be able to look at, touch, or share a simple moment with those we love. When we turn to them, they will be gone.

One moment will be our last to encounter the immensity of one more breath, experience awe at a color or fragrance or blooming of a violet, or to enter into union with the vastness of the sea.

It will be our last chance to see a universe in a drop of rain, to have a moment of communion with a friend, or weep as the light yields to the night sky.

One last moment to imagine, to feel an emotion, fall in love, or listen to a piece of music. To know heartbreak, joy, sorrow, and peace – to behold the outrageous mystery of what it truly means to be an open, sensitive human being.

To know firsthand the preciousness and rare, unique opportunity to have a human body and nervous system.

What if today is that last day? Or tomorrow? Or later this week?

Knowing that death will come, how will we respond to the sacred and brief appearance of life?

Perhaps our “life's purpose” has nothing to do with what job we find, what new thing we will manifest or attract for ourselves, or what new belief system we take on. But to fully live, to touch each here and now moment with our presence and with the gift of our one, wild heart.

And do whatever we can to help others: to hold them when they are hurting, to attune carefully to the ways they are making sense of a world that has gone a bit mad; to meet them with empathy and kindness, and listen to what keeps them up at night and what brings them alive.

To speak kind words and not forget the erupting miracle of the other as it appears in front of us. To companion them and be an open, warm, spacious vessel through which love can come into this world.

Perhaps this is the most radical gift we can give.

17/07/2023

Posted • Letting go is hard.

Do it in your own time.

Piece-by-piece.

Moment-by-moment.

Breath-by-breath.

There is no time clock.

No where to get to.

And no right way to do it.

You won’t get left behind.

And you won’t miss what is yours.

So take your time.

Move gently.

Move slowly.

Move with love.

And if you can’t move at all,

that’s ok too.

___________

Katie Buemann

12/07/2023

10/07/2023