Kintsugi is a Japanese art of repairing pottery. Entire family histories can be written in a single tea cup. ‘This is where my son chipped the cup when he knocked it off trying to climb on the counter. That kid was always climbing on everything. When he grew up, he climbed mountains.’ ‘This is where Grandpa let it roll off the roof when he was a kid. He’d sneak up there after his parents went to sleep to watch the…
Trauma is any experience interpreted as overly distressing. This could be something as universal as combat or rape or as individual as your sibling always dipping into your share of food when you were kids. Anyone experiencing combat or rape will have lingering issues to work through to varying degrees. The food nabbing sibling may or may not leave behind lingering wounds. I have heard these differentiated as Trauma- with a big ‘T’ and trauma- with a little ‘t’. Any…
Trauma coaches or trauma recovery coaches are coaches who have chosen to work with people who have experienced trauma. Let’s face it, we’ve all experienced trauma. However, these coaches are communicating that they work with clients who specifically acknowledge or intuit that their life has been affected by trauma. Trauma coaches may further niche by working with clients who’ve experienced particular types of trauma (child abuse; domestic abuse; addiction) I refer to myself as a trauma informed life coach because I feel…
Healing is a spectrum and sometimes requires a team approach. You may need to begin with a therapist, or even a therapist and a psychiatrist simultaneously. As you process past trauma, you’ll notice yourself hyper focusing less and less on past grievances; you’ll have learned tools to better maintain a healthy attitude and to better weather current and future grievances. Ultimately, you’ll be more stable. At some point during or following therapy, you may wish to optimize your present so…
If you’re not familiar with Peter Levine, it’s time to change that. Peter Levine created the therapeutic modality, Somatic Experiencing. SE helps clients/patients understand, recognize and process the lingering effects of trauma in the body. If you’ve followed my blog at all, you may notice I talk a lot about somatization, somatic writing, somatic meditation. Last week, I made a social media post titled Coaching Through the Arts that provided an art prompt titled, Somatic Noticing. (Click HERE for that…
Coaching Through the Arts refers to a specific method I promote in session, on your own afterwards or in CTtA workshops that I lead. (Not all my workshops’s are CTtA.) Coaching Through the Arts prompts are also emailed monthly. The method I use is what Michele Cassou and Stewart Cubley in Life, Paint and Passion Reclaiming The Magic Of Spontaneous Expression, refer to as Process Painting. Art is generally, though not always, produced with an end result in mind…
Seems a bit left field, I know. But here me out- it’s pretty amazing. I know very little about Feng Shui but I came across a Feng Shui concept a few years ago that made me take pause. Feng Shui’s direct translation is wind water. It is the study and practice of chi/qi/energy. Which makes sense, thinking of the never-ending waves in both wind and water. The concept I read was reminiscent of The Secret. The Secret is a book…
Rushing to meet deadlines. Bobbing and weaving through traffic to pick the kids up on time. The clerk at the gas station reminds you of your Dad and you flinch. Staring into an empty fridge, you realize there’s nothing for dinner. You overhear your son repeating one of Mom’s favorite phrases and you cringe. The dog is shoving in front of you to inspect the fridge contents. At best, you are stressed. No doubt about it. If the Mom and…
Few things are more miserable than a general, undefinable malaise permeating every cell of your life. If you can’t identify what’s wrong, how can you possibly move forward? You can. And in this instance, it can be helpful to put the cart before the horse. Sometimes recognizing the root of the problem won’t be possible until you start moving forward. When you’re stuck in a rut, the walls of the deep, deep rut are often all that’s in your field…
All kids have received the lectures of choosing friends wisely; of not succumbing to peer pressure. All parents have given those lectures. Of course, as kids we promise we’ll never say this stuff to our kids, but we do because by then we see how our kids are being influenced by others. How aware are we of this phenomenon in our lives as adults? Perhaps it time to take a closer look. Humans are wired for attunement and to belong. …
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