Marion Mensing – Online Counselling – Ireland, UK, EU/EEA & Switzerland

Some Signs That You Carry Trauma:* 

• You feel limited or constricted.
• You find it difficult to trust or to assert yourself.
• You find it difficult to experience suffering without succumbing to despair.
• You find it difficult to witness suffering with compassion.
• You cannot hold your pain, sorrow or fear without being overwhelmed or having to escape into compulsive habits of working, self-soothing, self-stimulating by whatever means.
• You feel compelled either to aggrandise yourself or to efface yourself for the sake of gaining acceptance or justify your existence.
• You are impaired in your capacity to experience gratitude for the beauty and wonder of life.

*taken from Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal

Coping Mechanisms From Childhood

...can stop us from being our True Self. Here are some examples:

• Harsh self-judgement because it kept you in line as a child (not being in line was dangerous)
• You are consumed with attracting attention because you did not get the approval you needed as a child.
• You are craving to meet people's expectations so they can value you because you were not valued as a child.
• You have a sense of entitlement to being treated in a special way because you were not made feeling special as a child.
• You want to impress people because you weren't esteemed for just who you were as a child.
• You are helping people all the time to gain a sense of importance because your importance was not valued as a child.
• You are too nice and suppress some of your authentic personality aspects in order to be liked, because you were not liked for who you were as a child.
• You are very charming because you were not loved as a child.
• You seek status and success but feel emptiness and hurt inside, because you were not recognised for who you were, and you still are not recognised for who you are.

Foundational Human Needs and their importance for Feeling secure in the world*

• If our need for protection and safety was met when growing up we developed a sense of belonging—if not we may feel like an outcast, as not fitting in.
• If our need for attunement, of being seen and known, was met when growing up we developed the capacity for emotional regulation—if not we experience invalidation and dysregulation.  
• If our need for reassurance and soothing was met when growing up we developed a felt sense of calmness in the body—if not we feel in the wrong, experience anxiety, depression, self-criticism
• If our need for expressing delight was met when growing up we developed a sense of pride and self-worth—if not we developed defensive arrogance and contempt as a defence
• If our need for guidance and mentoring was met when growing up we developed confidence—if not we feel insecure, uncertain and lack self agency
• If our need for conflict and repair was met when growing up we developed trust in relational disruptions—if not we developed defensiveness, reactivity, a need to be right.
• If our need for play was met when growing up we can be lighthearted and unselfconscious—if not we feel constricted and are apprehensive of enjoyment and letting go.

*taken from: Deirdre Fay, Becoming Safely Embodied

Once you have a desire to care about your Self, you are on the way. You might struggle for a little while because you do not see who you really are; but then there will be a moment of clarity, when you understand the defences you built up within you, when you realise that they protected your vulnerability and hence need to be valued instead of being directly opposed. These defences enabled you to survive and to cope—despite of your hurting, despite of the burden you might be carrying. Connecting to your inner defences and wounds in an attentive and caring process brings awareness of your real Self and finally—through healing—also harmonisation. This is the essence of what is called Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy, introduced by Richard Schwartz; but it is also the core of Gabor Maté’s Compassionate Inquiry and other therapeutic approaches like Frank Corrigan's DBR that gently engage with those parts of the nervous system that unconsciously hold threatening emotional memories . 

I would like to facilitate this inner change. In a first free video assessment of 20 min we find out if we can work with each other and how we can proceed. And we take it from there...

“Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you.
Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.
Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.”  (Rumi)

Marion mensing