Depression Archives | Inner Flow Counselling & Wellness, Yvette Lalonde, MTC.

When self-care is a stuggle

2018-03-25 by Yvette Lalonde

Self-worth. Self- love. Self-compassion. Self-care. Why is it so hard?

Why is it so hard to feel worthy? Why is it so hard to feel deserving of love? Why is it so hard to stop critical thoughts?

These are topics that come up frequently with clients and it’s a common struggle for adults who’ve experienced trauma in their childhoods. Trauma is anything that we experience as being deeply distressing; any experience where our nervous system was unable to find resolution and we don’t yet have the resources to handle the stress.

Bypassing Needs

The majority of people I work with have had childhoods where they didn’t feel inherently safe. All too often children in these environments learn to stand guard and keep watch anticipating the nuanced or obvious behaviour of their caregivers to try and keep themselves as safe as possible. This results in a nervous system that is kept on high alert for possible threat. The child learns to bypass their own needs in order to attend to the instability of their caregivers and/or home environment.

Moral of the Story

Trying to find order amongst the disorder, children begin to internalize messages from their environment, families, friends, and society. Messages can be directly conveyed or inferred. It is input taken in without discrimination. Think of a child trying to understand the moral of a story that’s way too elaborate for their developmental stage. The child is simply trying to make sense and apply these lessons so they may better be equipped to handle life. This is about survival. A part of our brain called the limbic system stores and generalizes these memories so that we become more adept at detecting threat; this is a conditioned response based on survival and self-protection.

For these young minds, all too often the messages boil down to being internalized as core beliefs such as “I am not worthy,” “I am unlovable,” or “I am not enough.”

Dulled Awareness

In these types of environments children learn to internalize these messages as well as intense emotions. They become adept at repressing their feelings and numbing themselves to physical sensations. In this way children are split off from emotions and physical sensations that are vital for informing them what they require to feel safe and healthy; to sense boundaries in their own body. They learn to disregard the warning signs and cues that the body offers to aid in nervous system regulation.

Critical Voice

Enter the critical voice. One adaptive skill of trying to make sense of a traumatic childhood is developing a narrative that is critical of the self. This critical voice believes it is safer to target ourselves than to target anything outside of ourselves. In essence the violence is internalized; “on some level they firmly believe that these terrible things were done to them because they are terrible people” states Bessel van der Kalk.

Internalized threat

As Christopher K. Germer and Kristen Neff note, “when we’re threatened internally by intense emotions such as dread or shame, the fight-flight-freeze response turns into the unholy trinity of self-criticism, self-isolation, and self-absorption.”

Think about this for a moment, this is huge! Trauma symptoms occur when our nervous systems are unable to find resolution. So, when we are unable to complete a fight response we may internalize the arousal symptom and experience self-criticism. When we internalize the avoidance response of flight we may self-isolate and when we internalize the intrusive stress response of freeze we may respond with self-absorption*.

*Self-absorption refers to how symptoms from the stress response can become a preoccupation.

The Resulting impact

If our early years taught us to negate our own needs for the needs of others, inhibit our emotional and somatic signals, and/or internalize messages that led to critical narratives, then how are we expected to know what we need, believe that our needs matter, and learn to care for ourselves?

If we were not given the nurturing, care, or warmth that we required as children how can we expect to replicate these behaviours for ourselves as adults?

Getting Support

It is not enough to try and change your thinking to a more positive outlook or buy some nice bubble bath. Though do these things too! Do the things that make you feel great because you deserve to.

As you can see the impacts of childhood trauma are insidious and require a deeper level of care and attention than changing our external self-care habits or trying to think positively.

For individuals with a trauma history self-care isn’t simply about changing behaviour it is about looking at the undigested rules, beliefs, and narratives we still hold from society, friends, and family that get in the way of us connecting to our truth. It becomes a developmental conversion, exchanging old belief systems that were never our truths in order to find out what we truly value and who we are outside of the constructed belief systems.

It is vital that we make contact with our emotional pain in a safe and nurturing manner. This may require the support of a trauma-informed practitioner that can help in unraveling and expressing what you as a child never got to. A trained professional can provide an honouring and compassionate environment where this type of work can happen and they can support you in regulating your nervous system, allowing you to stay present throughout your healing process. Ideally, therapy would include a somatic component since the body, brain, and nervous system store our experiences. To heal trauma we need to engage our whole self’s body, mind, and spirit.

It is a show of resiliency and strength to create a support network that supports you along your journey and helps you develop your own vitality.

I am the 10th child of 2 – Personal Lessons from Grief

2017-10-07 by Yvette Lalonde

Legacy of Grief

You could say that grief and I have an intimate relationship. In the 7 years between my sisters birth and mine my parents experienced a total of 7 miscarriages and the birth of one son, my brother Michael, who only lived for a few days due to structural birth defects.

I’m the 10th child of only 2. My parent’s loss 8 children. My sister witnessed these losses for the first 7 years of her life. And as you can imagine there was little in the way of support in the 1970s. In fact, miscarriages are still something that many women and couples feel they must sustain alone. As with most loss but particularly with this type of loss, grief is often accompanied by guilt and shame.

Understanding Griefs Impact

It wasn’t until my counselling training that I really started to unpack what all this meant for me.

Gestating in a womb well versed in grief, fear, and sorrow; I thought these were natural states for me. I understood myself to be a sad person; I hid it very well but it was always there along for the ride. I felt fear deep in my bones; it informed so much of my life.

As you can imagine there are layers upon layers of significance for me in the events that occurred all before my actual birth. I found validation through learning how the science of epigenetics demonstrates that this type of womb stress can modify the expression of a fetuses DNA.

To be very clear, I, in no way, hold my mother in blame. Rather it has presented me with the gift of acknowledging her strength, fortitude, and resiliency.

Lessons from Grief

What have I learned from this intimate encounter with grief?

Well, I’m still learning from it and suspect I and my whole family always will. This is not necessarily a bad thing. For me it is in the framing of it. It happened; nothing can be done about that. There is no shame and no blame. What I can do is be resourceful with how I work with it.

Grief has taught me the importance of intentionally searching out joy and pausing to embody it. To really experience it, no matter how fleeting it is. Because I know it will eventually return. I realize in typing this that it has also taught me the lesson of impermanence. It has taught me to see the ways I grasp and the ways I avoid.

To revel in and celebrate beauty. To cherish small things. I think this is why I can stare at a flower, a tree, or a bug and hold it in complete reverence.

Grief has taught me to honour my sorrow by seeing it and holding it tenderly without letting it define me. To understand that I am not the sum of my past. I am not the expression of others grief. That my grief is as unique as your grief.

To witness the birth, life, death, rebirth cycle. In moments, days, months, years, and lives. To hold space for death in all its forms. To see how it shows up in nature, in my transformation, in my clients, and loved ones.

Grief can be paralyzing. I know this. It can feel like it is taking over your life, and honestly, I think that it is meant to. It is one of the hardest and wisest teachers I have experienced. I know this only because I turned around and faced grief. I held space for grief and wanted to allow it to transform me. She is a multifaceted mistress. Simultaneously debilitating and stimulating.

Death is everywhere, in the falling of the leaves, in the setting of the sun, and in the ending of relationships and lives. Rebirth is also everywhere. In the decaying leaves that feed the buds that will bloom in spring. It is in the rising moon. In the understanding of why relationships and lives were important.

I guess in the end I see that death and grief have informed my sensitivity to sorrow which has inspired my resiliency and engagement with life.

Nature as Therapy

2016-11-08 by Yvette Lalonde

natureblog

Stressed out? Need a way to reset?

Stare at the above picture or any picture of nature. Seriously, studies have shown that focusing your attention for just 15 minutes decreases ruminating negative thoughts, lowers your heart rate, and improves your working memory.

Want to kick it up a notch?

Get outdoors and immerse your senses in nature! Touching a tree, smelling the forest, looking at nature’s fractal patterns, and listening to the birds gives your nervous systems an opportunity to reset. In nature there is less stimuli to contend with, less information to process, and therefore less things to respond to.

In Japan, the act of Shinrin-Yoku (forest bathing), is all about enveloping your senses in the experience of the outdoors.

Research has shown that nature affects us in numerous ways

Plunging yourself into the dynamic simplicity of nature benefits you by expanding your awareness and reaffirming your connection to something much larger than just your internal processing. Nature pulls us out of our heads, connects us back to our bodies and to the earth, and reminds us of our interconnectedness in the following ways:

Walking in nature versus a city improves concentration by 20%.
Decreases anxiety and preserves joy.
Enhances working memory performance.
Increases creativity.
Lowers aggression and crime rates in neighbourhoods with green spaces.
Decreases your heart rate, activating your parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest).
Evergreen trees release phytoncides which boosts the production and activity of our killer T cells strengthening our immune system.

Go ahead, change your screen saver to an inspiring picture of nature, buy some plants, and get outside.

The second brain – your gut – and its importance to your emotional well-being

2016-10-31 by Yvette Lalonde

Imagine taking probiotics to treat mood disorders or a Doctor asking you about your emotional state when you show up with gastrointestinal issues.

Your gut directly contributes to your well-being or your lack of well-being. Often referred to as the second brain, your gut consists of over 100 million neurons that communicate with the brain in your head. Your gut produces and uses the majority of serotonin in your body.

What is Serotonin?

It is sometimes called the ‘feel good’ neurochemical and is very much connected to your emotions.
It is also converted into melatonin which signals your body that it’s time to sleep.
Serotonin assists in the growth of new neurons in our hippocampus. The hippocampus assists in the regulation of our fight-flight-freeze response.

So how can you best fuel and heal your gut-brain?

Bacteria. Yup, bacteria.

Your gut is also home to a colony of microorganisms – the microbiome.

Imagine a world consisting of thousands of tiny little microorganisms having their own little city in your gut and the state of their ecosystem directly affects your emotional and mental states. When they are flora-ishing (see what I did there?) you will feel better mentally and emotionally. However, when they are in a state of disharmony you are also in disharmony.

The food list below is far from complete but it’s a good place to start.

Beneficial foods that build up good bacteria:

Probiotic foods include fermented foods such as yogurt (sugar-free), sauerkraut, kimchi, and tempeh
Prebiotic foods include raw; asparagus, carrots, garlic, onions, dandelion greens, and artichokes

Harmful foods that feed bad bacteria:

Sugar and artificial sweeteners
Starch-based foods such as potatoes, corn, and grains

And of course, stress levels will also affect your microbiome. Take time to figure out what is important; be discerning about what is worth your energy and what isn’t.

Ask for support and reduce your stress

2016-03-11 by Yvette Lalonde

Stress & Support

What happened? When did we decide that we should be able to handle everything on our own and that asking for help equates to failure?

The affects of stress have people literally wondering if they are crazy. The message we receive from society is that we should be capable having doing to all on our own. We reward and admire self sacrifice all the time. Think about the messages you are receiving at work, in school, and through the media.

Our fear of not being good enough, of being judged, and of failure keeps us caught in this self sacrificing cycle. What will they think if I admit that I am overwhelmed and need help? Will they think less of me? I see other people handling so much every day; I should be able to do it too.

Get Curious

If you were to have an honest conversation with the person who appears to handle it all – would you find out that they are also overwhelmed? You would discover that they too feel overwhelmed and require support.

We as a society are chronically stressed and it can be very hard to see how the symptoms of stress manifest in our lives. The belief system of having to do more is directly connected to a belief of not being enough.

By doing more, we are trying to Be more.

I encourage you to contemplate how this perspective affects your mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health. What do you believe would happen if you asked for help? Is this actually true? I am inspired by the strength and courage it takes to as for help.

This week try this experiment, reach out to someone and let them know what is going on for you. You may ask them to just listen or you may have a specific request. If this sounds scary, all the more reason to do it. Let them know that this is difficult for you.