Monthly Archives: May 2018

Neuroaffective Regulation: Observation and Intervention for Systemic Regulation

We often hear clients say that they feel like their body was hijacked in the face of a triggering event. They can’t think, their nervous system seems to have a mind of its own. They lose their center and their sense of self is compromised. Neuroaffective regulation practices can be key factors in returning to a secure experience of their felt-sense, a return home to safety. Neuroaffective regulation is not simply grounding: It is the fluid integration of cognitive, affective, physical and neurological systems in the direction of organization and coherence.

In this workshop we will explore verbal and non-verbal markers of systemic activation and deactivation. We will explore when bringing awareness to the body is appropriate and effective and when it reinforces adaptive strategies that hinder openness and growth.

Neuroaffective interventions engage cognitive, behavioral, emotional, neurobiological and energetic systems to help clients become more organized and alive. Interventions are bi-directional, moving from cognition to neurobiology and from neurobiology to cognition.

The skills developed in this workshop can be readily integrated within any clinical model.

https://insightcenter.org/schedule/regulation-2018-1/

At the workshop:

Part 1: In the morning we will review the underlying neurobiology of emotional reactivity using both didactic and experiential activities to identify within ourselves how it feels to consciously pass through activation-deactivation cycles.

Part 2: After lunch we will use dyadic exercises to focus on the identification of non-verbal cues and the use of non-verbal and verbal interventions.

At the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

Differentiate between mindfulness and neuroaffective awareness;
Describe top-down and bottom-up therapeutic interventions;
Identify strategies for integrating neuroaffective practices into therapeutic process;
Identify and describe systemic activation and deactivation cycles;
Identify and describe verbal and non-verbal indicators of emotional dysregulation;
Describe how neuroaffective practices can enhance awareness of transference-countertransference processes.

The Freedom Trail: Accessing Body Wisdom to Free Ourselves

The Freedom Trail: Accessing Body Wisdom to Free Ourselves
from the Oppression of Soul Trauma and Associated Core Fears
Guided Self Healing, founded by Andrew Hahn, Psy.D.
May 10, 2018

Sorry for the delay, this video gave me fits!! I have divided it into 3 parts. I will keep this up till the end of the month. Again, sorry for the delay and your patience. – Linda

Part 1

 

Part 2

 

Part 3

 

There is a certain kind of suffering that our clients experience which seems to not be so responsive to the standard work we do in body psychotherapy. In an earlier staging in our profession, this suffering was associated with what was called Personality Disorders. No matter how much we were able to help our clients experience the discomfort that was associated with life experience, still these problems hang on.

I would like to suggest that the reason for this is that these problems, called core fears, do not arise out of life experience, but instead are core lenses through which we see all life experience. Such fears as fundamental unlovability, badness, unworthiness, hopelessness, defectiveness, insufficiency, insecurity, unfulfillability, impotence are examples of such core fears about the self.

To compensate for these fears about ourselves, we compulsively have to try to be the opposite. As examples, someone who experiences themselves as unlovable has to compulsively create harmony, goodness,.. the Perfectionist needs to be perfect as a way to compensate for the fear of badness. So we can see that personality is an archetype, yet unlike other archetypes, it arises as a defense against experiencing core fears and not as an expression of universal identities (like the Exile, the King..).

The reason that our typical work is more challenging is the problem is not a Material level problem stemming from Material level trauma. Thinking about the challenges of personality as a Soul level trauma opens us to the idea that it’s root is in the misnaming of Essence/ emptiness as something totally unacceptable about the Self, and then avoiding being who we truly are for fear that if we become it we will cease to exist. For if we are who we truly are, which is everything, we cease to exist as something limited and separate. In philosophy, this is called the existential anxiety of non-existence.

We will examine:

1. how people come for healing both because of the trauma they experience and the way they protect themselves from experiencing it again

2. How material level trauma and soul level trauma have the same structure but on different fundamental levels of experience.

We will demonstrate how our deepest fears about ourselves are in fact the misnaming of the most Divine aspects of self.. we will explore core fears and teach you and have you experience (guided meditation) a simple powerful process that you can take home immediately so that both you and your clients can alchemically transform the deepest fears we have about ourselves into the most Divine aspects of ourselves.

Andrew Hahn Psy.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist and founder of Life Centered Therapy (formerly Guided Self Healing), an energy psychospiritual mindbody framework for healing our deepest trauma. He also teaches workshops nationally on the Enneagram and the Essence Process (which he developed).