Connection Trumps Control

In my Somatic Therapy for Family Nourishment - Part 1 blog post, I wrote about the relational process of invitational care and how it offers more sustainable bodily and relational healing. I used examples of my experience working at an eating disorders treatment center in an effort to highlight how the relational process, the capacity for the caregiver to offer a Circle of Support to one in need, sets the stage for integrative body-mind healing and nourishment.

In this post, I’ll specify a little deeper how caregiver connection trumps control, particularly as it relates to a robust quality of embodiment we all deserve to experience to live with satisfaction, empowerment and authenticity.

Family Support for Individual and Collective Integrative Healing

Because therapeutic journeys can offer reparative experiences in ways that enhance both relationships and nervous system functioning, using a family lens and family approach—whether it’s chosen family or family of origin—can help to re-feed these reparative experiences so all members of a family have potential to restore deep nourishment emotionally, psychologically, mentally, physically, spiritually and relationally.

From group therapy, to one-on-one sessions with individuals, to family sessions and family meal groups, one can have reparative family experiences and more sustainable bodily functioning. But within these therapeutic relational journeys, it’s important to take a closer look at how autonomy and client’s preference can still be valued by those who have built-in power authority.

Did you know 70% of our love dynamics involve mismatch, being out of sync? This includes parent/child interactions! (Tronick/Gold, The Power of Discord)

Did you know that co-regulation from parent to child and the child's development of Social Engagement system functioning needs more than just “staying calm?"

Children and their developing nervous systems depend on their parents/caregivers to….

Meditative Practices without Relational Support: the Possibility of Disembodying

Thanks to yoga—which has stretched its way into the West in the 20th century—our culture has lapped up various meditative arts that show up everywhere from cognitive-based therapeutic approaches, to ecstatic dance, to maybe my favorite—mindful tea bag tags. 🍵

Years ago, when yoga studios began popping up on every corner, I craved the urge to play with yoga shapes, to explore pretzel poses with my naturally bendy body. However, I felt great resistance to opening my heart in the ways my teachers suggested—ways that seemed to encourage losing myself. I felt like I couldn’t fully be myself in my yoga community.

I was already a “good girl,” a classic people-pleaser who didn’t need to shape-shift toward any more teacher expectations. Like a raw nerve, I needed to develop more energetic skin rather than less. I needed to stay in my body rather than transcend it.

The Importance of Play to Re-parent Your Nervous System Functioning

Learning to provide (relational) Support, helps us play. It helps us playfully “dance” through our lives, finding creative solutions for challenges. It helps us find the pathway, sensing the importance of Play. 🧠👣🌟

M-Bodied® Parenting focuses on womb-to-walking-and-beyond parenting stages. However, the challenging, oppositional patterns and worrisome coping mechanisms tend to cause most distress to parents, which also often benefits from therapeutic support and/or relational repair. M-Bodied Parenting psychotherapy and embodiment coaching offers experiential somatic practices that involve exploration of polyvagal theory, trauma response and attachment. We look at how the intersection of the three can shed light on common experiences and reactions of both caregivers and children. Using specific trauma-informed co-regulation practices that are relational and developmental, we explore how those oppositional response patterns can be better supported and embodied—versus pathologized—for both caregivers and children.

When we can become curious about disembodiment and dissociation, avoidance of conflict, gossiping or bullying, chronic freeze patterns, urges to flee, and tendencies to bite or snap back, we can become more interested and compassionate with expanding on the idea that something wants our attention, our love, our consideration, our bravery.

Interested in seeing Chi for Two in action? Dee and Caroline had fun creating a taste of Chi for Two, a multi-generational trauma healing method, while demonstrating a few practices on our YouTube channel.

When a person’s reach for coping mechanisms like restricting, binging, over-exercising or over-focusing on their body is re-experienced in body-mind-spirit as a symbolic reach for healthy relational connection, over time they are better equipped to embody all of their feelings and urges in more sustainable and nourishing ways.  The need to manipulate food and exercise naturally decreases, and they are able to nourish themselves deeply.

Presence in playing can be supported and co-regulated by a present caregiver serving as a containing environment encouraging play, exploration and teamwork. What about “why can’t they work it out themselves?” Or: “kids need to learn to problem solve on their own.” We cannot assume everyone has had ideal developmental holding and enough self-regulation to self-handle. Plus, we need at least the first two and half decades of our life, and likely longer, to practice developing ideal self-regulation….

Compulsive or maladaptive coping behaviors can present as an attempt for nourishment instead of gaining sustenance through supportive relationships and an eventual robust sense of self. When we helpers can offer specific early relational co-regulation practices based on developmental patterns and stages to help re-pattern nervous system functioning, we can help to shift a person’s Reach for coping mechanisms to a Reach for healthy relational connection with self, others and life itself.

Today when scrolling through social media, I came upon Evelyn Tribole’s Intuitive Eater’s Holiday Bill of Rights. I particularly delighted in #7 (pie for breakfast) and felt a little playfully smug because I’d already claimed my right to pie for breakfast last week. But as I read through Tribole’s Bill of Rights again, it occurred to me how much easier and within reach these Intuitive Eating principles can be for someone in body and mind when relational support is available and plentiful.

Am I a Good Enough Parent?

As caregivers, when our own nervous system feels adequately supported, we have an expanded capability of nurturing not only ourselves in a sustainable way but also our children and loved ones. Things feel decently easy, even the mismatches! Children intuitively sense this steady support and feed off it! This co-regulation dance happens from the one with power authority offering safety and connection to someone in their care…..

What about exploring movement and embodiment in a relational and less prescriptive, less lonesome way? We don’t learn support and steadiness alone; From womb-to-walking and beyond, we learn support, steadiness and our uniqueness by being able to lean into and push away from a quality of support, a container, a Circle of Support….

M-Bodied: a 6-week in-person therapeutic embodiment series for deep nourishment and core awareness

2 offerings!

In-Person starts Nov 12

Online starts Nov 16

Space is limited, register today!

Instead of racing to the quickest fix to solve distress, to eradicate unruly behavior, to demand a child to focus, or to stop a tantrum at any age, what about listening deeper for the relational and developmental cry for help? Here’s an opportunity for caregivers to get curious to pause, to stay with the heat that arises, and to invite embodied connection that celebrates the mismatch. If mismatch, sometimes viewed as “opposition” is not relationally met in a trauma-informed way, it’s bound to appear later in another form.

“Oppositional Movement gets a bad rap.” On July 30 and 31, Dee Wagner, LPC, BC-DMT and I are offering another series of CE trainings teaching Chi for Two practices that help clients utilize oppositional movement to settle their nerves.

Healing is relational. From womb to walking, we learn to parent ourselves when someone is there to healthily (re)parent us. Regardless of our upbringing—whether we experienced steady nurturance or a chaotic childhood—Many times we need these emotional redos and inner-parent fine-tuning when as adults….This can help you regain your own creative energy for life to help offer your children the deep nourishment and attention they crave.

Are you a helping professional looking for body-based ways to help support oppositional patterns and coping mechanisms? Are you polyvagal curious? The Polyvagal Bites CE workshops place an emphasis on the spectrum of disordered eating but also other concerning, challenging, oppositional patterns and coping mechanisms that can benefit from therapeutic support and relational repair. Throughout each workshop in various, experiential ways, we repeatedly dive deeply into polyvagal theory, trauma response and attachment. We look at how the intersection of the three can shed light on common experiences and reactions and how those oppositional response patterns can be better supported.

Whether you feel too frantic to eat sometimes or your pantry beckons you to snack five minutes after having lunch, or the nightly flow of wine or otherwise has you concerned, chronic emotional eating or struggling with substances like alcohol are common coping mechanisms during stressful times. Pandemic living requires most of us to stay home with more limitations, stressors and grief than we have ever experienced. M-Bodied: Mindful Movement as Mothering Medicine™ offers a virtual embodiment practice for soothing using mindful movement