Relationships Can Be Difficult But There is Help for Healing

Relationships are hard. There’s no getting around it. Put more than one person in the same place for long enough and you’re sure to have problems. It’s as certain as death, taxes and computer problems. In his book Your Brain on Love, Dr. Stan Tatkin says that “there really is nothing more difficult on the planet than another person…nothing.” I tend to agree with him. My personal history with relationships and my work as working as a Marriage and Family Therapist seem to confirm that there’s nothing that will complicate your life more than another human. As much as we desire and need other people in our life, we simply cannot avoid the pain and conflict that inevitably comes when we enter a relationship. It’s a catch-22 of the human condition.

Much of the tension and quarreling that occurs within relationships exist primarily due to our inability to communicate effectively. Most of us struggle to listen without judgment, fully understand another’s perspective, validate feelings we aren’t experiencing, and show empathy toward someone who has hurt us. This is normal. It’s the result of a whole series of complicated relational wounds we’ve experienced over the years. Combine that trauma with the many defensive strategies we use to help ourselves feel safe, and you have a recipe for relational conflict.

Here at the Meadows, we offer workshops that are specifically designed to heal and enhance relationships. Both the Couples Bootcamp workshop and the Family Matters workshop help participants share their own perspective honestly, better understand one another, identify problematic relational patterns, set and maintain healthy boundaries, and create safety within the relationship.

The Couples Bootcamp is a five day intensive for those struggling in a romantic partnership. The workshop is facilitated in a group setting which can include up to three couples. Each member of the group supports one another and enhances the healing process for each of the other couples. All participants will explore their own relational history and other factors that have contributed to their current destructive patterns. The couples will then learn to communicate more effectively with one another and clearly state their needs within a safe environment. It’s been my experience that many couples already possess the tools they need to make positive changes in the relationship, but simply need additional support and guidance to help them work through the problems that keep them “stuck.” When working with couples in this workshop, I’ve had the privilege of witnessing beautiful moments of tenderness and empathy where criticism and defensiveness used to be the norm. On many occasions, I have seen a partner look at their lover and say things like “It feels so good to be heard by you” and “I’m starting to feel safe again.” Moments like these are not uncommon and watching them unfold is what I love about facilitating this workshop.

Family Matters is another five day intensive workshop that is specifically customized for your unique situation and solely focused on your family. Whether you want to work on parent-child relationships, problems between siblings, or any other family combination, this workshop can provide you with the tools you need to bring your family closer together. Since family systems are complicated and each member carries their own perspective, it is important that everyone can speak their own reality and feel heard by the others. This workshop provides everyone a safe environment in order to facilitate open sharing and healthy communication. Each family member is given an opportunity to express their own resentments and frustrations with the goal of working toward repairing and improving family functioning. It’s been common for me to hear participants talk about their time in family week as a “life changing” experience. I experience a profound sense of joy when I see families who have experienced years of anger and bitterness begin feeling safe enough to risk being vulnerable with one another. Relational healing is a beautiful thing!

While the Couples Bootcamp and Family Matters workshops offer expert healing we also offer other options for couples and families. Rio Retreat Center offers private intensive workshops for those who may require a higher level of confidentiality and safety due to their recognizability to the public, their leadership status in a corporation, or those who may be paparazzi pursued. We also offer specialized couples workshops for couples addressing sexual disorders. If you are looking for healing from your relationships, contact our intake department at 1-866-997-8770.

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Tian Dayton Psychodrama Workshop

Content Source: Relationship Retreat Center

THRIVE is an experiential intensive that takes you to the next level of recovery.

Hanging onto old pain keeps us preoccupied with our past and anxious about our future, rather than living in the present. Releasing dysfunctional roles and embracing new ones empowers us to experience our full potential. But before we’re able to release worn out roles, we need to give voice and shape to them. This action oriented process will provide a unique opportunity to engage in an exploration that will lead you to a greater sense of aliveness and purpose: a life changing new experience carved out of time to energize and revitalize —to live your actualized life!


The workshop will emphasize:

• Forgiveness
• Resilience Training
• Post Traumatic Growth
• Consolidating Recovery Gains
  
  
  

To THRIVE is to……

Engage: More fully and mindfully in your relationships and day-to-day life.
Embrace: A deepened and more purposeful sense of self.
Expand: And revitalize your life roles.
Energize: Forgive the past to live more fully in the present.
Empower: Take ownership of your own healing and attitude towards life.

Mindfulness Can Transform

We humans are resilient creatures - we generally find ways to survive. However, surviving isn’t the same as thriving! Indeed, many times the very adaptations that helped us to survive get in the way of really living life wholeheartedly.

Frequently, these self-limiting patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving are most apparent, and most problematic, in our close relationships. Utilizing attachment theory as a guide, we can discover how these patterns were setup in our relationships with family and romantic partners. Gaining clarity about our patterns of attachment avoidance (i.e., love avoidance) and attachment preoccupation (i.e., love addiction) empowers us to let go of old survival mechanisms that are no longer serving their purpose and establish healthier ways of relating to ourselves and others.

While it is true that we can’t change the past, we can change our perception of it and our relationship to it… and that can change everything! The Mind & Heart workshop is designed to help in this process of growth and genuine change. Mindfulness, a contemplative practice and state of being that allows us to be more present with the life that is here, can facilitate increased awareness of our unique survival patterns that are now limiting our growth. Coupling mindfulness with greater compassion and acceptance for self and others can enable us to take meaningful and sustainable steps towards lasting change. Mindfulness (Mind) and compassion (Heart) are powerful tools for transforming the pain of the past by learning to wholeheartedly accept ourselves, as we are, in the present moment.

Psychiatrist, researcher, teacher, and workshop designer, Dr. Jon Caldwell, DO, PhD, will personally facilitate the workshop. The Mind & Heart workshop is a scientifically researched intervention that entails a mixture of highly informative material and experiential exercises using mindfulness and compassion. Because these ancient practices will be applied in unique ways to heal past wounds, people of various skill levels with mindfulness can benefit from the workshop. Also, the practice of mindfulness and compassion does not need to interfere with workshop participants’ spiritual beliefs, but can serve to deepen existing belief systems. All that is needed is a curious mind, a willing heart, and an intention to heal!

Counseling for Grief Arizona

Relationships cannot be stronger if they do not pass through hardships. Some couples pass relationship tests with flying colors while some who fail to make it work. As long as each partner is willing to address the issue and participate in developing a solution, most relationship problems are manageable. However, when challenges are left unaddressable, tension mounts, poor habits develop, and the health and longevity of the relationship are in jeopardy. These couples could open themselves up to relationship counseling or counseling for grief therapies. If you feel you are one of these, Rio Retreat at the Meadows in Arizona is the place where you could seek help from experts.

Stress and relationship:

Stress due to work or social pressure could affect relationship negatively. Communication plays a big role in the relationship. Resentment, contempt, and an increase in the frequency of arguments tend to be signs of underlying problems that have been left unaddressable. Some common relationship concerns include routine conflict, emotional distance, sexual intimacy issues, and lack of trust. Sometimes, marriage itself can be the issue at hand for couple, when one partner wants to marry, and other does not.

How to get deal with grief? – Counseling for grief in Arizona

Grief is a part of life and more we avoid it, more we suffer. If we do not grieve, we are tending to be emotionally weaker. People who do not feel pain are said to be the most vulnerable people. The vulnerability could change into addiction and disorders.

Thus, Rio Retreat – center for grief counseling in Arizona. At Rio retreat, workshops are created to heal the pain. There is no such concept as “ONE SIZE FITS ALL” when it comes to grief. Every person heals in his own way at proper time.

 

However, following are the ways to deal with grief and loss:

1. Identify and acknowledge:

If you identify the source of grief and acknowledge it rather that ignoring it, you will feel lesser need to grieve and you will heal. There are times when we do not let ourselves break down but that is incorrect. Try to identify all the situations and manipulate them, which bring up sadness or pain for you.

2. Cry your eyes out:

One of the best reasons to grieve is to cry your heart out. This will lighten up your mood. Not crying will give you anger and addictions that will harm you even more. Do not think about others and just cry yourself to the point where you certainly don’t cry for the same reason again.

3. Talk, Talk, Talk:

Most of the problems vanish by talking. Take the help of the counselor and talk to him about your grief. Talking and crying reduces 90% of the problems and will save you from indulging into alcohol or drug practices. There are many health care centers providing counseling for grief in Arizona. Contact them and you will definitely find a good solution to your grief.

These are the healing modes that work out. Embrace your grief rather than ignoring it. It will reduce your pain rather than increasing it.

Functional Adulthood as a Spiritual Practice

In this Mindful Monday series, we have presented many different ways of being mindful and many different benefits of having a mindfulness practice. We know that mindfulness is a deliberate practice and a deliberate experience of being present in the moment.

Today, I’m excited to talk about a passion of mine, which is working with the core issues and the ego states within mindfulness meditation. Meditation helps us to move away from our wounded child ego state and toward our functional adult ego state.

The Wounded Child Ego State

Rio Retreat Centere At The Meadows, we teach about the ego states as they were laid out by Senior Fellow Pia Mellody in her work on the Model of Developmental Immaturity. She explains that how our thinking and beliefs can be distorted in the wounded child ego state.

Sometimes, when we find ourselves in our wounded child ego state, we feel like we’re not as good as other people and we feel bad about ourselves.

We also tend to feel very vulnerable. We’re not able to protect ourselves when someone is critical or just not being present with us. We take it personally. We tend to have difficulty staying present because we give into our distorted thinking and we feel uncomfortable being in our bodies.

Moderation as a Spiritual Practice

I and my team had the wonderful privilege of spending some time with Pia Mellody recently. She reminded us all that working on our core issues and learning to live moderately is a spiritual practice.

It’s a spiritual practice to love ourselves and feel equal to other people.

Content Source - By Nancy Minister, Workshop Facilitator, Rio Retreat Center at The Meadows

How God Shows Up in Recovery

It’s Totally a God Thing

I am frequently delighted by the many ways God shows up when people are on their healing journeys. When I refer to “God,” I am referring to Spirit, the Universe, Nature, the Soul, our Inner Light—or any other term we might use for a divine sense of connection with something greater than us. And when I refer to God “showing up,” I’m talking about the awe-inspiring things that happen to us that seem to be more than mere coincidence.

 

“That was totally a God thing!” is the phrase I frequently use to express my amazement when I experience those unplanned events that couldn’t be more perfect if they had been carefully planned. I see the perfect mix of strangers based on their traits and backgrounds come together in a group and have unbelievably powerful experiences. They may finally see their partner’s point of view in someone’s story, or understand the depth of their parents’ own trauma leading to freedom to forgive. This often feels to me like more than a random gathering of folks; it feels like there’s an invisible influence shaping our experiences.

I also experience it as very subtle divine guidance when I have an idea for an intervention that isn’t even logical. I recently suggested that someone do some work with her addict self. She gave me a look of pure shock. This woman had been in solid recovery for more than 8 years. There was no logical reason for my suggestion. I couldn’t say why I thought of this process because it didn’t make sense.

But, when she put her addict self in the chair in front of her, she was very real. And when she sat in that chair and felt that part of her that was still alive and well in her, she was able to truly release guilt and shame and bring that part into recovery. She later shared that she would have never thought it in a million years, but that was the piece that was missing in her healing work.

It was totally a God thing.

I feel that this kind of experience must happen in recovery programs in general and in all of The Meadows programs, but we definitely get to experience it strongly in our workshops at The Rio Retreat Center.

The Survivors II workshop is open for participants to continue with another layer of childhood trauma work, adult trauma, relationship issues, addictions, etc. If you feel inspired or “guided” to continue your healing journey, it may be the workshop for you.

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Why We Grieve: The Importance of Mourning Loss

Grief and Loss Workshop at The Rio Retreat Center

Healing Heartache: A Grief And Loss Workshop provides a safe, sacred for participants to lean into the grief, which facilitates the healing. Loss can come in many forms including death of a loved one, loss of one's health, relationship losses, major life changes, lost opportunities, etc. During this 5-day workshop:

• Cumulative loss over the life cycle will be examined,
• Myths and inaccurate messages about grief will be dispelled, helping to normalize feelings,
• Thinking processes and patterns of destructive behavior following trauma or loss will be explored
• Feelings and words left unsaid will be released through experiential exercises,
• Issues pertaining to relational problems will be addressed, with an emphasis on recognizing emotional reactions to loss, trauma, and broken dreams,
• Resources will be offered to assist participants in moving forward, and
• Psycho-education on grief and recovery will be provided, offering hope for the future.

To register, or for more information, call 866-986-3225.

Note: This article originally appeared on The Huffington Post

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Tied Up In Knots: The Anxiety of Living with Unresolved Grief

Grief that is out in the open, that is part of the natural cycle of life or part of one of life’s tragic circumstances has a dignity to it. The person experiencing a loss feels that they have a right to grieve and to accept caring and attention from those they love.

However, the kinds of losses that accompany issues such as addiction do not necessarily command the respect of others nor does the person experiencing the loss necessarily feel a right to the support they long for.

But there is another kind of loss that we need to attend to as well, one that is less easy to see, that also needs mourning. The loss of self.

The losses that so often accompany addiction whether from being an addict or living with addiction roll out from year to year in a never ending cycle, they lack a clear beginning, middle and end. These are losses that may have been buried under years of denial and obfuscation, losses that went unrecognized, that became disenfranchised or thrown out of conscious awareness. In addition to a loss of self might be a loss of safety, of a comfortable childhood, or of the feeling that we were seen and heard by those we depended upon. A loss of the space held safe in which to grow up. In these cases, people may be at risk for acting out the pain that they do not properly see themselves, not necessarily because they refuse to acknowledge it, but because their feelings surrounding these almost invisible losses are so confusing and difficult to find and feel. They have been neatly hidden under days gone by, the child who was not seen or listened to becomes the adult who cannot see or hear himself.

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Couples Bootcamp: Working It Out In The Desert

Corrine and Joe have been married for seven years. This marriage is the second one for both of them. They elected to attend Couples Boot Camp to “improve our communication and resolve ongoing arguments about the amount of time we spend together.”

 

While each of them proclaims their love for the other, they also have different expectations about what coupleship looks like in terms of quality personal time vs. family time, and the issues are causing a rift that invites bickering and further withdrawal.

Consider this: Your partner’s behavior isn’t what drives you crazy. Your own brain is.

What you learned about relationships likely came from interactions, dysfunction, and traumas you experienced in your family of origin. You may often hear the strident voice of your immature brain reminding you of the less-than-ideal things you may have learned about the way adult couples are supposed to treat as you navigate your relationship with your partner. Rob complains that Jennifer is so reticent and depressed that he has lost hope that he can be enough for her. He is weary of being the cheerleader and counselor to her. Jennifer admits she has low self-esteem and counters that Rob’s constant nagging and criticism have worn her down. Both come from family backgrounds of addiction and emotional abuse. They aren’t sure they can remain together; however, both recognize that their unresolved issues will likely carry over to any future partners. They state that Boot Camp may be their last resort to stay together.

At this workshop, participants learn that they are not so much addressing their partner’s behavior as they are reacting to unaddressed family of origin wounds. When they stop projecting their past relational disappointments onto their spouse or partner, the path becomes clear for a more rewarding, intimate coupleship. Boot Camp process includes exploring family of origin roles and dysfunctional messages that individuals carry into their committed relationships.

Marilee and Jason have been together since high school. They acknowledge that they argue and “fight like we are still 16 years old.” As their 29th anniversary draws near, they wonder if they have simply outgrown each other or will they be able to redefine the relationship from a new perspective as life-long partners. They value the comfort and joy their children and grandchildren give them but dread the thought of spending the rest of their lives unhappily married to each other. Their objective at Boot Camp is to find a way to restart the marriage as mid-life adults.

This workshop curriculum invites exploration of skewed relationship thinking and offers respectful solution-finding to unresolved and/or repetitive relational issues. Couples find that this supportive environment is a safe place to examine difficulties within their relationship. Because the participants reduce areas of shame and open up previously-closed dialog, they learn through guided processes to problem-solve together and mediate agreeable solutions. Among other communication tools, healthy boundaries and limit-setting are introduced as effective strategies for bringing couples to a higher level of trust and intimacy. “Aha!” moments are not uncommon throughout this week.

Workshops are held for two to three couples at a time. The benefits of positive and supportive feedback from the group peers are plentiful. Among them:

• couples realize that they are not alone in their relational issues; others have the same problems;
• hearing viewpoints of several different facets can shed light on a previously murky solution;
• genuine, positive regard among all the participants can bring healing in unexpected ways for other areas of wounding.

If you are open to learning more about yourself, your beloved, and the life path you both share, Couples Boot Camp may serve as the relationship experience you seek. For more information or to enroll in a Couples Bootcamp call the Intake Department at 1-866-986-3225.

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Mutual Respect and The Power of Intimacy

Power is a very interesting phenomenon. I remember having numerous conversations about the complex intersection of power and relationships in graduate school. There was a lot of confusion as to what exactly power even is.
One of the most common misunderstandings about power is that it is a linear phenomenon. In fact, power comes at us from numerous sources all of the time.

The second most common misunderstanding is that power is a zero-sum game— either you have it or I have it. And whatever you have, I can’t have, and vice-versa. This fundamentally flawed way of thinking about power greatly impacts our experiences in relationships.

There are two main ways we experience power in our relationships: power with and power over (you have power over someone else or some else has power over you). The Man Rules say that real men have power and are never weak or powerless. Therefore, from a very early age, young boys are encouraged to find power over – power over others, power over their feelings, and power over themselves.

The Woman Rules say that women should be cooperative, passive, nurturing, selfless, and not too strong. Therefore, from a very early age, young girls are encouraged to find power with. Women are expected to share power with others even if it puts them at a disadvantage; even when it means they have to give up their own power.

And that is the rub in so many heterosexual relationships.

Making Peace with Power

You cannot have a relationship that doesn’t involve a complex interaction with power. What some people don’t often consider is that power can be healthy. In fact, it is an essential part of the day-to-day human experience.

To help us explore the complexity of power in relationships, we can look to the classic Karpman drama triangle which illustrates the shifting, and sometimes destructive, roles of persecutor, rescuer, and victim that people play in relational conflicts. In this “drama triangle” each person involved in a conflict experiences and acts out all of these roles at different times. The role we take on can determine how we perceive our partners, interpret their behavior, and interact with them.

The reason these triangles arise, and often endure, is that each person, regardless of their role, finds that they get their unspoken, and often unconscious, psychological needs met by playing these roles—roles which they most likely originally “perfected” through the power dynamic that played out within their family as a child.

Whether they play the victim or persecutor, or some combination of all three roles, in the end, each person feels justified in acting upon their needs. Feeling satisfied, they often conveniently fail to acknowledge the dysfunctional ways they tend to go about getting their needs met, or the harm that is being done as a result to themselves, their partners, or any third parties (like children) who may be directly or indirectly involved in their conflict.

When there are times of disconnection in the relationship and even if, for whatever reason, there is a loss of respect between partners, intimacy can only be restored in the space of mutuality. We have to move away from the desire to have power over our partners toward the experience of having power with them. When we are able to uncover how our emotional needs arise from our childhood trauma, and release some of that pain, we have the ability to break free from the drama triangle and build an intimate and nurturing environment of mutual respect. Is it easier to let our relationships fall into a series of power plays or to maintain a space of mutual respect? I would suggest the former.

We have to build up our emotional and spiritual muscle in order to truly listen to our partners and maintain respect, especially when they are being their very human and imperfect selves and not doing what we want them to do or being who we want them to be.

Source Link : Mutual Respect

Signs that You Need Help for Sex Addiction

Are my sexual behaviors really that bad?

Just like any addiction, sexual addiction can occur on a continuum of severity. On one end of the spectrum is the person who has caused physical harm to themselves or others or who has gotten into legal trouble for their sexual behaviors. On the other end is the person who hides their behaviors and feels shame about them but has not really suffered any external or visible consequences as a result.

While a person who has suffered more consequences might be more likely to admit they have a problem, it is not necessary to let things get that far before seeking help. No one thinks that they will ever go “that far,” or that their addiction will get out of control. Almost everyone feels somewhat surprised when they find themselves neck deep in dire consequences from their sexual behaviors, having believed that they would somehow avoid the inevitable. It is possible, and wise to stop before it gets to that point.

How do I know if I have an addiction?

There are three common characteristics of addiction: obsession, compulsion, and continuation despite adverse consequences.

Obsession refers to the intrusive and sometimes never-ending thoughts about the behavior. Obsession could mean that a person constantly thinks about the behavior; but, more often, it simply means the obsessive thoughts come at times that are inconvenient, inappropriate, or distracting and that it is difficult to stop the thoughts when they do arrive. The thoughts can be about the actual sexual behavior or about some aspect of the behavior. People might obsess about a person that they act out with, a place where they have acted out, (a hotel, car, or certain club) a plan to act out, or something that they use in their acting out (website, flowers, secret phone) or even about plans to enable their acting out (checking funds, making reservations, thinking of excuses of why they will be home late).

Compulsion refers to the engagement in the behavior despite efforts to not engage. A person who makes sincere promises that they will discontinue the behavior, then finds excuses to continue doing it in spite of those promises is typically acting on a compulsion. Another common example of a compulsive behavior is when a person knows they have made a prior commitment to be somewhere, like at a family function, but they feel they must act out sexually and they do, making them late for the function or making them miss it entirely. Ultimately, compulsive behaviors will lead to adverse consequences; however, adverse consequences alone do not necessarily mean that an addiction is present. Some people engage in a behavior, suffer an undesirable consequence, and then never engage in that behavior again. But, when someone continues the behavior after suffering consequences, it indicates a more severe problem.

Imagine a person who compulsively views pornography. Their children find the digital files, and their spouse becomes very angry and insists that all the pornographic images be deleted from the computers in their home. Instead, the person downloads the images onto a flash drive, labels it “Architecture Plans,” and continues to watch it, hoping the children will be deterred by the label.

This is a continuation of behavior despite adverse external consequences and puts this person at risk for further undesirable outcomes. Internal consequences are just as important as external consequences but are often less obvious than external ones. Internal consequences include, but are not limited to, feelings of intense shame, intense self-hatred, isolation, and secrecy. Adverse external and/or internal consequences are usually what motivate the person to seek help.

Do I need help?

Adverse consequences have a unique way of offering a moment of clarity. A person may be willing to admit to themselves that they need help after suffering a consequence. Or they may be willing to get help, even if they are not sure they need it because, at a minimum, they want to avoid further painful consequences. There are also times when a person might seek help just to appease a loved one, their employer, or the courts.

Regardless of the reason, if the person receiving help is open to looking at the potential causes of their behavior and its consequences, they will reap the benefits of treatment. If you have suffered consequences for your sexual behaviors, particularly repeated consequences, the time to seek help is now.

Still have doubts?

When a person experiences consequences, it usually leads to a bit of an emotional crisis. There is a strong desire for the pain to stop. When the pain of consequences leads a person to make the wise decision to seek help, denial can sometimes step in and offer a second opinion. After the crisis of the consequence fades, decisions to seek help are occasionally rescinded. That call for help might seem like a “rash decision” or an “overreaction.” Do not allow yourself to fall back into the denial. Get the help you need. Your future self will thank you.

What are my options for help?

Rio Retreat at The Meadows offers two different 5-day workshops, one exclusively for men and one exclusively for women, that helps people begin to deal with their sexual compulsivity or sexual addiction.

The Men’s Sexual Compulsivity Workshop helps men to broaden participants’ views about sexuality, learn how to have healthy sexual experiences, maintain positive relationships, and avoid harmful patterns of the past.

The Journey of a Woman’s Heart: Finding True Intimacy Workshop is for women who want to explore unhealthy sexual patterns and behaviors that deeply impact their ability to develop real emotional connections. Methods for enhancing self-esteem from within, rather than seeking validation from outside sources are explored

The Meadows also offers inpatient treatment programs for sexual addiction and compulsivity. Gentle Path at The Meadows is exclusively for men and Willow House at The Meadows is exclusively for women. All of our programs are firmly based in the work of Dr. Patrick Carnes and his 30-task model. Please call our Intake Department at 866-986-3225 to begin the healing process and find out which program is best for you.

Source Link: Sex Addiction Treatment Arizona

Everyone needs a therapy…

When somebody mentions therapist, psychiatrist or mental health care specialist, we assume them to be a mental patient. The person having therapist may not be mental patient but instead just requires a little bit of help. The people who are suffering from emotional trauma just needs emotional support, which in our language we say Healing Trauma. We at Rio Retreat conduct various Healing from trauma workshops in Arizona. There are 5 different types of Trauma Therapy in Arizona provided by Rio Retreat:

1. Survivors I: Healing Childhood Trauma

We provide safe and supportive environment, in which victim faces his defeating behaviors such as addictions, trauma, mood disorders, and troubling relationships. The primary focus of this workshop is releasing the negative messages and emotions to embody your authentic self.

2. Survivors II: Continue the Healing Journey

Survivors II is an advanced intensive customized to meet the needs of the participants of Survivor I. It is structured for those suffering from unresolved childhood and adult trauma who are struggling with self-defeating behaviors they wish completion of its previous healing work.

3. Healing Intimate Treason: For Partners of Sex Addiction

Here we teach participants about the biology and the behavior of sex and love addiction. This is a workshop that assists partners in moving through their grief and loss, breaking free from the attachment to fantasy, and enhancing emotional self-regulation. The motto of this workshop is to create a safe and compassionate environment, which provides a path to healing as they travel on their own journey in recovery.

4. Healing Heartache: A Grief And Loss Workshop

Here participants are offered hope for the future. We believe that feelings and words that are left unsaid needs to be released through experiential exercises. Issues pertaining to relational problems are addressed, with an emphasis on recognizing emotional reactions to loss, trauma, and broken dreams.

Motivate Ourselves – Set Some Boundaries

We often try to motivate ourselves through should statements:
“I should have done better.” “I shouldn’t have said that.” “I should only have one cookie.”

But really, the only thing that is guaranteed from should-ing on ourselves is the emotional consequence of guilt.

This is also the case, in my experience at least, when other people should me. I’m not talking about constructive feedback or when we are learning a new skill, but the type of should-ing that occurs from people struggling with their own codependence.


Individuals who should us, are likely coming from their adapted ego state of needing to be in control. To test this, think of a time you told someone what they should have done instead of what they actually did; did you think you knew better?  Did you want to control the situation because you knew how it should be handled?  Did you believe a certain situation could have been avoided had someone just listened to your advice?

In my experience, there are days that I struggle to remain in my functional adult state and cross over to a state of being too vulnerable. This often occurs with particular individuals (parents, eh?) with whom I still grapple with damaged or fractured boundaries. On these days, or with these people, when I am should-ed upon, I have a shame attack and feelings of guilt that are difficult for me to shake off.

Protecting Yourself from Carried Guilt

Having experienced this very thing today, I would like to share some ways to overcome these feelings of guilt and shame and move back to our functional adult self.

Visualize your Boundaries
 
Remind yourself where you begin and end, and where they do. Sometimes it is helpful to reinforce this boundary through visualization. Some people picture a hula-hoop around them and gauge that space around them as theirs and protected. I tend to visualize building a small pony wall, and each brick has a needed word/affirmation on it. (e.g. trust, love, safe. ).

Reframe Your Thoughts

We feel guilt because we believe have erred in some way. Our own guilt lets us know that we have done something outside of our value system. Carried guilt, on the other hand, is induced into us from childhood trauma and strikes us even when something is not outside of our values. We may even blame ourselves for things that are not within our control. If you make the determination that you are feeling carried guilt instead of your own guilt, recognize that this particular should-ing experience is resulting in a cognitive distortion and work to reframe 

your thinking. For example:
“I am human and fallible.”
“This is not about me but it is about them and their cognitive distortions/codependence.

Talk About Your Boundaries

Having reframed your thoughts in order to work through the feelings of guilt, communicate with the individual in order to be heard and not to manipulate a particular response or reaction. This can be done through using Pia Mellody’s talking boundary:

“When I heard you say…
What I make up about that/What I think about that is…
And about that, I feel…”
Or even a simple I-statement:

“I feel..… when… because…”

Hopefully, through these three steps, you can move away from the feelings of guilt and the damaging effects of should-ing and back into your functional adult self. It worked for me today!

SOURCE LINK : Rio Retreat Center at the Meadows

A Meditation on Grief

“Grief can result in a variety of types of losses. Some of these losses are well-recognized such as divorce, the loss of a loved one, or the loss of a job. Other types of losses can be just as difficult to deal with and sometimes less understood, such as moving, illness, or any other unexpected life changes. Loss can be experienced with both negative and positive events.

An event may be positive overall, such as getting a promotion at work but can still be associated with loss. It’s a loss of what is familiar—a loss of living in the old way.

Change can be associated with these feeling of loss. So perhaps today you are dealing with a change that is relatively positive and your grief is relatively mild. You may be coping with a significant loss and are going through a challenging grief process. Or you may have experienced a huge loss that’s profoundly 

changed your life, and you’re having difficulty dealing with grief.

Whatever your situation is, grief is real.”

Traumatic Grief

Grieving is often all-consuming and extremely painful, but overall, it is a normal and healthy experience. It can become unhealthy, however, when the symptoms of grief — such as yearning for the deceased, feeling angry about the loss, feeling that life is meaningless or feeling unable to move on — last for six months or more.

Researchers have tied traumatic grief, also known as prolonged grief of Complicated Grief Disorder, to an increase in the risk of suicidal thoughts, heart problems, and cancer. Studies have also shown that grief may trigger depression in the same ways being physically or sexually assaulted or losing a job can trigger the sometimes debilitating condition.

Though traumatic grief may share similar symptoms as clinical depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), many scientists believe that these disorders and Complicated Grief Disorder affect different circuits of the brain. Some also think there’s a possibility that traumatic grief may predict more severe outcomes than depression or PTSD.

 

Healing From Grief and Loss

During “Healing Heartache: A Grief and Loss Workshop” at the Rio Retreat Center at The Meadows, a safe, sacred space is created in order for participants to lean into the grief, which helps to facilitate healing.

Those who attend the workshop also will learn about basic psychological concepts related to grief and loss with an emphasis on recognizing emotional reactions to loss, trauma, and broken dreams. They will also dispel myths and inaccurate messages about grief and learn how to break free from or avoid patterns of destructive behavior that tend to follow trauma and other losses. Read More

How to (Finally) Find Love in the New Year

 

By Tracy Harder, MSC, LAC, Workshop Therapist and Andrea Sauceda

Do you find yourself ending up in one painful, damaging, and disastrous relationship after another? Do you feel like a failure because you haven’t yet found true love?

Do you want to know the secret to finding your soul mate? Do you want to know how to find a person with whom you can live happily ever after in a perfect and blissfully all-consuming romantic relationship that books, songs, and movies have told us since we were kids that we are supposed to have?

The secret is… There is no secret. Those kinds of relationships don’t exist.

Intense and overwhelming feelings of “love at first sight” and the belief that the other person “completes you,” may actually just be delusions brought on by Love Addiction.

That sounds terribly cynical, doesn’t it? I don’t mean to say that true love—mature love—does not exist. It just means that you might have to do a little work to break through your addictive cycle before you can find it.

What is Love Addiction?

Love Addiction is characterized by feeling “high” during the initial phases of the relationship. Love Addicts often describe the feelings that come after a person has triggered their fantasy of an ideal mate as intensely pleasurable. They often make statements to the effect that this person is their “soulmate” or “love at first sight.” This person becomes the sole focus in their life, to the detriment of other relationships with children, friends, work, and self-care. Love Addicts will tolerate almost anything in the relationship due to a fear of being left.

Breaking Down the Wall of Seduction

Love Addicts are often drawn to people who are Love Avoidant. A Love Avoidant is drawn to a Love Addict’s neediness due to a belief that their role in a relationship is to take care of the other person. The Love Avoidant begins the relationship with a Wall of Seduction. In other words, they present as a “Super Woman” or “Super Man.” This Wall of Seduction impedes true intimacy.

Eventually, the Love Avoidant will become overwhelmed by the Love Addict’s neediness and will withdraw from the relationship by creating intensity outside of it, perhaps with work, a drug addiction, or another person.

Shattering the Fantasy

During the Love Addiction / Love Avoidant cycle, there typically is what Meadows Senior Fellow Pia Mellody describes as a “shattering event.” This event destroys the Love Addict’s fantasy about the Love Avoidant, throwing the Love Addict into withdrawal. The withdrawal results in extreme pain, fear, panic or even rage. Eventually, the Love Avoidant’s guilt or their own fear of abandonment may bring them back into the relationship with the Love Addict, and the cycle begins all over again.

This unhealthy cycle of behavior is unfortunately what often passes for “romance” and “love” in our society, but in reality, it is neither. It is addiction, relationship compulsivity, and a fear of love and intimacy.

A “healthy” relationship after recovery from love addiction and/or love avoidance (and yes, there can be recovery) involves what Pia refers to as “mature love.” Mature love involves loving a person “warts and all” and not leaving them or punishing them because they cannot fully embody your fantasy. A healthy relationship requires realistic expectations that are discussed openly and honestly, especially at the initial stages of the relationship.

For the Love Addict in recovery, it involves getting rid of their fantasy of the ideal mate and not demanding unconditional positive regard, self-sacrifice, and care at all times from the other person. For the Love Avoidant, it begins with coming out from behind their walls and letting their partner see who they really are.

Love addiction and Love Avoidance can occur not only with romantic partners but also with friends, children, bosses, etc.

Source Link:- Rio Retreat Center