Healing The Family

Content Source : Family Healing/Therapy Retreats

The Family Matters workshop is designed to assist members of a family with establishing a supportive and healthy recovery environment by encouraging them to be authentic, communicate productively, utilize boundaries, and function in a healthy fashion. During this workshop, family members learn how co-dependent behaviors, trauma, mood disorders, and/or addictions can impact a family system. Family members develop tools to successfully enhance recovery and a relational family system. The primary goal of the Family Matters Workshop is to help members bridge the gaps that have plagued the family system.

The Family Dynamic

The Family Matters Workshop is important because it can:

• Teach family members about how families function in general and, in particular, how their own functions. 
   
• Help the family focus less on the member(s) who has/have been identified as ill and focus more on the family as a whole.
  
  
• Help to identify conflicts and anxieties and helps the family develop strategies to resolve them.
  
  
• Strengthen all family members so they can work on their problems together.
  
  
• Teach ways to handle conflicts and changes within the family differently. Sometimes the way family members handle problems makes them more likely to develop symptoms.
  
  
  

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!

A Unique Healing Experience

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• Expressive Arts
  Participants can express themselves through a variety of modalities ranging from painting to music therapy to psychodrama.
  

• Yoga, Tai Chi and Acupuncture
  Many alternative or progressive exercises such as Tai Chi and Yoga reduce stress by focusing on healing the mind, body and spirit. We also incorporate Acupuncture, an ancient Chinese medicinal technique that eases pain, alleviates stress and promotes wellness.
  
• 12-step meetings
  Twelve-step meetings help patients realize they’re not alone on their journey of recovery. At meetings, individuals have an opportunity to share their feelings and hear other people share their experience, strength and hope.
  
• Live Music and Camp Fires
  Workshop participants will have opportunities to unwind and socialize in the evenings during live music performances and campfire activities.
  
• Equine therapy
  Through interactions between patients and horses, patients learn new ways of dealing with trauma, addictions and relationships. Trained equine specialists use the interactions to illustrate the relationship patterns patients exhibit with people in their lives.
  
• Challenge Courses
  Our challenge courses involve an intricate network of ropes, cables and logs. All activities are designed to address issues that are being explored through workshops including group communication, problem solving, trust, planning, teamwork, facing fear, cooperation, understanding self and self-esteem.
  
• Meals
  Workshop participants will be served three meals per day, each prepared by The Meadows extraordinary chef. Meals are catered to facilitate balanced nutrition as part of the overall holistic healing experience.
  
  

The Rio Retreat Center Can Help

Workshops at the Rio Retreat Center at The Meadows are designed to help you understand your own needs, desires, emotions, habits, and everything else that makes you who you are. The more you know about yourself, the better equipped you are to engage in healthy relationships and have an improved sense of self. To learn more about the Rio Retreat Center at The Meadows or to sign up for one of our groundbreaking workshops, call us at 866-997-8770 or fill out the form below and a representative will be happy to provide you more information.

Content Source : Healing Trauma Workshops

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

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

Helping Therapists Healing from Their Own Trauma

The Meadows has been facilitating its signature workshop, Survivors, for more than 30 years. Many people’s lives have been changed by the opportunity to confront the deep emotional impact of their childhood trauma.

Therapists, clinicians, and treatment providers often refer patients to our intensive workshops when they need to do some deeper work in an emotional nurturing and safe place. And, sometimes, professionals come to us to do their own healing.

A little over one year ago, The Meadows workshop department grew and took up residence at the new Rio Retreat Center in Wickenburg, Arizona. We were able to greatly expand our workshop offerings to the general public and provide an even more comfortable, peaceful and beautiful setting in which to heal.

We are now pleased to expand our workshop schedule even further by responding to the request we’ve got from many professionals to host a Survivors workshop that is open only to them. Our hope is that this will allow participants to take a step back from their professional responsibilities and focus on themselves and their own healing. Here are a few frequently asked questions about the upcoming workshops:

What is Survivors I: Healing Childhood Relational Trauma for Professionals?
Survivors I: Healing Childhood Relational Trauma for Professionals is our standard Survivors workshop but will be limited to participants who are professionals in the field of behavioral health. Some feedback that we received from professionals who attended Survivors I before included concerns about being placed in groups with other participants who could potentially be former or future clients. Many professionals also felt it was difficult to take off their therapist hats during Survivors Workshop. When we asked professionals what we could do to improve their experiences, they said that they wanted to be in groups with their peers and they wanted to be able to use at least the psycho-educational portion of the workshop to receive continuing education credit. We are happy to say that we are able to now accommodate both of these requests.

Let’s face it, there is no such thing as a perfect childhood. Some people have overt or obvious trauma from their childhoods while others have less obvious struggles. Regardless of the type of childhood trauma; most therapists (at least those who tend to refer clients to The Meadows) agree that the messages we receive in childhood about ourselves, our relationships, and the world we live in continue to impact us long into adulthood. This continues to be true even if we are already on a healing journey! Read More

Autumn Is a Time for Letting Go

I live in Arizona so I do not get the benefit of seeing the beautiful fall foliage colors that some of the other parts of the nation enjoy. However, I see plenty of pics of autumn colors posted all over social media from friends across the country.

One thing I always think about in the fall is, “What do I need to let go of? What do I need to address so that I can grow more next year?”

I was thinking about that last week as I facilitated a group that included a number of brave participants. Each had long-term, successful recovery in one area, but were still working to overcome issues that had presented themselves in other areas of their lives.



Are You Holding on to Your Pain?
The more insight we have into ourselves, the more likely we are to notice additional things that we need to work on. It is not uncommon for people in recovery to find other areas of their lives unmanageable.

Sometimes, the issues are just part of everyday life; but, for people in recovery, everyday life issues can increase the risk of relapse and bring more challenges to recovery. Some of these unresolved issues might include other addictions, relationship or family issues, unresolved childhood or adult trauma, unavoidable grief and loss, money and work issues, long-held resentments, or simply complacency that has halted their growth in recovery.

We may think we need to hold onto some of our pain because we are not sure who we would be without it. We might also feel that we need certain behaviors to cope or survive. At times, we compare our current issues to those we already addressed and deem them “less serious.” Then, we procrastinate on the additional emotional work that we need to do. Regardless of what the additional issues are, it is important to address them.

How’s Your Inner Child Today?

By Nancy Minister, Therapist, Rio Retreat Center at The Meadows
If you have ever done any work at The Meadows—either in an inpatient program or in our Survivors I workshop — you likely have had some experience getting in touch with your inner child.

So, how is that young part of yourself right now?

Go ahead: close your eyes and take a deep breath.
Feel that child’s energy.
Are they content? Restless? Sad? Scared?

Experience the warmth and love that you have for him or her in your body. Take a moment to provide for their needs, which could include anything from reassurance to a promise to go for a walk later.

Your child may need for you to go ahead and feel any feelings of fear, pain, or shame so that you can get in touch of where those feelings are coming from and address them.

Reconnecting In the Survivors II Workshop

One of my favorite things about facilitating the Survivors II Workshop at the Rio Retreat Center at The Meadows is helping folks to revisit their relationships with their inner children. The child part of themselves that they rescued in Survivors I probably feels happy, safe, and loved; but, it may be helpful for that person to also connect with an inner child from a different time. Having gained a greater sense of themselves, they are often ready for more trauma work.

Sometimes people return to The Meadows for Survivors II to address adult issues such as ongoing or past relationship problems, traumatic experiences, or addictions. Often, they need another layer of healing from childhood abuse or relational trauma.

Because of my passion for inner child work, any way you slice it, the Survivors II workshop is going to include some connection with that inner child. Yours could be a fearful, sad, and wounded child or an adapted child that is rebellious, angry, or shut down.

By checking in with your inner child in a deeper way, you can learn more about the wounding—the feeling energy and the messages that you still hold inside. Often, the connection people make with their inner children is very sweet.

We use various modalities to get in touch with the underlying source of the issues that people come to address. For example, your homework at the end of the day might be an inventory, a letter, a collage or other art project. The aim of the homework is usually to get in touch with your underlying feelings and the age at which your trauma issue underneath those feelings was set up. Rescuing the child and releasing the feeling energy tends to bring much-welcomed relief. It’s fun for me to be creative and match the homework with the person’s goal for the week.

I have had this blog post in my mind for a few months now, but my own inner girl has not been happy with the idea of me writing a blog. She is scared, having had some social trauma as a teen. Even as those fears come up, I breathe and allow my functional adult to affirm that I have boundaries and I can protect myself (and her). What do I need protection from? It turns out it is my own thoughts that “make-up” all kinds of crazy things about betrayal, judgment, and shame.

Change Your Reality, Change Your Brain

What is truly exciting about this work is that it is validated by neuroscience. We hold relational and survival experiences in our limbic brain in the form of implicit, procedural memories. When we go back in time and access the feelings and experiences of hurting, neediness, abandonment, rejection, fear, or worthlessness, we are retrieving them from that part of our brain.

As we heal by letting go of the feeling energy and then re-parenting that child part, we literally change the neuropathways in our brain. Focused attention on loving that child part of yourself creates new neuropathways. This means creating a felt experience of warmth, love, protection, even physical nurturing by—yes—hugging a pillow.

So, check in again… How is your inner kiddo right now? If you’re finding that he or she could use a little extra nurturing, it might be time to join me for the Survivors II workshop. For more details, call 800-244-4949 or contact us through the Rio Retreat Center website.

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