“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by how its animals are treated.” Mahatma Gandhi
Last week we spent an afternoon meeting with some staff and volunteers from the BC SPCA Wild ARC (Wild Animal Rehabilitation Centre) in Metchosin. It was incredible to hear about the exquisite care the team offers to injured and orphaned wild animals, and overwhelming to put together just how many hands and hearts it takes to run the animal hospital. WOW.
Wild ARC cared for 2,043 wild animals last year from all over the region, helping them recover and return to the wild. This incredible program provides much needed care to injured, sick, orphaned and distressed wildlife (more than 80 percent related to human impact) with the goal to release recovered animals back into the wild.
In the BBP Somatic Attachment Psychotherapy 2 year training we talk about love being medicine—and throughout the clinics we talk about what does that really mean? In essence, we come to know that love means holding a frame and framework to allow for the most possible healing for our patients. In a reflection of this principle, the humans that work and volunteer at the BC SPCA’s Wild ARC offer a similar holding environment, offering interaction and care that is most beneficial for the wild animal to heal and return to life.
The thing that struck me most was the dedication of the team—volunteer and staff—to care for the animals. There is no snuggling Bambi, befriending the owls, or petting the rabbits—the team members take exquisite care NOT to familiarize the animals with people so voices are low in the hallways and protocols are taken to ensure wildness is maintained so they can return successfully and not be habituated to humans. We were inspired by the people we met that work and volunteer at Wild ARC and got an inside scoop on their dedication, what it takes to nurse some of the animals back to health, or to save their lives – baby hummingbirds need to be fed every 15 minutes! Some volunteers come in and just do laundry, like for their whole shift! WOW, just wonderfully dedicated folks.
While from the outside it looks like a wildlife education centre nestled among tall trees, once inside the centre, it is a hospital and infirmary. Wild ARC is not open to the public for tours as it’s patients need a dedicated environment to heal and recover in. We were able to learn that spread out on the hospital campus are a variety of enclosures to house and rehabilitate the animals—from deer enclosures, to a raptor shed where large birds of prey can spread their wings and fly, or learn to fly, to the raccoon rooms – specific for babies, juveniles or adults. They also have water enclosures for animals that are water based like seabirds, water fowl, river otters, etc. The enclosures are enriched with materials from the animal’s natural habitat like cedar boughs, water pools, and things to climb. Each species of animal has specific dietary requirements and meals are carefully prepared, including Wild ARC growing their own mealworms!
This quality of diverse care is an incredible feat – to be able to treat over 2,000 injured or orphaned animals per year, most of them (70%) in the spring and summer months, to coordinate over 150 volunteers, to fundraise the money needed to run the hospital (nevermind the whole of the BC SPCA—they don’t receive government funding), is monumental.
Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, to the BC SPCA, the dedicated staff and volunteers of the Wild ARC, and to everyone who opens their hearts and wallets to care and support wild animals.
If you are interested, one of the enclosures that we sponsor has a web camera – the deer enclosure – (there are currently no deer in care so the enclosure is empty though check back often during the busy spring and summer season) – WATCH
I’ve been having lots of conversations with therapists looking to enroll in our Somatic Attachment Psychotherapy Training about working with the body in therapy. Lots of therapists identify that they in fact already do use the body in their clinical practices, by asking,
what’s happening in your body?
where do you notice that?
is there a sensation that tells you that?
and then what they share with me is that they often feel uncertain about what to do with that information, or how to take it beyond their initial question/intervention – of course, this is what we teach in SAP over the two years! These conversations inevitably beg the question, is that enough? Is it enough to have people identify what is happening in their body and then notice it, stay with it, watch it? My response is, enough for what? What is the purpose of drawing the client’s attention to their internal sensation or felt sense? What is the working theory, not only about why the therapist is inquiring about the body, but also inviting clients to stay with it? That’s the guiding question here, what is the purpose?
If the intention is to merely have people increase their capacity to be present, be with what is, and increase capacity to tolerate discomfort, then yes, the status quo of how people often use the body might be a worthwhile intervention, though perhaps not the best intervention, as most therapists, prior to somatic training, choose to include the body at a time when there is distress, intense emotion, or disconnection/disembodiment. (More on this later).
If the intention to help process and metabolize material in the system (relational and incident traumatic material), then no, just dropping in and noticing the sensation, and staying with it, particularly difficult or uncomfortable sensations, is not likely going to further the processing of the neurophysiological material or psyche reorganization, and if it does, it will be short-lived. What is likely though, is that simply focusing on the body during these times of arousal will move the system out of the processing window into high/hyper or low/hypo arousal as the dysregulation in the system creates more and more dysregulation. Alternatively, the client may continue to feel the sensation but not really garner further process or understanding from it – for example, the tightness remains tightness, so the intervention fizzles without any further clinical or embodied process unfolding.
In order to process (trauma, grief, loss, etc.), the work is to up and down regulate the autonomic nervous system along side the story. This is where BBP/SAP differs from other somatic dominant trainings – one of our guiding principles is that people need to tell their story, and be witnessed relationally, rather than just experience and process what is happening in their body, so working to re-organize the psyche and body in concert. When we invite the body into the clinical dialogue and process, we want to be able to work to help people to not only be present to what is happening within, but to the nuanced truths of the story that also help anchor and facilitate processing and internal re-organization, both of which are key to change.
Change is key to therapy. We know the body and psyche are wired together, and that trauma is held in the right (versus the left), so we understand as therapists how bringing the body into practice offers an effective way to attend to and process traumatic material (of all kinds) in order to regulate and process the physiological body and reorganize the psyche and internal working models, and ultimately bring forth a new narrative understanding of self and story.
For clinicians, working adeptly with the body necessitates a solid understanding of the Polyvagal Theory (Porges) (read, the Polyvagal made simple) and the Window of Tolerance (Siegal). These conceptual frameworks offer therapists a theoretical framework to guide the use of somatic interventions, rather than simply inserting them into the therapy. Further, I would suggest that correlating sensations and felt sense into this framework is necessary for therapists to have a sophisticated capacity to work with, and in the body.
If we circle back to these conversations I’m having about bringing the body into practice, it seems to me that what we are differentiating here is mindfulness and somatic processing. While there is overlap, they ultimately have different purposes. Mindfulness is a practice oriented towards increasing one’s capacity to be with what is. Somatic process has the intention to shift the internal state and process material. These are significant differences when thinking about the purpose of inviting the body into the clinical conversation. In this way, I want to underscore not only the difference between mindfulness and somatic therapy, but the difference in intention. Somatic therapy is used to process material. It may use mindful presence to attune and be with experience, but it at its core, it’s about shifting and processing—making it different, not learning to be with what is.
This fall I’ve been thinking a lot about the capacity to witness. I have been thinking about what supports it, what threatens it, what builds it, and for therapists, how we are called to witness the unbearable, the unspeakable, and at times, that which has not, and perhaps cannot, or cannot, at this time, be metabolized through the body and psyche of the people we sit with. This is the work we do in the clinical space. As therapists, we serve as witness, and in doing so, material that has been rendered unbearable, becomes tolerable enough to metabolize. Mucci (2018) speaks to this, “by taking in the pain of the other, and bearing witness to it, the other is enabled to retrieve those parts of his or her existence that seemed erased, dissociated, split and disconnected. This retrieval enables a transformation in the social connection, a sign of renewal, reconstitution, collective reparation, and rebirth” (Mucci, 2013 cited in Mucci, 2018, p. 176 – 177). Mucci speaks of this as rebirth as there is a return of vitality as the psyche integrates and the autonomic nervous system processes the life-threatening states held in the body, moving from hypo arousal or dorsal vagal into a stronger, dominant ventral vagal state.
But what happens when we as therapists are also called to witness horror and terror in the larger world, the one outside of our clinical space, and in response to it, we feel fear, despair or helplessness? How do we continue to do the work that we do, and what is called for, when we are taken to our knees by world events, when our clinical spaces are infiltrated with the happenings of the larger world? As an educator in Somatic Attachment Psychotherapy, I’m always thinking about, how do we become more and more robust, where do we lean, what do we lean into, what holds us, how do we maintain our witness when we stumble, and as we stand as witness for and with others, what do we need?
In this time and place in history, where we are inundated by geo-political chaos and disconcerting movements, both in our own small communities and around the world, I am aware of the toll it takes. I know that it taxes each of us as clinicians, even if we are able to shut out some of the bombardment of difficult news, it comes in through our practices, and of course impacts us energetically. I’ve been thinking about that in my own life, and in a broader way, the lives of the therapists I know.
I think about the work that we do. I am awash with memories, scraps of competing truths vying for primary remembering, primary knowing:
I remember that the body is “our primary text and starting point for knowledge” (Rountree, 2006, p. 98). This quiets me. I land.
I remember, “When we remain connected to our body knowledge, it will make it more difficult for the powers that be to control our minds” (Crawford, 1998, p. 57). I nod.
I remember, “A brain disconnected from the stomach, intestines, throat, heart, and other parts of our body isn’t only seriously impaired, it can be as deadly as the proverbial loose cannon” (Todd, 2001, p. 28). I nod.
I remember, “People who can’t trust their own body knowledge feel out of touch, have less tolerance for ambiguity, seek clearcut simple rules to determine their actions, tend to consider complex situations in simplistic terms, and are thus more likely to be swayed by “experts” and by naïve either/or arguments” (Todd, 2001, p. 24). I feel worry.
I remember, “reading the body as one would read a text, we used our lived experience as another valid and valued source of information and knowledge…” (Gustafson 1998, 52). I nod.
I return to remembering that the body is “our primary text and starting point for knowledge” (Rountree, 2006, p. 98). This quiets me. I land.
I come back to the truth that nothing remains static. Embodiment is an ever-shifting evolution. Paired with the body is the capacity to witness, to be present, to hear the testimony of the people we sit with, and to use my body and my regulation in the process, for the process. For me, this has been an ever evolving and expanding quest, and I hope that is for you too.
This past week has called me to dig deeper and steady myself as my perception of reality shifted, as did many peoples’, with the outcome of the US election. By happenstance, my weekly supervision group was the first clinical space I entered into after the US election. I am one of the two Canadians in the group, the others are American. We put aside our cases and we sat, we processed, we made sense, and most importantly we connected and stood as witness for one another.
Since then, I have needed to take time, to be with myself, and come back to what I know beyond this moment. I had to take a bird’s eye view of history, of humanity, and lean into the vastness of time, to remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor did it fall in a day, and I had to find commonality of values with those that understand a way forward that is different from my own perspective. Remembering the goodness of people beyond their political leanings helped me remember how to connect across differences, even when the chasm feels vast. This was imperative, not finding it as a philosophical endeavor, but for myself, so I could find my ground again and stand, until the next time I stumble.
References:
Crawford, L. 1998. “Including the Body in Learning Processes.” In Proceedings of the 17thAnnual Conference of the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education, edited by Maurice Taylor, 57-60. Ottawa: University of Ottawa.
Gustafson, D. L. 1998. “Embodied Learning about Health and Healing. Canadian Women Studies 17 (4): 52-55.
Rountree, K. 2006. “Performing the Divine: Neo-pagan Pilgrimages and Embodiment at Sacred Sites. Body & Society 12 (4): 95-114.
Mucci, C. (2018). Psychoanalysis for a new humanism; Embodied testimony, connectedness, memory and forgiveness for a “persistence of the human”. International Forum of Psychoanalysis. 27:3, 176 – 187.
Todd, J. 2001. “Body Knowledge, Empathy and the Body Politic.” The Humanist (March/April): 23-28.
Recently, I’ve been thinking about early experiences with caregivers that lead to insecure attachment and the formation of chronic shame. We know experiences of overt shaming, neglect, chronic misattunement, or a lack of relational repair, are reflections of the caregivers own relational injuries and likely reflect their own early experiences with their caregivers, and their own insecure attachment and chronic shame. Another, possibly less obvious avenue of chronic shame creation, than say, overt shaming or neglect in early life, is through objectification. Hooten (2019) writes, “A child that is objectified, whether adored or criticized, who is evaluated instead of being joined in their energetic and emotional state, produces a state of disconnection and shame” (p. 33). I see the evidence of this clearly in the many folks I sit with in my clinical practice which focuses on the healing of trauma, specifically relational trauma.
As I consider the effect of these early experiences, I am reminded of a quote from O.B. Epstein (2022) that for the child, these interactions form “…micro-moments of accumulated grief which never seem to go away, quite the opposite; they will continue to generate a sense of insecurity and shame in the growing child and be present during adulthood” (p. 48-49). This linking of shame and grief has real clinical relevance in the healing of chronic shame, because at some point in the treatment, as the client comes to see and better understand the multitude of ways that the unseen hand of chronic shame has formed, guided, and limited their life, both past and present, a real grief and sadness will emerge. In this expanding understanding of their life and the ongoing impact of chronic shame in it, there will be a grieving and reconciling of missed opportunities, possibilities, relationships, and how compromised their sense of feeling free and creative and solid in what Bromberg (2017) calls the “…unique pleasure of oneness…” (p. 19) has been due to chronic shame. Although this part of the healing can feel overwhelming and unending for clients, clinically, I see it as an indicator of their increased capacity, and progress in their healing, which brings the promise of not just decreased chronic shame symptoms, but an increased stability and comfort in themselves, which has been largely elusive.
References:
Epstein, O. B. (Ed.). (2022). Shame Matters: Attachment and Relational Perspectives for Psychotherapists. Routledge.
Hooten, J. (2019). Shame: An Existential Wound. The Knowing Field. (10), p.29-44.
Solomon, M. F., & Siegel, D. J. (2017). How People Change: Relationships and Neuroplasticity in Psychotherapy (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology). WW Norton & Company.
I posed this quote for a free writing exercise one morning at a BBP writing group. What came back was potent, powerful, illuminating, expansive, opening, affirming—you get the drift. We decided to share it…here it goes, you’ll see responses from four different therapists and writers ~ enjoy!
“Practicing therapists are all confronting the same phenomenon, the troubled animal, and striving to find ways to relieve emotional misery, often in defiance of the pressures and demands of the surrounding culture” (McWilliams, 2005, p. 140). McWilliams, N. (2005). Preserving Our Humanity as Therapists. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 42(2), 139.
How is it that we work within the bounds of the culture which provides a frame and yet identify and go beyond the limitations of the cultural framework that oppresses, denies, injures? The framework that I hold is one of recognizing the duality of the cultural framework – holding both the good and bad so as to see the complexity of life, the complexity that we are embedded in. It reminds me of the necessity to develop the capacity to hold both, that developmental achievement in human maturation and psychological sophistication, a necessary part of reflective functioning, mentalization, both which are necessary for understanding self and other, and in that way decreases or has the opportunity to decrease misery and suffering. To be able to see oneself in context and understand the other in context opens people to the ‘depressive stance’ (in object relations parlance) which takes us out of rigid boundaries of black and white, us and them, victim or perpetrator, and moves us into an orientation toward both and. This movement allows one to recognize how they are implicated in the dynamics – for better and for worse – and how the context of cultural dynamics can create isolation, blame, othering, and competition, rather than collaboration, connection, consciousness, and understanding. Lisa Mortimore, PhD, RCC
It is important to remember, that at the most fundamental level, we are animals, and we also have a spiritual nature. As humans, we all experience emotional pain. The demands of the culture often keep us disconnected from our spiritual nature and the potential wisdom that comes from listening to what the emotional/animal body is saying. If we can allow our animal body to be alive within the truth of our spiritual nature, perhaps the emotional pain doesn’t have to become suffering. As therapists, we have the honour of being with our clients in a way that makes it possible for them to experience us feeling them, animal to animal and soul to soul, with an empathic presence so the emotional pain, which may have been felt as misery, can now become a felt communication of what wasn’t previously understood. Being felt, attuned to and understood by another, it becomes possible for the pain to be transformed into the beauty of pure sensation and true embodied wisdom. Lana Marie Willow, MA, RCC
Two things come up for me here. The first is that I am immediately taken to a line from Mary Oliver’s Poem, Wild Geese: “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.” I am also drawn to McWilliams’ use of the word striving. It takes on so much meaning for me here, there is so much magic in the striving . . .
Some things are too big and too hard to hold alone.
There is nothing that can replace the felt sense of deep, empathic witnessing.
Relief can offer regulation but may also bring waves of grief as we realize how fleeting this is in certain seasons of life.
Inviting another into your world takes immense courage.
Valuing deep connection begins with conception.
If we remain disconnected from each other, and from community, power continues to reside elsewhere.
Now, more than ever, relational reciprocity is the only currency our souls need.
Genuine, authentic connection is a form of resistance.
Amandy Murphy, MC, RCC
Dominant over-culture. The tide that seeps in. Porous we are to this sea, when truly all we are is trying to be seen.
No human is an island.
Yet in this wake of emotional uncertainty, we often feel adrift-
Isolated, impenetrable to the soft sand castle of our soul’s teachings; just out of reach of the relational life raft.
Let me be your lifeline, your buoy, your floating kelp of help moving lovingly towards you in the watery expanse between us.
If I were an animal, an otter, a dolphin, I’d extend my fin in a feature of friendship to your distress.
I hear your SOS.
I see the peril in pathology and the way in which the pressures & demands of this surrounding culture have swept you out to sea”.
‘It is a joy to be hidden, but a disaster not to be found.” D. W. Winnicott
Reflecting on the quote by psychoanalyst and pediatrician Donald W. Winnicott (2005), one could imagine you are a child playing a game of hide and seek. How quickly your delight and joy of hiding is lost when no one comes to find you. The game continues to be played, while you remain unfound.
We are social beings and as such, relationships are primary. Since the day we were born, we experience moments of union and separation with those we love. There is complexity in these oscillating rhythms in insecure and even in secure relationships. At times, when we are in union with the other, we can feel intruded upon and engulfed; and other times in separation we can feel neglected, rejected, and forgotten. Too little and too much contact can have us feeling equally alone and unfound. As therapists, how might we use this metaphor to disrupt a disaster in the therapy room?
The Bringing the Body into Practice (BBP) psychotherapy approach leans into theoretical and conceptual understandings of relational psychodynamic principles and practices. A BBP foundational pillar is the relational framework, often referred to as a two-person psychology. There is a principal acknowledgement that there are two full subjectivities who come together to creatively co-construct the intersubjective field. In the psychotherapy process, both the client and the therapist have an experience of themselves as individuals and as individuals together.
It is not so much what we know or what we do in therapy but how we are when we are with our clients. This does not mean we should dismiss the knowledges we have garnered from our professional development training. It is imperative that we continue to grow and develop, as theories inform our practice. What it does mean is once our training has been fully integrated and internalized, the knowledges become a bedrock to how we are. In a relational framework, our central focus is on being with so clients feel heard, seen, held, and ultimately found. In the space between, there is a continual co-constructive experience uncovering the ever-evolving, unfolding of Self in the present moment. Our intention is to offer our presence, as a holding container, to welcome those hidden parts of self to be known. Winnicott (2005) author of Playing and Reality writes,
Psychotherapy has to do with two people playing together. The corollary of this is where playing is not possible, then the work done by the therapist is directed towards bringing the patient from a state of not being able to play into a state of being able to play. p. 51
As therapists, we attune our embodied self and our internal state of mind, which includes our nervous system, sensation, thoughts, affects, and intuitions to create a holding space. Thoughts that may split our attention, or interfere with our ability to be fully present are bracketed off. We orient to the client’s history and hold memory traces in the forefront of our mind, to be called upon by our clinical intuition to facilitate a client experience of themselves. Our intent is to track the oscillations, the embodied push and pull of the field, while co-regulating injured and fragmented self-states. We aim create a relational holding space so the client may experience an embodied felt sense of themselves.
In order to cultivate presence in the holding environment, it is essential to have a certain degree of self-awareness. Are we aware of our self-knowledges, beliefs, values, abilities, aspirations and identity? Are we aware of our emotions, thoughts, attachments, conflicts, injuries, and dilemmas? Do we have a solid framework that defines our practice? Self awareness is not static but expands creatively throughout the lifespan. There are countless practices to deepen self-awareness. Centering, grounding, meditation, contemplation, reflection, and orienting to the inner and outer parts of ourselves may be a place to begin. There are times when we may struggle because our own material shows up in the therapy room unexpectedly. This is when we may need to seek additional support from a peer, a supervisor, or our own psychotherapist. We can only take people, as far as we have gone ourselves.
Fundamental to cultivating presence is deep listening. What are our clients showing us rather than telling us? In stillness, we listen with our eyes to their non-verbal communication, such as: eye contact, facial expression, posture, tension, and gesture not only in the other but also listening to what happens in us. We remain curious and open to the mystery of being with the other in a state of receptivity.
We listen with our ears to the client’s expression of language, sound, tone, vocalization, affect, content, and context. Simultaneously, we bare witness to the way the client communicates. Specifically, their linguistic output – prosody, timing, intensity, rhythm, lapses, themes, patterns, and coherence – which provides a window into their intrapsychic organization. What remains unconsciously hidden? Silences, pauses, and quiet moments are patiently held while listening with and attuning to our own inner experience. Grossmark (2018) writes, the field affords the emergence of unformulated non-represented meanings that cannot be articulated in language, but are lived through together (Joseph, 1985) and find form in this companioned experience. p. 98
We listen to and with our bodily sensations and our nervous system. Feeling into our tensions, strains, impulses, releases, temperature fluctuations that tells us something about what is happening in the intersubjective field. Our embodied self tracks the rhythm, timing, and pacing of the session while seeking opportunities of genuine connection through empathy, inquiry, disruption, and punctuation. Our focus is on being fully present to a shared experience of deep companioning engagement.
Let us return, full circle and imagine delighting in playing hide and seek. We use our creativity to find the best possible hiding spot, challenging the seeker to uncover where we are. The game plays on, and we remain hidden. Anticipation builds, and in our waiting, we harbour an unspoken wish, a hope that we will be found. How quickly our delight and joy return when we are. We need the Other to help us find our Self.
References:
Grossmark, R. (2018). The unobtrusive relational analysis: explorations in psychoanalytic companioning. New York, NY: Routledge.
Winnicott, D. W. (2005). Playing and reality (2nd Edition). Routledge Classics. London & New New York: Routledge. Originally published in 1971, Tavistock Publications.
Dawn Sather, RSW, RCC, RCC-S is a private practice therapist in Victoria, BC. She currently works with Adults using a Somatic Attachment Psychotherapy Approach. Dawn has studied extensively, and continues to do so, in the field of: trauma, attachment/disrupted attachment, relational, and somatic attachment psychotherapy. All her trainings weave together to provide an integrative, attachment, relational, trauma-based approach to her practice. Dawn can be found athttps://SatherCounselling.com
Wild ARC cared for 2,043 wild animals last year from all over the region, helping them recover and return to the wild. This incredible program provides much needed care to injured, sick, orphaned and distressed wildlife (more than 80 percent related to human impact) with the goal to release recovered animals back into the wild.
