Marking New Territory

Sometimes in therapy things come into focus, and we know we’ve made a comprehensive leap in our understanding. This could be in relationship to a parent, work, a partner, and, certainly, with ourselves.

In indigenous cultures, rights of passage, especially for men, were often marked by a wound, examples would be a tooth being knocked out or a circumcision. In Western Culture, we don’t have these collective experiences as much. And, even when we do seek them out, they can seem contrived and inauthentic. I’ve been on 4 Wilderness Quests, but I can’t really say any of them achieved what I was looking for, and that’s not a knock. They helped, and the first one, especially, was powerful, and initiated some changes. But my experience of IFS therapy is that the changes are deeply impactful and affect all areas of life, especially relationships. They are tangible.

I think what’s really going on is that a long-standing trauma response or trauma pattern gets resolved. Often these traumas happen in early or mid-childhood and/or teen years, and, when one maps out the effects on one’s life, from, say 11 years old, the consequences of decisions made at that age based on a trauma are enormous. Something that happens at 8 can affect someone’s entire life path, and entire pattern of coping, and at 3 or 4 years of age, even more.

That’s why I believe this work is so important, and I will continue doing it for as long as I can. Resolving these early traumas positively affects codependent patterning, compulsive and addictive behaviors, the ability to feel habitually repressed feelings, and the ability to communicate needs and wants clearly and with authenticity. There is no price tag for these kinds of changes!

I have a client who has worked a ton on owning his own voice within his relationships and, especially, with his parents. He recently was able to communicate clearly and with power, directly with his father, his experience of their relationship and the ways in which his father has come up short. It wasn’t judgmental or anger driven, just factual and with heartfelt power. He told me that he was very clear that he was protecting his own son from his father’s inability to show up consistently and in a healthy way. He was very clear that his intention was to claim his voice in that relationship and be heard. And he was. He was also very clear that he didn’t need his father to change, that he would act according to his own truth and awareness of himself and his body, and his father could either show up in loving ways or he would remain on the periphery of his and his family’s life. Powerful. I wanted to reach across the zoom world and knock out one of his teeth:)

It can be really helpful to mark a moment like this. I asked this man if there was some way he could mark it for himself, and he’s thinking about that. There are many options like buying a piece of jewelry, going out into nature and performing a ritual, getting a tattoo, writing your account of the experience and how it made you feel, changing your home environment in some way with a piece of art or rearranging a room, or playing with an element like fire or water. These are just some of the things that you can do to mark and deepen change.

As a therapist, I find that as I continue to do my work. And it is work. My clients deepen with me. A therapist really needs to have traversed territory within themselves in order to help others. My commitment to myself and to my clients is to continue to do the deep soul work that reverberates throughout my practice and my life, so that I can be a guide for others. And IFS is a big part of that.

If you’d like to give this work a try, contact me at chris@chrisfenarolimft.com