Letters from Sofia #9: How to Let Go and Begin Again | 4 Steps to Deal with Change and Uncertainty

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Let’s Go Inside

Have you ever been in the midst of a transition, in a state of limbo, or at a crossroads that sent you on a downward spiral? Perhaps you started questioning yourself, your needs and wants, your past decisions, your perceptions of reality, and your experience of those closest to you.

Imagine you could instead of feeling overwhelmed or disempowered, get comfortable with the discomfort and find empowerment in the unknown. Imagine you could experience a sense of home or shelter within these in-between moments. What if you could trust that you can handle what comes your way and still wisely, cautiously, and bravely navigate the wilderness of what lies ahead?

In this month’s newsletter we explore together the concept of transition and all the crossroads that build upon each other to create a life. I share four steps to help you navigate change and transitions in ways that serve your highest self and purpose. My hope is to give you more resources to deal with change and uncertainty. As always, I share these steps with you as a trauma therapist peering though the lens of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy. (IFS therapy is an evidence-based, trauma-focused therapy that uses the multiplicity model of the mind and the relational nature of healing to explore, connect with, and transform your inner world).

Transitions are liminal spaces. Entering a liminal space has historically meant standing at the threshold of a rite of passage leading you from the previous place, identity, relationship, or community to the new. It has long been believed that these liminal spaces are permeated by chaos making them sacred, fertile grounds for birth, death, resurrection, transmutation, communion, and a new divine order.

If you dare to pause and occupy this liminal space, you give yourself permission to linger and to metabolize. You absorb the nourishment you have received and excrete the unnecessary waste that would otherwise drain your life resources. By knowing when and how to receive, let go, and begin again, you engage in an act of self-compassion for your future self. You re-energize the physical, psychological, and spiritual cells that make the future you YOU.

There are the obvious, tangible transitions such as entering adulthood, moving from one place to another, changing careers, falling in or out of love, having breakdowns and breakthroughs, illness and recovery, marriage and divorce, retirement, and the birth or death of loved ones. Then there are those transitions that are quiet, shapeless, or even invisible to the naked, untrained eye. The latter are encapsulated moments in time when what has been is lost, expired, or no longer applicable yet what will be is still unknown, unfathomable, or beyond reach. What was once an inspired vision of the future, a firmly held belief, a coherent worldview, a solid sense of self, an unwavering trust in another is now ambiguous and fading into darkness.

The more you create a home or shelter within these in-between spaces, the more you can comfortably tap into your potential. The more you can access your creativity, clarity, and connectedness to your Self, Others, and your Higher Power (however you define it).

The more comfortable you can get with discomfort, the more agency and power you have to reclaim yourself, your relationships, and your life. 

Here are 4 steps to help guide you toward finding calm and solace in transitional times of chaos and uncertainty.

1. Honor your triumphs.  

     You carry within you certain triumphs (or at the very least triumphant moments). These are pivotal to your story regardless of which threshold you’re standing at presently. “Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew….I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell but just coming to the end of his triumphs,” writes the poet Jack Gilbert in his poem, “Failing and Flying.” What are the triumphs in your previous stage or season of life that you may have forgotten or lost sight of? What are the survival or adaptive strategies that worked back then and there but may have stopped working or expired over time? Of course, this is not meant to question or invalidate past difficulties or failings. It is to honor the parts of you that tried and perhaps succeeded in small or big ways to face the insurmountable or bear the unbearable. 

     For many of us with complex trauma backgrounds, simply trying when all we have been given is reasons to give up is a tremendous act of faith and rebellion against the status quo. These heroic parts of you say, “Yes, in spite of everything.” We can at the very least acknowledge the one (or many) Icarus inside who dared to put wings on and reach for the sun. After all, in many ways we did reach the sun although perhaps the sun may not have been exactly as we expected it to be. These are triumphs worthy of appreciation and celebration. If we are to become comfortable with the unknown, we must honor the steadfast nature of our trying, striving, achieving, risk-taking parts that kneel at the altar of freedom and adventure while daring to have and be more. 

2. Mourn the losses (both real and perceived). 

     “Whatever goes up must come down,” as Sir Isaac Newton once stated. Whatever begins is ever evolving and must cease to exist in its original form. Whatever we have is on loan. The only constant is change. We’ve heard it all before to the point of it becoming cliche. But why do we need to be constantly reminded of this truth? The popular return of Stoicism and its Memento Mori (i.e. the ancient practice of contemplating death and dying) into our cultural conversation is very telling. As a therapist and student of human nature (my own and others), I believe we carry a shared illusion of permanence, immortality, and eternal life in the material world. Depending on your beliefs, these are perhaps foundational elements of the spiritual world. The problem is we apply spiritual perspectives to the material world to bulwark us against the pain of loss on this worldly plane.

Denial is an important and even essential defense to prevent collapse and to keep going. Parts of you need to function on the automatic assumption that change is the exception and the future is predictable. When this assumption is coming from a wounded place inside, any type of change (or even potential for change) can become destabilizing and re-traumatizing, resonating internally with injured, unhealed parts. Hypervigilance is an equally important defense strategy yet diametrically opposed to denial. If you’ve experienced significant instability or loss early in life, parts of you may be very much acquainted with change as the only constant. The future becomes entirely unpredictable. You may have a hard time being present or finding joy when things are good because a hypervigilant, weary part of you is waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Both sides of this inner polarity (change is the exception versus change is the only constant), need attention, exploration, and healing in the form of mourning the real losses and metabolizing the potential for loss. Transitions invite you to release the individual and collective burdens that make you vulnerable to the impact of loss, whether real or perceived. The more you can connect with the parts of you that live either in a perpetual state of grief (present or anticipatory), the more choice and agency you will have to receive, let go, and begin again.

3. Engage in Rituals and Tributes. 

     We are currently living through a great collective loss of ritualization. Ritual is a symbolic act and vehicle that carries us through transitions while making the most of the liminal spaces we occupy. Rituals call for honor, celebration, and meaning-making most often in a structured and communal way. They simultaneously pay tribute to what has been, what is, and what could be given the potential for a new divine order. They purify the old and make space for the new.   

     In Greece (where I live) we have little road shrines, or “eikonostasia,” along the roadside where someone died due to an unfortunate accident or, conversely, where someone’s life was spared due to fortunate providence. This is especially meaningful to me now as my family was involved in a severe car accident that could have taken one or more of our lives two years ago on Christmas Eve. We survived mostly unscathed (needing only a few superficial stitches). To this day I pay tribute to both that moment in time and the person I was in that car having that experience. It inspires me to contemplate with awe and curiosity on the symbolic “car wrecks” that touched me psychically. Some left me scathed, some unscathed. The former created invisible wounds that simultaneously held deep pain and wisdom.       

     Today you can reclaim this practice of ritual and paying tribute by researching rituals from your ancestral lineage or other cultures or spiritual traditions that resonate with you. You can get creative and form your own customized rituals that speak to your unique journey, honoring the soul imprints you have sustained from “going out into the wild” as Jungian psychoanalyst and poet Clarissa Pinkola Estes advises. One ritual for your consideration is creating a time line of “ofrendas,” tributes or memorials to past moments in which you endured, lost, gave up, gave in, surrendered, embraced, let go, began anew, survived, thrived, or transformed in expected or unexpected ways. To take this ritual one step further you can pay tribute to past versions of yourself (who still exist in one form or another today) that hold the impact of what happened back then or developed the strategies to get you out and keep you going.

The more you reclaim your past with self-compassion for previous iterations of yourself, the more confidence and clarity you will have to pave the road for your future self. After all, your future self awaits you on the other side of the threshold.

4. Seek Community and Communion 

     Our ancestors could metabolize transitions, let go and begin again, with built-in rituals, communities, and means for communion. A significant aspect of rituals is the opportunity to be witnessed while standing at and crossing literal, metaphorical, and mysticla thresholds. When there is no one to turn to in the midst of upheaval and chaos, overwhelming experiences become not only overwhelming but also traumatic. As children, we cannot securely occupy the liminal space when there is no safe, loving other to be the container around us. The result is low tolerance for the unknown and overwhelming discomfort with what may or may not lie in the unfamiliar territories life brings forth.

     Let’s take a look at the first of life’s transitions: birth. When our ancestors were born, there was a cohesive tribe or village awaiting them. In today’s times, we are fortunate if there is a nuclear family with extended relatives on the other side waiting for us to cross the threshold from in utero to earthside. We mourn, many times without conscious awareness, the tribe or village that should have been there but wasn’t. The post-modern norm of extreme individuation, community fragmentation, and subsequent isolation and alienation are experienced as existential threats to the nervous system. Aloneness and lack of belonging are felt not only top-down but also bottom-up in primal and visceral ways. There are very real, tangible reasons why the World Health Organization named loneliness as a global public health concern. 

     I often find that as a trauma therapist, I become a place holder for the community that should be there but isn’t due to the devolution of past societal norms and cohesive group identities. I wonder how we threw the baby out with the bathwater. I remind you here (as I remind my clients) you are a social being and community is as essential as the food you eat and air you breathe. I invite my clients to get curious about the parts of them that mourn the lack of community and connection. We welcome the parts that on the one hand yearn to belong and, on the other hand, are deathly afraid of rejection, abandonment, and/or ostracism. For many of my high-achieving clients, relying on others in certain respects means giving up control and subjecting one’s self to another’s whims, a dangerous proposition they are painfully familiar with from their traumatic pasts. We work together towards seeking safe others and healthy communities. After all, a sense of belonging—a sense of being a part of a greater whole—is a vehicle for transcendence and communion. Holding space for and acting upon not only one’s own good but also the good of others’ is a purpose-fueling, life-giving endeavor. This is an adventure of a lifetime that is just as spiritual as it is social. 

     I invite you to reflect upon your own community and sense of belonging. How are you expressing yourself and connecting with others as the social being you are? What are the parts of you that yearn for community and the parts of you that are fearful or skeptical of belonging? The more you can create and connect with community, the more resources you will have both internally and externally to occupy the liminal space of transition. You can navigate the unknown in service of the highest good for yourself and others. 

The in-between moments can be disorienting, overwhelming, or just plain terrifying regardless of what type of transition you are presently moving through. That being said, this limbo state can also lead to a sense of liberation, expansion, and a welcomed relief from the tyrannical order of what once was. Chances are you’ve experienced both sides as you contain multitudes within you. Some parts of you have yearned to be grounded and tethered to something solid while other parts of you have sought to be free, flying, and floating toward what lies beyond the solid even if it means becoming acquainted with chaos. Perhaps you can get curious if there are other perspectives within you that view this limbo, this standing at the threshold, as a gift or blessing? 

The important thing to remember is there are more possibilities—there is more choice and agency within transitions than previously expected or perceived. There is another way to let go and begin again. It is possible to occupy a liminal space and deal with change and uncertainty without triggering old wounds and drowning in their pain. You can stand on this sacred, fertile ground and bring more healing and empowerment to your vulnerable parts.

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Questions

• What is your experience of being in the midst of transition, in a state of limbo, and/or at a crossroads? Have you noticed any themes or patterns? Do any parts of you arise who are fearful or overwhelmed by standing at thresholds? Do any parts of you arise who are excited, relieved, or liberated?

• How can you create a practice of honoring your triumphs, mourning your losses, engaging in ritual, and seeking community? What could it look or feel like to integrate these steps into your day-to-day life? What’s one small thing you can do to remind yourself of this perspective?

• What could block you from or get in the way of you engaging in such a practice? Get to know any parts of you that are skeptical, reluctant, or fearful of pausing in the threshold and potentially creating a home or shelter in the unknown. What if you could get more comfortable with the discomfort and expand your window of tolerance with self-compassion?

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More from Sofia

How to Slow Down and Live in the Moment / article

I share with you how to slow down and living in the moment. You will discover how to continue achieving, striving, and performing with self-compassion to avoid burnout and be present for your life.

How to Get Clarity with Almost Anything / article

I share the number one reason you are lacking clarity and five ways to gain clarity about almost any situation through the IFS therapy lens. You will learn to PIVOT from confusion and overwhelm to clarity and confidence. I share tools to help you master your emotions with greater self-compassion, meaning, and aliveness.​

Ready to heal from trauma and find your aliveness?

Letters from Sofia #8: How to Slow Down and Live in the Moment

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Let’s Go Inside

“Slower is faster,” I say to my clients when they want the work of healing and transformation done yesterday. They often give me an inquisitive look which quickly transmutes into a broad smile of recognition. The message resonates with a deep inner knowing. They long to slow down, rest, and be present for the hard-earned wonders of their life but they are haunted by a sense of urgency and pressure. A part of them possesses the desire to slow down and relish the moment while another part of them comes alive through a persistent need for speed.

Time is a medium that offers a containing sense of coherence necessary for the expression of our life force across past, present, and future selves. Time is intimately linked to our identity and the ways in which we navigate the world as both a cumulative byproduct of our past selves and an active agent in service of our future selves. We have deep inner conflicts and polarizations around time as individuals and as a collective. This is why in this month’s newsletter I want to talk about time management and the parts of us that engage in the perception and experience of time. Not in the ordinary, traditional sense of productivity but in the extraordinary, mythical sense of the “rapture of aliveness” as Joseph Campbell would say. 

One side of our psyches seeks out the commodification of time, using it to manifest our fullest potential through achievements providing increased fulfillment, purpose, meaning, belonging, validation, agency, etc. The parts of us in charge of this domain have a need for speed. They are rushing, doing, and whizzing through time. They are oriented toward outer expansion. The fleeting, ephemeral, and transient are inspiring and even exciting for these parts. They are aiming at quantity–they often want to live many lives in one or experience as many possibilities as possible. They are Doing-centered parts. 

Another diametrically opposing side of our psyches compels us to savor time, relishing each moment in order to rest and imbibe the aliveness unfolding within it. The parts on this side of the equation often have a need to slow down or even pause. They are lingering, riding the natural rhythms of time. Instead of doing, they are being with what arises, offering us a sense of self- and world-coherence. These parts embed us in a greater structure, weaving together threads of our past, present, and future. In this way, we become bound to ourselves across time as a stable yet dynamic whole. They are aiming at quality—they often want to live with depth the one and only life that is guaranteed. After all, this is not a dress rehearsal. These are Being-centered parts. 

Doing and Being “sides” are equally essential and, in fact, we cannot truly flourish without access to both. It would be like attempting to drive a car with access to only the accelerator or the break. It would be like trying to dance with only the left side of your body. But Doing is pitted against Being in our Western culture. We are rewarded for productivity, achievement, manifestation of potential, and the domination and mastery of the external world. Being is often a foreign concept, conflated with the absence of doing, or even non-Being. Perhaps one of the cultural burdens we’ve picked up is that Doing is proof of Being and that ceasing to do is ceasing to exist altogether.

When we’re not doing, we’re “wasting” or “killing” time, indulging in our capacity for “laziness.” We’re proud to be “busy,” making things happen. We’re ashamed to be doing “nothing.” We’ve put one side of our individual and collective psyches on a pedestal forsaking the parts beckoning us to slow down, lean in, surrender, and let life happen. I was once given this piece of advice about parenting in a light-hearted yet serious spirit: “You have to be willing to be shaped and molded by it. If you resist being changed by it, it will be a tragedy.” I believe this can be applied to many realms of life beyond parenting.

In our modern, whizzing, infinite scrolling world of ever increasing stimuli, we suffer from an overidentification with the role of the sculptor. We’re so busy scalpel in hand chipping away at the world to create the life we want that we forget we are also the marble block being created and recreated by Life, by a Higher Power—through the progression of Time. Asleep to the knowledge of our dual nature (both sculptor and sculpture) we turn the scalpel on ourselves accelerating the fragmentation of our psyches. This is the ultimate tragedy.   

For those of us who are survivors of complex trauma, being shaped and molded, letting life happen to you, being the “object” on which external forces act upon, is threatening. It becomes an experience of subjugation as opposed to one of surrender. But to surrender is not to give up subjectivity, agency, or selfhood. It’s quite the opposite. It’s precisely because you do claim your selfhood and do stand firmly in your solidness (not unlock a marble block) that you can surrender to Being. This is a call to adventure, a call to experience the rapture of aliveness, and to transform tragedy into myth. This is the phenomenon of “slower is faster.” We may not be able to control time but we can manage our perceptions and experiences of time by inviting in, befriending, and dancing with both Doing- and Being-centered parts. 

My clients are high achieving professionals who are used to the striving, productive, active life. Their Doing parts are at the helm navigating the currents of their inner and outer lives. Urgency and pressure comprise the fuel that propels them forward. Speed is not only familiar—their safety depends on it. Somewhere along the lines, a part of them picked up the message, “Keep the momentum going or else….” Pausing or even slowing down is risky business. What if you run out of fuel, lose momentum, become untethered, and get swept away into oblivion and devouring despair? What if on the other side of productive Doing lies complete and utter collapse into non-doing and non-being? For these productive, striving parts rushing through life is not only a means toward success and fulfillment but also a strategy of staving off the underlying vulnerabilities threatening the tenuous inner homeostasis they have achieved. For this reason, we need to redefine what slowing down means and offer a new possibility grounded not in subjugation, loss of self, and collapse but in safe yet expansive surrender. 

Slowing down is the ability to surrender enough so you can simultaneously be a master of time (doing with it what you will to manifest potential) and a servant of time (allowing it to act upon you and carry you forth into a future of mythical proportions). Slowing down is the capacity to be both the one Doing the creating and the one Being created. Perhaps you will discover there a dynamic state of ease, flow, and resonance with your most heroic, highest Self.

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Questions

• What is your experience of and relationship with Time? Take a moment to notice what thoughts, feelings, sensations, perspectives, impulses arise when you think about time. These are all trailheads that, if taken, will lead you to parts of your psyche who belong most likely to the Doing-or Being-centered camps of consciousness. It’s important to note that both of these camps are valuable, essential aspects of your psyche and, when in connection to your inner knowledge, wisdom, and Self, they are necessary for genuine transformation and thriving beyond mere survival. 

• When you bring to your awareness the concept of “slowing down,” what arises within you? Identify the productive, striving, managerial parts who have concerns, worries, or even fears about slowing down. What are their hopes, dreams, nightmares, perceptions of your past, present, and future selves? 

• What are the parts of you that yearn for slowing down? Invite them to share with you what “slowing down” means for them and any hopes, dreams, nightmares, or insights into your past, present, and future selves they would like you to know. 

• Set an intention to continue getting to know both sides of this polarization. The more you can connect, befriend, and create a loving, compassionate relationship with them, the more inner harmony and the greater safety and freedom you will have to genuinely experience a slowing down and nourishing rest. 

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More from Sofia

How to Overcome Resistance, Get Unstuck, and Find Inner Peace At Last / article

I share with you how to overcome resistance by exploring it through the respectful yet powerful lens of Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy. You will discover the parts of your psyche underlying resistance, especially if you are a survivor of complex trauma and narcissistic abuse.

How to Get Clarity with Almost Anything / article

I share the number one reason you are lacking clarity and five ways to gain clarity about almost any situation through the IFS therapy lens. You will learn to PIVOT from confusion and overwhelm to clarity and confidence. I share tools to help you master your emotions with greater self-compassion, meaning, and aliveness.​

Invitations for Exploration

• I'm Reading:

  Fate and Destiny: The Two Agreements of the Soul by Michael Meade. This book invites you to awaken to your own Life Force by contemplating and applying the ideas of fate and destiny.

  The Republic by Plato. I’m (re-)reading classics this year as I have found connecting to timeless truths and wisdom has a grounding, clarifying effect on my psyche. Can you relate? If you’re interested in the archetype of the philosopher-king and exploring the ways in which justice and true happiness are intertwined in the individual and collective, then I highly recommend this one.

Ready to heal from trauma and find your aliveness?

Letters from Sofia #7: How to Overcome Resistance, Get Unstuck, and Find Inner Peace At Last

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Let’s Go Inside

When a client first comes to my (virtual) office for therapy, I’m aware they arrive on a mission. The part of them that wants to change X,Y, and Z is in their seat of consciousness. This change-making part is dedicated to genuine transformation. It reveals a laundry list of reasons why A, B, and C need to happen in order for my client to move forward, reach their goal, and be at peace. It knows exactly what “gets in the way” or hinders my client’s capacity to be a fully alive, joyful, and creative agent of Being in their own life.

Before adopting the Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy approach or systemic lens to the psyche, I would create an alliance with this deeply devoted part that is ready to roll up its sleeves, dig in, and do the work. Now I know this is literally only a part of the story. There are parts of my client that “get in the way” of doing the work for historically good and valid reasons. By aligning myself with the change-making parts, I was unwittingly exiling or further alienating the parts that have been labeled by the mental health profession as “resistance.”

The truth is our psyches are comprised of parts who hold different (even conflicting) stories, memories, beliefs, feelings, or physiological imprints of the past, especially unresolved trauma. These change-resisting parts are also on a mission, just dedicated to a different cause. They are equally valuable and inherently worthy of attention, support, and healing. If the change-making parts are committed to moving forward, then the change-resisting parts are committed to staying put or grounding down.

Can you relate? At some points, you may be animated by a force that’s pushing you forward, attempting to make changes by putting self-care rituals into practice, or completing the to do list in service of that lofty aim. At other points, you may be animated by a diametrically opposing force that’s pulling you down or holding you back, perhaps by slowing you down, draining your energy, distracting or dissociating you.

A battle is playing out within your psyche between the parts of you devoted to the cause of keeping you “flowing” and the parts of you devoted to the cause of keeping you “rooted.” Each view you, your relationships, and your life through a lens of different organizing principles. The “flowing” part is oriented toward adventure while the “rooted” part is oriented toward home. The “flowing” part is pulling up the anchor and gazing out across the blue horizons. The “rooted” part is looking down planting its feet firmly into the soil. One side beckons you to venture up and out into possibility while the other side beckons you to venture down and inward into groundedness.

The invitation of life is to tune our capacity to inhabit all dimensions of Being:

• moving forward and staying put,

• venturing out and venturing in,

• being called to adventure and returning home,

• seeking play, freedom, and exploration, and

• yearning for safety, security, and comfort.

The descent is just as essential as the ascent on any hero’s journey. Everything becomes an opportunity to experience yourself as an agent in your own life. That is—a hero of your own myth reckoning with the burdens of suffering acquired as a result of being alive. One of the greatest sources of “resistance” is a deep disavowal of and disconnection from our birth right—our ownership over our innate worthiness and our right to be loved and love as differentiated yet connected, sovereign beings. To put a stake in the ground and claim your authenticity was literally risky business for those of us growing up in abusive households. This is especially the case with survivors of narcissistic abuse.

Your Life Force was actively thwarted, attacked, or shamed in an attempt to cut you off from your own Self. When you’ve experienced extreme psychological abuse, you live in an upside down world. Everything becomes inverted. Words and experiences are redefined to mean their opposites in true Orwellian fashion. Relationships become sources of pain and suffering as opposed to opportunities for love and mutual recognition. Intimacy becomes a means for subjugation and loss of power as opposed to a pathway toward surrender and transcendence.

You may feel deeply conflicted or fragmented as a result. The battle between the change-making/flowing and change-resisting/rooting parts can become so overwhelming that your entire nervous system gets swept up in these oscillating push-pull dynamics. Your internal pendulum swings back and forth between being amped up ready to bear down and push through in one moment and, in the next, dulled down, stripped of energy, and on the verge of collapse and burnout. This can be a self-alienating experience—we become strangers, even enigmas, to our own ourselves. Change is exactly what some parts of us most need and simultaneously exactly what other parts of us most fear. Genuine transformation is a dream to one aspect of our psyche and a horrific nightmare to another.

I assure you all your parts have their reasons. Some parts may:

• fear the unknown territory that lies beyond the old and familiar,

• disbelieve change is even possible or that you’re capable of it,

• believe you’re unworthy, undeserving of change or your needs don’t matter enough to even bother,

• feel weary of taking control and having more responsibility, and/or

• worry about getting punished, attacked, humiliated, abandoned, or rejected for asserting agency and embodying authenticity.

There is another way to live. You are not only a series of warring parts pulling you in one direction and the next until your head spins. You can befriend both sides of your inner battles and recognize they are extreme for a reason. The more curious and open you are to each of their stories, the more access you will have to what is deeply wounded inside and needs healing. Upon healing these early wounds, you reclaim the dimensions of life that you had become blocked from for the sake of survival.

“I feel a thousand capacities spring up in me. I am arch, gay, languid, melancholy by turns. I am rooted, but I flow.” writes Virginia Woolf. Being rooted and flowing are not mutually exclusive. Both parts are necessary for not only surviving but thriving. Children need a secure base from which to play and launch their exploration. They also need a safe haven to return to when turbulent waters arise and the going gets tough. Likewise, you need access to the full spectrum of inner and outer experience. I’m saying here that inside you are capacities to be your own secure base and safe haven. You are your primary attachment figure and caregiver as Dr. Richard Schwartz, founder of Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy, states. When you are your primary attachment figure, these previously warring parts can become partners, complementing and dancing with one another to the music of life while you restore and revive the thousand capacities within you.

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Questions

• Are you aware of these change-making/flowing versus change-resisting/rooting parts in your inner world? I invite you to take a moment and notice if you’re aware of these two opposing forces within your own system. Can you get curious about them? Do they make sense to you considering their perspectives and your past history? See if you can be present with them.

• Grab a journal and write down for each side of this inner battle or polarization: what are their deepest dreams, desires, fears, and fantasies? What do they wish for you, your relationships, your work, your life, etc.?

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More from Sofia

When Trauma Fuels High Achievement, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do / article

I share with you how trauma can fuel high achievement and the consequences of striving that is rooted in woundedness. For many of us high achievers, it can be impossible to imagine a world in which fear, insecurity, worthlessness, or shame are not acting as fuel moving us forward. In this newsletter, I invite you to entertain the possibility of an alternative way: Achievement doesn’t have to be a reaction to the love we didn’t receive. Achievement can be an expression of the love that we are.

How to Get Clarity with Almost Anything / article

I share the number one reason you are lacking clarity and five ways to gain clarity about almost any situation through the IFS therapy lens. You will learn to PIVOT from confusion and overwhelm to clarity and confidence. I share tools to help you master your emotions with greater self-compassion, meaning, and aliveness.​

Invitations for Exploration

• I'm Reading:

  Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation by Daniel Shaw. This book is a must-read for individuals who are survivors of narcissistic abuse. I would go so far as to say it’s essential reading for everyone because we all need a theory of mind around malevolence in order to properly navigate our lives. Shaw provides a framework through which to understand traumatic narcissism and make sense of its potential impact on our psyches. If you’ve experienced narcissistic abuse firsthand, this book draws a relational map through which you can better grasp and connect to the survival strategies we took on as well as the wounded parts of you that need to be seen, reclaimed, and healed.

  Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. This tremendous book is a classic for a reason as it provides deep insight into the protagonist’s mind and the parts at war within his psyche. Dostoevsky brings to life and gives voice to the internal conversation between conflicted parts of us that experience false dichotomies such as victim and perpetrator, oppressed and oppressor. In addition, we gain insight into the consequences of disavowing our humanity and rejecting the sacred that is a current trend in our materialist world.

• I'm Watching:

  Inside Out 2. A fun, playful way to learn more about parts through the little voices in Riley’s head. Perhaps this film can invoke some more curiosity, tenderness, and love for these little parts trying their best.

Ready to heal from trauma and find your aliveness?

Letters from Sofia #6: When Trauma Fuels High Achievement, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do

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Let’s Go Inside

You are thriving in some areas of life, what pioneering trauma expert Dr. Bessel van der Kolk calls the “islands of safety.” But there’s a catch. Nothing feels quite enough or good enough. A sense of emptiness or hollow discontent permeates the recesses of your psyche and becomes the soundtrack to your life. Sure, there may be moments of elation or aliveness but they quickly succumb to relief, then numbness, then shame, and then finally onto the next big problem, milestone, project, or goal. This is how you know you have unresolved trauma as a high performer or high achiever.

You may experience extreme oscillation between self-confidence and self-flagellation. You can muster up superhuman strength and resilience one moment and the next you’re down on your knees at the hands of a relentless inner critic or perfectionist part of yourself. Worst of all you feel like an imposter because your insides don’t match your outsides. You have a life worthy of celebration yet you feel dissociated, deadened, or even resigned to the gilded cage of success and performance. At the heart of the matter is a deep spiritual misalignment. How can you become an authentic leader or gain genuine mastery in the external world when you feel so untethered from your own inner world and sense of Self?

As a trauma therapist and mom, something that has been on my mind and in my heart as of late is how our Western culture and society causes our experience of Being to be shaped and defined by external factors. The message we receive is: how worthy, good, or valuable you are depends on your academic performance, relationship status, career success, social status, money, power, sex, etc. As a result of these messages, we become motivated by avoiding punishment, failure, rejection, or abandonment and receiving approval, validation, belonging, admiration, or praise. These sources of extrinsic motivation have a rightful place as they play an essential role in the outward expression of human experience, endeavor, and adventure.

The problem arises when extrinsic motivation emanates from a trauma orienting us to the outer world as a means of disconnecting us from our inner world. The result is extrinsic motivation being the sole motivation fueling our sense of a coherent Self. Extrinsic motivation does not provide a center or sense of groundedness from which to launch into the external world and engage with life. “All too often, your decisions are based on the fear of getting in trouble or getting abandoned, rather than on the principles of having meaningful and equitable interactions with the world,” states psychotherapist Pete Walker. I would add that all too often decisions are based on working for, fighting for, chasing after, or pleading for the love that you should have received freely, happily, and openly for being you—for just being alive. High performance and achievement become survival strategies to get what you didn’t get back then and there. Success is born from the lacking void instead of the nourishing Love that was your birthright. 

When we witness our woundedness and heal from our traumas, we have more access to intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is fueled by meaning, purpose, growth, fun, play, passion, curiosity, mastery, pride, agency, and the peace that comes from becoming immersed in the flow of life as it's manifesting through you in this moment. High performance and achievement can and will be born from a deep sense of enoughness, aliveness, and Love when traumas are resolved and wounds are healed. There is another way to live. There is another way to achieve and succeed.

I will leave you with this personal story. I noticed a few months ago that my mother would say to my son, “I love you,” at very specific moments during her visits. Moments when he was performing, doing something “smart,”  “special,” or generally “achieving” a hard task (for a 3-year-old, that is). Something inside me clicked into place, and I heard a part of me say, “Wow, that’s what happened to me.” Although there was nothing overtly traumatizing or catastrophic happening in these encounters, I recognized the part of me that got the message, “Achievement equals love.” If we want to go down the rabbit hole of narcissistic abuse, I could see tiny glimmers of how my achievements served as narcissistic supply for my caregivers who were themselves disconnected from their Self and spiritually misaligned. I could witness and hold space for the part of me that had been living alone on my" “island of safety,” namely achievement, surviving and fighting for scraps of love, crumbs of worthiness and acceptance. 

I say this to you because chances are you’re in the process of healing and reparenting your inner child and/or parenting your own child. As adults in the present day, we have the choice to free ourselves (and future generations) from the gilded cage of accomplishment as reward. Achievement doesn’t have to be a reaction to the love we didn’t receive. Achievement can be an expression of the love that we are. Success can be a manifestation of the inner attunement with your Highest Self and the greater spiritual alignment with Being, God, or however you define your Higher Power.

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Questions

• How has high performance or achievement become your island of safety? In what areas do you thrive? How does this thriving (and striving) give you a sense of self or add meaning to your life? 

• What are the extrinsic motivators that fuel the high achieving and striving parts of your psyche? What would happen if you didn’t achieve? What is the worst case scenario?

• What would it be like if you had more access to intrinsic motivation while striving? What is the best case scenario? What visions of your future self may come true? What concerns, wishes, or desires come up?

• I have less of a question and more of an invitation here. Is there a past version of yourself (a young, vulnerable part of you perhaps) or, for that matter, any person in your life that just needs to hear I love you? I love you for being you. Thank you for being here in my life. I love you with no strings attached. You don’t need to be, do, or perform in any way to receive my love. Can you express that love in a way they can absorb and take in?

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More from Sofia

4 Keys to Building a Happy Relationship / article

I share with you the four keys to a happy relationship. These keys are meant to serve as maps guiding you on your journey of deepening and expanding your intimate relationships. I believe true intimacy is a place–a field–where you and your partner meet to discover the sacred and meaningful that make life worth living.  

How to Get Clarity with Almost Anything / article

I share the number one reason you are lacking clarity and five ways to gain clarity about almost any situation through the IFS therapy lens. You will learn to PIVOT from confusion and overwhelm to clarity and confidence. I share tools to help you master your emotions with greater self-compassion, meaning, and aliveness.​

Invitations for Exploration

• I'm Reading:

  The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit by Donald Kalsched. A beautiful book that takes you on a journey inside the trauma survivor’s self-care system and what it does in an attempt to survive and preserve the Spirit through a Jungian lens. Kalsched writes, “Trauma is about the rupture of those developmental transitions that make life worth living.” He shares stories, myths, and folktales that acknowledge and give credit to the parts of us that have worked hard to protect our Spirit from the potential annihilation of unbearable trauma.

  Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up by Abigal Shrier. This is a book that challenges preconceived notions when it comes to the utility and effectiveness of talk therapy for children and adolescents. It is sure to ruffle some feathers as it looks at how therapists, teachers, parents, and caregivers may be doing more harm than good, reinforcing trauma inadvertently. Although I don’t agree with all of her takes, Shrier accurately reflects what I believe to be a detrimental aspect of our culture, namely—an overidentification with our woundedness, vulnerability, brokenness, victimhood, and traumas which leads to not only the the missed opportunity to instill resilience in our children and in ourselves but also the reinforcement of fragility and learned helplessness.

• I'm Watching:

  Awakening from the Meaning Crisis with Dr. John Vervaeke. Dr. Vervaeke, a philosopher and cognitive scientist, has provided 50 free lectures online that tackles the questions of meaning and aliveness from the perspectives of evolutionary biology, philosophy, psychology, religion, and cognitive science (to name only a few). The breadth and depth of these lectures is not only enlightening but also healing for those yearning to understand themselves and humanity on a multi-dimensional existential level. So much food for thought!

Ready to heal from trauma and find your aliveness?

Letters from Sofia #5: Love after complex trauma and why you should have hope

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Let’s Go Inside

Love is all around as Valentine’s Day fast approaches. To some it’s a reminder to celebrate the ways that love has shown up in their lives. To others it’s a consumerist holiday manufactured by the flower and chocolate industries. To those with complex trauma it can be a reminder of all the ways in which love was—and maybe still is— absent.

A common misconception is that trauma is only what happened to you and how that impacted you. There is an overlooked piece to the puzzle that has affected my clients just as much if not more so. That piece is what didn’t happen to you—how you were not seen, heard, known, witnessed, held, cherished, adored, and loved. A lack of these experiences can lead to a sense of an inner void or abyss.

A great degree of our suffering is a result of these holes, these inner voids that shape us. We grow around these holes the way a tree grows around its injuries. These inner voids can lead to a mental, emotional, or spiritual emptiness that has us sleep-walking through life, numbing or distracting ourselves because feeling anything at all can become overwhelming, pushing us over the edge.

Neglect can make love exceedingly complicated because there is no reference point, compass, map or guide based on past experience to show us the way back home to a greater sense of connection, attunement, or resonance with another. It’s important to acknowledge this loss, what it meant to your younger self, and how it affects your relationships today. This is a deep injustice that shakes up the very foundation of your sense of Self and Being.

Can love exist after such seismic trauma? Yes and here’s why: you do not need to have past experiences of love to know and experience love. You don’t need a reference point from your childhood. Love is not just your birthright. You are Love. It’s your inherent nature. It may be hard to believe at first but what happened to you has not robbed you of the love that is interwoven into your Being. You do not need to create or cultivate experiences of love and relationship to get back in touch with love (although that can help of course).

Because your natural state is love, you only need to find what is blocking you from accessing its natural flow. These blocks are wounds, burdens from the past, or armor you’ve picked up to bear the unbearable and survive. When those wounds are healed and you’re free from the past, you will naturally reconnect to what has been there all along. You will be living proof of what’s possible—you went to hell and back, you dug your roots down, and at last you can grow to heaven.

Wrestling with the shadows of the inner void infuses your life with greater depth, meaning, and purpose. Parts of you may rightly wish there was never a need to wrestle or descend into your own personal Underworld. At the same time, there can be no true joy, peace, or aliveness without integrating, and even honoring, the full spectrum of your experience—from heaven to hell, from light to darkness, from love to hate, from good to evil, from pleasure to pain. Life paints itself in broad strokes across your Being and it’s up to you to embrace all the colors and turn your Self into the work of art you already are.

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Questions

• How were you not seen, heard, witnessed, or cherished? How you were not accepted, embraced, taken care of, or taken into consideration? How were you not protected, defended, honored, or challenged with love? How were your strengths and weaknesses, desires and needs, talents and skills, not reflected back to you?

• What are all the ways you were not given permission to be your most authentic, bold, creative, thriving self? What are all the ways you were not given the love that should have been (and is) your birth right?

• What survival strategies did parts of you use to fight for the love that is your birthright. Perhaps you checked out completely to shield yourself from the pain. Perhaps like many of my clients you became a high achiever, work and accomplishment becoming an island of safety, a refuge from the abyss.

• Do you believe love can be after trauma? Why or why not? What if your wounds could be healed and you could be free to love without the overwhelming fear? What if you didn’t have to guard your heart with such vigilance and for so much of the time? What would your most intimate relationships looks like and feel like?

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More from Sofia

Letters from Sofia #4: How to Follow Through and Reclaim the Sacred / newsletter

My previous newsletter in case you missed it. I share with you the problem we confront when we set goals or resolutions and how we may be unknowingly sabotaging ourselves. I also discuss the role meaning, purpose, and the sacred play in creating a life worth living.

4 Keys to Building a Happy Relationship / article

I share with you the four keys to a happy relationship. These keys are meant to serve as maps guiding you on your journey of deepening and expanding your intimate relationships. I believe true intimacy is a place–a field–where you and your partner meet to discover the sacred and meaningful that make life worth living.  

How to Get Clarity with Almost Anything / article

I share the number one reason you are lacking clarity and five ways to gain clarity about almost any situation through the IFS therapy lens. You will learn to PIVOT from confusion and overwhelm to clarity and confidence. I share tools to help you master your emotions with greater self-compassion, meaning, and aliveness.​

Invitations for Exploration

• I'm Reading:

  Brain Energy: A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health--and Improving Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, OCD, PTSD, and More by Chris Palmer, MD. Chris Palmer, has created a revolutionary unifying theory of mental illness. I'm grateful to see he is receiving greater traction and popularity as his insights on the connection between diet, metabolic syndrome, and mental health can lead to unbelievable transform and healing from the inside out. Healing trauma is one piece of the puzzle, and I know personally and professionally, that what we consume psychologically, spiritually, and physically can either have dire consequences or unlock our body's innate healing potential. 

  The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron. This is a classic course that has been recommended to me over the years. Its purpose is to help you reclaim the creative spirit within you. Creating reminds you you are an agent of Life, not only a reactor or consumer. Taking action and articulating a creative impulse reconnects you to a greater power within and beyond regardless of the end result. For trauma survivors, this is critical since disconnection from Self and Source is a root cause of suffering.

• I'm Watching:

  End of the World Series by Jonathan Pageau. Jonathan Pageau is a unique intellectual and religious scholar. He breaks down current events through the lens of the symbolic world and the ancient traditions of our ancestors. If you’re looking to make sense of the modern world and understand how community and connection can help repair us on individual and collective levels, then this is for you.

Ready to heal from trauma and find your aliveness?

4 Keys to Building a Happy Relationship

How to Build a Healthy Relationship

A happy relationship is one that supports life, infusing it with a sense of adventure while also providing refuge and safety. It’s an invitation to engage in a creative process, one that both challenges and comforts you. There is no perfect relationship but there is a way to be in communion that is nourishing and reveals greater truths to you and your partner. The following four keys to a happy relationship are meant to serve as maps to guide you on your journey of deepening and expanding your intimate relationships. I believe true intimacy is a place–a field–where you and your partner meet to discover the sacred and meaningful that make life worth living.  

1. Be in a loving relationship with Your Self

Many of my clients come to me after years of talk therapy having an acute awareness of all that plagues them. As it turns out, awareness is not enough. They may know what they want, need, or desire. They may know what it feels like to be in their mind and body. They may know their traumas, their patterns, what keeps them up at night, why they wake up in the morning. They may know what makes them come alive and burst into bloom. Yet they still feel depleted, dissociated, dull, and disconnected from themselves and others. 

These inner experiences do not exist in a vacuum. Everything exists in relationship. The most foundational relationship you have is the relationship you have with yourself. And the relationship you have with yourself largely depends on how you were held, mirrored, and witnessed as a child. Were you held with a sense of reverence by a cherishing and adoring presence? Were your wants, needs, desires reflected back to you? Was your experience of reality validated, honored, and guided by a wise, compassionate other?

If this was lacking and you were met with psychological abuse, interpersonal violations, and a degradation and invalidation of your inner experience, then it can become hard to know where you end and the other begins. Or where the other ends and you begin. You can feel like there is no YOU there without those defining lines that outline a shape, a self, an identity worthy of love and adoration. This is the primal wound of non-being. Boundary setting becomes a baffling, bewildering, or daunting exercise when there is no sense of coherent self. Unresolved trauma makes it impossible to have an embodied sense of what is okay and what is not okay. What is tolerable, acceptable, fulfilling, or meaningful to you–or not. Doubting or gaslighting yourself becomes all too easy while relationships devolve into combative, power struggles. 

The solution is to be in a loving relationship with yourself. Not to just know yourself. You turn insight into action by taking the knowledge and awareness you have acquired and becoming curious. Below are some questions that can help you discover the quality of your relationship to your own woundedness. After all, the relationship you have with your own woundedness determines the quality of your life after all.  

Questions for exploration 

• What is your relationship to your own inner experience? How do you feel toward all that resides within you? How do you feel toward those “fault-finding, falling apart, unfinished parts” of yourself as poet Julia Fehrenbacher writes. How do you feel toward those parts that should have been held, mirrored, and witnessed? 

• What is your relationship with the parts of you that have to fight for what should have been received willingly with love? How do you feel toward the parts of you that carry the wants, the needs, the dreams, the nightmares, the drives of your inner world? 

2. Embrace the paradox of security versus freedom 

A fundamental polarity exists within us and within society at large that reflects an existential complexity we’re faced with as human beings. We want safety, security, stability, and commitment while also wanting freedom, spontaneity, adventure, and autonomy. Some parts of you may have made it their mission to get you to a stable, secure place. Their ultimate goal is finding and loving a safe, trustworthy other to experience true intimacy and commitment with. Some parts of you may have made it their mission to free you up for the adventure of your lifetime. Their ultimate goal is to experience the passion, thrill, and adventure of being in relationship (or not being in relationship).

If you have unresolved trauma, there is a tension between the two poles that can lead to more fragmentation, disorientation, and confusion. The result of existential internal conflicts is paralysis, dullness, a drainage of joy and life force–a stalemate with our own Being. Your relationship suffers from a loss of desire, a stuckness in old patterns, boredom, restlessness, and a sense of being trapped on a merry go round of familiar conflicts and hurts. You may not know what’s yours and what’s theirs, where is up and where is down, you may not know when to stay or when to go. 

If we dive deeper and take a closer look getting to know these parts of us straddling the divide between security and freedom, we come to realize there is no divide. What appears as a polarity or conflict on the surface is actually a complementary relationship. Try this exercise by Barry Johnson…Breathe in and hold your breath for as long as you can. The oxygen that once felt so nourishing begins to become suffocating as carbon dioxide builds up. Your body is forced to exhale. There is a great sense of relief for a bit before the need for fresh oxygen arises yet again. The inhale and exhale are complementary. One cannot exist without the other. Both are necessary for the health of the body and to avoid suffocation. 

You cannot venture out freely if there is no safety, no trust. True passion requires a merging, an intimacy that reveals and makes manifest our innermost desires. Commitment in long-term relationships leads to adventure because of time. Time becomes a vehicle for exploring and transcending preconceived notions of the self or other. The relationship becomes a living organism that must evolve, get rid of waste, and absorb nutrients for renewal as time progresses. How will the relationship unfold and what will it become is a mystery. It’s embracing this mystery that can lead to a sense of aliveness and meaning within the relationship and beyond.

Questions for exploration 

• Notice which you feel most drawn to–security or freedom? Intimacy or passion? Are you geared more toward commitment or adventure? Which of the two feels more familiar in your present relationship or historically in previous relationships? Which feels more applicable to this season of your life? 

• What are you hoping to achieve or avoid through a sense of security? 

• What are you hoping to be free from or free to do as a result of freedom? 

• Is it possible that security and freedom can coexist and play complementary roles in your relationship and life? What would that look like and feel like to you? 

3. Recognize Your Redeemer Narrative 

When you are living with unresolved trauma, you play out a role (or multiple roles) you were forced into by others. This role becomes unbearable because it was never yours to begin with. Chances are you had to contort yourself into all kinds of shapes to fit into a preconceived mold. Parts of you are driven by the need to break free from this role, this mold. Unfortunately, these parts often look outward for a person–a partner in crime–to help free you from this imprisonment and get the redemption you are seeking. Someone to finally see you, know you, love you the way you are so you can be free to be you, find peace, and experience joy and aliveness at last. We may yearn for someone strong enough to bear our woundedness and remain unfazed by our rough edges. We put them on a pedestal because the more superior, whole, and powerful they appear to us, the more capable they are of withstanding our inferiority, brokenness, and powerlessness. 

The problem with this plan is that the drive for redemption leads to reenactment. In an attempt to recruit a redeemer or rescuer, you are placing an immense burden on the other–forcing them into a preconceived role. You are imprisoned and your partner also becomes imprisoned. They become stuck–if they act beyond the confines of their role or contradict the given terms they risk losing you or the relationship. They are robbed of their freedom to be authentically themselves. The problem gets more complicated because chances are that your partner is returning the favor by doing the exact same thing to you. You are both each other's prisoners. Recruiting each other to be rescuers or redeemers lands you both into the heart of the abyss. Sooner or later one or both of you will present the other with the four horsemen: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling as described by Dr. John and Julie Gottman, founders of The Gottman Institute. You may attempt to: (1) radically change yourself so your partner doesn’t leave you, (2) radically change your partner so they can be who you need them to be, or (3) give up by abandoning the relationship physically, emotionally, or spiritually. 

I’m inviting you to recognize the possibility that the woundedness or vulnerability inside you that has contorted itself, been locked away, and now seeks redemption is your responsibility. As IFS Founder, Dick Schwartz, Phd writes, “You are the one you’ve been waiting for.” The only way to free yourself is to become aware of the multitudes within you. You are the prisoner, the prison guard, and the rescuer. You hold the lock and the key. Using the key to unlock your cell can look like getting curious about who you could be if you let go of the role that was forced upon you? Who could your partner be if they could let go of the roles forced upon them? 

When you shine a light on these dynamics and see the wounded parts of yourself and your partner, it becomes much easier to hold space. As poet Rainer Maria Rilke writes, “The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust.” When you try to rescue or force the other to play the role of redeemer, you are tearing down the boundaries that make you you and your partner them. Without any boundaries there is chaos. When you guard each other’s solitude, you honor the divine order and sacred space that resides within each of you.

There is an essence inside us all. You are much more than meets the eye. You have a Self, a core Self, that cannot be contorted to fit any mold. It remains undamaged and unbroken. It cannot be imprisoned, only hidden from view like the sun on a cloudy day. Perhaps the aim of any relationship is to guard, cherish, and witness the sacred space that resides within us so that we can each embody more of our essence and become more of who we were meant to be.

Questions for exploration

• What are the roles you were given to play as a child? Here are some options: lost child, golden child, parentified child, scapegoat, truth-teller, mascot, caretaker. How do you play out these roles in the relationship? Are parts of you that try to do the opposite of these roles? 

• In your ultimate fantasy, what role would you give up and what role would your partner play? What are some expectations you have for your partner that may make them feel limited, trapped, confined, or suffocated? What are some expectations your partner may have that make you feel limited, trapped, confined, or suffocated? 

• What would it look like or feel like in your relationship if both partners were responsible for their own inner woundedness? How would that free you or them up? What would it look like or feel like if your partner guarded your solitude and you theirs?

4. Create a contract based on communion 

When you are in a relationship you are tacitly agreeing to a contract. Most of these contracts are unspoken, unseen, or unknown. The more invisible these contracts are the more chaotic and  confusing the relationship may be. If you have unresolved complex trauma, you are likely to find yourself stuck in a relationship that is not only not nourishing but also an extension of past trauma. Your love life becomes a merry go round of various iterations of the same wound, the same pain. The stuckness represents a greater stuckness rooted in learned helplessness. 

Chances are there is a part of you that feels powerless or believes you don’t have a choice when it comes to the relationship you want to have. You should accept the crumbs you are given. You should not trust your perception of the relationship–it’s not as bad as you think. Or you may believe it’s too good to be true, not trusting any relationship that does not resemble chaos itself. Perhaps you sabotage what good there is to feel more in control–it’s not safe to get attached, some inner voice says.

Without a conscious contract, your unresolved trauma creates the terms of the relationship. You build the foundation of your relationship on sand instead of rock. The wounded parts of you that are looking to be redeemed or freed are in the driver’s seat and in charge of the negotiations. The relationship becomes a reaction to the past instead of a proactive, creative activity manifesting the future. When you engage in a relationship, you are in the midst of a creative process. You are co-creating a life worthy of living together.

Unfortunately, in today’s world the function of the relationship has been stripped of meaning. Instead of co-creators, our society has turned us into reactors, enablers, and consumers who experience relationships on the basis of transaction as opposed to communion. The relationship becomes a means to an end without having any inherent value in and of itself. To be in relationship–to be in communion–is to be awake together to the nature of reality, truth, and love. What comes to mind is sitting under a night sky staring up at the stars in awe and experiencing a beauty that cannot be articulated into words. I invite you to grab a seat under the stars, see yourself and your partner as co-creators, recognize the sand in the foundation, and identify what rocks you can use to rebuild. 

Questions for exploration

• What is the nature of a relationship to you? How do you define the ideal or highest order of goodness in a relationship? 

• How can you each advocate for the best iteration of the relationship? Do your ideals map onto one another? Where do they overlap? Where do they diverge from one another? How can you learn from your differences?

• What if you were to stop sweeping things under the rug and make the invisible agreements visible? The unspoken spoken? What are the conflicts that shake up the relationship and how can they become tools to better understand the other and create a contract based on communion?

• How would it feel to share this with your partner? What concerns arise? What hopes arise? 

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Ready to heal from trauma and find your aliveness?

Letters from Sofia #4: How to Follow Through and Reclaim the Sacred

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Let’s Go Inside

I hope you're having a wonderful 2024 so far. Did you set any resolutions? If so, how is it going so far? What arises within you when you do follow through or don't follow through? Oftentimes, setting resolutions can feel like planting inner landmines. When we do follow through, we're relieved we didn't step on it, and when we don't follow through, an explosion of disappointment, shame, hopelessness, inner criticism, or even self-hatred, blows up in our faces. Does this sound familiar? 

If you've experienced complex trauma, it may be challenging to genuinely feel good--joy, aliveness, and wholeness--when you follow through, reach your goals, or keep your promises to yourself. Feeling good is often interpreted by parts of us as lowering our guard and therefore being open to more threats. It makes sense considering this helped keep us prepared for the worst-case scenario. Positive emotions or experiences cause suspicions to arise as a result. We can appreciate those parts of us that tried to shield us from danger. The flip side is when we inevitably fall short or disappoint (because we are human), our sense of self is encroached upon. This is especially the case if you see your achievements in the material world as inextricably linked to your identity, and, therefore, to your worth as a human Being. This is often a cultural or legacy burden parts of us have picked up to adapt to a world that places paramount value on working and performing. 

Following through on a resolution or achieving a goal without a contextual framework of intrinsic meaning, deeper value, or greater purpose exiles the sacred from our lives. Aiming toward an ideal, a higher good whether individually or collectively, is a sacred process. From time immemorial we have known this as the ancient myths, stories, and religions reflect back to us and celebrate the heroic journey that is our birthright. Today we are divorced from these traditions in our Western world. We live in a world that distracts us with pleasure and obscures our perception of the Truth. Victor Frankl writes, "When a person can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure." Pleasure has replaced meaning. ​

We are yearning for the ascent to the Psychic heavens, the elixirs of life, without having to descend into our personal Underworld, ground ourselves in Truth, and sacrifice for a higher vision. We are seeking the treasures without daring to go into the cave that holds them. We want to be resurrected without first experiencing our personal crucifixion. We want salvation without suffering. This is a noble attempt on our part to soothe ourselves and provide some relief and protection from the inevitable tragedies that we experience. The paradox, however, is that what we resist persists, what we distract ourselves from only grows and intensifies. The more we exile meaning and see pleasure as the solution to our suffering, the more distracted, untethered, and groundless we become. We find ourselves lost or imprisoned in our internal dungeons and labyrinths. We become consumers instead of creators. 

My message to you for today and for this year is to turn back and remember you co-create with the divine, however you define it. You can let go of the cultural burden that has forsaken meaning for pleasure as the path to freedom from suffering. You can achieve goals and keep resolutions more effectively without the burden of worthlessness or shame weighing you down. You can achieve goals with the virtues of hope and faith lifting you up to the sacred and allowing your light to shine through. You are inherently valuable. You are worthy. And the more you embrace and invite in the meaning or sacredness of life, the more you will be able to tolerate and even celebrate the obstacles, struggles, or sacrifices on your hero's journey.  

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Questions

• What has historically arisen for you when you aim for a goal, attempt to follow through, or keep a resolution? Notice any thoughts, feelings, or sensations that come to the surface when you do or don't follow through. These are all trailheads and worthy of exploration to better understand and get to know the woundedness that often drives us to work more, perform better, move forward, etc.

• I invite you to create a map of meaning or a lens through which you can see yourself and experience the world as inextricably connected to the divine, however you define it. ​How do you define meaning? The sacred? The divine? You can look inside for what comes up spontaneously and/or you can look into ancient myths, stories, and traditions. Are you drawn to any ancient traditions or teachings that resonate with you? 

• What cultural or legacy burdens around work, achievement, success, and striving have you carried into your adulthood? What messages have picked up from your culture or family and how have these message impacted the way you show up in your day-to-day life?  

• What if there was another way? What if you could reclaim the sacred in your life and find a deeper sense of meaning and fulfillment? What would your life look like, feel like, be like? What would you look like, feel like, be like? How would you show up differently? 

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More from Sofia

Letters from Sofia #3: How to Live with Meaning / newsletter

My previous newsletter in case you missed it. I share with you my fear-death experience on the shores of Portugal and how to reclaim a sense of freedom and adventure. I invite you to reflect on the states of rapture and transcendence as potential everyday experiences.

How to Get Clarity with Almost Anything / article

I share the number one reason you are lacking clarity and five ways to gain clarity about almost any situation through the IFS therapy lens. You will learn to PIVOT from confusion and overwhelm to clarity and confidence. I share tools to help you master your emotions with greater self-compassion, meaning, and aliveness.​

Invitations for Exploration

• I'm Reading:

What My Bones Know: A memoir of healing from complex trauma by Stephanie Foo. This book is a heart-breaking yet hope-inducing memoir of a complex trauma survivor. Stephanie Foo's courageous story makes me reflect upon what it means to be resilient and how as a culture we define resilience in ways that can cause more harm and re-traumatization than healing and wholeness. It inspires me to give voice to alternate views of resilience and to recognize how work and achievement can be forms of dissociation that disconnect us from our inherent value and sacredness as human beings.

• I'm Watching:

Harvard Professor: This Food is Causing a Mental Health Crisis with Chris Palmer | Diary of a CEO. Chris Palmer, author of Brain Energy, has created a revolutionary unifying theory of mental illness. I'm grateful to see he is receiving greater traction and popularity as his insights on the connection between diet, metabolic syndrome, and mental health can lead to unbelievable transform and healing from the inside out. Healing trauma is one piece of the puzzle, and I know personally and professionally, that what we consume psychologically, spiritually, and physically can either have dire consequences or unlock our body's innate healing potential. 

• I'm Listening To:

Hans Zimmer | Interstellar (Space Sounds) I return over and over to the soundtrack from Christopher Nolan's film Interstellar. I find it helps me access a sense of awe, interconnectedness, and openness to cosmic possibility. What music do you listen to that inspires you to pause and experience a deeper sense of meaning and sacredness? 

Ready to heal from trauma and find your aliveness?

How to Get Clarity with Almost Anything

How to Gain Clarity In Your Life

The number one reason we lack clarity is because we don’t trust our own judgment or our capacity to discern—to separate the wheat from the chaff. We don’t trust ourselves enough to be able to see clearly what is. We don’t trust ourselves to handle or withstand what we see when we open our eyes, that is—the truth. We may believe we don’t deserve the truth or we may think. if we reveal our truth to others, we will be undeserving of love and rejected. A part of us may believe it’s better to seek false refuge in the lie (as short-term as it may be) than to face the real, bewildering pain of a shattered self-concept or worldview. In our post-modern world, we may even believe there is no truth or objective reality—for example, all truth is subjective and, therefore, permissible and malleable to the whims of the moment or the eye of the beholder.

“The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves,” writes world-renowned trauma expert Dr. Bessel van der Kolk Greatest in his book, “The Body Keeps the Score.” Lying to ourselves is a survival strategy a part of us took on to shield us from pain and suffering. One of the biggest lies we tell ourselves is that we can move away from the inner pain the way we draw back our finger from a hot stove. The biology and physics of the outer world do not apply to our inner world. We recoil at emotional pain thinking we’re protecting ourselves. But what we are actually doing is recoiling from the truth, leaving ourselves vulnerable to the real dangers or threats that may be lurking in the dark. We have blindfolded ourselves and, in the process, blocked our innate clarity as conscious, spiritual Beings from shining through. We are effectively retraumatizing our own selves without even realizing it.

If you’ve experienced childhood complex trauma especially in the forms of psychological and/or narcissistic abuse, a part of you may have taken on the role of gaslighting your own self into adulthood. This was a noble attempt to adapt to extreme abuse and survive. Your disconnection from the truth and lack of clarity may show up as a deep and profound confusion, dissociation, a sense of boundary-less-ness, a feeling of being lost, untethered, and groundless. You may feel at times that you don’t know who you are at your core. You may feel like there is no core—that under the hood of your Being is pure nothingness or emptiness.

The way out is to PIVOT, or move toward the source of the pain. It may sound counterintuitive but the more you can hold space for and be with the inner wound, the easier it will be to reconnect to your truth and restore your sense of clarity. We PIVOT to turn back toward ourselves, toward the truth when our natural inclination is to move away or against our own vulnerability. You can practice PIVOT in the following 5 ways: (1) Pause for perspective, (2) Invite in what is, (3) Value your Self, (4) Open up to Life, (5) Trust the truth. It is my hope that PIVOT will act as a tool to help you map a greater sense of meaning, aliveness, and wholeness onto your experiences. As you will see, it is challenging, if not impossible, to live with clarity when there is no connection to a deeper meaning and existential foundation of Being. We will be looking at how to get clarity through the lens of the Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy.

5 WAYS TO GET CLARITY

1. Pause for Perspective

When you get triggered, activated, or overwhelmed, pause and note there is something coming to the surface. Words like “triggers,” “activation,” or “overwhelm” come from parts of us that have labeled what has arisen in our conscious experience as something negative. This makes sense because historically when we’ve been triggered or activated, the effect or outcome is negative, oftentimes leading to a downward spiral of increased pain and suffering. What we are offering here is another possibility. Another way to respond or be in the moment, that is to say to live. After all life arises in our consciousness as a series of unfolding moments.

In nature when something comes to the surface it does so because it needs to. A whale needs to come to the surface for air. A seedling must push through the surface of the soil to receive nutrients from the sun and air. What has come to the surface, even (or especially) in the most challenging of moments, is in need of nourishment. Something is arising from a dark depth or deep darkness, from our personal Underworld or Shadow world. It is emerging from the unknown, unseen world and towards the known, seen world, where the light of consciousness can shine on it. The question then becomes, how will you greet what has arisen? How will you meet this new arrival, this unexpected guest, as described by the the Sufi poet Rumi? Is it okay for this new arrival or unexpected guest to be here?

Affirmation

I pause for perspective, notice what is coming to the surface, and recognize its need to be seen, known, and nourished just like the whale surfacing for air or the seedling pushing through the topsoil.

2. Invite In What Is

You have a choice. You can stand in the light, see the unseen, and know the dragon. Or you can stumble around in the darkness, bumping up against a tail or wing when you least expect it and becoming terrorized all over again. If you can voluntarily choose to know the dragon, you can do something about it. I don’t mean doing something in the traditional sense. We often talk about slaying the dragon, overcoming our demons, or confronting {fill in the blank}. What if instead of confronting “it,” you voluntarily invited it in? Invite it to be here, stand in the light, and take a break from the dungeons of the psychic Underworld.

You may have concerns like can you handle being with this? What if you get pulled into the psychic Underworld along with it? What if you get overwhelmed and flooded by its grief, rage, despair, or shame? These are concerned parts of you surfacing. They are more arrivals, unexpected guests. Can you also welcome them to stand in the light with you? You can stay with those concerned parts and allow them to share their worries or fears. This is new territory and it takes time to become acquainted with the unfamiliar.

This is the paradox of healing that offers a profound paradigm shift. The more we invite in the pain, the less pain and more at peace we feel. The more we invite in the fear, the less fear and more courage we feel. The more we invite in the shame, the less shame and more confident in our worth we feel. When we have access to our inner light and can stand firmly in it, we can experience the benefits of not only accepting but also embracing the paradox.

We begin to discover that the triggered or activated parts of us are not what they appear. Just like Dorothy we can go all the way to Oz to discover that the all-powerful wizard is a little old man hiding behind a curtain. We discover that an inner critic is a young, bullied child who had to be harsh to keep you in line so real bullies stopped targeting you. “Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love,” writes poet Rainer Maria Rilke.

As we invite in more of these new arrivals, we learn overtime that the psychic Underworld is also not what it appears to be. Through the lens of our true Self we do not see our personal Underworld as something to fear. We see it as a womb, where gestation of our hidden, unseen potential lives. We see it as home to an unlocked vitality that is waiting to be brought into the light, that is to say, healed and loved. We begin to see the obstacles or tor-mentors of our lives as midwives beckoning forth from the womb that hidden potential. Even “the inner wound can be seen as the womb,” Michael Meade writes. The question then becomes can you give birth to yourself—the you that is yet unborn? The you you are meant to be? Can you be reborn on a moment-to-moment basis as the inevitable tragedy strikes and the world initiates you into a more transcendent state of Being?

Affirmation

I invite in what is here knowing that it is a guest bearing gifts, the inner wound is a womb carrying unlocked potential, and the world is initiating me to overcome past limitations and live with more aliveness, wholeness, and transcendence.

3. Value Your Self

If each wound can be seen as a womb, then what you once wanted to get rid of, you can begin to value, even treasure. You can invite in the parts of you that live in the recesses of your psyche and treat them as guests until their true nature and potential is revealed to you. You can treat each guest with honor because of its inherent value.

The question then may arise, if there is inherent value in our experiences and the parts of us who carry these experience, then where does this value come from? For that matter, where does your inner light come from? Where do you and I come from? I believe we cannot heal our traumas or recover from our pasts without grappling with the existential questions that have followed us since time immemorial.

Does our value come form God, a Higher Power, the Universe, Nature, Love? Is it a spirit guide, a Divine Mother, an angel, a wise ancestor, or pure consciousness? Whatever you choose to believe, just as your parts are connected to you, your Self—Your Self is also connected to something greater accessible to each and every one of us. Like spokes on a wheel if we each travel far enough into our inner landscapes we discover the center, the Source, within our collective unconscious. Everything and everyone emanates from a singular place. You are made up of the very specks of energy that were once confined to a single point before the Big Bang explosion. You come from and are comprised of that same potential capable of creating billions of galaxies. How could you be insignificant? How can your experience not matter? You are worthy just for existing. After all, you are a human Being, coming down from a lineage of ancestors who have survived the unspeakable and unknowable.

This may come as a surprise to parts of us that feel the need to strive, to achieve, to perform, to become someone worth mattering in the world. These parts of us may even refute these claims. And that’s okay. Can you get curious about where that comes from? That message that you have to prove you’re worthy or do something to become enough? You can become much more effective in the world and in carrying out your responsibilities when your actions are fueled by an inner knowing and recognition of your worth. We can only go so far acting out from a place of misalignment and disconnection from our inherent value. When we value who we are at our core, baggage and all, we choose to live in alignment with honor and in service of the highest good as it manifests through us. Striving, achieving, and performing are still tasks we undertake—but they become lighter, less effortful, and sacred processes without the burdens of shame and worthlessness weighing us down.

Affirmation

I see the inherent value in myself and others, my innate connection to the divine (however I define it), and, as a result, I live in alignment with the highest good as it manifests through me.

4. Open Up to Life

When we begin to consider the possibility of our inherent value, we are able to experience more confidence, freedom, and openness to life and its offerings. The renowned Italian filmmaker Federiko Fellini shared, “You have to live spherically – in many directions. Never lose your childish enthusiasm – and things will come your way.” Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:2-4). Zen Buddhists speak of Shoshin, beginner’s mind, which is to look at every situation you’re placed in as if it’s the first time you are seeing it, like a child. Practicing a beginner’s mind or becoming like a child gives us a chance to connect to our innate clarity. We can see the unseen and know the unknown of any ordinary or extraordinary situation, from the most mundane to the most mystical.

The veil is lifted, the mists part, the spell is lifted, and we are open to possibility and limitless potentials that reside within the kingdom of heaven. We can experience the pull upward to ascend to our Psychic Heavens. We can envision through the power of our imagination a better future, one reflective of the highest good. We can access and exercise our free will and agency over our lives with grace. We have the power to transform ourselves, give birth to our unborn selves, and renew our Being without the constraints of our past burdens which have obstructed our view of the truth.

Affirmation

I am open to awakening and seeing the ocean of possibility before me and within me, and with childlike wonder I choose to live spherically, giving myself permission to take up space and expand in many directions.

5. Trust in Truth

Being open to possibility and to life does not mean being completely care-free and bumbling about in bliss. We cannot disconnect from that which grounds us, from that which beckons us downward to face the harsh hand life may deal us. We need solid ground to land on. We need a foundation to build upon and use as a launching pad for upward ascent into healing, growth, and transformation. That solid ground is truth. That foundation is truth.

No matter how far out there you are, regardless of how lost you may be, your truth is always there. Your truth is an inner north star guiding you out of the forest if you only look. Looking can feel like a daunting task. Parts of us may feel we aren’t worthy of the truth or that ignorance truly is bliss. Parts of us may hope that postponing the inevitable may actually prevent the inevitable from happening. But more often than not parts of us feel we can’t handle the truth. Seeing it will blind us. It will lead to total collapse. We can honor those parts that have felt the need up until now to shield us from the truth. We can gently reassure them and witness what it has been like for them to protect us in this way. Perhaps we can update them that preventing us from seeing the truth or moving away from what is has only made us more vulnerable and exposed to getting hurt. It will take time to build that trust in the truth and trust in our capacity to not only withstand it but also be set free by it.

Yes, the truth will set you free. This is not an overstatement or exaggeration. Seeing, accepting, and speaking the truth, especially to our own selves is the greatest act of love. We may need to sacrifice short-term comfort to grapple with it but we also get to truly know ourselves, who we are, and what we are made of. “No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell,” writes Carl Jung. Looking for truth leads us down a path that may feel like Hell but, now we know, that even (or especially) in our unique personal Underworld, rebirth is possible (if not essential). Perhaps we are being guided and rooted down so we can grow to heaven. So we can gain access to our Psychic Heavens, “a sacred space where we can find ourselves again and again,” as Joseph Campbell says. Perhaps then we will know what it feels like to be at home in our minds, bodies, relationships, and the world at large.

Affirmation:

I trust I can move towards my inner wounds, and see the truth that sets me free, reconnecting me to the sacred within and beyond my Being.

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Ready to heal from trauma and find your aliveness?