Edy Nathan's Blog

The Therapy Journey & The Hidden Agenda

Written by Edy Nathan on 02/14/2011 – 3:01 pm -

“I don’t remember anything. Can you please help me to remember. It is all a blank. I feel like I know something. I feel it in my body. An internal knowing haunts me to the point that at times I cannot sleep. I know that something went terribly wrong a long time ago. I cannot place it. There is not a face attached to the pain. I do not have a voice attached to the ugliness that is embedded in my soul. Yet, I can tell you that at times it tastes salty, like blood, and at other times it smells like someone who has not showered in a very long time. I can tell you that relationships are very difficult for me. There is an insidious feeling that won’t rest, knocking, knocking, knocking at the internal emotions held within for so long. I cannot rest. I cannot share anything. I feel pretty worthless. Can you help me to remember?”

She cried to me as she spoke, sharing her story and making me a witness to a piece of her that she cannot even access. It gnaws at her and creates a jagged edge in her heart.

What can I say to help? How can she access the hidden memories that have abandoned her as a means to protect her, really not meant to hurt her at all.

I listen. I sit with her. I acknowledge her pain. I feel her tears. I begin to help her help herself  by remembering those parts of her life that were good. Supporting her need to  remember those times in her life when she felt content. We need to find safety, either in her memory banks or created in the therapeutic and sacred space. The space is defined by 4 walls and a room that has heard it all and remains silent. This will take time. We must journey together, telling the amnesia demon that we are more powerful than it understands and we will ultimately win.

The conversation begins. A deathing takes place. A birthing emerges. The birth of a memory allows the death of amnesia. Not unlike Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, who held the answers to her survival in her ruby slippers, yet needed to go through the obstacles and tests, to finally be able to go home- survivors, by their very nature hold the ruby slippers, even when they are unaware of the existence of the slippers.

Tags: abuse, amnesia, edy nathan, Psychotherapy, trauma
Posted in Child Abuse, Wizard of Oz Series | No Comments »

Survivorship – Childhood Trauma – The Real Deal

Written by Edy Nathan on 02/14/2011 – 2:49 pm -

We use the word “survivor” to embody having been able to live through some horrific circumstance: survived the holocaust, survived the Oklahoma City bombing, survived abuse of any kind, survived the floods in the South. The trauma that results in being a survivor is potentially long-lasting and changes the “survivor” forever.

Grief Meditations

There is no known template for how a survivor moves back into the world they knew before the traumatic personal devastation occurred. What we do know is that there is a loss of sense of self. The survivor cries out, either internally or externally, to retrieve that which is known and to replace the foreign territory with some calming, known remedy. Instinctually, we want a quick fix. We want to feel better and knock out the pain of the memories. The coping methods vary from survivor to survivor, with some reaching out to friends and family, others escaping through drugs and/or alcohol, some by becoming more private or introverted.

Yet, what happens if the survivor is a child, and does not have any skilled coping mechanisms? How do they grow up as a survivor? How have they remained hidden, and in that hiding, framed the very person they embody? How does it affect their ability to trust, their understanding of intimacy, and their ability to fully develop into a person who feels whole?

Their survivorship frames who they become, and affects whether they are able to have healthy relationships, be successful in a job, feel self-confidence, and just be comfortable in their own skin. We have many children who are survivors in our culture. They are now coming of age in a time where there is instability and fear. The culture mirrors what they feel. What they feel is real. It is important to help the survivors learn to change their perspectives, reorganizing the internal strategies of hiding and allowing them to be our teachers. They need a role that enables them to take that which hurt them and turn it into a model for survival. Their lives create the template of how they got in touch with their Lion of Courage.

We have all been children, and we have all survived. Perhaps it is time that we emerged into adulthood as being curious about the other and being teachers to all. Learning from others gives us a sense of knowing that we do not need to have all the answers. This gives birth to the template for healing and survivorship.

Grief Meditations

Tags: abuse, Child Abuse, childhood trauma
Posted in Child Abuse, Psychotherapy | 2 Comments »

Wizard of Oz Series, Part 1 – Leaving The Home of Abuse

Written by Edy Nathan on 02/03/2011 – 12:10 pm -

“The Wizard of Oz”, is an enticing and long lasting story that encapsulates so much about life. Join me in a series of weekly blogs that root themselves in the Zen of this story while you grasp a greater understanding of you and your relationship to your soul’s journey.  Each week a different aspect of the relationship this tale has with interpersonal and emotional issues will be delved into.

Have you ever felt like you wanted to run away? Run from your family of origin, run from your work, run  from the internal voices that push you to try harder, do better or even to give up?

That is what Dorothy did at the very beginning of her journey into her Dark Night of the Soul, as she ran from her Auntie’s house with the definitive hope that someplace has got to be better than the place she has found herself in.

What is it that makes us feel that the home we know is no place for us to be. What pushes us to run away in the hope that another path or another facsimile of a home will take away the internal pain we are running from?

In the home where abuse was experienced by you as a child, no matter what type of abuse you experienced, I am sure you thought that as soon as you got out of there all  the wounds would heal—you would finally find safety.  Then, somewhere along the path of life, you realize that the haunting moments of that home, cannot simply be wiped out because of your leave-taking.

The emotional and physical scarring that took place erupts throughout your life looking like anger, fear or with you embodying the very role you ran from, the abuser. The eruption is like a volcano that lays dormant for years, building its internal steam until it erupts, at first a little bit of the eruption takes place and then there is an internal trigger that may come from left field yet affects your very being.

In trying to understand why this is happening to you, at this time in your life, you might begin to look around taking note of the people around you, what your professional life is like,  who you have relationships with and how you are living.

• Are there any parts of your life’s baskets that remind you of the home of your youth?
• Does your current environment feel as if it is out of control?
• Are you out of control?

Time to take a breath. Be mindful that each breath you take allows you to feel “you” and begin the journey to the internal home that you want to create. You have the ability to create that sense of safety and security when you dialogue with you, the adult, and you, the child.

The child that lives deep inside of you and has never left you.

Once you begin this dialogue between these two very integral parts of you, the sense of loss, confusion and angst will begin to have a voice.

Once you meet the voice you will be on your way to the ownership of wearing the ruby slippers.

Once you try them on, feeling their power, the abuse of the past will not need to continue to erupt in the present.

Tags: abuse, life
Posted in Child Abuse, Psychotherapy, Wizard of Oz Series | 2 Comments »