To Dare, Together: Truth Seeking in the Depths for Healing, Transformation, & Collective Liberation
Hello friend! I’m so grateful you’re here. I created this space for you and I to spend some time together. To Dare, Together. To seek the truth in the depths. To Dare to tune into the wisdom and pleasure of our bodies. To honor the places that hold pain and renewal. To Dare to descend and arise, transformed in the never ending cycle of death and regeneration. To reenchant the world around us from a more embodied and integrated place. To Dare to join in honest connection where liberation, love, equity, beauty, joy, gratitude, sensuality, dignity, and reverence for all life on earth is at the heart of our sacred space.
I am your host, Erin O'Brien, licensed psychotherapist in practice for over 20 years, intuitive healer, relationship counselor, and dare I say, witch, and if you are willing, your friend. Together we will descend into the mystery, into the exquisite darkness because true liberation starts with healing from the inside out. And it happens when we dare to go there, together.
Where are we going, you may ask? Well, we are delving into all the realms of our experience. We will move through our body, heart, mind, soul, spirit, original and chosen family, relationships, communities, cultures, dominant systems in society, intergenerational patterning, ancestral wounds and wisdom, and the great expanse of our collective. Because when we are together, we will seek to know what’s true. We will alchemize and transform, knowing that our fates are inevitably intertwined with one another. So let’s will it together.
My offering here will be a combination of solo explorations together, and deep dives with other like-hearted therapists, healers, intuitives, activists, magickal practitioners, artists, abolitionists, astrologers, visionaries, witches, and more. I want to support our journey of transformation by sharing practices that we can facilitate because ultimately we are our own wisest guide, healer, and teacher. Our body holds so much intelligence if we just slow down enough to listen. When we know how to keep silent and just be, just breathe, just listen, we know how to summon our greatest powers of transformation.
We will explore practices that focus on increasing our somatic awareness, trauma integration, and nervous system regulation. We will work with our shadow to illuminate what needs to be alchemized or released. We will dismantle our internalized systems of dominance and extraction so we resonate with the reciprocity and abundance of life. We will deepen our understanding of intersectionality and how our social location in the world shifts our experiences of power and disembodiment. We will strive to relate with others in ways that are embodied and promote connection, celebrate differentiation, and respectfully move through rupture or conflict so that all beings preserve their dignity. We will conjure the wisdom of our ancestors to strengthen our communal spaces. We will create rituals to attune with the cycles of nature, lunar rhythms, astrology, and the wheel of the year. We will do pathworkings and divination to deepen our relationship to our Higher Self, Spirit Team, Intuition, Magick, Soul’s purpose, and so much more.
We are all here on Earth right now. It’s time To Dare to take a stand for healing, transformation, and collective liberation. And the first step starts from within. Let’s take it together.
“As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul.” – unknown
To Dare, Together: Truth Seeking in the Depths for Healing, Transformation, & Collective Liberation
New Moon Reflection: Your Story Part One
What happens when we dare to slow down and truly look within?
In today’s episode, we move through a guided introspection journey that takes you through a comprehensive self-reflection process that mirrors what I offer in my healing work. We'll explore your social identities, family history, attachment patterns, and relationship to your body and experiences. Each question serves as an invitation to witness yourself with compassion, curiosity, and deeper consciousness. At the heart of any transformation process lies the practice of introspection—a deliberate slowing down to examine the conditioning, societal expectations, and systemic structures we've unconsciously absorbed throughout our lives. This internal work isn't separate from our collective liberation. As we heal individually, we become more capable of authentic connection with others. In a world designed to keep us divided, coming together in genuine relationship represents a profound act of resistance and hope.
The timing of this exploration is significant, occurring during Cancer season—a period astrologically aligned with emotional well-being, home, safety, and relationships. This season invites us to dive beneath the surface and examine the emotional foundations upon which we've built our lives. With Jupiter's supportive influence on this new moon, we're presented with a potent opportunity for expansion, wisdom, and growth. According to astrological insights, we find ourselves at a critical inflection point between June 2025 and June 2026, where collective choices may significantly impact how the tide turns. This awareness adds urgency to our personal healing work. The time is now to cultivate the awareness necessary to create more just and loving systems—beginning with ourselves and extending outward to all life on Earth.
Grab your journal, find a quiet space, and let's begin this journey of self-discovery together. Your healing matters—not just for you, but for all of us.
*Please know that this episode explores experiences of trauma, addiction, and suicidal thoughts and actions.
Recorded on 6/26/25
Hello and welcome back. Get ready to dare together, truth-seeking in the depths for healing, transformation and collective liberation. I'm your host, erin O'Brien, licensed psychotherapist in practice for over 20 years, intuitive healer, relationship counselor and, dare I say, witch. So I am really excited about today's episode because I'm going to guide a introspection process for you to do deeper self-understanding work. And yesterday was the new moon in Cancer.
Speaker 1:We are officially in Cancer season and Cancer is a beautiful time of looking at our emotional well-being, our home, our feelings of safety and security relationships. We also have a new moon, conjun. This new moon, which is already a very important time for setting intentions, new beginnings, planting seeds, all the things, is also getting some support for manifestation and growth and prosperity from Jupiter. There are also, you know, moments right now where I'm reflecting back on my first episode that I did, which was me planting seeds here, trying to create this space and this offering, and so I'm just reflecting back on the lunar cycle and the dark moon last month and where we are right now and I'm also really being with this moment of all that is going on right now around the globe on our beloved earth and all the mass harm, genocide, ecocide, domicide, all the things. And then I'm also having this moment of really recognizing the unity that people are experiencing as they connect and rise up and join together, because we are stronger together than when we are separated and divided. And that's all an illusion of the system trying to keep us apart so that they can profit, so that they can keep us fighting each other instead of joining together for the collective. Joining together for the collective, for our collective well-being, because it's not going to happen for one of us if it doesn't happen for all of us. And we are wise, we are on to the system and to the small majority who hoard all the things. We are also in a moment and I want to bring in something that I just listened to from another podcast and a person that I've been following for years.
Speaker 1:Their name is Renee Sills and they put out this amazing podcast and really a whole entire community called Embodied Astrology, and I love their work. They integrate activism and art and relationships and collective healing and transformation and liberation with astrology and embodiment. It's just a profoundly powerful community and what they put out is really remarkable, so a huge fan Again. They don't know me, but I am a huge follower of them. Anyway, I just listened to Renee's message to the collective about cancer season and that we are really astrologically in a profound moment between June of 2025 and June of 2026, that we as a collective have kind of this enormous inflection point where the tide can really turn and it can turn towards more of the same of violence and the legacy of colonization and caste systems and mass incarceration and the privatization of prison systems for the profit and the abuse of bodies for mass production. I mean, it's just there's a lot right, there's a lot All the harms done to the living systems that we depend on for our survival here, survival here and you know the message was very profound around it can go in that direction or or we can really unite and come together as a collective and join forces because ultimately, the real power resides with us and the choices that we make, where we can make them. And it was a very inspiring podcast to listen to. So I'm riding that wave and want to pull forth some of that message, because what we do over the next year is really going to define the next few decades and the next two centuries, according to astrology, which I tend to really want to learn more about and, again, humble, student learning more. And so, okay, all that to say. I just went off on a whole thing.
Speaker 1:But for today, what I really want to bring in is an offering to help do my part. And what I feel really called to do in this space is encourage our healing from the inside out. And what does healing require? It requires slowing down and introspection and self-reflection and integration. How many more words can I say? But it really does invite us to dismantle all of the conditioning, all of the systems that we absorb right From the moment that we are born. We're absorbing information, messages, societal, societal expectations, dominant structures, all the things. And so my work here, my personal work, my work that I want to bring in for the collective, for anyone who is listening I don't know how many people that is maybe just a few. How many people that are? That is maybe just a few. But that's more than enough to support your journey, our journey of not just healing and integrating and doing our shadow work, but looking at how we're positioned in the larger system, what our context is, the relationships that shaped us and form us, because we transform in the context of relationships. That's where, in my perspective as a relationship therapist. I marvel at that. I'm in awe of watching the people I work with heal from the inside out and in the between spaces. It is sacred, and so that's why I really love doing relationship focused work in my practice.
Speaker 1:So what I'm going to guide you through today is a series of prompts and this is part of what I have my relationship clients, my couples, my polycules, my family systems that come to work with me to heal and transform their relational dynamics and their intra-psychic experiences, because it's both internal work and also relational work. It's both. So these are some of the guides that I give the folks I work with. You know, more formally it's sort of known as questionnaires or an intake process, but I really like to kind of reclaim them and rename them, as these are life journey, reflection experiences, and you can journal as I kind of go through this process. I'm going to likely knowing me.
Speaker 1:I'm going to kind of go off on expanding different prompts and why I have included it and how it can be useful and how you can use it to expand your self-awareness and your consciousness, because that's what we're here to do, right, and I'm going to move us through this here. You know, I know in the last episode that I put out, I really went into my personal, some of my personal story. So I like to lead with that because I think it's important that if I'm going to, you know, want you to walk down a path of self-awareness and understanding that I'm walking right alongside you, I'm doing it too. So let's move into it, shall we? We're going to just dive right in here into the life journey reflection now, and it's going to cover a lot of ground. I'm not sure if this is going to end up being a, you know, several part series here, so we'll just see how it goes and how much I talk.
Speaker 1:So if you want to get a journal, if you want to just kind of lay down and be curious and kind of go inward and invite your higher self or your spirit team or your innate wise mind and deeper intelligence to join you now as I move through these prompts, you can engage in any way you want. This is up to you. So we're going to start with your name and your date of birth and also your place of birth, and here's why, if you are someone interested in astrology and the lens that that has to offer to enhance your self-understanding, then your time of birth, your place of birth, will enable you to determine your natal chart, which is your entire, you know, 12 houses, all the signs where they fall at the point with which you were born. This can be really useful information. It can help you understand your sun sign, your moon sign, your rising sign, your ascendant ruler, all the things. And I also want to acknowledge that it is an actual privilege to know these details of your birth and you might not have access to that part of your birth story. So I want to name that, and if you're not into astrology, no biggie, just you know you can leave it, leave it right.
Speaker 1:Here we're also going to explore place, the place where you were born right. Whose lands were you born on or that you currently life forms right. What they built was much more than the uninhabited wilderness that the European colonizers of the time named in the history books. They had just a gorgeous, vibrant way of being in collective right relationship with each other and the land right. Relationship with each other and the land right. There's a really beautiful book by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz called An Indigenous People's History of the United States, and I'm just going to quote them here. Indigenous peoples had occupied and shaped every part of the Americas, established extensive trade networks and roads, and were sustaining their population by adapting to specific natural environments. Right, they were brilliant in how they were able to do this. And then, of course, when the of capitalism and the destruction of crops and livestock as a weapon to exterminate indigenous people and cultures. And we know that that's in our history. It's not, uh, widely taught, but it's there if you seek to learn about this part of our history here on Turtle Island, right?
Speaker 1:So I'm going to move us now into exploring social location and I'm going to name a range of key social identities or aspects of yourself. And, as I do, I want you to allow yourself to reflect on your relationship to that identity. What do you notice about that part of yourself? What is the body sensation, the memory, the thought or emotion you experience? Reflect on a significant experience that you have had in relation to that aspect of you. How does the social world around you typically respond to you based on that identity? Right? What did you learn about the group of people that belong to that identity?
Speaker 1:So we're going to first move into racial identity and how you personally identify in terms of race, which is a social construct, and it's connected to pigmentocracy, which is valuing lighter skin bodied folks over darker skin bodied folks. And this occurs all over the globe in many different ways, and it's a systematic way of devaluing and dehumanizing darker skin-bodied folks over lighter skin-bodied folks. And so I want you to just tune into your relationship to those experiences and be with that and be with that. Be with the way that you're able to move through the world If you are a lighter skinned or white bodied presenting person, how you're able to walk into a store with ease and a sense of belonging and safety and not for one moment feel like you need to brace yourself for an intrusive question of can I help you? Subtext you don't belong here, you don't look like you can afford this. Are you going to steal something? Right? That's what darker skin bodied folks experience all of the racism, all of the dehumanization that we're all we all absorb unconsciously. It's in our system, so it gets inside of us, right? So just tune into that.
Speaker 1:I'm going to move now into ethnicity, cultural identity, and I'm also holding that these are not necessarily one dimensional identities. Lots of folks right have multicultural identities, multiracial identities, multi-ethnic experiences and identities. So what are your experiences there related to your cultural identity and maybe the impact of white supremacy and caste systems that exist around the globe and certainly here in North America and the United States? You likely, when your ancestors and maybe recent generations immigrated here, if they had the privilege to immigrate versus or disassociate themselves from their own cultural experiences and traditions in order to assimilate and integrate into America and white supremacy privileges, white skin over darker skin, and so that kind of became the ultimate group that we joined. So my folks, my ancestors from Ireland, relinquished their traditions, cultures, earth-based connections. Paganism and I know Catholicism certainly is deep in the rivers and roots of my Irish ancestors and you know more broadly European ancestors. But they had a choice, a difficult choice certainly to be a part of the privileged part of the caste system. They had to denounce their roots, they had to conform, and that creates great harm to people.
Speaker 1:Okay, I just went off on a whole thing. This is going to end up being a couple part series, I'm sure. All right, moving now into a sexual identity or orientation. And so take a moment and reflect on the evolution of this, the spectrum or the fluidity of your relationship to this identity. How has it shifted and changed over time? If it has, if it has and you know I want to name here that for folks that have a, who identify more in the queer spectrum and when I say queer I mean I kind of really use this as a wide umbrella term which encompasses both sexual identity, sexual orientation, gender identity and also relationship orientation and identity which refers to whether you feel like you are a monogamous person or non-monogamous, or poly, or maybe kinky, or maybe you're fluid and you don't really feel like you fall into a particular identity. So I kind of when I say queer, I'm kind of holding all identities and experiences that fall under this umbrella, outside of cisgender, hetero, monogamous types of ways of being in relationship to others and to yourself, right. So just reflect on those areas for you and your coming out process If you do identify as queer or non-monogamous or trans or non-binary or gender non-conforming right, because it does require a coming out process along the way, and sometimes coming out happens on the daily because you move through the world and people make assumptions and map on projections onto who you are and you have to make that decision. Do I claim who I am and be seen and be visible, or or do I not? And also there is privilege around visibility and not, so there's layers here Moving along into socioeconomic identity, class identity, experience.
Speaker 1:How has this evolved? Have you had class mobility? Have you had movement from having access to less access or losing access? Right? What has your experience been there? You know, as we know, there is enormous, enormous wealth gaps and wealth disparity around the globe and, in particular, in the United States, with a very small, small like 1% really owning the majority, and so we're taught to believe, right now, that there isn't enough, right, there isn't enough to go around.
Speaker 1:We are. You know, there's a food crisis and a housing crisis and all the things, and the truth is the earth is so abundant and there is enormous prosperity and more than enough to go around to feed everyone, to house everyone, right, and so we've been told a lie which creates fighting amongst the masses. Us, right? We, the people, we are fighting. We believe we're fighting for jobs, we're fighting for food, we're fighting for access. You know, our neighbor isn't to be trusted, all the things. And it's just not true, our, our nature that shows up when we are in a crisis, right, when there are crises happening around us, we join together, we share, we take care of each other, these care communities, these liberation practices, the collective well-being the movement towards, we will care for each other. That is in us, that is who we are, and so I just went off on a whole other thing.
Speaker 1:So, reflect on your class experience, your relationship to access, your relationship to money, your family's relationship. What did you learn as a little one? How did people talk about money? How do people talk about people who had money or didn't have money? Right, and just tune into that, because there is definitely deep intersection around race and culture that have to do with our understanding and our unconscious biases around why people have wealth and why people do not. Right, and it's a lie.
Speaker 1:Okay, moving along into spiritual identity, faith traditions that you belong to or feel a part of, religious identities or affiliations, and just feel into that, feel into you know the family that you were born into. What were their spiritual or religious beliefs? How is faith tradition interwoven into your cultural identity or experience, right? Just kind of noticing the interplay of those experiences. What were your family's philosophy or spiritual ideas, right? What happens when we die? Where were we when we were waiting to be born? And just notice what comes up there and notice your own evolution of what you believe now and maybe you're still seeking Maybe you're not sure, and that's okay too right the Unitarian Universalist faith tradition, which is one that I really like this way that they put this idea that there's a mountain and at the top of the mountain is the divine right, the universe, the creator, the spirit, the higher power, whatever deity, deities, and there are many paths up that mountain for spiritual connection, spiritual enlightenment, whatever way you want to think about it, connecting to the divine.
Speaker 1:And there are many paths for a reason and they all matter and have something to contribute to the collective and it's through respecting that we're all on our own path. Right, my path of spirituality is paganism more broadly and more specifically the Western magical tradition, druid craft, which is the kind of interplay of druid practices, the ancient Celt practices and Wiccan practices. So, moving along into ability, your felt sense in your body around your ability status, and this can be, you know, related to whether you feel you are neurodivergent, neuro expansive, neuro spicy, all the ways that we can name this. Moving into your physical realm, your physical ability, how you identify there, also related to your mind, your mental health, your neurobiology, all of those pieces and how you identify around ability and how the social world perceives you or subjugates you based on your ability, right, and I want to let you kind of spend time with all these different places. You can certainly just pause this, do whatever you want to be with this and list any other ones that are important to you that I have not named here.
Speaker 1:So now we're going to shift into your genogram or your family tree, and this can include the family that raised you, regardless of your genetic or blood relation to these people. And then I want you to also contemplate your family, going back a few generations. So move into right, the like trusted adults sometimes those are your parents who are raising you and then move up a generation into the, the grands right, the grandparents or or elders or parental siblings and you know I want to move into non-binary, inclusive language here. So whatever terms resonate with you right, go, go with what feels true and inclusive to your family story, moving up another generation into the great grands right, great grandparents. And if you want to move a generation even back to the great greats, you know, I know for me, my great grandmother, maggie, came here from Ireland when she was 16 and married my great-grandfather, who had already been. His family had already immigrated, I think earlier. I think he was actually maybe born here, but just contemplate some of that.
Speaker 1:Where did they live? What was their social, cultural context? What were their faith traditions that came with them or that they had to abandon? What were their cultural communal traditions? What were their strengths and struggles? What was their relationship to substances, to coping, to class, to access? What was their experience related to ability, trauma, all those pieces, just kind of. And if you want, you can map out a family tree and there's lots of resources you can look up online. If you you know Google family tree, it'll lay out different maps, different ways of doing this, but this can be such a foundational way to really map out your intergenerational patterns. You can look at what were communication styles like how did they deal with conflict? Did they talk about emotions? Right, you can really just be curious.
Speaker 1:What were the stories that you heard from your grandparents or the elders of your family? I want to name, of course, it is a privilege to both have access to those stories access to those stories to be able to map out your recent ancestors, the generations before you and people whose ancestors were stolen and enslaved and forcibly brought here to Turtle Island to the United States, don't have access to those stories, and so I want to name that, and I also want to name the deep resilience and beauty and power and magic within those people, those communities, because even though maybe their specific lineages or their specific stories were stolen or decimated, they still found ways of remembering and knowing and the story keepers, the elders, and the ways that they were able to hold on to those memories and experiences and beloveds in their community. So there's there's there's a lot there, right, there's, there's complexity. So we're now going to move a bit into your specific immediate family and I'm going to go over some questions that have to do with your very early history, and again, there's privilege in knowing pieces of this To your knowledge.
Speaker 1:Were you a planned baby? Do you know what life was like when you were in utero? Were your caregivers or the adults that were a part of your family joyfully awaiting your birth? Or were they under-resourced, overwhelmed, unprepared dealing with complexity and trauma or systemic oppression, right, what were their experiences? What was the circumstance with which you were conceived? So, just kind of getting at some of those early pieces.
Speaker 1:What kind of baby, toddler or young child were you based on the stories that you've been told? Do you have an early memory that confirms these stories? Now, memory, right, there's this. There's an awareness in infant mental health and child development that narrative memory, which requires more of the prefrontal cortex, doesn't fully come online. The old wisdom was till about six years old. We now have a deeper understanding that as young as three people can have some narrative memory, and maybe even a bit earlier. But here's the important piece Our body holds a lot of unconscious, visceral memory and experience, and so we refer to this as like the pre-verbal. Before a child can really speak, they have an understanding, and so this is also before sort of narrative memory. So you can also go by like what was your felt sense, right of what kind of little being you were?
Speaker 1:Who were your primary caregivers when you were growing up? What were their relationships to you? What was your overall experience of them? Who did you feel closest to and why? Aside from raising you, what else filled their time? Did they have occupations, passions, activism, spirituality, education, community, care of elders? What else was filling their time? Did you have siblings or other little children that were being raised alongside you? If you had siblings, what is the birth order right? Where are you in the birth order of how your family was created? Are you the oldest, are you the youngest? Are you an only child? What was your overall experience of both your siblings and any other little children being raised alongside you in the home, maybe cousins, maybe other family members that your trusted adults were raising? Did any member of your family experience alcoholism, substance abuse, addiction, medical issues, mental health struggles or trauma life events that were enormously overwhelming? And I define trauma as too much, too fast, too soon for us to integrate, for us to process right Things that are life-threatening, whether that's perceived things that are life-threatening, whether that's perceived or actual life-threatening events. And if these experiences happened to your original family, how did they process it? How did they cope with it? How was it talked about? Was it talked about? What was your access to being able to integrate these experiences as a family?
Speaker 1:When you expressed a need, a feeling, a thought or a desire as a child, how did your caregivers respond to you? How were your emotions expressed in your home? What was the emotional climate, so to speak? And when you think about emotions. Let yourself kind of distinguish among them. What about anger, sadness, joy, excitement, guilt, loneliness, shame, fear, boredom, jealousy? How are those emotions expressed and responded to? What did you learn about them? There's this term used in the relational research. It's this idea of meta emotion. How do you think about your emotions, right? What's this idea of meta emotion? How do you think about your emotions, right? What's your sort of philosophy about emotions? And these come from our original family and from the larger community and society, the context, right, that we're all breathing and absorbing and internalizing from the minute we're earth side.
Speaker 1:When you were upset as a child, what would you do? Who would comfort you and in what ways? Were you held? Did someone come along and scoop you up and hold you close? Were you talked to in a way that told you that you shouldn't have those feelings? Did your caregiver try to quickly solve the emotional issue so that you weren't feeling it anymore? And so then they didn't have to feel it anymore, right?
Speaker 1:How was conflict addressed between the adults in your home, in your community? What did you observe? What did you see? What did discipline look like between adult and child? And the actual definition of the word discipline is to teach. That's at the heart of discipline. And so how did your trusted adults teach you about the world, teach you about your place in the world, in the home, right? What did they teach you when you made a mistake, when you weren't able to follow a rule because you're a kid? What did that look like? How were siblings encouraged to interact? Look like how are siblings encouraged to interact and there's a lot here If you were raised with other little children, whether they're your siblings or cousins or some other relation, how siblings are encouraged to interact is fully dictated by the adults.
Speaker 1:I can't say how many times I hear stories and experiences and so much pain around really difficult sibling relationships and how the adults really created and encouraged division and competition and scarcity between the children, among the children, or projected things onto the children. I mean there's a lot of literature in family systems and contextual theories about roles that children get cast in in, quote-unquote, you know, dysfunctional family systems. I like to refer to it as family systems that are holding a lot of complexity and unconscious patterning and these roles typically have to do with really the parents and the adults and how they designate children in these very confining, binary, one-dimensional roles. In three words, how would you describe yourself as a child, as a teenager? Do any of these common family roles resonate with you? And I'm going to name some the mediator or peacemaker, the mascot or clown yes. The lost child or invisible child. The parentified child. The scapegoat, the golden child or hero, the enabler or caretaker, the identified patient quote unquote. These are just to name a few. And think about that. And in some families maybe you held multiple roles. I know there's some awareness of families where there is an only child. That only child receives a lot of projections from the adults One minute they're the scapegoat, the next minute they're the caretaker, the next minute they're the hero, and so that can be incredibly confusing and disorienting.
Speaker 1:Describe your overall health during childhood. How were illnesses or injuries treated? What about emotional and mental health needs? So now we're going to move into looking at attachment. So how our primary caregivers respond to our needs as children creates an imprint for how we experience relationships throughout our lives. And even though this imprint is impactful, attachment styles aren't fixed. That's my perspective and the perspective of a lot of more recent research on interpersonal neurobiology and attachment science. These styles are not fixed and aren't generalized across all of our relationships. The context of the relationship is just as important to shaping our attachment as the relationship itself.
Speaker 1:So with one close, intimate other, you might have attachment strategies and experiences to distress that look one way. Maybe you reach for that person, maybe you need more connection, more contact. And in another relationship, with another intimate other, you might actually experience different kinds of attachment strategies. Maybe you lean away from the relationship, maybe you withdraw a bit, maybe you tend to minimize the emotional impact or you kind of pull away from connection. So these are fluid and, yes, we are heavily shaped by our primary caregivers. That is when our nervous system is really really, just really influenced and impacted by those experiences. So there is hope because neuroplasticity the brain can change new. The neurons that fire together, wire together. So there's so much hope around healing and what is possible in relationships that can provide more safety, more security, more exploration and freedom, because we need it all.
Speaker 1:Okay. So I'm going to go over a couple statements and I want you to just kind of reflect on what feels most true right now, just right now. This is just a little snapshot. So which of the below statements resonates most with how you tend to feel in close relationships right now. So this is A. Letter A I am comfortable with intimacy and can balance dependence and independence in relationships. Okay, letter B I tend to crave intimacy and can feel overly dependent and maybe even a little demanding in relationships. When there is not enough, I can get really scared of being abandoned or left or being too much, and I can protest as sort of an anticipatory response to separation. Okay, next letter is C.
Speaker 1:I tend to have a strong sense of self-sufficiency. I know that, at the end of the day, I can really only trust myself to be there for me, and so I might often appear a bit detached. I might tend to dismiss the emotional needs of the people close to me because I kind of feel like, hey, I figured it out, why can't you? I figured out how to take care of my needs or to need very little. Why can't you figure it out? Why are you so needy of me? Ugh, letter D I desire close relationships and fear vulnerability.
Speaker 1:Fear vulnerability. I may behave unpredictably in relationships because I have a deep internal conflict between my desire for closeness and my overwhelming fear of it. And here's why why, in past important relationships, most definitely with my caregivers, I experienced profound inner conflict, when I was terrified, my attachment system reached for my person, my trusted other, the person that I'm attached to. Maybe it was my parent, maybe it was some trusted adult, but everything in my attachment system teaches me. I'm literally wired to reach for my safe person, my protector, the one I'm utterly dependent on as a baby, as a toddler, as a child. So when I'm scared or when I'm in distress, or when I'm upset, my body literally is compelled to reach for that person. It's my biology. However, here is my enormous paradox what if the very person I'm reaching for for survival system, my amygdala, the part of my brain that responds to threat, to try to keep me in, to let me survive, right? What if I am literally in a moment where, just as I'm pushing on the gas to move towards my safe person, I have to slam on the brake because that safe person is also abusing me, right? So that is really, really disorienting and disorganizing for a person, for a little one. So spend a little time with that. See which one resonates. Maybe more than one does. That's fine too.
Speaker 1:We're moving now into your body. How would you describe your overall health and wellness right now? How has it changed over time? How has it changed over time? List any medical experiences that you've had conditions, surgeries, illnesses and your age. Any notable medications that you've had to take previously or that you are currently taking.
Speaker 1:What is your relationship to your body and your health and your well-being? How do you nourish your body? What foods do you gravitate towards? What is your relationship to movement right, to letting your body move and experience functional exercise for the longevity of your body? Because it takes you places, it moves you around the earth. It's your home. How do you care for it? How do you tend to your body's need for? What does your sleep look like? What does your experience of recovery look like? This matters. How many hours of sleep do you condition? How do you feel in your body? When is it hard to be embodied right? When do you notice that your body is trying to signal something to you? How responsive are you to listening to your body's cues and signals?
Speaker 1:And since we are all about exploring relationships, we're going to shift a bit into your sense of self and your relationship to yourself. What parts of you do you value most? What parts of yourself do you value least? How do you handle when you make mistakes or feel disappointed in yourself. What have you been told are your positive qualities or gifts or a unique purpose here? Does that feel true to you? And I know that I've talked about attachment and interpersonal neurobiology and relationships, and and so we're going to shift a bit into experiences of trauma and loss and your relationship to those experiences. If you are willing, let yourself open up and consider some of these following questions. Consider some of these following questions.
Speaker 1:Have you ever experienced significant loss of a loved one, of a beloved, of a family member, friend, lover, partner, child, person in your close inner circle? A loss can involve separation or death. Loss can be significant when we are separated significant when we are separated, just as in the experience of separation through a person leaving their body and transitioning and not being in the physical realm right, the physical realm right. As a child, did you ever experience unwanted touching or situations that made you feel uncomfortable? Did you ever experience abuse that was sexual? How old were you and by whom? And was it ongoing? These elements matter to your story and to your healing and to your self-understanding, to your relationship to that inner child how you're able to acknowledge what happened to that little child, right.
Speaker 1:Have you ever experienced a traumatic event or ongoing events and experiences? What was the nature of the experience and how old were you when it occurred? And I will continue soon for our body and brain and being to fully integrate in real time. And so it gets held as a separate experience, one that is unprocessed and unintegrated because it overwhelms us and we can't process it fully. And what enables us to deeply process these kinds of experiences is having a safe and supportive and believing, trusted other. And when you're a child, that is a trusted adult who believes you right, who comforts you and protects you. And when you're an adult or an older child, it's the same. It's having trusted others friends, family, partners, intimate others, be able to believe you and support you and care about what happened to you and deeply listen when you want to share.
Speaker 1:As a child or teen, have you ever experienced physical harm or abuse to your body? Have you ever experienced someone using words, threats, bullying or intimidation that caused you emotional or psychological harm or impact? Have you ever been deprived or neglected of essential resources like food protection, education, emotional connection or physical contact? Emotional connection or physical contact these are primary, essential experiences that we require as humans. It's our human right and, of course, there is deep context and systems of power that prevent and create barriers for humans and families and children to have access to these essential life-giving resources. So of course there's that. Have you ever experienced any of what I just named as an adult? And so I'll name it again have you ever experienced physical harm or abuse to your body as an adult? Have you ever experienced someone using words, threats, bullying or intimidation that caused you emotional or psychological harm? Have you ever been deprived or neglected of essential resources like food protection, education, money, emotional connection, physical contact? Right? How did you learn to cope with these experiences? We are all human and being alive on earth means we are going to encounter trauma and suffering and hardship and adversity and systemic oppression and domination and the impact of all of that right. So how do you take care of you? What did you learn? What did the people around you do right? Have you ever been in therapy or any other healing modality to address these experiences, to create sacred space for yourself to integrate and heal and process?
Speaker 1:Have you ever felt uncomfortable with your relationship to different ways of coping, such as alcohol or substances? Have you ever felt uncomfortable with your relationship to alcohol or substances. Has a loved one or trusted other ever expressed concern? If so, how did you respond to that? What came up in you, right, have you ever felt uncomfortable with how you cope with difficult emotions or stress or physical pain by using substances or excessive exercising or food, gambling, shopping, overworking, staying really busy or intensity in relationships with others to manage these feelings? Have you ever noticed this about yourself? Have you ever received therapy or treatment for anything related to alcohol or substances, or disordered eating patterns or excessive exercise, sex or love process addictions, violence or abuse towards others, trauma or PTSD or complex developmental PTSD or anything else not mentioned here? Have you had any thoughts of wanting to harm your life, not be here anymore? Have you ever attempted to not be here? Have you ever thought about what it would be like if an accident happened and you just were gone? Have you ever attempted or seriously considered at any point in your life taking your life? If so, what was the support that you received? Who did you turn to? What happened? Did you tell anyone? Have you ever experienced any kind of hospitalization related to your mental well-being or your relationship to safety in your body and not wanting to stay in your body, not wanting to be here alive on earth? If so, where and when did that hospitalization happen?
Speaker 1:And I'm asking really, really deep and tender questions. Tender questions, and it's intentional, because we don't often turn inward and reflect and ask ourselves these questions and really answer right To have that kind of internal dialogue with ourselves. I mean, these questions can come up in conversation with other people and also, clearly, in therapy or other healing, transformational modalities and practices. And so, if you're listening, I recognize that I am naming really tender things, things we don't talk about enough as a culture, things, things we don't talk about enough as a culture, and they're important. Thank you so much for your time, for your attention, for staying with me, and I can't wait to be with you again soon. I'm your host, erin O'Brien, licensed psychotherapist in practice for over 20 years, intuitive healer, relationship counselor and, dare I say, witch. As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul. Bye for now, bye.
