I am honoured to be a Featured Teacher on Insight Timer's home page for the upcoming week. I love this app and am so proud to be part of a global community of teachers, producing – mostly free – content for the 26 million meditators who use Insight Timer across the globe.
If you would like to try one of my breathwork practices, mindfulness, self-compassion or IFS meditations, or guided-imagery practices, check out my collection at: insighttimer.com/danrobertstherapy
Love ❤️
Dan
Another satisfied student after taking my new Premium Audio Course for Insight Timer – Healing from Childhood Trauma with IFS & Self-Compassion. Over 800 students have already taken the course and found it powerful and healing, giving it consistently positive feedback like this.
If you sign up today you will learn about child development, temperament, core developmental needs, schemas and the IFS model of internal parts, how to work with your Inner Critic, what we mean by childhood trauma and neglect – as well as how to heal from these painful experiences using powerful techniques drawn from schema therapy, compassion-focused therapy, mindful self-compassion and internal family systems.
The course is free if you become a Member Plus Supporter. This costs just $60 for 12 months of high-quality content like this on the Insight Timer app from me and thousands of other leading teachers.
Try it now by visiting my Insight Timer collection or clicking on the button below.
I hope you find it insightful and healing.
Love ❤️
Dan
Image by Zoltan Tasi
There is a Swedish term, maskrosbarn, which means ‘dandelion child’. The Swedes have long believed that a proportion of kids were like dandelions – they were hardy, resilient and could grow anywhere. Just as dandelions can grow in lawns, parks or cracks in the pavement, so these unusually robust children can manage in any family, even if from the outside they look like tough environments in which to grow up.
Psychologists Bruce J Ellis and W Thomas Boyce, when studying genetics and child development, coined a new term in 2005: orkidebarn, meaning ‘orchid child’. Unlike their hardier counterparts, orchid children are – like the flower – highly sensitive, needing just the right environment to flourish. If the parenting/family dynamic is not what they need, orchids struggle mentally and physically, and can go on to suffer from long-term mental-health problems.
In new research, Dr Francesca Lionetti and colleagues identify a third category: tulips. These are medium-sensitivity children, somewhere between dandelions and orchids. The authors write that in their study of 901 healthy adults, 31 per cent were orchids, 29 per cent dandelions and 40 per cent tulips. These numbers vary from study to study, but what is clear is that some children are born with highly sensitive temperaments (also known as Highly Sensitive Persons), with less-sensitive children at the other end of the scale, and medium-sensitive in the middle. This temperamental sensitivity, or lack of it, stays with people into adulthood.
Why does this matter? As I am always telling my clients, your temperament is crucial because it shapes you from the moment of your birth (and probably before that, in the womb). It is a combination of nature and nurture – the genetic inheritance you received from your parents combined with early parenting, attachment with your primary caregivers, family dynamics, and so on. If you were born a dandelion, you would have been pretty thick-skinned as a child, managing to cope even in high-conflict, volatile or otherwise less-than-ideal family environments.
But if you were an orchid, the same families would have been far too much for you, causing you persistent stress which would, in turn, have affected your developing brain. We know, for example, that high levels of the stress hormone cortisol negatively impact brain development, starting in the womb. This can harm a tiny baby’s growing brain, affecting its shape, size and connectivity.
Put simply: if you were an orchid in a stressful, chaotic or otherwise dysfunctional family, you would have suffered. And, very sadly, that suffering might have continued throughout your life – Dr Boyce writes that orchids account for a disproportionately high percentage of every society’s physical and mental-health problems. That’s because your highly sensitive temperament made you unusually vulnerable to things going wrong at every level of your mind-body system.
If you – like me and most of my clients – are an orchid, this may all seem a bit depressing. You were born with a highly sensitive temperament, your family wasn’t great, so then you suffer for life, right? Wrong. In fact, research also shows that, given the right care, orchid children thrive. They do better educationally, financially and in every other way than dandelions. Just like their horticultural namesakes, these kids can bloom into the most beautiful adults, they just need a little care, the right emotional nutrients, and some time.
There are two take-home points here. First, your temperament is key, whether you are an orchid, tulip or dandelion. It plays a huge part in making you, you. It is mostly inherited, but is profoundly affected by your environment.
Second, none of this is inherently good or bad. Sensitivity is an inherited neural – and neutral – trait. Just like being short or tall, having green eyes or brown, it’s something you are born with. But unlike your eye colour, it can change because of your environment and throughout your lifetime. And the problems that high sensitivity makes you vulnerable to can be mitigated by all the usual methods of healing and change – reading mental-health blogs like this one, self-help books, podcasts, therapy, meditation, yoga, loving relationships and all the other good stuff I am always writing about.
I hope you find these ideas eye-opening. If you would like to know more, try Dr Boyce’s book: The Orchid and the Dandelion: Why Sensitive People Struggle and How All Can Thrive. It’s a great read and has helped shaped my thinking around temperament and child development.
Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️
Dan
Image by Wes Hicks
Have you listened to my new Premium Audio Course for Insight Timer yet – Healing from Childhood Trauma with IFS & Self-Compassion? Over 600 students have already taken the course and found it powerful and healing, giving it five-star reviews and consistently positive feedback.
If you sign up today you will learn about child development, temperament, core developmental needs, schemas and the IFS model of internal parts, how to work with your Inner Critic, what we mean by childhood trauma and neglect – as well as how to heal from these painful experiences using powerful techniques drawn from schema therapy, compassion-focused therapy, mindful self-compassion and internal family systems.
The course is free if you become a Member Plus Supporter. This costs just $60 for 12 months of high-quality content like this on the Insight Timer app from me and thousands of other leading teachers.
Try it now by clicking on the button below. I hope you enjoy it!
Love ❤️
Dan
Image by Rosie Kerr
I thought I was one of the lucky ones. Since the start of the pandemic, I had never had Covid – not once. My wife and I had a certain smug glow, telling people, ‘Well we have never had it. Aren’t we lucky!’ And then, finally, those ingenious little microbes found a way in. We both got it, my wife a couple of days before me. And it hit us hard – last week was a write-off.
But this is not a post about Covid, or sickness. It’s about what comes next. Because as we emerge from a week of feverish coughing and spluttering, it’s like waking up after a long, dark night. And realising there was all this beauty, this wonder, right outside the whole time, we just couldn’t see it.
This skewed view of things is fundamental to being human. The Buddha taught that we walk around in a dream, seeing things not as they are, but as we imagine them to be. We think we are defective, not good enough, less than others, but none of this is true. We may think that other people are mean, or selfish, or untrustworthy, but most people are kind, decent and good.
And we may believe that the most important things in life are material – money, fancy car, big house – but none of those matter overly much, once we have enough to be comfortable. What matters is love, warm relationships, a life filled with meaning and purpose. None of those things can be bought.
Yesterday, I finally left the house and went for a walk through our neighbourhood. It was a cold, grey, windy February day. In another mood, I might have looked around and thought, ‘God, this is a grim day. Winter is just miserable – I cannot wait for spring.’ And (no-brainer question of the day) what would have happened to my mood? Of course, it would have worsened. The wonderful Aaron Beck, founder of cognitive therapy, taught us this back in the 60s – that thoughts trigger emotions, positive or negative.
But because I was emerging, blinking, from my forced confinement, instead I looked around and thought, ‘My God, how wonderful to see the world again!’ What a joy it was just to walk, putting one foot in front of the other, taking in all the sights and sounds of my beloved neighbourhood. And then to walk to my favourite coffee shop, where my brain fog had lifted sufficiently to let me read a book. And to drink coffee! My heart sang.
Again, it’s kind of obvious that where we place our attention, as well as the meaning we make of our experience, has a profound effect on our mood. The Buddha knew that. Beck knew it. Plato knew it. He said, ‘Reality is created by the mind. We can change our reality by changing our mind’.
Positive psychologists like Martin Seligman know it – which is why he taught the mood-enhancing power of using techniques like the Gratitude Letter. This doesn’t mean that you should adopt some kind of Pollyanna-ish, good-vibes-only positivity, pretending everything is fine all the time. Because it isn’t – the Buddha also taught that to live a human life is to experience inevitable pain like sickness, ageing and the loss of loved ones. But he explained that we turn pain into suffering through our thoughts, our interpretation of the world.
Instead, we need to turn towards and accept painful things (like a week-long struggle with Covid, for example!). But we can still be grateful for so much. Life is full of light, beauty, wonder, awe and delight, as much as it is sadness, pain, hurt and disappointment. Light and shade. Day and night. Joy and pain.
So do check out Seligman’s gratitude exercises. You can also try my Hardwiring Happiness Talk & Meditation on Insight Timer, which is designed to help you notice, feel and maximise positive experiences throughout your day.
I hope you enjoy it – and sending grateful love from London ❤️
Dan
Image by Aleksandar Cvetanovic
What are you doing, right now? Well, before you started reading this – what were you doing a few minutes ago? I’m guessing you were rushing around, either physically or mentally. And I’m confident about that guess because we’re all so damn busy these days, aren’t we? This is partly down to the advances in technology that enable me to write this on my computer, then send it whizzing around the world to all of you – which is wonderful – but also mean we are available, 24/7, for calls, texts, WhatsApp messages, Zoom calls, emails and countless other forms of digital communication. Those of us living in industrialised countries are never really off, in our 21st-century, high-tech world.
This can become especially tricky for us when we are stressed and overloaded at work. Something I notice a lot with my clients is that when they get stressed, they stop taking breaks, work harder and longer hours, staying chained to their desks – and some kind of screen – for longer and longer each day.
In some ways, I totally get it – if you feel stressed and like your to-do list is a mile long, you go into overdrive, pushing yourself harder and harder to get all those items on your to-do list, done. But I also have to speak to these clients about the ways in which 24/7 working is not only bad for your health, it’s bad for your performance and productivity as well.
To understand why, we need to think about evolution, which works in a slow, steady, incremental way. So many parts of your brain are really old, in evolutionary terms. The whole ‘subcortical’ layer of your brain is millions of years old (not your actual brain, obviously, but those parts haven’t changed much in all that time). And these older brain regions were developed for stone-age life – hunting mammoths and gathering roots, nuts and berries.
And in our pre-industrial, hunter-gatherer lives, we were either very much on (hunting, fighting, climbing tall trees for honey) or off (lazing around after a large mammoth burger, playing, dancing, sleeping). If you want to know what off looks like, check out that photo – unlike modern humans, cats have no problem switching off!
So your brain, nervous system, body, hormonal system, organs – all are adapted for these intense bursts of activity, followed by lots of rest. And what do most of us do, today? Sit hunched over a screen, with stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol coursing through our bloodstream, very much on in terms of stress and focus, but immobile/off physically. So a weird sort of grey area for your brain, which finds it all very sub-optimal and confusing.
This is why longer and longer hours don’t really work, for work, because your brain needs periods of downtime to process all the information you are cramming into it, sort data into different forms of memory storage (boring – delete; important but not crucial – file in long-term storage; absolutely vital – save in short-term memory for easy access and retrieval). The more hours you do, the poorer become your memory, concentration, cognitive function, creativity, collaboration, decision-making and a whole host of other skills and abilities most of us need to perform and produce at work.
I often write in these posts about the importance of exercise for your physical and mental health. I am evangelical about moving your body, because it was designed to move, which is why it feels so good. But it’s also vital to get enough rest, downtime and relaxation. If you’re a high-stress, high-octane, highly-caffeinated sort of person, you may not find that easy.
If so, as well as the higher-intensity exercise, try yoga, tai chi, meditation, gentle swimming, walking, gardening – slower, more meditative forms of movement. Getting enough good-quality sleep is, of course, crucial, so the experts recommend creating an eight-hour ‘sleep window’, in which you are in bed, ready to sleep (following all the usual sleep-hygiene advice about no electronic devices in the bedroom, keeping that room cool and dark, and so on) for eight hours a night. You may get eight hours, you may not, but you are creating the optimal conditions for that to happen.
You may also find my Body Scan Meditation helpful – this is designed to help you completely relax, either to wind down from a stressful day or drift off to sleep. Just click the button below to listen on Insight Timer.
I very much hope that helps – sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️
Dan
Image by Jessica Voong
‘He didn’t see his childhood as unusual – it was the only one he had ever had.’ I read this line in a coffee shop earlier and it has really stayed with me. It was in a brilliant book, Why Therapy Works: Using Our Minds to Change Our Brains, by Louis Cozolino. It’s a bit dense, so probably more for the mental-health professionals reading this (or anyone else who enjoys dense psychology books!). But that line is so good – and speaks to something I see with my clients over and over again.
Because it doesn’t matter how bad your childhood was, what kinds of terrible things were happening – to you it’s normal, because that is all you know. Especially when you are young, before you have attended school, your house and family is your whole world. You might go to the park, or to other kids’ houses to play, but basically everything important that ever happens to you happens inside your family.
So even if your dad is drinking heavily, then shouting aggressively at your mum every night, that’s normal. Or if you grow up in poverty, feeling scared and hungry every day, that’s normal. If your parents clearly favour your sister over you and you know, in your bones, that they love her more than you, well that’s normal too.
Of course, it doesn’t mean that any of those things are OK, or right, or even normal by the standards of many other families. But it is normal for you, because that was all you knew then – and may still be normal for you now, until we work to reframe that story and help you realise it was neither good nor normal to grow up in that environment.
One of the central ideas in schema therapy is that of core needs. These are the developmental needs that all children have, whatever the culture or country they grow up in. These five needs are:
Love and a secure atachment
Safety and protection
Being valued as a unique human being
The ability to be spontaneous, play and express your emotions
Having boundaries and being taught right from wrong
It’s easy to see that the kids who are unlucky enough to grow up in traumatic, neglectful or abusive families are not getting these fundamental needs met. They probably don’t feel loved, safe or valued. Their emotions might be seen as ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’. And – a problem I see in many families today – they might have what we see as too much of a good thing. Meaning they are spoilt, allowed to say and do whatever they like without consequences. This is also a kind of neglect, because it produces unhappy children who will struggle to fit into society when they are older.
So, however ‘normal’ your childhood was, if these basic needs were not being met, it will have caused you problems as you became an adult. And it may well have been traumatic, even if it seemed normal on the outside, because being shouted at, bullied, devalued or ignored can all be traumatic for kids.
If any of this resonates for you, I’m very sorry you had a tough time growing up. But you may find this talk helpful, which I recorded for Insight Timer to help people tell a different, more compassionate story about their lives: The Story of You: How to Build Self-Compassion.
Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️
Dan
Following on from my last post, about men’s mental health, this is such a powerful interview. As a Spurs fan I have a lot of love for Dele – such a great player and obviously a guy with a very traumatic past. He was adopted and was in all sorts of trouble as a teenager, so this interview is about that and his recent struggles with addiction as the trauma resurfaced.
Please watch and share with any of your male clients/friends/family members who struggle to open up and keep their feelings locked away inside.
And big love to Dele. It took such courage to open up like this.
Dan
If you struggle with addiction or compulsive behaviours, book your place on a one-day, in-person workshop co-presented by Dan Roberts, Advanced Accredited Schema Therapist, Trainer & Supervisor and Founder of Heal Your Trauma and Claire van den Bosch, Psychotherapist, addiction expert and Clinical Director of Heal Your Trauma. Overcoming Addiction: Heal Your Pain and Escape the Addictive Cycle is the latest in a series of monthly Heal Your Trauma webinars and workshops.
This event, which will be both highly informative and experiential, will take place from 10.30am-4.30pm on Saturday 29th April 2023. It will be held at The Gestalt Centre, near King’s Cross in Central London. The Gestalt Centre is easily reached by bus, Tube or mainline rail, being a 10-minute walk from King’s Cross Station.
This event has a limited number of free places available if you need them – or please choose the Reduced-Fee Ticket or Supporter Ticket options when booking if you are able to support the Heal Your Trauma project. Every penny we receive, after covering expenses, is invested in the project so we can help as many people as possible with their mental health.
Overcoming Addiction: Heal Your Pain and Escape the Addictive Cycle features teaching from us, combined with powerful individual and group exercises, to help you feel more centred and able to support the parts of you that have learned to find solutions with addictive or compulsive behaviours. You will also have the chance, throughout the day, to put your questions to Dan Roberts and Claire van den Bosch, leading experts on trauma, mental health and addiction.
In this powerful, highly experiential workshop you will learn:
Why trauma is often a crucial factor in addiction, as people with a trauma history often have a ‘dysregulated’ nervous system, which makes you more reactive/impulsive and so more likely to use substances/behaviours to numb painful emotions, as well as to experience the stimulation of feeling alive
The key role of core developmental needs in addiction and how – when these needs are not met, for any reason - you are more vulnerable to addiction in later life
How these unmet developmental needs create painful ‘schemas’, which play a key role in the addictive cycle
How, through the eyes of Internal Family Systems, trauma and unmet developmental needs prompt lonely, young un-resourced parts of us to learn how to soothe distress in the only ways available at the time
How in turn other lonely, young un-resourced parts of us try to mitigate the negative consequences of addictive behaviours and how this internal battle ends up feeling stuck and looping
The powerful insights about addictive cycles offered by the Internal Family Systems model, which teaches us that when wounded young parts are triggered, protective parts rush in to try to numb the pain as quickly as possible, using various substances or behaviours
The wide range of substances and behaviours we can class as addictive/compulsive, including alcohol, prescription/recreational drugs, junk foods, sex and pornography, excessive phone/social media use, gambling, shopping, working, thinking, smoking and many more – and how common and human it is to have these patterns
How some, if not all addictions need to also be understood from the perspective of hijacked brain chemistry and behavioural conditioning in ways that leave even the most determined of us experiencing powerlessness
The central and painful role of shame in the addictive cycle and how compassion is both possible and essential for recovery
How to use a selection of experiential exercises – such as Compassionate Breathing, and 4-7-8 Breathing, inner dialogue, guided meditations and imagery, trigger diaries and more – to help you feel calmer/regulate your nervous system, making you more able to respond wisely to cravings and find new, more effective and healthier ways to calm yourself when stressed, anxious, upset or generally triggered
Don’t miss this chance to learn from two leading trauma therapists and experts on mental health, wellbeing and addiction – book your place now using the button below.
Warm wishes,
Dan
Image by Marcos Paulo Prado
If you’re feeling depressed right now, let me start by sending you warm thoughts, because depression can be truly awful – as I know only too well, having struggled with deep, dark periods for many years. Thankfully, after a lot of therapy, a long-term meditation practice and many other forms of healing, I don’t really get depressed these days – or if I do get down, it’s only for a day or two, not the awful week after week of darkness that used to dominate my life.
So, again, if you are struggling with depression right now, please do seek help – especially if you’re feeling suicidal. See your doctor. Get help from a mental-health professional like me. You may also need antidepressants, which can be a lifesaver for many people dealing with depression. And tell your loved ones that you’re struggling, because trying to hide depression is never a good idea – and will 100% make it worse as it becomes a shameful secret squirming away inside you. Humans are verbal, storytelling creatures, which is why it feels good to talk about what’s troubling us.
As well as – crucially, not instead of – seeking help, there are a number of things you can to help yourself if you’re feeling down or depressed right now. That’s a key theme of my blog posts and teaching and why I founded my Heal Your Trauma project, because there is so much we can all do to improve our mental and physical health – much of which is free and available to you right now, if you feel able to take a small step towards lifting your mood.
When my mood is a bit low (it does still get low sometimes, because I’m both highly sensitive and human), one of my go-to practices is changing my negative thought patterns by focusing on all the things I am grateful for in that moment. This helps change the messages playing on a loop in my head (‘God, I’m so tired/stressed/pissed off! Why is it still winter? So grey! And so damn cold! Life sucks’), which as I’m sure you know, can be overly negative, hopeless and disheartening when our mood is low.
I actually used this practice this morning, so here’s a sample of the things I found to be grateful for on a cold, grey, somewhat gloomy February morning:
Unlike millions of people in this country struggling with the cost-of-living crisis, I had a nutritious breakfast this morning. I am so fortunate to be able to eat what I want and not worry about how to feed myself or my family
I’m walking to work from my warm, dry home and will soon arrive in my warm, dry office. I didn’t have to sleep out in the freezing cold last night – I am so lucky not to be homeless, to have a job and an income
I heard on the news this morning that yet another Russian missile has killed innocent people in Ukraine. It made me well up and my heart goes out to them and their families, but it also makes me realise how lucky I am to live in a peaceful, fairly stable country
Everybody I love is healthy and safe right now
I actually have people to love and who love me
My health isn’t perfect, but my body is strong and I have no pain at this moment. Having lived with chronic back pain for years, that is such a blessing
I have a wonderful wife, who is my life partner and rock
My son is a remarkable, kind, huge-hearted young man – and I am so proud to see the person he is growing up to be
Although I lost my father at a young age (which triggered all those years of depression), I have a loving, supportive mum who has been there for me through so many tough times in my life
You get the idea. This list is not meant to be boastful, or say how wonderful my life is, just to recognise that there is always something we can find to be thankful for, even when our mood has dipped and it’s a cold, grey winter’s day.
Being mindful, grateful and appreciative of what we have is a foundational practice in many traditions, from the 2,500-year-old wisdom of Buddhist psychology, to newer psychological approaches like CBT and Positive Psychology. If you would like to bring a little more gratitude into your daily life, here is an excellent step-by-step guide to writing a Gratitude Journal from the wonderful Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley.
It’s important to note that being grateful for what you have is not about forcing a fake-positive, everything’s great! mindset. There are many reasons for us to struggle with depression, including a history of trauma, medical/hormonal/biological issues such as the menopause, being a refugee, living in a war zone, in poverty or suffering domestic abuse. We can’t just think our way out of these problems.
But whatever the cause of your low mood, it’s still important to do everything you can to help yourself. And increasing your gratitude is an evidence-based approach that might help, even a little. It’s free and you could start today, so why not?
I hope that helps.
If you are feeling depressed right now, I am with you. I have been there and know how awful it can be – but also know from personal experience that we can recover and emerge from the darkness of depression into a lighter, happier, more fulfilling life.
I will teach much more about depression and how to recover from it in my next workshop: Overcoming Depression – How to Lift Your Mood & Feel Calmer, Happier & More Hopeful, which takes place on Saturday 1st April 2023, from 10.30am-4.30pm. This event will be held at Terapia, a specialist therapy centre in the grounds of Stephens House, a listed house and gardens offering an oasis of peace and calm in the busy heart of North London. Terapia is a 10-minute walk from Finchley Central Northern Line station, with free parking outside – book your place now using the button below.
Sending you love and warm thoughts,
Dan
If you missed this webinar, you can purchase the recording for just £10 – you can then download or stream the recording whenever you like.
Just click the button below to enjoy this powerful, highly experiential webinar now:
Image by Igor Kasalovic
First, let me wish you all a very Happy New Year! May 2023 be a year full of health, happiness and healing. Heal Your Trauma has an exciting year ahead, with webinars and workshops throughout the year – a combination of your favourite events so far with some brand-new content we are confident you will love just as much.
We kick the year off with our first webinar, Trauma Healing with Internal Family Systems, in February. Internal Family Systems is one of the most exciting therapy models currently available. IFS has become hugely popular in recent years – and for good reason. As an Internal Family Systems-Trained Therapist, I use this warm, compassionate, highly effective approach with all my clients. And that’s because it is so effective for a wide range of problems, from complex trauma to problems with anxiety, depression, relationships, chronic stress, eating disorders and addiction.
If this sounds helpful for you, watch the recording of this 90-minute Zoom webinar presented by Dan Roberts. Trauma Healing With Internal Family Systems took place on Saturday 11th February 2023, from 3pm-4.30pm and was the latest in a series of regular Heal Your Trauma workshops and webinars presented by Dan Roberts throughout 2023.
Trauma Healing With Internal Family Systems features 90 minutes of teaching, powerful exercises that will help you feel calmer and more relaxed, and a 15-minute Q&A with Dan Roberts, an Internal Family Systems-Trained Therapist and an expert on trauma, mental health and wellbeing.
In this powerful, highly experiential webinar you will learn:
What we mean by trauma and how common it is, especially if we had a difficult childhood
Why IFS is such a revolutionary model, offering brand-new ways of understanding psychological problems and how to heal them
Why we all have an internal system of ‘parts’ – both young, wounded parts and protective parts which work hard to make sure those young parts never get hurt again
How to calm, soothe and heal your young parts, so you also feel calmer, soothed and can heal from painful past experiences, especially in childhood
Why we all have a ‘Self’ – an internal resource that is calm, compassionate, courageous and healing
You will also learn some simple, powerful techniques to help yourself feel calmer when you are triggered – especially important if you have a trauma history
And, during a 15-minute Q&A, attendees can put their questions to Dan Roberts, Founder of Heal Your Trauma and an expert on trauma, mental health and depression
Don’t miss this chance to learn from a leading trauma therapist and an expert on Internal Family Systems and mental health – purchase access to this recording for just £10, to download or stream whenever you like, using the button below.
Warm wishes,
Dan
Image by Tobias Reich
If you are interested in coming to one of my Heal Your Trauma webinars and workshops, I have just released a full calendar of events for 2023. Bookings for all events are open now, so do visit the calendar page on my Heal Your Trauma website to reserve your place now. Many of these events sell out quickly, so do book your place early to avoid missing out.
We have webinars and workshops running almost every month, on a wide range of subjects to help you with your mental health and wellbeing. My workshops are all in-person next year, as I very much enjoy being with you ‘in real life’ – these will be held either at the Gestalt Centre, in central London, or Terapia, in north London. Highlights include:
Brand-new workshop – Overcoming Depression: How to Lift Your Mood & Feel Calmer, Happier & More Hopeful, 1st April 2023 at Terapia
Our highly popular Overcoming Addiction: Heal Your Pain and Escape the Addictive Cycle, 29th April 2023 at the Gestalt Centre, co-presented with the brilliant Claire van den Bosch
First time in-person – Overcoming Anxiety: How to Worry Less, Feel Calmer & More at Peace, 8th July 2023 at Terapia
Also brand-new as a workshop – The Healing Power of Self-Compassion, 23rd September 2023 at Terapia
If you are unable to travel to the workshops, we have a wide range of webinars planned for you, which are hosted via Zoom. Online highlights include:
Brand-new webinar – Trauma Healing With Internal Family Systems, 11th February 2023
Also brand-new – How to Manage Your Inner Critic, 25th March 2023
Our highly popular The Healing Power of Self-Compassion, 27th May 2023
Brand-new webinar – Buddhist Wisdom for Your Mental Health, 28th October 2023
All Heal Your Trauma events offer a number of free places, for those struggling financially for any reason, as well as Low-Income Ticket and Supporter Ticket options, if you are able to support the project. Heal Your Trauma is a non-profit project, so every penny we receive, after covering expenses, goes into making sure that everyone, everywhere can access all of our content.
I am excited about our upcoming programme for 2023 – and very much look forward to meeting you at a Heal Your Trauma event soon!
Sending you love and warm wishes,
Dan
If you struggle with addiction or compulsive behaviours, book your place on a one-day, in-person workshop co-presented by Dan Roberts, Advanced Accredited Schema Therapist, Trainer & Supervisor and Founder of Heal Your Trauma and Claire van den Bosch, UKCP-accredited Psychotherapist and an expert on treating addiction. Overcoming Addiction: Heal Your Pain and Escape the Addictive Cycle is the latest in a series of regular Heal Your Trauma webinars and workshops throughout 2022.
This event, which will be both highly informative and experiential, will take place from 10.30am-4.30pm on Saturday 26th November 2022. It will be held at The Gestalt Centre, near King’s Cross in Central London. The Gestalt Centre is easily reached by bus, Tube or mainline rail, being a 10-minute walk from King’s Cross Station.
This event is booking up fast, so don’t miss this chance to learn from two leading trauma therapists and experts on mental health, wellbeing and addiction – watch the video for more information and book your place now using the button below.
Warm wishes,
Dan
Image by Tobias Reich
As a long-term meditator, I am a passionate proponent of mindfulness. Building mindfulness practices into my life – as well as other forms of meditation – has had a profound impact on my mental and physical wellbeing. There is now a huge body of research to back this up – regular mindfulness practice is clearly beneficial for common psychological problems like stress, anxiety and depression, as well as a whole host of physical health benefits like lowering blood pressure and relieving gastrointestinal issues.
I have recorded a number of mindfulness practices for my Insight Timer collection and send these to clients as homework, to help them build a daily practice. Most of my clients like them, some absolutely love them and some find it hard to incorporate a daily practice into their busy lives, which is of course fine.
But what happens if you find standard practices like mindfulness of breath, or the body scan, not just hard to embrace but actually harmful? For a small minority of people who try mindfulness practices, with a therapist or meditation teacher, on retreat, or using an app like Calm or Insight Timer, the standard form of practice is highly triggering.
Why is this? Well, most of these people will probably have a trauma history. If you experienced trauma, either complex trauma in your childhood, or a single traumatic event like a car crash or assault, your nervous system may be ‘dysregulated’, meaning you are either prone to hyperarousal (high-energy states like stress, anxiety, panic, agitation or anger) or hypoarousal (low-energy states like dissociation/detachment, sadness, shame or depression).
In more simple terms, this may mean that when you sit and focus on your breath, say, you feel uncomfortably short of breath and panicky. That’s because your body is sitting calmly on your cushion, as instructed, but the threat system in your brain is yelling Run! So now you’re stuck there, trying to be all calm and serene, as you think you should be (especially if you have mainlined all those Instagram posts of beautiful women sitting in perfect Lotus positions, with peaceful, radiant expressions), when your whole body is fizzing with nervous energy and you want to get the hell out of there asap.
This is why Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness was developed. And this approach, which either adapts standard practices to make them more helpful and accessible for folks with a trauma history, or offers brand-new practices, is incredibly helpful. Because mindfulness is a key skill for everyone to learn, especially if you have a trauma history. So please don’t abandon or avoid mindfulness and meditation just because you had a bad experience.
In my next Heal Your Trauma webinar, on Saturday 12th November, I will explain why Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness is such a helpful approach for trauma survivors – and guide you through a number of practices. Do come along if you’re interested – as with all my Heal Your Trauma events, this will be donation-based, making it affordable and available for everyone, everywhere.
You can book your place now using the button below – I hope to see you there, or at another of my webinars and workshops, very soon.
Sending you love and warm wishes,
Dan
Image by Aaron Burden
If you live in Therapy World, like me, you will definitely have heard of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy. It’s ridiculously popular right now – every IFS training is sold out and finding an IFS therapist or supervisor with any space is borderline impossible. IFS is definitely having a moment.
But when I speak to people who live in the Real World, many of them have never heard of IFS. Which is a little baffling for those of us who live, eat and breathe therapy. I guess one reason for that is that it’s a model imported from the US (as many of our best models are). And it’s taking some time, especially in the UK, for it to hit the mainstream in the way that, say, CBT has.
If you have heard about IFS, that’s wonderful. But if you haven’t, it’s definitely time you did. Here’s why…
Internal Family Systems therapy was developed by Dr Richard Schwartz in the 1980s. Dr Schwartz (or Dick, as he likes to be called) was a family therapist, who was frustrated with his model and started listening closely to what his clients were telling him. They would talk about ‘parts’ of themselves who often had clear voices, wanted different things for the client, had conflicting ideas about what they should do, and so on.
Dick started working with one of these parts, which was making one of his clients self-harm. Unable to stop the self-harming, Dick started working collaboratively with this part, listened to and understood its concerns and function for the client – and IFS therapy was born.
He came to understand that we all have parts of us, whether we experienced a ‘normal’, happy childhood or severe trauma. It’s just the way that your brain constructs ‘you’. But if you did experience childhood trauma, you will have young parts inside holding those traumatic memories, feelings and experiences. You will also have other parts, who are protectors, using various means to protect the young ones from being hurt again.
But although all of these parts live in your mind, brain and body, there is another you – what Dick says is ‘who you really are, deep down’. And this is your Self, which is not a part, but a deep, rich array of resources that live within us all, whether we can access them or not. Some of these qualities are embodied in the 8 Cs:
Calm
Compassion
Clarity
Connectedness
Courage
Creativity
Confidence
Curiosity
Again, all of these wonderful qualities are inside you, right now. You don’t have to learn them, or grow them, or find them somewhere out there in the world. Instead, you just need to access them. Of course, that can be hard, especially when your young parts are triggered and you’re riding big waves of emotions like stress, anxiety, sadness or fear; or your protector parts are up and you’re being avoidant, or compulsively drinking/shopping/thinking about stuff. (This happens to me on a daily basis, it’s just what minds do/how parts get triggered by our experiences in the world. Nothing to be ashamed of our feel bad about, it’s just how all humans work).
But I want you to hold on to this idea. However bad things have been for you, however much you are struggling right now, there is something in you that can respond to your suffering with love and compassion. Which can help you heal. Which is like the sun, bursting out from even the darkest clouds. The sun never vanishes, right? Even if we can’t see it, we know it’s still there behind the clouds, with all of its life-giving energy and power. So it is with the Self.
I will be teaching a great deal more about the IFS model on my upcoming Heal Your Trauma webinars and workshops this year and next – but especially my Overcoming Addiction workshop, which I am co-presenting with my dear friend and colleague Claire van den Bosch. Like me, Claire is trained in and passionate about IFS, so we will be weaving IFS concepts in with those from schema therapy, EMDR and other rich, wise therapy models.
I hope to see you there – or on another Heal Your Trauma event soon.
Sending you love and warm thoughts,
Dan
PTSD is estimated to affect one in three people after a traumatic event. If you are struggling with trauma symptoms it can be useful to begin considering your support options. There are many different therapies available to support trauma and one of those is Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or TF-CBT for short, but what is this type of therapy, and what does it involve?
Psychologists Ehlers and Clark (2000), in their Cognitive Model of PTSD, propose that there are certain factors that keep the vicious cycle of trauma going, and these factors essentially prevent the trauma memory/memories from being processed. These factors include:
Poorly elaborated memory of the trauma and that the memory has not been contextualised (the memory does not equal the situation within which it existed or happened).
Excessive negative beliefs and meanings attached to the trauma memory.
Behavioural and cognitive strategies. Cognitive strategies include pushing thoughts away (suppression) and dwelling on events (rumination). Behavioural strategies may include withdrawing socially, avoiding internal and external reminders of the event/s, little or no engagement in previous hobbies or interests, use of drugs and alcohol. There can be many more strategies people may use, we recognise every individual has different coping strategies to try to minimise or eliminate their suffering.
Therefore together our goals in TF-CBT are to:
Reduce flashbacks and nightmares by opening up the memory and being able to discriminate with reminders of the trauma what is then (at the time of the trauma) and what is now (in the present moment). We may recall the memory spoken out loud or by use of writing in session using the present tense. Some people may revisit the site of trauma in this part of the work to aid adding context to the trauma memory.
Modify excessive negative beliefs of the trauma, changing perspectives to create new more helpful beliefs. For example ‘it was my fault X happened’ becomes ‘it was not my fault X happened’ we may develop a more compassionate response towards the self. In therapy we may do this through careful and gentle questioning to explore different perspectives. We then incorporate the more helpful belief into the trauma memory.
Remove unhelpful behavioural and cognitive strategies that maintain intrusions and the current sense of threat and danger. We may do this in therapy by exploring the advantages and disadvantages of each strategy both in the short and long term.
As we come towards the end of treatment we often hear people we support reporting a reduction or ceasing of intrusions, a decreased sense of danger in the present moment and an improvement in mood as the person begins regaining and rebuilding their life after after the traumatic event/s.
Please see the video below if you would like to learn more about the different stages of the therapeutic journey when we work with trauma using TF-CBT.
Emma McDonald, CBT & EMDR Therapist
•If you are looking for a Trauma Focused-CBT specialist we have a team of therapists who can offer this support face to face or online – further information can be found on our website www.thepsychotherapyclinic.co.uk
Image by Stefan Widua
If you are interested in personal growth (which, as you’re reading this, I’m guessing you are), you will know that mindfulness is a helpful skill to learn. In fact, it can feel a little overwhelming at times, as mindfulness is touted as a sort of miracle cure by the media for problems including ADHD, depression, anxiety, chronic stress, eating disorders, substance abuse, chronic pain, insomnia and many more. Of course, it’s not a miracle cure but, happily, many of these claims are backed up by extensive research (psychologists have been researching mindfulness as a health-promoting practice for around 50 years).
So, mindfulness practice is clearly helpful for many of the common mental-health and some of the physical-health problems we all struggle with. And, as I often say in these posts, this is not new information for billions of people around the world – Buddhists have been practising mindfulness for 2,500 years; and devotees of yoga have been using similar techniques for even longer, so they probably greet the Mindfulness is Today’s Hot New Health Hack-type headlines with a wry smile.
One area of particular interest to me is the importance of mindfulness in healing from trauma. I specialise in treating complex trauma, so I am always looking for knowledge and skills that will help me help my clients. If you have a trauma history (and many of us do, whether we know it or not), here are three ways that mindfulness will help you heal:
The power of ‘noticing’. Until you know what the problem is, you can’t possibly solve it. So we need to learn how to notice all sorts of things in real time. For example, if you want to work with your inner critic, you have to notice that you’re being self-critical and say, ‘Oh, there’s my Critic again!’ Otherwise it’s just a constant flow of harsh, negative and self-demeaning comments passing through your mind (and triggering challenging emotional states like anxiety, stress, depression, low confidence or self-esteem).
How do we notice? With mindfulness, which allows us to take a step back and adopt an ‘observer’ position, so we see our thoughts arising, rather than being swept away by them/believing them to be The Truth.
Mindfulness is vital for emotional regulation. One of the biggest difficulties for trauma survivors is the overwhelming power of their emotions. There are many reasons for this, but simply put most of my clients struggle with intense waves of emotions like anger, fear, sadness or shame. This makes day-to-day life a real struggle – and can lead to using substances like comfort foods, alcohol or prescription/recreational drugs to numb out emotions that feel too big to handle.
Mindfulness helps with this problem in a number of ways. First, research shows that just noticing (see above) and naming emotions helps reduce their intensity. So thinking, ‘Oh, I’m feeling really anxious right now’ can help you feel less anxious. This is especially helpful when some emotions, like panic, seem to come out of the blue. (They never do – there is always a trigger, which again requires noticing to start learning which things trigger you and why.)
Second, using simple mindfulness practices like breathing into the part of your body where you feel tight or tense (because that’s how the emotion is showing up, somatically) can help soften and relax that part of your body, which in turn calms the uncomfortable emotion.
Third, mindfulness practice helps strengthen synaptic connections in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), the part of the brain (just behind your forehead) you need to regulate the more emotional, reactive parts of the brain, like the limbic system. Which leads to…
Mindfulness practice helps us find peace, calm and equanimity. Like all skills, mindfulness takes effort, practice and dedication to learn. That’s why it’s called a yoga practice or meditation practice. Doing it once won’t make much difference. But meditating every day, for long stretches of time, will help in many ways. As a long-time meditator, I can confirm that I am so much calmer, more peaceful and balanced than I used to be. It has helped me develop what Buddhists call ‘equanimity’, which essentially means balance. So if something triggers or knocks me, it’s easier to come back to a calm, centered presence.
This is partly because I have strengthened the neural architecture of my PFC, so have more access to resources that help me feel calm, as well as soothing and reassuring anxious/stressed/upset parts of my brain. In less jargon-y terms, regular meditation helps you feel a little happier, a little stronger, a little more able to cope with life’s many challenges. And that has to be a good thing, whether you have a trauma history or not, right?
–If you would like to know more about how mindfulness could help you heal your trauma, come along to my next webinar: Not Just Mindfulness, But Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness. It takes place on Saturday 12th November 2022 from 3-4.30pm. Places are either free, if you are struggling financially, or payable by donation if you can support my Heal Your Trauma project (after covering expenses, all donations go towards running the project and making trauma-informed help available to everyone, everywhere).
Book your place now using the button below.
Warm wishes,
Dan
Image by Taylor R
If you’re having a tough time right now, you might try a whole host of things to help you feel better. And in many ways, that’s great – I am all for working hard to make a positive change in your life. But something I often see with my clients and those I teach is that they are trying too many things, all at the same time.
So, in addition to our therapy, they are practising yoga and one or more forms of meditation, reading three different self-help books at the same time, microdosing psychedelics, having couples therapy and life coaching, intermittent fasting, giving up gluten/dairy/sugar, wild swimming/Wim Hof-ing, cleansing their chakras and trying, shall we say, many other less-reputable forms of healing…
Sound familiar?
Now, I am not casting aspersions on any of this stuff (apart from the chakra cleansing – sorry, that’s a step too far for me). I am 100% passionate about healing, growth and change, both yours and mine. I spend almost every waking moment thinking about, studying and practising this stuff. And I support you trying all sorts of healing – from mainstream, evidence-based therapies like schema therapy CBT, EMDR or internal family systems and Eastern traditions such as yoga, Buddhism and various schools of meditation.
My general rule is, if it doesn’t do you any harm – and you’re not using it instead of a more reputable/effective treatment – be open-minded and give it a try. Why not?
But it can be a real problem when people try too many things at once, then give up because they’re not working or just find them a bit ineffective, so get discouraged and disheartened. Let me tell you a story, which comes from my former life as a health journalist and speaks to this problem.
Men’s Fitness magazine sent me off to a branch of the world-famous Shaolin Temple, in Tufnell Park, of all places! This really is a branch of the actual Shaolin Temple, in north London, which blew my mind from the outset. (Here’s the website, if you don’t believe me: shaolintempleuk.org).
I went to interview a tiny but terrifying Shaolin monk, who taught me all sorts of kung-fu magic, which was great fun. But he also told me something, which has always stayed with me. He said, ‘It’s better to practice one kick 10,000 times than 10,000 kicks once.’
Let that sink in for a moment…
I often tell my clients this story, especially when I feel they are trying to pack in too many personal-growth strategies at once, or want to learn lots of new breathing techniques, etc every session. It’s much better for me to teach them one thing, like 4-7-8 Breathing, say, then get them to practice that every day until we next meet.
If you’re struggling right now, feeling depressed, upset, lonely, anxious, hurt or overwhelmed, first of all I’m sorry. No-one likes to feel those things. As well as reading this blog, let’s thing about one thing you can change today that might help. Here’s a list of helpful things you could try – please read it and choose only one:
Start practising yoga (Yoga with Adriene is free on YouTube and a great place to begin)
Establish a daily meditation practice. You can check out my ever-expanding Insight Timer collection, or find one of the many thousands of teachers on Insight Timer who resonates with you (if it helps, some of my favourite teachers are: Sharon Salzberg, Tara Brach, Richard Schwartz, Kristin Neff, Chris Germer, Elisha Goldstein, Vidyamala Burch and Melli O’Brien)
Visit a Buddhist Centre near you – if you live in London, I recommend Triratna Buddhist centres like this one. You might bump into me there! That’s a great way to learn all about Buddhism, as well as mindfulness, metta and other forms of meditation from serious, long-term practitioners
Start exercising – jogging, swimming, cycling, going to the gym, dancing… Whatever you enjoy and will be able to commit to long-term
Begin therapy – if you have a trauma history, make sure you find a trauma-informed therapist like me. There are so many great therapy models, but I suggest schema therapy, CBT, EMDR, IFS, compassion-focused therapy and TIST as good places to start
Try wild swimming – there is a large and ever-growing evidence base on its benefits for mind and body. Cold water is best, if you can bear it!
I could go on, but that’s enough to get you going. Remember, your challenge is to try one and one only this week. Dedicate enough time and energy to whatever you choose to see if it’s helping (of course, some of these things will take more than seven days to make a difference, but that’s a good place to start).
I hope that’s helpful for you. Sending you love and strength on your healing journey.
Warm wishes,
Dan
