Author: Justice Schanfarber

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Growing wings on the way down – How the modern spiritual journey can leave our soul famished

How the modern spiritual journey can leave our soul famishedThe modern spiritual journey

A life crisis can be the thing that sends us on a spiritual journey. Through crisis we may realize that we have become attached to something – a relationship, an identity, even life itself.

Crisis gives us a taste of loss, and thus also a glimpse of liberation; off we go, seeking transcendence – from attachment, from ego, from the bonds of our old life. Up and away we soar, away from the dense matter of worldly stuff, up into the light of pure consciousness.

There is a particular flavour to the modern spiritual journey. It has its own ideology and its own language. It is secular, although tinged with eastern mysticism, and while practiced globally it is quintessentially American with its fierce individualism, emphasis on self-determination, and market-friendly accessorization.

The modern spiritual journey (MSJ) is built on self-empowerment, transformation, and perhaps above all, feeling good. Trouble may arise, but we’re told that it is always, ALWAYS, within our power to choose positive thoughts and transcend (if not transform) any circumstance.

The emphasis on feeling good is, interestingly, completely aligned with the desires of ego. It’s our ego that wants to feel good. And so here we encounter one of the fundamental contradictions that seems to run through the MSJ – we’re supposed to at once transcend the ego, AND use it as our compass.

We run into other problems on the MSJ. It simultaneously asks nothing of us – The universe made you absolutely perfectly. You deserve (and can manifest) anything and everything you desire. Everyone is responsible for their own feelings… And it asks everything of us – You and you alone are entirely responsible for everything you experience.

Consider this quote from a prominent leader of the MSJ –

Everything you do is based on the choices you make. It’s not your parents, your past relationships, your job, the economy, the weather, an argument or your age that is to blame. You and only you are responsible for every decision and choice you make. Period.

In this view complex family systems, political and social systems (and systems thinking altogether) are all neatly dismissed. Your relationships with people, over time, in various circumstances, your relationship with the world, trauma you have suffered – none of this has any bearing on your choices. None whatsoever. The absolutism is punctuated at the end for effect. “Period.” Discussion over.

Another quote, typical of the MSJ –

You cannot always control what goes on outside. But you can always control what goes on inside.

What an incredible ideal to promulgate! You can control what you feel? Emotions? Desires? Fears? The entire world of inner experience is under your control? And not sometimes. Always. This is zealotry and fundamentalism at its extreme. There’s no curiosity here, no exploration, no “Please experiment, test this statement yourself and discern its truth.” It would be one thing if these kinds of ultimatums were meant (and taken) in the context of metaphor, but they are not. They are, amazingly, pure literalisms.

I’m not arguing against the modern spiritual journey per se. I have practiced it extensively in my own life and supported it in the lives of clients and other people around me. We all have a variety of tasks to attend to throughout our lives, and when our tasks align with developing personal responsibility, dropping negative beliefs, simplifying, letting go, and lightening up in general, the modern spiritual journey can be a valuable path. But like every path it has its shortcomings.

The MSJ seems to ignore certain troubles that come with being a human being. It also creates its own share of troubles, troubles it is inadequate for attending to. Such as – What if you discover that you can’t always control what goes on inside? What then? What if what goes on inside has its own designs for you, beyond your control? This question is not the domain of the MSJ. This sort of question, if we dare ask it, leads us on a somewhat different journey.

The soul journey

We could talk about a soul journey as something distinct from the modern spiritual journey. The soul has its own designs. It’s different from spirit, and different from ego. The soul cares nothing for feeling good. It only insists that you FEEL. The soul isn’t interested in controlling what goes on inside. It’s interested in EXPERIENCING what goes on inside, showering you with it in all its colour and texture.

The soul is not into transformation, transcendence, or the light at the end of the tunnel. It is content in darkness if that is where it finds itself. In fact, if the soul is hanging out in darkness and it feels that you are avoiding it because you don’t want to enter its realm, guess where you might find yourself? You then face a choice. Will you look for affirmations to get you into the light as quickly as possible? Or will you risk exploring the darkness on its own terms? This is what the soul asks, and, I believe, what poet Robert Bly alludes to when he writes “The candle is not lit / To give light, but to testify to the night”. Thomas Moore puts it in clearer terms, “It is precisely because we resist the darkness in ourselves that we miss the depths of the loveliness, beauty, brilliance, creativity, and joy that lie at our core.”

If spirit is lightness, soul is weighty.
If spirit is airy and fresh, soul is earthy and musty.
The spiritual journey asks you to pack lightly; soul collects steamer trunks.

Soul runs deep and is not afraid of getting dirty. If spirit loves a clear and empty mind, soul is a collector of images and meaning. If spirit’s interests are oneness and connection, soul’s interests are in the particulars of what defines you as an individual different from everyone else. If spirit seeks liberation from attachment, soul seeks a deeper exploration of all that we are attached to.

Why does this matter?

The modern spiritual journey is clean-cut and friendly. You can take it to work. As I’ve pointed out above, the modern spiritual journey is aligned in many ways with conventional American culture (positive thinking, self-determination, meritocracy, individualism, sound-bites and meme-length philosophy). The MSJ has also been commodified through books, television, yoga apparel, tea boutiques, sacred vacations, spiritual breakfast cereal, one-minute power meditations and zen everything.

Followed too far, the modern spiritual journey provides a customizable life alternative for those who can afford it. I know people who are so far on the modern spiritual journey that they can not tolerate the slightest conflict or discomfort. Their spirituality has become a kind of compulsion. Everything must be organic. The feng shui must be flawless. Their aura must not be darkened by any negativity… “It’s not bathed in white light, get it away from me!”

The soul journey contradicts the modern spiritual journey, at least in appearance. It can also be the antidote for the MSJ that has reached far enough and become blind obsession. But if we have internalized the ideology of the MSJ, we we may not recognize the soul journey when it comes calling. We may dismiss and resist it as non-spiritual (which it is, sort of). We may starve ourselves of soul in order to be faithful to spirit.

Soul does not care to lift you up, it wants to take you deep

Contrary to popular belief, the soul doesn’t want chicken soup (it doesn’t care about feeling good, it just wants to FEEL). The soul journey may steer you in the opposite direction of the modern spiritual journey. This can be disorienting. The soul is often inappropriate for work. You dress it up nice and it gets drunk and throws up on itself. You tell it I’m in charge of what goes on inside! and it responds with a heart attack and six months of depression.

While the MSJ lets you pick up and leave, soul nails you to the spot. It doesn’t let you go. The soul can be cumbersome and contrary. Passive aggressive. The soul is not “in the moment”. It has TONS of baggage – crates of dusty old family photos that it insists on showing you. No escape. Remember, it cares not for transformation. It knows who you are and holds you to it. This can be really annoying at times – frightening, embarrassing, or deeply fulfilling at others. But again, soul doesn’t exist to make you feel good, or to control or transcend feeling. Soul does not care to lift you up, it wants to take you deep.

In session, I work with clients who are immersed in either their modern spiritual journey of ascension, or their soul journey of deepening, or both. Or neither. It isn’t the terminology that matters. What’s important is feeding the parts of ourselves that are hungry. A hungry soul and a hungry spirit want different nourishment. If we listen, we may get to know the difference.

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Campbell River Marriage Counselling Justice Schanfarber Trying to grow, fix, change, understand or save your marriage? I provide couples therapy, marriage counselling, coaching and mentoring to individuals and couples on the issues that make or break relationships – Sessions by telephone/skype worldwide. Email justice@justiceschanfarber.com to request a client info package. www.JusticeSchanfarber.com

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Trauma and counselling – Recognizing trauma and choosing a suitable approach to therapy

Trauma counselling and therapy - suitable approaches
A client came to counselling bracing themselves for what they expected would be a terrifying and awful experience. I was the fourth counsellor she had seen over the period of a few months.

This client was a woman who had been suffering from depression and anxiety following an extended period of abuse. In my office she fidgeted, avoided eye contact and appeared anxious and distressed. She told me she was tormented by something that had happened a few years ago. She had finally sought help, but after one session with her first counsellor she couldn’t bear to go back for a second.

She’d tried other counsellors too but it always ended up more or less the same. They would ask her about the event that was troubling her, she would tell part of the story, the session would end, and she would go home feeling like a wreck. Now she found herself in an impossible bind; her symptoms were getting worse but she was increasingly afraid to get help.

Being with this woman in my office, I could practically feel her nervous system reaching out and clawing at me in desperation. I focused on moderating my own nervous system as we began our first session. (Our human nervous systems, like those of other mammals, are constantly, silently communicating with each other.) I explained that I would not be pushing her for any details around painful life events. In fact, I assured her that I didn’t need to hear the story of her abuse to help her.

Everything I was sensing from this person, from her story to her body language, hinted at trauma. Here’s a useful definition of psychological trauma –

Psychological trauma is the unique individual experience of an event or enduring conditions, in which the individual’s ability to integrate his/her emotional experience is overwhelmed, or the individual experiences (subjectively) a threat to life, bodily integrity, or sanity.
(source sidran.org)

My trauma counselling approach is in some ways different from my other treatment methods. Without a suitable map for working with trauma, it’s easy to inadvertently re-trigger a traumatic response in someone and cause harm. This is true for counsellors and therapists, but also for doctors and medical professionals, teachers and educators, even parents and spouses.

This woman in my office had been repeatedly re-traumatized by helping professionals who either didn’t recognize trauma, or didn’t have a sufficient map for working with it.

Traumatic life events are generally experienced in one of two ways –

  1. The event is experienced and then integrated over time until it takes an appropriate place in our memories, or
  2. The event is experienced but then continues to haunt us with a variety of persistent mental, emotional and physiological symptoms.

In the first case, when we talk about a traumatic event from the past it feels like it happened in the past. It has taken its rightful place in the past and although it may trigger painful memories we do not feel our safety threatened in the present moment.

In the second case, talking about a traumatic event from the past may trigger extreme distress in the present moment. We may feel, against all rationality, that the event is happening again or may happen any moment. We may understand logically that this is not true but our nervous system is in fight or flight (or freeze) mode.

When past traumatic experiences get triggered, we might become panicked. We might perspire, tremble, clench. We might feel rage or despair. We might freeze, go numb or dissociate.

As you can see, trauma can trigger a lot of different symptoms. What they have in common is immediacy and a sense of disproportion. We might be confused to see someone get so triggered or so shut down by just a few words or a sound or some other small cue.

It’s important to understand that the post-traumatic response is much more visceral than it is logical. It’s a body experience more than a head experience. Feeling more than thinking. When someone is panicked or dissociated it is very hard to get through to them with reason. Trauma therapy that works directly with the body rather than entirely cognitively, or that engages reason in slow, small steps can be effective.

By instructing someone to tell the story of their traumatic event we may be setting them up for re-traumatization, as happened with the client mentioned above. If we understand something of the nature of trauma, and learn to recognize its signs, we can better support people who are struggling with its lingering effects.

Pacing is critically important when working with trauma. There is a window of tolerance that must be carefully observed. Go too fast, push too hard, and a traumatized person can quickly go into hyper-arousal or dissociative states. Nothing useful happens in these states.

Here are some signs that a trauma response may be activated in a person –

  • Trembling, clenching, flushing of skin
  • Darting or wide eyes
  • Swallowing, fidgeting
  • Shallow breathing, minimal movement, “freezing”
  • Far away sounding voice, avoidance, sense of not being present
  • Rage, aggression or terror

If you suspect that a trauma response is activated, it’s best to slow down whatever process you’re engaged in. Back off the hot topic. De-escalate any conflict or stress. Simplify your language. Show support and caring with words and body language. Attend directly to the nervous system activation that is happening in the moment. This is vitally important.

As my sessions with this particular client continued, she slowly revealed details of her ordeal. It isn’t that she didn’t want to tell her story – on some level she wanted desperately to talk about what happened. But every time she did it made matters worse. By parsing out the details at a pace that was manageable for her, and by attending to her nervous system directly at every step, and by working relationally and building trust, I was able to help this woman get some relief from her symptoms.

Telling her story – to me and to key people in her life – was actually an important step for regaining perspective, moderating nervous system arousal, and healing the sense of alienation she experienced. But she had to build up to it slowly. Only by understanding the effects of trauma and having a map to navigate it in therapy could I work with her in a truly helpful way.

Understanding and treating trauma requires training, study and practice. I use somatic processing rooted in mindfulness and Hakomi principles. This allows me to gently work with the trauma that is locked in the body, without forcing clients into potential overwhelm or retraumatization.

To learn more about trauma, PTSD and treatment I recommend Peter Levine’s books –
Waking the Tiger – Healing Trauma: The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences
In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness

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Campbell River Marriage Counselling Justice Schanfarber Trying to grow, fix, change, understand or save your marriage? I provide couples therapy, marriage counselling, coaching and mentoring to individuals and couples on the issues that make or break relationships – Sessions by telephone/skype worldwide. Email justice@justiceschanfarber.com to request a client info package. www.JusticeSchanfarber.com

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The surprising role of conflict in relationships – How the arguments that tear us apart also hold us together (Part 3)

Conflict in relationships

Over the past two weeks we’ve looked at how two couples, Chris and Stephanie, Leila and Franz, reflexively use “conflict loops” to cover up deeper issues and temporarily provide functionality to relationships that threaten to collapse.

Today we look at what is risked and what is asked of us as we grow through these patterns.

I take the position that we are brilliantly complex and resourceful creatures who grow and strategize with and without the benefit of conscious awareness. In other words, our conflict loops can be a kind of training ground where we build resourcefulness and capacity for facing the truth of our lives. The conflict loop in a relationship continues, below awareness, until we’re ready to see it and to face the task that it asks of us.

Imagine building a scaffold for years in your unconscious. This scaffold is made to support the weight of an as yet unknown truth about your life, about who you are or who you are meant to become. Eventually this scaffold reaches up and out of your unconscious and into the light of day. You look down with amazement at this incredible support you’ve “unknowingly” been building for yourself. Our relationships, including the challenges, are part of this.

Here’s the crucial part to understand –

Recognizing our role in the relationship system, and then changing it, is inherently risky. It is likely to break the relationship, at least temporarily, and there is no guarantee it will be put together again. We feel the risk of this at some level even if we don’t quite acknowledge it, and so we continue the cycle until until we’ve built enough depth of character, enough resilience, enough maturity to risk breakage.

Until we’re ready to confront our own dark fears (and desires) in relationship, we will continue to feel “stuck” in our own particular conflict loops.

People may come to counselling when they are ready to risk breaking the relationship… “I’m at the end of my rope. I’ve tried everything.” As Anais Nin puts it “…the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”  What Anais Nin doesn’t say is that we can not know what blossoming will look like until we have risked breaking.

The breaking that we risk likely goes far deeper than the hot-button issue we face in our relationship. We end up facing patterns of avoidance, bullying tendencies, self-esteem issues or whichever life themes we’ve grown up with. Breaking our relationship system is one way to bring us to the heart of the most definitive themes in our lives. This is why the tension we feel as we simultaneously grow toward blossoming and feel the pain of breakage is so significant. Much is at stake.

In some cases entire life strategies may be crumbling. In this regard we face an initiation, a new beginning born from an impending ending. No wonder we remain stuck for so long – A huge amount of ripening and preparation is going on beneath the surface.

Even as you work to support your own awareness and insight through reading, self study, therapy etc, consider that this ripening has a life and intelligence of its own. Supporting our own ripening means being present to the tension without necessarily struggling to resolve it. Pushing for resolution too quickly can easily dig us more deeply into more conflict, more confusion. The insights we seek often reveal themselves to us only after we have exhausted ourselves. Part of our exhaustion comes from seeking answers, part comes from defending the position we’ve come to depend on. This is yet another face of that tension between blossoming and breaking.

This is difficult territory to navigate. In this short series we’ve looked through the lens of relationship systems, getting some insight into the functions that conflict provides. Let the stories of the couples in these articles sit with you. See if you can feel the tension these couples feel. Notice what the tension of your own blossoming and breaking feels like. Is there any sense of initiation in the feelings? What have you been protecting? What have you been unwilling to risk? Honesty? Feeling too much? Loss? Being wrong? Desire? Grief?

What wants to blossom –
Responsibility? Truth? Integrity? Surrender? Something else?

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Campbell River Marriage Counselling Justice Schanfarber Trying to grow, fix, change, understand or save your marriage? I provide couples therapy, marriage counselling, coaching and mentoring to individuals and couples on the issues that make or break relationships – Sessions by telephone/skype worldwide. Email justice@justiceschanfarber.com to request a client info package. www.JusticeSchanfarber.com

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The surprising role of conflict in relationships – How the arguments that tear us apart also hold us together (Part 2)

Conflict in relationships 2

Last week we learned how Chris and Stephanie used their conflict loop to (temporarily) protect their relationship and avoid facing their deeper issues.

Franz and Leila have a different but similar loop.
Here’s what became apparent in our sessions –

Leila is plagued with anxiety. She constantly feels an inner struggle between her rational self and her emotional self. (This struggle is painful, but I believe critically important.)

As Leila struggles with her own internal dilemma, Franz steps in and gives voice to one side of Leila’s struggle. The rational side. Franz is in the habit of representing the rational side of every issue.

Watch what happens next –

The moment that Franz embodies the rational voice of Leila’s internal struggle, she gets some relief from her own dilemma. Suddenly Leila no longer has an internal struggle. She has an external struggle, and an enemy in Franz. Turning against Franz feels bad, but not as bad as endlessly turning against her self.

An example –
Leila works full time at a very stressful job and feels guilty about not spending enough time with their infant son. Their current childcare is not sustainable. Leila is thinking about preschool, but has mixed feelings. She struggles with her familiar internal dilemma. Franz sees her struggle and steps in with his own opinion, which is always the rational point of view.

“Think about it Leila, preschool is the only logical solution.”

Leila reflexively snaps at Franz and accuses him of being cold. The internal struggle that Leila was facing has now been externalized, and Leila no longer has to feel her dilemma. She can now project the criticism that she had for herself out onto Franz. This is their loop. It’s incredibly functional.

Franz, for his part, gets to be the logical one, which is important for his identity. He manages to continue avoiding feeling too much, a holdover from a strategy he learned early on in his family life. He also plays the unlikely role of rescuer for Leila, temporarily saving her from the endless conflict she faces in herself, and from the anxiety this inner conflict creates in her.

Franz is essentially fearful that Leila cannot handle her internal turmoil, that she might crack, and so he rescues her from herself. The resulting relationship conflict is painful, but apparently preferable to the fear of watching Leila implode.

At some level Leila is aware of the role Franz plays. If Franz waits too long to step in, her internal anxiety becomes unmanageable and she baits him with “What do you think?”. And the pattern plays out again. Functional.

As long as Franz takes on the voice of reason, Leila is spared the task of confronting her own dilemmas. Coming to terms with contradictory impulses, values, and desires is an important task we all face. But it’s hard work that we unconsciously protect ourselves from doing until we’re ready.

In session, I explain that Franz’s task in this case is to hold back on offering his opinion to create some space where Leila can wrestle with her own struggles. I assure them I am not asking Franz to withdraw. On the contrary, I want him to be exquisitely present, to slow down the process enough that he can pinpoint the moment where he gives in to his own anxiety and responds habitually. From that precise point, new possibilities emerge.

Leila and Franz were initially intimidated by the implications of these insights, which isn’t surprising, given the enormous function that their conflict loop has been fulfilling, but they’ve been willing to stretch themselves and experiment with what they’ve learned.

Next week we’ll tie the pieces together and look at what is risked, and what is required, to change these deeply embedded patterns and open a new chapter of relationship.

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Campbell River Marriage Counselling Justice Schanfarber Trying to grow, fix, change, understand or save your marriage? I provide couples therapy, marriage counselling, coaching and mentoring to individuals and couples on the issues that make or break relationships – Sessions by telephone/skype worldwide. Email justice@justiceschanfarber.com to request a client info package. www.JusticeSchanfarber.com

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