Dealing with Dread

“Dread is just memory in the future tense.”

These words, written by English pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, clarify why dread is such a complex emotion to manage. It is both rooted in a memory of past pain and distress that actually occurred and the future, something that’s possible but hasn’t yet happened.

Winnicott’s words help me stay curious as I deal with my dread in a way that keeps it from draining my vitality.

• What is my dread trying to warn me about?

• How do I better care for myself in intense seasons of emotional fear?

• What does it mean to stay in the reality of my present when my alarm bells about a not-yet-true future are going off?

• How do I listen to my dread with validation about what it remembers but not let it rule my internal landscape?

For more resources on emotional regulation and how to care for our minds, hearts and bodies check out my upcoming seminars on Polyvagal Theory:

Tuesday October 17th 7-9pm MST

Saturday December 2nd 9-11am MST

Appropriate TENSION

After a long hiatus my monthly newsletter is back online. Each month I’ll share about a healing element that is enriching my journey and upcoming content I create in response to the needs of my clients. I’m doing more virtual teaching than ever before so please share this with others across the globe!

Diving in….

This diagram has been living rent-free in my mind for weeks! It’s from the insightful Seth Godin and appeared in his blog this past July. His thoughts on risk and growth apply so deeply to those of us recovering from childhood trauma. How do we live, love and relax in the world when how we FEEL doesn’t always align what’s ACTUAL? I’m realizing that navigating relationship in a healthier way means first discerning which box I’m in and that’s neither easy nor simple for survivors. I have so many more thoughts about these four squares and they are shaping the seminars, workshops and groups I’m leading this fall.

Online Seminars

October 17th: Emotional Regulation Seminar (12 participants)

• 7:00-8:30 PM MST

• Cost $125

In Person Workshops

November 2th: The Four Attachment Styles (12 participants)

• @ Shama Collective in Littleton, CO

• 3 hours beginning @ 5:30-8:30 PM

• Cost: $195

November 9th: Healing Disorganized Attachment (12 participants)

• @ Shama Collective in Littleton, CO

• 3 hours beginning @ 5:30-8:30 PM

• Cost $195

Online Monthly Groups

Daughters of Traumatized Mothers Learning Group (8 participants)

• First Tuesday of every month

• 60 minutes beginning @ 6:30 PM MST

• Cost: $50

Between Touches Movie + Story Membership (6 participants)

• Third Tuesday of every month

• 90 minutes beginning @ 6:00 AM MST

• Cost: $95

BEGINNING JANUARY 2024

Healing from Childhood Trauma (8 participants)

• Online monthly learning group for disorganized attachment

• First Sunday of every month

• 90 minutes beginning @ 6:00 PM MST

• Cost: $75

“Every person we have ever known, every place we have ever seen, everything that has ever happened to us—it all lives and breathes deep in us somewhere whether we like it or not, and sometimes it doesn’t take much to bring it to the surface in bits and pieces.”

~Frederick Buechner

At The End of the Year

Upcoming Story Group Opportunities:

• In person Story Group restarts January 12th (3 spots left)

• Online Story Membership Program restarts January 19th (1 spot left)

These stanzas from John O’Donahue’s poem “At The End of the Year” are guiding my reflections of the past months and turning me towards the future. You can read the full poem here.

As this year draws to its end,

We give thanks for the gifts it brought

And how they became inlaid within

Where neither time nor tide can touch them.

Surprises that came awake

In forgotten corners of old fields

Where expectations seemed to have quenched.

The slow, brooding times

When all that was awkward

And the wave in the mind

Pierced every sore with salt.

The darkened days that stopped

The confidence of the dawn.

Days when beloved faces shone brighter

With light from beyond themselves;

And from the granite of some secret sorrow

A stream of buried tears loosened.

We bless this year for all we learned,

For all we have loved and lost

And for the quiet way it brought us

Nearer to our invisible destination.

Looking Back to Move Forward

Between the chaos of my summer with teen kids, and now the plumes of smoke clouding Denver’s skies, it’s been weeks since I have had a critical mass of coherent thoughts to string together into a blog post. But here, for your inspiration, are quotes I’ve collected that remind me why I invite people into the hard work of looking back at their lives.

To accept one’s past—one’s history—is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.”

~James Baldwin

I’m working on my own life story. I don’t mean I’m putting it together; no, I’m taking it apart.

~Margaret Atwood

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.

~Steve Jobs

“Finding yourself” is not really how it works. You aren’t a ten-dollar bill in last winter’s coat pocket. You are also not lost. Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people’s opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that became your beliefs about who you are. “Finding yourself” is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you.

~Emily McDowell