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	<title>Current Affairs Archives - Khiron Clinics</title>
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	<description>Trauma Clinics</description>
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		<title>Living with Schizoaffective Disorder: Everything You Need to Know</title>
		<link>http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/living-with-schizoaffective-disorder-everything-you-need-to-know/</link>
					<comments>http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/living-with-schizoaffective-disorder-everything-you-need-to-know/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[steve]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 23 Nov 2018 23:14:58 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Current Affairs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mental Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mental illness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[recovery]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[schizoaffective disorder]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[treatment]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/?p=5266</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>One person shared their experience with schizoaffective disorder on the main website for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). Here is an excerpt from their story: “The aspects of my illness that affect my life the most are the constant shifts in mood, how I appear to the rest of the world and the knowledge [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/living-with-schizoaffective-disorder-everything-you-need-to-know/">Living with Schizoaffective Disorder: Everything You Need to Know</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk">Khiron Clinics</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">One person shared their experience with schizoaffective disorder on the main website for the </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">National Alliance on Mental Illness</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (NAMI). Here is an excerpt from their story: </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">“</span></i><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The aspects of my illness that affect my life the most are the constant shifts in mood, how I appear to the rest of the world and the knowledge that my entire life will have to be carefully managed with skills and medications.”</span></i></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Schizoaffective disorder is said to affect nearly 1 or 2 out of every 1,000 people. This disorder is most often firstly misdiagnosed as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, mainly because the symptoms do overlap. The following are 6 main symptoms of schizoaffective disorder:</span></p>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Hallucinations – seeing, hearing, or feeling things that aren’t really there</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Delusions – believing things that are not necessarily true</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Disorganized speech – talking too fast or too slow, saying things that do not make sense to others</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Disorganized behavior – wearing clothes that seem odd to others or acting inappropriately, for example</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Catatonic behavior – voluntary movement stops, and you may appear to be in a daze</span></li>
</ul>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">A 2014 review published in the </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">International Journal of Clinical Psychiatry</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> emphasizes that those with a family history and women are highest at risk for developing schizoaffective disorder. Despite the impairment that these symptoms may cause, treatment is available and may include a variety of the following:</span></p>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Medication</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Group Counseling</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Individual Psychotherapy</span></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Social Skills Training</span></li>
</ul>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Ultimately, the sooner a person seeks help, the quicker a person can learn to manage their symptoms effectively – making it very important that you seek treatment if you relate to any of the symptoms listed above. If you haven’t already, speak with a professional from a reputable treatment center to learn more about treatment for schizoaffective disorder and aspects of treatment that would best suit your needs. As another person explained on NAMI, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">“</span></i><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Brain disorders are not defaults of character.</span></i> <i><span style="font-weight: 400;">I do not call myself schizoaffective. I call myself what I am: a person living with schizoaffective disorder.”</span></i></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>Stop the cycle of merry-go-round treatment and find the solution you’re looking for in trauma treatment. Through effective residential treatment, Khiron House helps you find the path you need toward health and wellness in recovery. For information, call us today. UK: 020 3811 2575 (24 hours). USA: (866) 801 6184 (24 hours).</strong></p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/living-with-schizoaffective-disorder-everything-you-need-to-know/">Living with Schizoaffective Disorder: Everything You Need to Know</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk">Khiron Clinics</a>.</p>
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		<title>Why Is Insatiable A Problematic TV Series?</title>
		<link>http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/why-is-insatiable-a-problematic-tv-series/</link>
					<comments>http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/why-is-insatiable-a-problematic-tv-series/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[steve]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Mon, 20 Aug 2018 23:39:02 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Current Affairs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Media Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[recovery]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[trauma]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[treatment]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/?p=4878</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>Netflix has had a difficult few years producing quality movies or TV series which portray mental illness and challenging topics regarding mental illness, in a safe way for viewers. Criticisms started after the release of 13 Reasons Why which depicted sexual assault, depression, and suicide in teenagers. Doctors warned against the series and advised parents [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/why-is-insatiable-a-problematic-tv-series/">Why Is Insatiable A Problematic TV Series?</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk">Khiron Clinics</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Netflix has had a difficult few years producing quality movies or TV series which portray mental illness and challenging topics regarding mental illness, in a safe way for viewers. Criticisms started after the release of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">13 Reasons Why</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> which depicted sexual assault, depression, and suicide in teenagers. Doctors warned against the series and advised parents not to let their teens watch the show. After the show’s release, studies found that suicide rates had increased among teenagers, possibly due to the “cluster” effect or the “copycat” effect which can come from portrayed suicide. After </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">13 Reasons Why</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> came </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">To The Bone</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, which depicted the journey of struggling with, then attempting to recover from an eating disorder. Netflix has been criticized for being overly graphic, not providing enough information, and still participating in shaming language which doesn’t accurately portray the recovery or treatment process. Problematically, this inadequate messaging continues to send the wrong ideas about living with mental illnesses, which can be life-threatening. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Now, Netflix has released a series called </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Insatiable </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">which focuses on the life of a young high schooler who was bullied and fat shamed for her weight. After losing weight and becoming “hot” and “pretty”. The problem is already inherent. Fat shaming is a problem because it reinforces negative stigmatization&#8217;s on body size and body appearance. The “hot” transformation is problematic because it reinforces thin idealism and continue to compare one body appearance as better or more acceptable than another body appearance. Moreover, it skirts the surface of the real trauma which can result from being bullied due to physical appearance. </span></p>
<p><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Bustle</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> explains that “when the trailer first hit social media, people immediately took issue with two things: the before-and-after, fat-to-skinny plot and the fact that [the main actress] wears a fat suit.” </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Vox</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> touches on why this shaming contrast matters because “it can’t avoid suggesting that [Patty, the protagonist] was right to hate herself, that fat people </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">should</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> hate themselves, and that they should hurt their bodies until they get better- which is to say skinny.” </span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Learning to be is part of the process of trauma recovery. Stop the cycle of merry-go-round treatment and find the solution you’re looking for in trauma treatment. Through effective residential treatment, Khiron House helps you find the path you need toward health and wellness in recovery. For information, call us today. UK: 020 3811 2575 (24 hours). USA: (866) 801 6184 (24 hours).</b></p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/why-is-insatiable-a-problematic-tv-series/">Why Is Insatiable A Problematic TV Series?</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk">Khiron Clinics</a>.</p>
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		<title>At Home In The Dark: A Film About Trauma &#038; PTSD</title>
		<link>http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/home-dark-film-trauma-ptsd/</link>
					<comments>http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/home-dark-film-trauma-ptsd/#comments</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[steve]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Tue, 20 Jan 2015 17:17:54 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Current Affairs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Inspiration and Reflection]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Charles Shaw]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/?p=3491</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>by Charles Shaw A film that gives people the courage to face their traumas and shows them ways others persevered. My name is Charles Shaw. I am the author of Exile Nation: Drugs, Prisons, Politics &#38; Spirituality, and the Director of the documentary film Edward James Olmos presents Exile Nation: The Plastic People. Post-Traumatic Stress [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/home-dark-film-trauma-ptsd/">At Home In The Dark: A Film About Trauma &#038; PTSD</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk">Khiron Clinics</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: justify;">by Charles Shaw</p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/4uTNSp76PBw?list=UUH45mtYB6_T5cNmKZ9d5S3A" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">A film that gives people the courage to face their traumas and shows them ways others persevered.</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">My name is Charles Shaw. I am the author of Exile Nation: Drugs, Prisons, Politics &amp; Spirituality, and the Director of the documentary film Edward James Olmos presents Exile Nation: The Plastic People.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a subject I have a lot of experience with. When I was younger I suffered severe drug addiction, violence and sexual abuse. I&#8217;ve spent years working to rebuild my life. During the years when I worked on Plastic People my collaborators on that film were killed in a car accident, my sister and a friend died of drug overdoses, another friend committed suicide, and my dog was run over right in front of me.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In the case of my sister, we&#8217;re not even sure what happened. I decided to investigate what led her to such a dark place, a place I too had once known. These events challenged everything I thought I knew about trauma and our ability to “get over it.” And what I found turned out to be the story of us all. I found that wherever I went, people jumped at the opportunity to talk about the traumatic events of their lives.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">So&#8230;our goal is to create a film that gives people the courage to face their traumas and shows them ways that others persevered in the work of healing. Our collection of stories includes&#8230;.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">EYDER &amp; DANIEL: A HIV+ gay couple who have sought political asylum in three countries after being unwelcome in their own.<br />
CARY HARRISON: A descendent of one of America&#8217;s founding families, former slaveholders, whose father became deranged from alcohol abuse and embraced NeoNazism.<br />
DIMITRI MUGIANIS: A visit to an inner city harm reduction clinic dealing with the overwhelming trauma of life on the streets.<br />
MAJA DUNDER: A victim of family related sexual abuse who now lives in the squat community of Christiania in Copenhagen, Denmark, a haven for trauma survivors.<br />
DAMON SMITH: A Gulf War Veteran, and KELSEY GUSTAFSON, a multiple rape survivor, who both found ancient therapies for their persistent traumas.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">We&#8217;ll also be looking at four generations of PTSD in my own family.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In this film we travel to locations in NY, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, London, Madrid, Berlin, Copenhagen, and Ibiza. And we have useful information and insights to share from experts like Drs. Gabor Mate, Julie Holland, Benjamin Fry, Andrew Tatarsky, and Kathleen Chard of the Veterans Administration.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">We&#8217;ll also look at the powerful ways that trauma influences our politics and culture. We have already spent one year filming the stories that make up this documentary. Now we need your help to finish. We&#8217;re raising post-production funds for editing, graphics, archival footage and mastering. Your contribution will help us shine a light on this dark area of the human psyche, in the hope that the future can be brighter. By learning to recognize our inheritance of trauma, and by learning ways to cope and to heal, we can improve our own individual lives and hopefully our collective destiny.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Thank you for your support.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Nomad Cinema &amp; Elevate Films presents&#8230;.<br />
AT HOME IN THE DARK: A FILM ABOUT TRAUMA &amp; PTSD<br />
Written, Produced &amp; Directed by Charles Shaw<br />
Produced by Mikki Willis, Ronnie Pontiac, Tamra Spivey, DJ Turner &amp; Akira Chan<br />
Photographed &amp; Edited by Charles Shaw &amp; DJ Turner<br />
Title Song by 9 Theory (feat. Dawn Mitschele)<br />
Musical Score by Master Margherita, Lucid Nation, Dennis LaFollette &amp; Amae Love.<br />
The filmmakers would like to extend their extensive gratitude to the Tedworth Charitable Trust of the Sainsbury Family Foundations for making possible the Production phase of this film.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">To contribute please visit: <a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/at-home-in-the-dark-a-film-about-trauma-ptsd/x/174255" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">our contribution fund</a>.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/home-dark-film-trauma-ptsd/">At Home In The Dark: A Film About Trauma &#038; PTSD</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk">Khiron Clinics</a>.</p>
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		<title>What&#8217;s it like to be an Imperfect Parent?</title>
		<link>http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/whats-it-like-to-be-an-imperfect-parent/</link>
					<comments>http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/whats-it-like-to-be-an-imperfect-parent/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[steve]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 13 Jun 2012 11:11:19 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Current Affairs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Benjamin Fry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[biological stress cycle]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[children]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[incomplete stress cycles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nervous system]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[parenting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pia Mellody]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[stress cycle]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[trauma]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://benjaminfry.co.uk/blog/?p=265</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>by Benjamin Fry News that David Cameron left his eight year old daughter, Nancy. in a country pub over the weekend got me thinking about what it&#8217;s like to be an &#8216;imperfect parent&#8217;. One of the interesting follow up stories from the Cameron&#8217;s leaving their daughter in the pub was that it prompted other parents [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/whats-it-like-to-be-an-imperfect-parent/">What&#8217;s it like to be an Imperfect Parent?</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk">Khiron Clinics</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: justify;">by Benjamin Fry</p>
<div id="attachment_268" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-268" decoding="async" fetchpriority="high" class="  wp-image-268 size-medium" title="Did Nancy suffer trauma from being left in the pub by the Prime Minister?" src="http://benjaminfry.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/cameron-nancy-2_2244778b-300x187.jpg" alt="The trauma of being left behind" width="300" height="187" /><p id="caption-attachment-268" class="wp-caption-text">The trauma of being left behind</p></div>
<p style="text-align: justify;">News that David Cameron left his eight year old daughter, Nancy. in a country pub over the weekend got me thinking about what it&#8217;s like to be an &#8216;imperfect parent&#8217;.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">One of the interesting follow up stories from the Cameron&#8217;s leaving their daughter in the pub was that it prompted other parents to come forward with their own stories of errors and neglect. This raises the issue about how difficult it is to an imperfect parent. The follow up question to which is usually &#8216;how much is good enough?&#8217;</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">To answer this question we have to look at the mechanism of the biological stress cycle in children. First of all each child has his or her own calibration of regulation which broadly speaking means as we all know that some children are just more robust than others. Someone who responds very quickly to threat, their nervous system activating more sharply than a comparable child, will appear to us to be more sensitive or more &#8216;difficult&#8217; or even more &#8216;needy&#8217;.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Secondly we have to look at what we might call the &#8216;red line for trauma in any individual nervous system. So there&#8217;s a point at which the child activation in response to threat hits overload and the system crashes into the freeze state. This red line will be at different levels for different individuals, perhaps just based on their DNA but more commonly is effectively moved around and compromised by any difficulty in their environment or history. So to put it in common language someone who&#8217;s had a really hard time and has not yet got over it will be less resilient to the next problem.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The third factor that then comes in is actually what we do to these children as parents. And the important thing to consider is, how is the nervous system of the child responding to what we are doing? Usually we judge our behaviour based on what we think is normal or OK but this can be subject to all the normal pressures of society and family and internal processes of denial and confusion. The only thing that matters is how this behaviour is being received by the nervous system of the child in question. Our theories about what we should or should not be doing or about how the child should or should not be responding are completely irrelevant and redundant.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Unfortunately the combination of these factors leads to a fairly frighteningly low threshold for what we define as potentially traumatic for children; the definition given by Pia Mellody is &#8216;anything less than nurturing&#8217;. Most people hearing that for the first time think that it must be ridiculous but when you look in detail at the actual mechanism of the stress cycle and in particular the reality that trauma begins when stress is overwhelming, you can see that in a young child anything less than nurturing could be seen as a life or death threat.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Given therefore that it&#8217;s impossible not to traumatise our children, what is it that we should be doing as parents?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The answer in broad terms is to focus on not trying to prevent stress cycles but learning how to facilitate a child to complete stress cycles. There&#8217;s nothing wrong with activation and the trauma mechanism; all the problems we experience are as a result of not coming out of the freeze state rather than because we went into it. We can help our children to complete these stress cycles by giving them what we would call &#8216;resources&#8217;. This effectively raises the red line in what they can tolerate and therefore allows them to process things that previously they were unable to complete. On a basic level, time, focused attention, physical affection and being attuned or responsive to the child&#8217;s needs are good enough foundations for building these resources in a young child (see Peter Levine&#8217;s book on &#8216;Trauma Proofing your Kids&#8217;).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">When these opportunities are missed in childhood the adult that the child then becomes may need some specific help in resolving these unfinished stress cycles in the nervous system. That’s the work we do at Khiron House.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">So in the Cameron&#8217;s case like any parent they made mistakes but what augers well for Nancy&#8217;s recovery is that it was her mother that went straight back to collect her and not some nanny or bodyguard. This will have been received by Nancy as a resource, as a parent who is truly present and understands her needs, and that in itself is likely to lead to good enough parenting.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Nobody can ever prevent a child from going into the traumatic spectrum of the nervous system but everybody can play a part in facilitating a child to come out of it.</p>
<p><span style="color: #008080;"><strong>If you would like a weekly email about new posts on our blog please sign up for our mailing list in the box above right. </strong></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/whats-it-like-to-be-an-imperfect-parent/">What&#8217;s it like to be an Imperfect Parent?</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk">Khiron Clinics</a>.</p>
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		<title>Attachment Parenting – What’s the Problem?</title>
		<link>http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/attachment-parenting-whats-the-problem/</link>
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		<dc:creator><![CDATA[steve]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 23 May 2012 18:32:42 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Current Affairs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[anxiety]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[attachment parenting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Benjamin Fry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[biological process]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[blog]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[children]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[depression]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[freeze response]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[incomplete stress cycles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Khiron House]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mental health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nervous system]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[relationships]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[stress cycle]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[trauma]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://benjaminfry.co.uk/blog/?p=250</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>by Benjamin Fry An article in the Guardian this week asked why long-term breastfeeding and co-sleeping are parental practices that provoke strong reactions. Here are my thoughts&#8230; When we work with the nervous system (which we do because it affects both mental health and behaviours &#8211; so anxiety, depression, addiction, OCD etc.) we are effectively [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/attachment-parenting-whats-the-problem/">Attachment Parenting – What’s the Problem?</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk">Khiron Clinics</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: justify;">by Benjamin Fry</p>
<div id="attachment_251" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-251" decoding="async" class="wp-image-251 size-medium" title="Attachment Parenting - what's the problem?" src="http://benjaminfry.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Attachment-parenting-008-300x180.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="180" /><p id="caption-attachment-251" class="wp-caption-text">a Mother Breastfeeding</p></div>
<p style="text-align: justify;">An article in the Guardian this week asked why long-term breastfeeding and co-sleeping are parental practices that provoke strong reactions. Here are my thoughts&#8230;</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">When we work with the nervous system (which we do because it affects both mental health and behaviours &#8211; so anxiety, depression, addiction, OCD etc.) we are effectively working with natural biological processes, each of which has a rhythm and a natural arc. The stress cycle is one of these. When we are aroused by threat, we go through an activation, and then when we are ok again, we go through a deactivation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The cause of most common mental illnesses and behavioural disorders is incomplete stress cycles. This happens when we get aroused, and then get overwhelmed, and then freeze… and then never come out again into deactivation. What we are left with is a huge ball of unprocessed energy, which tends to either rumble about in our basement, or explode at inconvenient times; neither of which helps us to live a good or easy life.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">So, the freeze is the pathway to all of these problems (or more specifically our inability to come out of it healthily), and whether or not we freeze has something to do with our resilience.   It’s like a fuse in a domestic plug; some are 3 Amps, some 5, some 13. The ones with the higher setting will get blown less frequently. Therefore we obviously want to be 13 Amp plugs rather than 3 Amps if we can help it. So what makes the difference?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">One idea about this is attachment parenting. Part of the goal of attachment parenting is to create as few stress cycles in the child as possible until he or she is old enough to manage them (all the way in and out) on their own. Babies can’t handle stress cycles alone; they need the physical proximity of a parent to metabolise their bodies. That’s why we cuddle, hold and sleep with them. So called primitive cultures seem to know this automatically; we’ve forgotten. Attachment parenting appears to be resuscitating this ancient art of baby regulation. Interestingly, it needs a nicely regulated adult to make it work, and this article suggest that far from being mud-flinging bare-breasted maniacs, the mothers who practice this appear to be quite grounded and calm. This make sense from a nervous system point of view.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">If you are not a calm nervous system yourself, or were not raised by one, you might wonder what you can do to recover that lost birth right, and to get into the arms (metaphorically) of a good container or metaboliser. The good news is that the new psychotherapies which are being developed and slowly propagated in the UK do exactly this. Khiron House was set up to deliver this work safely and with the most possible expertise. So, the lack of a good-enough mother no longer needs to be terminal!</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Benjamin Fry works across a range of services and media using personal, professional and scientific expertise to help people to a baggage-free life. A published author, and a past columnist for The Times and Psychologies magazine, Benjamin is a social activist in mental health. He founded Get Stable in 2010 to get effective treatment paid for by the state and his great passion is to bring treatment, which works, to all levels of society and across all severities of conditions.</p>
<p><span style="color: #008080;"><strong>If you would like a weekly email about new posts on our blog please sign up for our mailing list in the box above right. </strong></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/attachment-parenting-whats-the-problem/">Attachment Parenting – What’s the Problem?</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk">Khiron Clinics</a>.</p>
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		<title>What is the internet age doing to our sense of personal boundaries &#8211; and how does it affect the nervous system?</title>
		<link>http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/what-is-the-internet-age-doing-to-our-sense-of-personal-boundaries-and-how-does-it-affect-the-nervous-system/</link>
					<comments>http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/what-is-the-internet-age-doing-to-our-sense-of-personal-boundaries-and-how-does-it-affect-the-nervous-system/#comments</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[steve]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 16 May 2012 10:30:37 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Current Affairs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Benjamin Fry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[blog]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Khiron House]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mental health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nervous system]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[personal boundaries]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[relationships]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[trauma]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://benjaminfry.co.uk/blog/?p=240</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>by Benjamin Fry I came across this fascinating article in the Independent recently &#8211; Divorce in the internet age: It’s complicated &#8211; To move on after a relationship ends, you need to be able to forget. But how can you when the internet has such a long memory? This article brings up the pressing issues of boundaries [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/what-is-the-internet-age-doing-to-our-sense-of-personal-boundaries-and-how-does-it-affect-the-nervous-system/">What is the internet age doing to our sense of personal boundaries &#8211; and how does it affect the nervous system?</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk">Khiron Clinics</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_242" style="width: 274px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-242" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-242" title="What is the internet age doing to our sense of personal boundaries - and how does it affect the nervous system?" src="http://benjaminfry.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/broken-heart.jpg" alt="Picture of a broken heart " width="264" height="216" /><p id="caption-attachment-242" class="wp-caption-text">Is the internet destroying our personal boundaries?</p></div>
<p style="text-align: justify;">by Benjamin Fry</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">I came across this fascinating article in the Independent recently &#8211;<span style="text-decoration: underline;"> Divorce in the internet age: It’s complicated &#8211; <em>To move on after a relationship ends, you need to be able to forget. But how can you when the internet has such a long memory?</em></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This article brings up the pressing issues of boundaries in personal relationships. In the digital era, we are confronted with a dizzyingly swiftly changing landscape in personal boundaries; privacy has evaporated from the concept it once held a hundred years ago. A thousand years ago, nothing much would change in a hundred years. A thousand minutes from now, things will be changing as fast as they ever have in the history of human society. What is this doing to our sense of personal boundaries and how does it affect the nervous system?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Relationships are built on the ability to connect from a place of separateness and health. Only when I am whole in isolation, can I truly bring myself to relating. But this ideal is almost never reached in the human condition, so we are encouraged to approximate. To do this, successfully, society creates norms. These become the boundaries of human experience within which we are encouraged to remain. So monogamy seems to be such an idea in most cultures; perhaps strengthening the family unit and discouraging the random coupling and decoupling which could destroy the fragile fabric of an early civilization. These external norms replace the need in ourselves to be perfectly self-regulating. If we follow the rules, we are encouraged to believe, then everything will turn out fine.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">To evolve from there, and therefore in effect to choose our own path (such as divorce, in this case) we need to find a way into the deeper truth of our own boundaries. In trauma work we look at two layers of personal boundaries; one is internal and regulates what gets into and out of our deepest psychological and emotional core; and the other is external and governs the behaviour we allow and manifest. Each has a two way function; we let stuff in, and we let stuff out. It takes years in recovery to perfect these boundaries and to get them to a point of functioning healthily in the background, regulating our experience of ourselves and others.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The digital age can come crashing through these boundaries in a startling way. Boundaries need time and practice to develop, and new experiences, new ways in which to have them assaulted, are too much too fast too soon for our finely calibrated systems. We are stone age instruments in a fibre optic blizzard.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">With trauma work, we always retreat to a baseline position of “slow down”. It usually is the opposite of what the dysregulated nervous system is wanting to do. So with digital communication, with email, with Facebook, with twitter, and especially in time of stress and crisis, like a divorce, a retreat to a pre-digital era is most likely to nourish our prehistoric pace of nervous activation and discharge.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Benjamin Fry works across a range of services and media using personal, professional and scientific expertise to help people to a baggage-free life. A published author, and a past columnist for The Times and Psychologies magazine, Benjamin is a social activist in mental health. He founded Get Stable in 2010 to get effective treatment paid for by the state and his great passion is to bring treatment, which works, to all levels of society and across all severities of conditions.</p>
<p><span style="color: #008080;"><strong>If you would like a weekly email about new posts on our blog please sign up for our mailing list in the box above right. </strong></span></p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/what-is-the-internet-age-doing-to-our-sense-of-personal-boundaries-and-how-does-it-affect-the-nervous-system/">What is the internet age doing to our sense of personal boundaries &#8211; and how does it affect the nervous system?</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk">Khiron Clinics</a>.</p>
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		<title>My boyfriend threw me out but now he wants me back! How Trauma Therapy can help stop the cycle.</title>
		<link>http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/my-boyfriend-threw-me-out-but-now-he-wants-me-back-how-trauma-therapy-can-help-stop-the-cycle/</link>
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		<dc:creator><![CDATA[steve]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 04 May 2012 15:53:00 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Current Affairs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Benjamin Fry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[blog]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fight or flight]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[freeze response]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Khiron House]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mental health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nervous system]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pia Mellody]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[relationships]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[stress cycle]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[trauma cycle]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[trauma reactions]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://benjaminfry.co.uk/blog/?p=231</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>by Benjamin Fry The answer is yes, (or no) it doesn&#8217;t matter&#8230; Relationships are the final frontier of mental health. The journey to “should I take him back or not” begins a long time before with the loss of the self. This loss comes from the incomplete process of the automatic response of the nervous [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/my-boyfriend-threw-me-out-but-now-he-wants-me-back-how-trauma-therapy-can-help-stop-the-cycle/">My boyfriend threw me out but now he wants me back! How Trauma Therapy can help stop the cycle.</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk">Khiron Clinics</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: justify;">by Benjamin Fry</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;"><strong>The answer is yes, (or no) it doesn&#8217;t matter&#8230;</strong></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Relationships are the final frontier of mental health. The journey to “should I take him back or not” begins a long time before with the loss of the self. This loss comes from the incomplete process of the automatic response of the nervous system to threat in our environment, and usually starts in early childhood.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Trauma is the medical name for these incomplete nervous system processes, but when people hear the word in common language they think of events far more serious or obvious than they can usually locate in their own lives. For hundreds of millions of years organisms have been refining their response to threat. We are at a time in the evolution of that system when things have gone a bit wrong. It may even become our &#8216;Darwinian Achilles heel&#8217;.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Our responses to threat are supposed to go smoothly through an arc from mild adrenaline response, to fight or flight, to freeze; and crucially back again. The human system is the only one to get stuck and not be able to return. This means that threats in childhood become frozen into the potential energy system of our bodies, like little unexploded bombs. And there they sit, sometimes for decades, until something, or someone comes along to set them off again. And that’s when the fun starts.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Nothing can trigger these explosions (or as we call them, trauma reactions) like another person, and of course particularly that special other person. The problem is that these reactions are always themselves incomplete, and can indeed often restart the whole nervous system activation process because they themselves seem like a new threat. So usually there is a repeating cycle of stimulating these very difficult experiences, which have been waiting around in the body (trauma is in the body and not in the event) just waiting to find a way out, but not completing them (which we call discharge). So the experience itself becomes a trauma, and the original trauma gets refrozen.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Oddly, part of our experience of this is to like it. We get magnetically drawn towards our trauma templates and trauma cycles. The body knows what it wants to do, which is to discharge this energy, and unconsciously this innate wisdom takes us there. These relationships we get stuck in which go round and round but never work are actually just manifestations of our trauma cycles trying to release over and over again and needing the trigger of the other person to do it</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Of course, that is not a healthy relationship.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Pia Mellody, one of the architects of health in relationship has a model of human behaviour which goes roughly as such; I’m born perfect, I get screwed up and don’t reach full maturity, I behave oddly as a result, so my relationships are a disaster.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The cure is to work on the relationship from the inside out, from the self with the self, rather than with the other. Only then can I bring myself next to another from a position of health. Then I will be triggered into my own trauma (guaranteed) but I will deal with it in my own psychological and physical space, and not try to use the other person to medicate my reaction.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">That work on the self, and the trauma reduction work specifically, freeing us by completing trauma and stress cycles, is the work that we do at Khiron House. Watching people’s relationships blossom as a result is one of the most gratifying fruits of our labour, but you only get there through doing the hard inner work first, during and after.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">So in this case, the answer to the lady’s question is<em> “yes, or no, it doesn’t matter; what’s important is how you take care of yourself and the work you do to free your body from the accumulated energy which this relationship is triggering.”</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Benjamin Fry works across a range of services and media using personal, professional and scientific expertise to help people to a baggage-free life. A published author, and a past columnist for The Times and Psychologies magazine, Benjamin is a social activist in mental health. He founded Get Stable in 2010 to get effective treatment paid for by the state and his great passion is to bring treatment, which works, to all levels of society and across all severities of conditions.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #008080;"><strong>If you would like a weekly email about new posts on our blog please sign up for our mailing list in the box above right. </strong></span></p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/my-boyfriend-threw-me-out-but-now-he-wants-me-back-how-trauma-therapy-can-help-stop-the-cycle/">My boyfriend threw me out but now he wants me back! How Trauma Therapy can help stop the cycle.</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk">Khiron Clinics</a>.</p>
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		<title>&#8220;It&#8217;s like living in a storage facility&#8221; &#8211; Symptoms of hoarding and why people do it</title>
		<link>http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/its-like-living-in-a-storage-facility-symptoms-of-hoarding-and-why-people-do-it/</link>
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		<dc:creator><![CDATA[steve]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 03 May 2012 09:27:06 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Current Affairs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[addiction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dysregulated]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[external crutches]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nervous system]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[obsession with hoarding]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[para-sympathetic nervous system]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sympathetic nervous system]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[trauma theory]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://benjaminfry.co.uk/blog/?p=218</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>by Benjamin Fry A recent article published in the Guardian discussed how Jasmine Harman&#8217;s mother&#8217;s obsession with hoarding was having a hugely negative impact on their lives&#8230; In trauma theory we work a great deal to manage the transition in the nervous system and in the body, from the sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/its-like-living-in-a-storage-facility-symptoms-of-hoarding-and-why-people-do-it/">&#8220;It&#8217;s like living in a storage facility&#8221; &#8211; Symptoms of hoarding and why people do it</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk">Khiron Clinics</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: justify;">by Benjamin Fry</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">A recent article published in the Guardian discussed how Jasmine Harman&#8217;s mother&#8217;s obsession with hoarding was having a hugely negative impact on their lives&#8230;</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="alignright wp-image-219 size-medium" title="It's like living in a storage facility - symptoms of hoarding and why people do it" src="http://benjaminfry.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Hoarding-Jasmine-and-Vasoulla-Harm-008-300x180.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="180" />In trauma theory we work a great deal to manage the transition in the nervous system and in the body, from the sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic nervous system. The difference between these two nervous systems is that the sympathetic nervous system activates our response to threat, and the parasympathetic nervous system regulates our response to being in environments where there are no threats. So when we&#8217;re treating people who struggle with making this transition naturally (who we might call &#8216;dysregulated&#8217;) we look to find internal ways to make a person feel like they&#8217;re in an environment in which they have, what we would call, resources, because a resource is the opposite of a threat.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">When this internal architecture is not in place, people will look to all kinds of external crutches on which to rest their difficulty in regulating their nervous system. Many of us are familiar with the most usual suspects; drink, drugs, sex, gambling, relationships, food etc. However the same dynamic can be manifest in many more weird and wonderful ways.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Hoarding is very often simply a way for a person to gather around them as much as possible of what physically feels like a resource. In this case, every single object in Vasoulla Harman&#8217;s home will have an association, a memory, a smell, a relationship; something that feels like security rather than a threat. If you remove all of those objects from around that person all they are left with is the reality of their own dysregulated nervous system, and from that place their only experience in life will be of responding to threat.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">So, the reason that they gather all manner of things that makes no sense to anyone else, is that they begin from a place in which they live in an incredibly uncomfortable personal biology. Looking at the bigger picture, in general in our lives all battling behaviour from alcoholism to hoarding can be explained in terms of understanding the individuals difficulty with regulating their nervous system, in the absence of these other interventions or behaviours.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">So what this person needs before she&#8217;s confronted about removing resources from her home is professional help to expand the resources within her internal psychological architecture. This work can be done with excellent results by a nervous system specialist.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Benjamin Fry works across a range of services and media using personal, professional and scientific expertise to help people to a baggage-free life. A published author, and a past columnist for The Times and Psychologies magazine, Benjamin is a social activist in mental health. He founded Get Stable in 2010 to get effective treatment paid for by the state and his great passion is to bring treatment, which works, to all levels of society and across all severities of conditions.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #008080;"><strong>If you would like a weekly email about new posts on our blog please sign up for our mailing list in the box above right. </strong></span></p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/its-like-living-in-a-storage-facility-symptoms-of-hoarding-and-why-people-do-it/">&#8220;It&#8217;s like living in a storage facility&#8221; &#8211; Symptoms of hoarding and why people do it</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk">Khiron Clinics</a>.</p>
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		<title>Why would I like you more divorced?</title>
		<link>http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/why-would-i-like-you-more-divorced/</link>
					<comments>http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/why-would-i-like-you-more-divorced/#comments</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[steve]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:11:54 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Current Affairs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Benjamin Fry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[blog]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[broken relationships]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[divorce]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Khiron House]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nervous system]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[relationships]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[trauma reduction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[trauma reservoir]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[trigger]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[trigger and reaction]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://benjaminfry.co.uk/blog/?p=195</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>by Benjamin Fry Maria and Simon Paxton recently declared in the Mail On-line that they were so much closer now they were divorced. How can this be? Jean-Paul Sartre famously said that “hell is other people”. Well there is no greater hell in another than a broken relationship. So why would a divorced couple get [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/why-would-i-like-you-more-divorced/">Why would I like you more divorced?</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk">Khiron Clinics</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_198" style="width: 257px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-198" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-198 size-medium" title="Would I like you more divorced?" src="http://benjaminfry.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Happier-now-divorced-247x300.jpg" alt="Marie and Simon Paxton " width="247" height="300" /><p id="caption-attachment-198" class="wp-caption-text">Happier now they are divorced</p></div>
<p style="text-align: justify;">by Benjamin Fry</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Maria and Simon Paxton recently declared in the Mail On-line that they were so much closer now they were divorced. How can this be?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Jean-Paul Sartre famously said that “hell is other people”. Well there is no greater hell in another than a broken relationship. So why would a divorced couple get on better when not married? The answer is quite simple if you understand trauma theory.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Every experience has two components; firstly a “trigger” and then a “reaction”. Much of what we do in our trauma work therapy is to firstly identify the difference, and then to work on the nervous system to calm the reaction. So the first step is to actually know that there are two factors involved. Two. Sound familiar?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In every relationship this dynamic is mirrored. The “other” of Satre fame is my trigger, and my trauma reservoir feeds my reaction, which if strong enough feels like “hell”. The unending dynamic of relationship is trigger and reaction, trigger and reaction, trigger and reaction. Now when we add in the romantic and domestic element of a relationship, we add fuel to this fire of reactivity.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Much of the experience of a close relationship, like a marriage, is a suspension of disbelief that we are now “safe”. This security allows us to access vulnerabilities which were previously just too overwhelming to permit. In some ways, therefore, we become less stable, not more, when we feel firmly held in a loving bond. This can be seen as a relief; we can stop holding on (there is even a film about this called “waiting to exhale”).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">However, the problem is that this letting go results in us accessing even more reactivity, which results in us blowing up even more and even bigger to the same triggers as before. That’s why we usually have our biggest rows (and if we’re honest often show our worst behaviour) with the people we love the most. Lovers quarrel in a way that people who just know each other a bit never do. Love, and the activity of being “in” love, turns up the dial on our reactions to the triggers coming from the loved one.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">So when we fall out of love, take a break and then meet again years later, the other person hasn’t changed (they still provide the same “triggers”), but we just don’t react so much anymore. We are not so open to them, and therefore not so bothered. In fact, we might say something like “I can’t believe I used to…”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">There is another layer to this too. Just by not being “in” love anymore, we remove not only our reactivity, but also many of our triggers. We tend to project a great deal of stuff onto those we love, the residue of unfinished business with our first love objects (usually parents), and so we are actually manufacturing much of the content of the triggers too, not just our reactions to them. Being “out” of love tends to fracture these projections and hence calm down the supposed triggers.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Love needs real skill and self-knowledge to navigate. We work on boundaries to bring reality to our triggers, and on trauma reduction to calm down our reactions. Then “other people” can be our heaven, because we return our own biology to where it was meant to be, an Eden of self-regulation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Benjamin Fry works across a range of services and media using personal, professional and scientific expertise to help people to a baggage-free life. A published author, and a past columnist for The Times and Psychologies magazine, Benjamin is a social activist in mental health. He founded Get Stable in 2010 to get effective treatment paid for by the state and his great passion is to bring treatment, which works, to all levels of society and across all severities of conditions.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #008080;"><strong>If you would like a weekly email about new posts on our blog please sign up for our mailing list in the box above right. </strong></span></p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/why-would-i-like-you-more-divorced/">Why would I like you more divorced?</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk">Khiron Clinics</a>.</p>
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		<title>Home is an emotional issue. And with good reason&#8230;</title>
		<link>http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/home-is-an-emotional-issue-and-with-good-reason-2/</link>
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		<dc:creator><![CDATA[steve]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 11 Apr 2012 09:09:37 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Current Affairs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Benjamin Fry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[biological system]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[blog]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[crime]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Khiron House]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mental health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nervous system]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[trauma]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[trauma reservoir]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[unfinished stress cycles]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://benjaminfry.co.uk/blog/?p=211</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>by Benjamin Fry Few things seem to ruffle Simon Cowell’s feathers, but his recent home invasion got to him. Home is the perfect metaphor for the intra-psychic search for somewhere in the body which feels safe. We live in topsy-turvy bodies which have lost the capacity to “regulate” themselves.  The complexity of the human system [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/home-is-an-emotional-issue-and-with-good-reason-2/">Home is an emotional issue. And with good reason&#8230;</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk">Khiron Clinics</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: justify;"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="alignright" title="Simon Cowell home intrusion" src="http://benjaminfry.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Simon-Cowell-home-intrusion-300x187.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="187" />by Benjamin Fry</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Few things seem to ruffle Simon Cowell’s feathers, but his recent home invasion got to him.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Home is the perfect metaphor for the intra-psychic search for somewhere in the body which feels safe. We live in topsy-turvy bodies which have lost the capacity to “regulate” themselves.  The complexity of the human system has caused a breakdown in communication between at least two large parts of the biological system, and as a result we can often feel out of control.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Feeling in control is how we counteract this systemic problem in our species, and coming “home” is one way in which we like to do this. In trauma work, we often talk of a person coming “home” when they begin to develop the capacity to re-exist inside the “container” of the biology of their own bodies. This means that they are not too much for themselves. A baby needs a mother to hold him or her when distressed but an adult can most of the time contain him or herself, if they have a healthy nervous system without too much of a trauma reservoir.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">For those of us carrying a lot of baggage, our reactivity means that we can not contain ourselves. So we look to external agencies to do this for us; people, relationships, behaviours and chemicals will often do. But nothing is more sacred than that place we try to come back to for safety and recovery. In our modern culture we have made this our physical house, our home; but in the spiritual traditions and architectures which run much further into the history of human thinking, our home is a place within, a place which we have lost due to the accumulated effects of untreated trauma (or simply unfinished stress cycles).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This can be more easily addressed and cured now than at any point in modern history. <a title="Khiron House - Contact" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/contact.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Contact Us</a> now and allow us to help you come home.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Benjamin Fry works across a range of services and media using personal, professional and scientific expertise to help people to a baggage-free life. A published author, and a past columnist for The Times and Psychologies magazine, Benjamin is a social activist in mental health. He founded Get Stable in 2010 to get effective treatment paid for by the state and his great passion is to bring treatment, which works, to all levels of society and across all severities of conditions.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #008080;"><strong>If you would like a weekly email about new posts on our blog please sign up for our mailing list in the box above right. </strong></span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk/blog/home-is-an-emotional-issue-and-with-good-reason-2/">Home is an emotional issue. And with good reason&#8230;</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://khironhouse.dev.fl9.uk">Khiron Clinics</a>.</p>
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