What If You Don’t Need to Fix Your Pain? | Parental Alienation & Nervous System Healing

Lawrence Joss and Brea Segger, Master of Somatic Emotional Release explore the importance of presence and non-judgment in therapeutic settings, emphasizing the need for individuals to connect with their emotions and experiences without the pressure to 'fix' them. They discuss alternative therapeutic approaches that focus on co-regulation and emotional awareness, particularly in the context of grief and anxiety. The dialogue highlights the significance of witnessing others' emotional processes and the role of trust in navigating complex feelings. Ultimately, the conversation advocates for a compassionate and empowering approach to emotional healing.

Key Takeaways

• The importance of showing up for others from a centered place.
• Therapy can be more effective when it allows for emotional exploration without a fixed outcome.
• Understanding and processing emotions can lead to deeper healing.
• Witnessing someone's grief can be more powerful than trying to alleviate it.
• Grief often encompasses a range of emotions, including anger and resentment.
• Building trust in one's emotional process can shorten the duration of grief.
• Allowing emotions to arise without judgment fosters resilience.
• Co-regulation between therapist and client creates a safe space for healing.
• Emotional processing can be facilitated by focusing on bodily sensations.
• Finding balance in emotional expression is key to mental well-being.

Chapters

00:00 - The Power of Presence and Non-Judgment
02:53 - Exploring Alternative Therapeutic Approaches
05:50 - Meeting People Where They Are
09:08 - Navigating Anxiety and Emotional States
11:47 - Understanding Grief and Its Complexities
15:04 - The Role of Witnessing in Healing
17:48 - Building Trust and Resilience in Emotions
20:45 - The Journey Through Grief and Acceptance
23:41 - Finding Balance in Emotional Processing

If you wish to connect with Lawrence Joss or any of the PA-A community members who have appeared as guests on the podcast:

Email - familydisappeared@gmail.com
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/lawrencejoss
(All links mentioned in the podcast are available in Linktree)

Connect with Brea Segger:
https://www.breasegger.com/

Please donate to support PAA programs:
https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=SDLTX8TBSZNXSsa bottom part

This podcast is made possible by the Family Disappeared Team:
Anna Johnson- Editor/Contributor/Activist/Co-host
Glaze Gonzales- Podcast Manager

Connect with Lawrence Joss:
Website: https://parentalalienationanonymous.com/
Email-         familydisappeared@gmail.com

Transcript

Showing Up Without Judgment

SPEAKER_01 0:00

What if we were able to just show up for people in a way that was from a centered place and a place of allowance, of non-judgment, of having a very calm nervous system? And that in turn gives others the opportunity to come into their own inner knowing and to then make decisions and move from that place.

Community Resources And Support

Personal Story Of Alienation

Brie’s Approach Beyond Fixing

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Are you tired of going to therapy and feel like you're not getting anywhere? You keep talking to the therapist and you still miss your kids, and you've got all this grief and all this confusion and these ruminating thoughts, and you don't know what to do with it. You know, today we're gonna have a wonderful conversation with Bries Hager, and it's about breaking down other access routes that you can work with therapists and what that could look like. And also we talk about the expansiveness that can come with starting to spend time with yourself and your emotions. We talk uh a bunch about grief and hope. Uh, and there's also some special flies, which might sound silly, but they they come into the show too. So if you're new to the community, welcome. We have a bunch of resources in the show notes. We have a free 12-step program, Parental Alienation Anonymous. Great place to get community, which is a pivotal part of actually moving through this in any kind of way. And whether it's that community or another community, it's highly suggested to jump into that. We're a 501c3 nonprofit. Please donate if you have the resources. And you're not donating for yourself, you're donating for the next person that hasn't found these resources and to keep them free and available to everyone. We do need your support. And with that, let's get into the show and see what Ray has to say. I remember early on when I was struggling with parental alienation before I even knew what it was. I'd get angry at my kids when they would treat me really badly. And it wouldn't be overtly angry when I'm yelling and screaming, but there was that resentment and that fear and so many emotions, and I didn't know what to do with them. And I wanted to I wanted the kids to change their behavior, so I projected a lot of my emotions onto them, and I wasn't useful. And I wasn't bad. I was just doing the best that I could to survive, but knowing now that I was overwhelmed and didn't necessarily have the resources to fully be with myself because I had no idea what that was. I wasn't aware of that from my family of origin and I hadn't done a lot of interpersonal work, I wasn't able to fully feel comfortable and alive and myself in my own body. But as I started to cultivate that, a lot of those feelings around the kids and them doing something wrong, or them being this or them being that dissipated. And I finally got to understand what they are doing, what are they feeling at that age? What would it feel like for me to sit with them in what they're feeling? So I say that because that's a really important part of the show that uh we're gonna be talking to today. And I just wanted to relate it to real life when you're struggling with alienation, estrangement, or erasure. So here we go with Brie. Well, today we're really, really excited to have Bree Sager on the show today. And she is a powerhouse, and we're just gonna let Bri uh introduce herself quickly to the community. So please go ahead, Brie.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

Hi, Lawrence. Nice to be here. Yeah, thank you for that introduction. So essentially, what I've been working on for many years now is really being there for people in a bit of different way, a bit of a different way than we would from general therapy. It's been in a way that you can actually hold space for a person rather than having an outcome attached to how they move through their traumas, their patterns, the things that they are experiencing in life. So, what I found over the years of work where I was trying to quote unquote fix people or get them into a certain state, I realized that my way of what I wanted them to happen for them wasn't exactly in line with what was happening internally for them. So it's very easy for us to see our friends, our family, and be like, why they should be happy, they should feel peace. You know, surely if we give them this advice and they follow it, that they're gonna be great and their life is gonna be successful and wonderful. But we know that's not true. One, we know it doesn't work that way. And two, we know that it really doesn't work on ourselves either because we have this sort of cognitive dissonance between understanding what we see in others and applying that to ourself. But what if we were able to just show up for people in a way that was from a centered place and a place of allowance, of non-judgment, of having a very calm nervous system. And that in turn gives others the opportunity to come into their own inner knowing and to then make decisions and move from that place. So that's what I've been doing for many years now: leading retreats, mentoring people, seeing clients, patients from that space of we're not necessarily trying to get somewhere or fix something specific. We're really allowing people to come into their own truth. And can we teach other people that also want to hold space for others, mentor, be a therapist, doctors, all the different things? It doesn't even have to be in this realm of work, but can they also lead from that place of not so much force of putting our ideals and our expectations onto others? So that's a bit summary of me and my work. And I mean, on top of that, I live in Costa Rica. I've been here for four and a half years. I have a permaculture farm on Vancouver Island, so I spend a few months there a year too, and I love growing food. I love spending time with my goats and chickens and my kids. I have a 13-year-old and a 15-year-old. And that's my that's like the brief summary of my life. So let me know if you want to know more.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Well, A, your life sounds phenomenal between Costa Rica and going to Vancouver Island, and the work that you're doing sounds really profound. And I appreciate the distinction about not fixing and just meeting people where they are, you know, coming alongside them. And I'm curious, like, what does that look like when someone comes to you? Like it's easy to say not to fix, but what's like your initial intake, or like how do you meet people where they are? Is there some prompts or how does that look?

Co‑Regulation And Nervous System Safety

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Yeah, well, I'm really I'm really fortunate. So generally, everyone comes to me through word of mouth. And so my practice has been full for a number of years now. And so when they come, there's already sort of that setup like this isn't gonna be the same as going to therapy and saying that same story over and over again. And it and not that a good therapist should be it should be like that anyway, so just to make that distinction. But as you've probably had, and many people have, we have we hear about those stories, right? Where people feel like, well, I've been in therapy for 10 years, and yeah, I feel mildly better, but I don't. And so partially this has to do with the therapist themselves, right? It's about finding the right person, and there's like a lot that goes into that. But what I'm really explaining to people when I'm like, there's a stability in my nervous system, and subconsciously, my nervous system is talking to your nervous system, whether that's on Zoom or whether you're in person with me. And that is just a felt sense. And it's so interesting because, you know, yes, we can scientifically measure that. Like we know if we're around people that are calm and centered, we sort of can gravitate to being calm and centered ourselves. But it goes even deeper than that. If there's truly an allowance for somebody else, that means that they can also experience emotional states that maybe have been suppressed, but that they're aware of. So let's just say anxiety. Somebody comes to me and they have a lot of anxiety, and they've just been trying to like get it away, move it away. Let's not have anxiety anymore. Well, I mean, that sounds great. Let's get rid of our anxiety. But what if they're able to actually feel that anxiety in their body in a really deep way, follow that through in a physical sensation. So it might be mental stories, images, it might be just the emotion of anxiety itself, but without me as that practitioner with them trying to get them somewhere. We're just like allowing that to be there. And what happens is people move through it and they seem to find the spaciousness underneath the anxiety or whatever the thing is.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

Just to summarize, in in your approach, you're you're actually bringing in a regulated nervous system and you're meeting people where they are and you're giving them the self-felt sense of what it feels like to sit with someone that's regulating. So it's kind of like a co-regulation entry point, and then you move into whatever arises. Is that kind of what you're saying?

Allowing Anxiety To Move

SPEAKER_01 8:17

That's a good way to say that's an there's an entry point there, except that I am not pushing them to understand that co-regulation. So they don't need to cognitively understand that. Now, do they feel calm and centered? Yes, but we're just following what's happening in their body. So that might be something that's calm and centered, but also that might give that allowance and that permission for, in this case, anxiety to arise. So then that might be, oh, my stomach's tightening or my back of my head is sore, what's going on there? And we're exploring that, we're exploring the physical sensations along with the emotions and any stories that come up. So, yes to the co-regulation piece, but that doesn't necessarily mean that a session is going to feel easeful. I think what it is is giving that permission of ease and calmness underneath somebody. So there's this sense of safety and okayness to then explore things that are being held in the nervous system, which often we find feel like a physical sensation or a strong emotion, or both. And so let's say, for example, the person feels safe enough. So there's like a sense of calm in the deep core, but then on top of that, they're like, okay, yeah, there's a there's a bunch of anxiety there. Wow, okay, my stomach is twisting and turning, and I get this sensation of like this big darkness in my stomach. And we're just following that. So I'm setting it up so that the person really becomes in charge of their own session and the way that their body wants to heal and move through something rather than me directing them through that path. Now, I might come in in certain ways and help guide and facilitate, of course, like there's a specific way of doing this, but it's not based on something learned. Like I want to get them somewhere I'm following exercise and steps one, two, three, four to move through something. It's very much what needs to happen for that particular person's nervous system, emotional system, physical system in that moment versus like something that's been learned that's applying from the outside inside, or something that I want to see them move through. That's the other part of it. It's putting myself back. Like we might get through anxiety today, we might not. We might be just allowing the person to feel calm and good. Like, what does that feel like to feel the flip side, to feel calm, to feel okay, to know that there is a state available that is regulated. That might be enough. So it's, you know, or we might go through a whole host of other patterns, traumas, learned behaviors, all these things that we often hold that aren't ours. So it's very, it's very different on in each session.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

That sounds wonderful. And just to contextualize it for people that are listening, like a lot of people are going through some form of alienation or estrangement and they're super dysregulated and they can't even tell what's real or not real. And if like someone walks into Zoom or walks into a place and they've got all this anxiety and tension in their body, but they can't process anything that's happening because they just get stuck in this like thought loop. Like, how do you bypass the thought to help them get somewhere, or do you just let them stay in like a thought loop? Like traditional therapy, it doesn't sound like that's what's happening.

From Thought Loops To Body Awareness

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Yeah. So first they're laying down. Yeah, actually put a sleeping, I put a sleeping mask on, or they do if they feel comfortable doing it. Because this is telling their body, like, hey, it's okay to go inside. It's okay with to be like right in this moment. So again, if we're our eyes are open and if we're looking around, we're turning on so many other parts of our brain. So so that's the first part of the session if someone's comfortable. Now, people that are in that very dysregulated state that you're talking about, closing their eyes, just letting them be in that dysregulated state. What comes out of that after a while is the recognition that my brain is doing one thing and my body's doing another thing. And there might be a place, my body might be even more wired than my brain is. But we start to differentiate between the brain always on safety, always looking out, always trying to like, where's the fear? What's going on out here, versus there is a place available in every person where there is a regulated state. And we don't want to force ourselves into that, but we start giving it a permission and allowance just simply by being, giving the brain some time, but also getting to know other parts of the body at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

So for clarification, I love the idea of giving the brain time to come online, calm down, feel the difference between the calm and this dysregulated state, but you're also bringing the body into it. Do you direct people to move away from like the thought process, start to feel what's tightening in their body or hot in their body or anything to that degree?

SPEAKER_01 12:51

It'll look something like okay, we're first we're we're giving the brain permission to do what it does. We're noticing the loops, we're noticing the thoughts in the past, the future thinking, the what's happening now, the judgments of this moment. So we're just letting that be there. We're not gonna fight it, we're not gonna like push it away because we know that's just gonna make it come on stronger. We're not gonna like pull it close and be like, oh yes, you're my best friend brain, keep protecting me. We're just gonna let it be there and keep running. And then we move the awareness into the body, into the emotions, and we're letting the brain still do what it does, but more of that focus is in the body, and that helps people start to differentiate. Okay, mind can do whatever it's doing, but there's something and, you know, an and happening, a simultaneous thing happening, which is our body, our nervous system, can find that spaciousness and that calmness. But again, it's not in a forced way. So someone might not be feeling that at all. We might go through a big process of fear or like an old trauma that comes up that gripped them when they were six years old and we're in with that. But what happens in sessions is that as they feel safe enough to explore these things physically and emotionally, their mind's still doing the same thing it does. When you move through it, we realize it wasn't as awful as we often thought it was. I don't mean from like an outside looking in, you know, if someone had a very traumatizing thing, that's an awful, horrible thing. But their system, it's not happening to them right now in this moment. And that's where we can find that regulation.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

Okay, and then moving from like the the cognitive dissidents, the really high up regulation, and you just kind of like follow them where they go, and to get them into their body feels like there has to be a breath, a prompt, or does it just naturally transform into something else and they just come on board themselves and you just help them move to that next space that's coming alive?

Grief As A Full‑Body Process

SPEAKER_01 14:42

There's a prompt in can you allow yourself to feel what's happening in your body right now, not in uh what's happening in your heart, what's happening in your stomach. And, you know, with me, I see where emotions are being held in people's bodies. And so, you know, when I first started this work many years ago, I was like, okay, now feel your heart. Okay, now feel your jaw. And I was really pushing people because I was like, well, surely they want to, you know, move through things. But again, that's it's so easy as people, as therapists, helpers, healers, whatever, to want to fix and guide people into a certain state. But I do find that over in, you know, really what happens is that we're disempowering them to find their own way through it. And I think there's a lot of space and a lot more opportunity for us to allow them to be empowered to find their own way through their journey rather than having it to be what what their therapist, their coach, their best friend tells them. We can take all that stuff, it can be useful and helpful, but what's what's their way? What is really meaningful to them? What is their body telling them? What is their emotional, what's their nervous system telling them? And we don't know if we're always in the brain, right? We're like, if we're always in the brain, we're just we're always on alert.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Yeah, that makes that makes perfect sense. And I'm just gonna kind of like wean it down to like if someone comes in in in a lot of grief and their mind's spinning and they're they're talking about it and they're kind of like stuck up there, and then you start to have them like check in with your body, like what's traditionally do you see folks happening when they're dealing with something specifically like grief, and then they feel it come in on board in their body? You had mentioned that it doesn't feel quite as severe, or it's not like a crisis potentially, and and then they kind of like are able to metabolize it as you move it from the head to the body. Is that kind of what's going on to some degree?

SPEAKER_01 16:35

Well, grief is a good one because if that's a really grief is usually a full body collapse in that state. Like let's say a loved one just passed, and so usually they're having a hard time breathing, there's a full state of overwhelm. Uh, so it's it's pretty acute. And so just being there and allowing them to be in that process without stopping it or without trying to change it, that in itself can then bring them through it. And I mean, bring's not the best word, I'm not bringing them through it. They're bringing themselves through it, not by trying to get to the other side of it, but by giving it full permission. And I think there's something, I don't know, magical, special. I don't know what the right word is there, about having a witness to someone's process. So it's one thing to be in a state of grief and have a family member, oh, I'm so sorry. This is so hard. Can I make you some tea and help you feel better, right? Like we're we're always trying to help each other with the best of intention. But so it's something different to be like, I'm just just be in it. Be it, because like grief isn't just grief, it's generally anger. It's I wish I would have, I wish things weren't, right? There's a lot in grief when it's that that level of grief. And so we want to give that full allowance for expression. And often there's those layers of anger that need to really be seen. And I think as as guides or help coaches, helpers, therapists, we can we can really be there for that.

Waves Of Grief And Building Trust

SPEAKER_00 17:55

Yeah, that that that makes perfect sense and sounds beautiful the the process. And you know, like in uh in Alan on a 12-step program, they say don't pass the Kleenex. So it sounds like as a therapist and as someone coming alongside, not passing the Kleenex, but a a lot of people within the community experience something of a more ambiguous grief where they don't have access to a child for five years, ten years, fifteen years, and they're going through the cycle where they come in and out of grief. Like, what would you say for something like that within your process? Does the the waves just get a little bit smaller and people stay more in the center as they're working with grief? Or do you find people going through these huge valleys, even when they're working with something that's more of a long-term grief that doesn't go away, that's just becomes stored in their body, literally, I would presume?

SPEAKER_01 18:41

Yeah, and on to on top of that, when we move through something, so let's just say we have it's a subconscious identity of resentment, right? We're holding resentment, and we come into realize that there's resentment there. And like with that, we feel that resentment. We're with it, we allow it to be expressed in whatever way. That might be emotionally, it might just be physically, it might be, it could be in any way. On the other side of resentment, or almost any of these emotions, is grief. And that grief comes when something has left, because our whole system is processing it like an identity that is now gone. And we're left with this sort of gap and this spaciousness in our system. So that also brings up grief, along with the type of grief that you're speaking about, where it's been so suppressed and it's just in there in such a deep way. And sometimes we can't even figure out what that is. Like, like the person is like, I had no idea when they get to the space of grief, like that that was there because they're focusing on the like, I'm not okay with this, I'm not good enough, uh, the resentment, the hurt, the pain, and all the other things, and the grief might be weaved in and out of that too. And so grief is a foundational emotion, in my opinion, that I've seen that you know is really sort of the end of the expression of whatever, whatever else is there. And that's why it comes in and out. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 20:06

It makes a lot of sense that you've got all these other things going on, and then you get to the grief, and as you transform the grief and move through it, and maybe find other things underneath it. That that makes perfect sense to me. The the thing that I struggle with personally, and a lot of people in the community is the grief is deep. You work with it, you find some light, you you you transform it. It's not really about that, it's about letting go acceptance, working on yourself, whatever it is. And then something else happens in the grief cycle with this person that you don't have any access to, like a child, and then the grief pops back up, and it feels like it's like a really heavy hit again, processing the same grief that supposedly has already moved through your body. And like, does that transform after a while? I know it gets shorter the periods of grief, but I was just curious from your perspective, what what you would think about that.

Anger, Permission, And Release

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Well, I think it does get, I think you're right, the cycle for sure gets shorter, but the reason it's getting shorter is because we have more trust in our body or that our nervous system, that central part of ourself, that we can be with heavy grief and that it will disappear because we've seen that happen in the past. We're like, okay, so now that trust is there. So it wouldn't just be the trust of like, I can feel grief when it arises. I could now feel resentment when it arises. I can feel shame when it arises, jealousy, lust. Like I can allow myself to feel these emotions that I did not want to see and I wanted to push away. And we start giving ourselves trusting our system that it can actually allow those to be there. They're not our identity anymore. And so they leave because our brain isn't so attached to them like it used to be. We used to just define ourselves by like these things that we didn't want to feel, and yet we've set up all these patterns in our life and we're living from that way. I mean, I'm sure most people here listening, they know what it's like to hold deep resentment and anger and guilt and shame inside, and yet we don't want to talk about it. We don't go telling. The world that that's that's what's happening. And yet our actions to our relationships, our our family, our children, our you know, our interactions, they are a reflection of some of what's being held in there. But if we can have that more, that permission of like that can just arise. I'm angry. Okay, I'm really angry. Maybe I'm screaming, maybe I'm yelling, whatever, you know, but it's not me. I'm like, I'm just processing it. It's okay. It's okay to allow that to be there. And often then there's grief on the other side of that. It's it's a it's a big release when we're not scared. But it's the trust, I think. The trust that allows it to never go away necessarily, because I think that's what makes us human is having access to all these different emotional states, but recognizing that it doesn't have to be our identity.

SPEAKER_00 22:46

You know, I love that. That not identifying with that specific place where you are. And I'm also hearing you say people building resilience and capacities that are able to hold that sense in their body that they're suppressing usually and they don't want to feel. And I would say the other question that comes along with that is I experienced this myself, and I I hear a lot of people talk about it where they have trust in the middle range. The upper range of anger and the lower range of sobbing become super difficult to stay in for longer than moments. Do those higher ranges also with trust through your therapy start to expand where people can stay in anger longer and they can stay in crying longer? Does that question make sense to you?

Reflection, Humor, And Closing CTAs

SPEAKER_01 23:24

It does, but it it's also it's not necessarily time specific as much as it's allowance specific. So I don't know if you've if you've ever experienced this, but I know that I've had these times where I've been like so angry. And this is in recent years. This isn't older versions of me held on to anger for years, but this is more recent versions of me where I'm like, oh my God, I have so much anger. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go and just allow myself to be with that. I'm, you know, in my mind, I'm thinking I probably have a few hours here to sit with that. And then I give it that allowance and that permission. I'm like, oh, that was five minutes. And so again, that's that trust. It's like, but that only happens when we let it kind of go and end and fizzle out on it in its own time, in its own way, rather than us having to force ourselves to a certain state. Now, there's a counter argument to that. At some place, do we just sit in our anger for days on end? I don't think that's healthy either. I do, you know, being human means showing up for our responsibilities, being active. It's okay to let our anger be in the background while we still carry on in life. And I know sometimes those big emotions just freeze people. And I think we have to find whatever that balance is for us between, you know, actively showing up in life and allowing those emotions to be processed, which might be as simple as like, don't scroll on Instagram for a day. Like, you know, take some of those extra moments that we have and let yourself actually feel what's happening.

SPEAKER_00 24:50

I love that as a great point. And the the Instagram is an example, like how we're kind of like cutting off from our emotions so we don't fully feel them. And and I like the intentionality where you said, Hey, I gave myself a couple of hours to go be angry, and it was five minutes, you know, which is super cool. I don't know how many of us people actually take the time to fully feel the emotion without trying to distract ourselves from the emotion. What a great first half of the show. That was that was really fun. It's really great talking to a therapist that is uh helping people access so many complex feelings and emotions, but doing it by coming alongside with them and letting them lead, but still supporting the process. I really love what she has to offer and how she role models it during the conversation. I don't know if the fly was the first part of the show, but if it was, it's just that kind of like realizing what's happening, announcing what's happening in your life, being super open and transparent and moving through it. If you didn't see the fly on the first part of the episode, it'll be on the second part. But it's just these things that come into our life and how do we deal with the most basic things in in our life that come in it. You know what I mean? Because that influences how we deal with everything else, including the really complex stuff. And God knows if that makes any sense. But thanks for coming out to play in the the sandbox today. Please like, share, let folks know about the show. Let's help as many people as possible. We are a 501c3 nonprofit, and I get tired of saying that, but it's a reality, and we need resources to continue bringing what we already offer and to start rolling out all the other stuff that we have access to. We do need your help and generosity to do that. So please uh come back for the next part of the show. There's uh a bunch of episodes in the in the can, 130, 140 episodes talking about any kind of topic. We hope you enjoyed the show today. Family disappeared at gmail.com. Love to hear what you have to say. And with that, let's give a couple wows. Wow, wow, wow, good show, loving it. And yeah, I'd like to way to capture the audience's wows too, because I get that all the time. Like, what would be a fun way to hear everyone say, Wow? I'm gonna work on that, and with that, have a beautiful day. And in case no one's told you yet today, I love you. We'll see you around the neighborhood.