E-mail service for Matt's blog being discontinued

Dear friends,

Please note that moving forward, we have decided to discontinue the email service associated with this blog (this will be the last post that will be emailed out). 

I will not be discontinuing the blog itself, though!

If you are interested in receiving periodic emails from me regarding new writing and upcoming online courses and events, and information about free videos and webinars, please sign up for my main mailing list here. We do not mail out very often, will never share your email, and will never include any spam or ads. 

>>Sign up for Matt's mailing list here

In order to continue to read the posts made here at the blog, you'll simply need to visit manually at https://alovinghealingspace.blogspot.com/.

Thank you for your interest in sharing this path with me. I look forward to staying in touch over the months to come.

Warmly,

Matt

P.S. I'll be relaunching my online course on "Resting Your Nervous System" with new live sessions starting in September. Please stay tuned for more information about it, and also a new ongoing study-practice group that will begin in the new year. 

Seeds of holding and light

Over time, as we deepen in our practice, we may come to discover that taking care of our unresolved emotional wounding and unprocessed trauma, and resting our own nervous systems isn’t something we do only for ourselves. 

It’s something we do for others and also for the world.

Untangling the trance of disembodiment and self-abandonment is itself the activity of love, for the earth, the ancestors, and also for the ones yet to arrive here.

Through our own unique play of embodied compassion, seeds of holding and of light are planted which then ripple through the neural circuitry of our star.

Photo by John_Nature_Photos

***Thank you for your emails regarding the next online course. We're going to be relaunching the Resting Your Nervous System course, with three new live sessions, to start in September. I'll be sure to post details here or you can sign up for my main mailing list to ensure you receive all of my updates. 

Untangling the circuitry of self-abandonment

Some are put in the position of emotionally caring for an adult early in their lives at a time they themselves need more than anything to have their own inner world mirrored back to them. To be seen as a subject with an interiority, not merely as a narcissistic reflection of the other. Until reorganized, this template orients the way we see ourselves and engage in close relationship.

In these early configurations, the little one’s sense of self becomes tangled up in the other’s moods, anxiety, and injured self-esteem. The job of the little one is shifted from unstructured play and discovery into tending to the unlived life of a caretaker, a task that is not designed for a young nervous system, nor for a tender little heart.

If interested, we can explore how this template might be at play: in our phobias around having/ expressing needs, in the fear around disappointing someone, in the hesitation around allowing another to matter. In the terror of relationship, on the one hand, and in the painful longing for it on the other. In the existential confusion about where we end and the other begins. In the ancient conclusion that caring for another requires primordial disavowal of our own psyche, body, and heart.

Having come to see our own self-worth through the changing psychic states of those around us, we find ourselves wondering: Have I disappointed them? What can I do to make them feel better? Should I take more responsibility for the unfulfilled longing in their hearts? They are upset, surely that is somehow traceable back to me, right? I’ve failed somehow, right? As a little one longing for any sort of empathic connection, we’ll do anything to receive even a limited amount of psychic (and physical) holding.

Accessing, illuminating, and untangling the tentacles of this template can go a long way in healing chronic feelings of shame and unworthiness, where we begin to differentiate our worth as a person from the moods, suffering, and unlived life of others. To withdraw the projection of our own basic goodness from others and locate it inside ourselves. This withdrawal is a great act of kindness – for ourselves, the other, and for the world.

It is by way of this disentangling that we can truly love ourselves and others and act from the radical force of true compassion, not merely re-enact the old pathways of self-abandonment and empathic failure.