Messages

(posting in two parts because of character limit on posts)

4. PROMOTING PSEUDOSCIENCE

Your scientific cherry-picking, misrepresentation of clinical data, and reliance on long-outdated and refuted theories is so extensive that a complete rebuttal goes far beyond the scope of this letter.

To name just a few areas where you promote disinformation:

You claim a causal relationship between trauma and various somatic diseases, including autoimmune illness and cancer - despite the absence of robust scientific consensus.

You assert a direct link between trauma and ADHD, which is not supported by current clinical evidence.

You frame all addiction as trauma-related, dismissing the complexity of biological, social, and psychological contributors.

You echo outdated ideas about personality traits contributing to cancer, which have been scientifically discredited for decades.

You promote a distorted understanding of how medical and psychological disciplines view somatic and mental health problems.

You misuse and conflate clinical terms demonstrating a lack of psychological and neurobiological understanding. For instance, during your talk at Nowy Teatr in Warsaw, you described attentional difficulties as trauma-based dissociation, conflating entirely separate phenomena.

As stated, I will present detailed examples of this in my upcoming broadcast.

5. PROFESSIONAL FOUL PLAY

In doing all of the above, you show disregard for your professional peers - clinicians, researchers, and educators in both somatic and mental health fields. Worse still, you foster public mistrust in medical, psychological, and academic expertise. In a time when scientific knowledge is under increasing attack, such behavior is especially reckless.

Instead of encouraging collaboration across disciplines - which is now more necessary than ever - you polarize. You alienate. You undermine.

6. BETRAYING TRUST

Dr. Maté, as a medical doctor, you are fully aware of the foundational ethical principle: primum non nocere - first, do no harm. You served under the Hippocratic Oath for decades. There is no excuse for not understanding that promoting pseudotherapy to trauma survivors does harm. It delays, derails, or altogether blocks access to professional, safe, and evidence-based care.

You betray the trust of the very people you claim to advocate for - those healing from betrayal. You also betray the trust of mental health professionals who attend your lectures expecting qualified insight, not therapeutic overreach disguised as wisdom. And you betray the trust of the colleagues and institutions that host you, such as those last Friday in Warsaw. More on that below.

A WORD OF SOMBRE CONCLUSION

What you are doing, Dr. Maté, no longer looks like offering healing opportunities. It looks like manipulation and the abuse of power. It looks like creating ambiguity, where we should strive for clarity. It looks like putting lives at risk, where we should establish safety.

It looks like reproducing trauma.

I wish I could say otherwise after your first visit to Poland. I wish you had not cast this long shadow over your earlier accomplishments.

And I wish I could end this letter here.

But I cannot - because of your response to the protest letter from the Jewish community, which you publicly addressed last Wednesday in Łódź. While I will leave the political aspects to others more qualified, I want to focus on your reaction to the claim that you promote pseudoscience.

Here's what you said:

,,As for pseudoscience, I'd like them to explain why - if I promote pseudoscience - I am invited to speak at psychotherapeutic conferences and universities".

It is a clever line, Dr. Maté. I have been reflecting on it deeply. And unfortunately, I have come to some bleak conclusions.

7. BEING HOSTED BY REPUTABLE INSTITUTIONS WITHOUT TRANSPARENCY

There is no other public figure whose credentials are more widely misrepresented in Poland than yours. Your publisher Wydawnictwo Czarna Owca and media like Vogue Polska list you as a psychiatrist. Przekrój calls you a psychologist. Zwierciadło calls you a famed therapist. You have been referred to as a psychotherapist by Konteksty. Miejsce Psychoterapii and Bożena Haściło - a psychologist, psychotherapist, and Laboratorium Psychoedukacji supervisor. Even dr Natalia Zajączkowska, organizer of your Polish tour, routinely introduces you as "a retired doctor and therapist."

If this were an isolated confusion, I might puzzle over how so many professionals could get it wrong. But after outlining your broader strategy, a more troubling possibility arises: you allow - perhaps even encourage - these misimpressions to stand because they serve your goals.

You do not need to lie. You just do not correct the record.

Well, I will. Because in trauma-informed practice and in social justice, we are taught that when transparency is missing, someone is benefitting from it. In the context of trauma, that person is almost always the perpetrator - or the enabler of harm.

So, to answer your question - why does a pseudoscientist like you get invited to speak at universities and conferences?

First, because you cultivate a misleading public image of your expertise.

Second, because you tailor your message strategically. During your recent tour, you did not say a word about Compassionate Inquiry® or Suicide Attention - even though you just launched a Polish version of the Compassionate Inquiry® website and are clearly entering the Polish market. Why not speak about a modality that forms such a major part of your current work?

Because if you had, you would not have been hosted by any Faculty of Psychology. Your methods, and the way you certify others in them, stand in direct opposition to the Polish Psychologist's Code of Ethics.

Could it be that one of your two certified Compassionate Inquiry® Practitioners in Poland - Dagmara Ziniewicz, also your assistant and Compassionate Inquiry® mentor - advised you to avoid the subject for precisely this reason? I can only speculate.

What I do know is this: neither prof. Katarzyna Schier nor prof. Małgorzata Dragan had any idea about Compassionate Inquiry® or Suicide Attention. I spoke with prof. Schier personally after your Friday event. From what I know, they were both shocked and unsettled.

So yes, Dr. Maté - you already knew the answer to your own question.

You get invited because you mislead people.

You are charismatic. You have carefully cultivated an image: the imperfect, compassionate "uncle Gabor" who speaks truth to trauma. It disarms people. It builds a following. It makes them stop asking hard questions.

And of course, you could argue that your websites are public, and it is not your fault that others fail to investigate thoroughly. And in part, you would be right.

But here we reach the systemic factors that enable you:

First: A decline in critical thinking and fact-checking among Polish mental health professionals and academics. Compassionate Inquiry® is just one of many pseudotherapies that have quietly slipped past institutional gatekeepers in recent years. This is a problem we must confront head-on and I am prepared to do so.

Second: Role overload in the helping professions. With overwhelming clinical demands, unclear regulations, and a nonstop flow of new methods, it has become nearly impossible for individual professionals to track every emerging model or teacher.

This is why, today, interdisciplinary collaboration and science communication matter more than ever. No one person can hold all the knowledge. But together, across fields and perspectives, we can guard the boundaries of safety and trust.

We have an obligation to protect vulnerable people from charismatic figures selling false hope. If scholars and clinicians do not stand up to pseudoscience - who will?

This is my contribution to making this world more transparent, more accountable, and more just.

And as for you, Dr. Maté, I can only sigh once more, recalling so much of your wisdom:

"You can't separate politics from health and mental health". "Not why the addiction, but why the pain". "Trauma is not what happens to you, but what happens inside you". "Learn to read symptoms not only as problems to be overcome, but as messages to be heeded". "- Why can't parents see their children's pain?

I've had to ask myself the same thing. It's because we haven't seen our own".

And more recently: "Healing trauma needs to begin with the recognition of trauma" (Łódź University), as well as last Friday's reminder: "No one gets complex trauma on their own".

Such accurate and powerful words - yet I will not quote them any more, Dr. Maté. Not because I value them less - I do not. But because there is too much of your darkness running free for me to carry your light forward.

I believe we deserve more than ambiguities. And even more strongly, I believe we can do better.

It is time to reclaim integrity in the service of healing. When we choose clarity over charisma and ethics over influence, we begin again - with truth, and with hope.

With kind regards, Carolina Const

A POST SCRIPTUM CALL TO REFLECTION AND ACTION

for the organizers: Sieć nauczycieli akademickich i osób studenckich związanych z polskimi uniwersytetami Wydział Psychologii UW, Uniwersytet Warszawski, Uniwersytet Wrocławski, Uniwersytet Jagielloński, Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu, Uniwersytet Łódzki, Instytut Psychologii UŁ, Akademia Sztuk Pięknych w Łodzi, Fotofestiwal Lodz, Nowy Teatr, Teatr w Krakowie - im. Juliusza Słowackiego, Kino Nowe Horyzonty, Teatr Ósmego Dnia

for the partners and patrons: Ministerstwo Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego, Akademickie Centrum Designu, Łódzkie Centrum Wydarzeń, PURO Hotels

for the media: OKO.press Duży Format Rut Kurkiewicz / tvp.info Justyna Kopinska / Vogue Polska Salam Lab Pawel Moscicki Wydawnictwo Czarna Owca Wydawnictwo Galaktyka

those who quote and share: Laboratorium Psychoedukacji, Ośrodek Pomocy i Edukacji Psychologicznej Intra, Fundacja Małgosi Braunek Bądź, Polskie Towarzystwo Psychoterapii Psychoanalitycznej, Instytut Poliwagalny

trauma therapists and researchers in Poland: Centrum Badań nad Traumą i Kryzysami Życiowymi, Centrum Badań nad Traumą i Dysocjacją, Polskie Towarzystwo Psychotraumatologii, Polskie Towarzystwo Psychologiczne, Uniwersytet SWPS, Małgorzata Dragan, Marcin Rzeszutek, Igor Pietkiewicz, Radosław Tomalski

[Because in trauma-informed practice and in social justice, we are taught that when transparency is missing, someone is benefitting from it. In the context of trauma, that person is almost always the perpetrator - or the enabler of harm.]

So, as I wrote in my journal, I came across this letter to Gabor Mate via a reddit post (after trying to find the original lecture behind a suspected deep fake Gabor Mate video). I found it thoughtful, provoking and insightful and wanted to leave it here. I think it's interesting for survivors of abuse to have to navigate safe people, and one of the fundamental concepts I grapple with is how to trust again?

I think I have learned as she says that when transparency is missing, someone is always benefitting, usually the perpetrator of harm.

"But after outlining your broader strategy, a more troubling possibility arises: you allow - perhaps even encourage - these misimpressions to stand because they serve your goals.

You do not need to lie. You just do not correct the record.

Well, I will. Because in trauma-informed practice and in social justice, we are taught that when transparency is missing, someone is benefitting from it. In the context of trauma, that person is almost always the perpetrator - or the enabler of harm."

Emphasis mine.

So, perhaps this is why I always have a need to search for the "objective truth" in matters and that peoples' subjective realities can be hard to reconcile with their "misuse" of power, where even the ones that want to help us might harm us.

Original post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/therapists/comments/1lf7ot2/gabor_mat%C3%A9_an_open_letter/

Edit - some people seem to think I wrote this, I didn't. Carolina Const did.

I'm reposting here an open letter from a Polish psychologist in response to Gabor Maté's speaking tour of Poland. I think incredibly well written and nuanced, but wondering what y'all think. Reading this reinforces for me the importance of professional ethics. Gonna post the whole thing here, it's long:

AN OPEN LETTER TO DR. GABOR MATÉ LIST OTWARTY DO DRA GABORA MATÉ (Przewiń w dół dla wersji polskiej - pojawi się najpóźniej w południe 17 czerwca 2025)

Dear Dr. Gabor Maté,

I am writing this letter as a psychologist, as a professional working with trauma survivors using evidence-based, body- and mindfulness-based approaches, and as a complex trauma survivor.

I will remain forever grateful for the tremendous work you have done to destigmatize addiction and trauma. Those who have walked this path know what a difficult and painstaking course it is - to make trauma and suffering known, seen, and met with compassion. After all, as Leo Eitinger once said, "War and victims are something the community wants to forget; a veil of oblivion is drawn over everything painful and unpleasant".

And here you are, in my vastly traumatized home country. Touring Warszawa, Kraków, Poznań, Wrocław, and Łódź with "Dr. Gabor Maté Poland Tour" over the past five days. Undeterred and devoted to making it more difficult for people to look away.

This makes me assume that you do realize how trauma is, at its core, an abuse of power - as prof. Judith Herman clearly proved over thirty years ago. Power may mean many things: a title, profession, popularity, authority, access to information, control over the narrative. And its nature is dynamic. During this very tour, you said yourself that when we do not heal trauma, we may unsettlingly easily shift from being trauma survivors to becoming trauma perpetrators. I could not agree more.

Last Friday evening, I sat down at the former University Library in Warsaw. The lecture hall was filled to the brim. Like so many others, I came to listen - to you. To what would come up in your dialogue with some of Poland's top trauma researchers: prof. Katarzyna Schier, a renowned psychologist and psychoanalyst, and prof. Małgorzata Dragan, head of the Polish Society for Traumatic Stress Studies Polskie Towarzystwo Badań nad Stresem Traumatycznym - both of whom work at the University of Warsaw's Trauma Lab. My heart jumped when I heard that prof. Maja Lis-Turlejska was present there too - a true legend and a pioneer to whom anyone providing or receiving trauma therapy in Poland owes a bow. What a gathering.

What a gathering! - I gasped. I came over to see it all with my own eyes because I still could not believe it. I hoped that some questions would be asked, or that at the very least I could ask them myself. Since I was not granted the opportunity during or after your lecture, here I am - writing a letter of concern that I would so much prefer were a deep-hearted "thank you" instead. But if I am to keep my conscience clear, I cannot thank you. I should not.

I must not.

Dr. Maté, you are a medical doctor by profession. You know that scope of practice is neither snobbery nor elitism. Scope of practice defines professional boundaries of skill and competence to provide quality, accountability, and - above all - safety, both for those we help and for ourselves. Here in Poland, we know this particularly well, because only two weeks ago, we finally passed a draft law regulating the profession of psychologist. We know that exceeding the limits of one's professional role and responsibilities - as defined by education, training, experience, and legal and ethical standards - brings about suffering. In the context of your tour, it all too often exacerbates hurt and trauma.

Yesterday, at the University of Warsaw, some of your first words were that no one gets complex trauma on their own. You are then well aware that trauma only thrives under certain conditions: ambiguity, non-accountability, ambivalence, manipulation, extreme loss of power and agency, defied boundaries, and denied access to informed choice.

Considering all the above, I struggle to justify your decisions and actions - just as I struggle with you being hosted by esteemed universities, scholars, and journalists. I also fail to believe that it was only by sheer accident that, throughout your tour, you kept on omitting some of your dealings with such diligence.

Before I get to the specifics, let me underscore that the aim of this letter is not to provide counterarguments (which I will readily present in a broadcast that I am currently preparing), but to signal some pressing issues. Below you will find a few that I consider the most relevant in the context of your recent tour.

AUTHORING AND SELLING PSEUDOTHERAPIES

Dr. Maté, you are a retired family physician who has created and marketed Compassionate Inquiry® - a "psychotherapeutic approach created by Dr. Gabor Maté over several decades while working with both patients and retreat participants. This approach gently uncovers and releases the layers of childhood trauma, constriction and suppressed emotion embedded in the body, that are at the root of mental and physical illness and addiction", as described on your website.

You have not tested it clinically. You do not know if it works (except for a handful of selective and anecdotal proofs that you gladly share). You do not know if it is safe. Despite lending Compassionate Inquiry® the credibility of a medical doctor, you do not care to put it to research or clinical verification.

Nor do you care to consult trauma-focused mental health professionals or scholars as contributors to your "psychotherapeutic" approach. To my mind, this should be a given, considering you have no background in the social sciences - like psychology, psychotherapy, or social work. Instead, you invite Sat Dharam Kaur, a naturopath and kundalini yoga teacher, as the co-creator.

Oh, I do not discard the therapeutic potential in yoga. I am, in fact, honored to work as a hatha yoga teacher. I am also a Trauma Center Trauma-Sensitive Yoga facilitator and licensed trainer. And I worked as a licensed aromatherapist when I lived in Norway, where this occupation is regulated by the state. This is where I learned - I was obliged to learn and respect - both the possibilities and the limits of my professions. It saddens me that you do not seem to care for them at least as much.

What saddens me even more is that - somehow - you did care enough to register Compassionate Inquiry® as your trademark.

I am now pausing to let out a long sigh. Dr. Maté, you offer and capitalize on a "psychotherapeutic approach" that gives the impression of being medically backed, trauma-focused psychotherapy - without being one. I cannot call it anything other than an abuse of power and authority.

2. CERTIFYING TRAUMA THERAPISTS WITHOUT PROPER CREDENTIALS OR OVERSIGHT

To my great concern, your website states that Compassionate Inquiry® "can lead to certification" and that "anyone can take this course" - with no required educational or professional background in healthcare or mental health.

At the same time, you describe the Compassionate Inquiry® Professional Online Training as "targeted for professionals already working with clients, such as addiction counselors, psychotherapists, psychologists, medical doctors, naturopaths, life coaches, and other related fields, whose scope of practice includes counseling". In other words, you openly admit and train people who practice unregulated professions - such as homeopaths, yoga teachers, massage therapists, acupuncturists, and life coaches - and you allow them to believe it is entirely acceptable to present themselves as "trauma therapists" after completing your $3,900 CAD program.

And they do.

On your website, "graduates" of this program are listed as CI Psychotherapists and CI Practitioners. I have checked this multiple times - these labels appear without exception. Moreover, you recommend some of them as trusted providers, despite many having no formal training or licensure in psychotherapy, psychology, social work, or medicine. Nonetheless, you certify and promote them to the general public - including vulnerable individuals coping with trauma, mental illness, and chronic disease.

This is not simply unethical. In some jurisdictions, it is illegal.

Let me emphasize: training others in trauma therapy - or issuing a certificate that may be misinterpreted as a clinical license or professional endorsement - while not being a licensed mental health professional yourself, is a serious breach of ethical and professional responsibility.

To illustrate the implications of this, I will share one concrete example. A popular Polish yoga teacher and influencer enrolled in your program and, after just one year of online training, could have become a Compassionate Inquiry® therapist. She later chose to withdraw, saying the training was "too much for her, emotionally" (personal communication, April 4, 2022). And that brings us to another issue.

3. CLAIMING TO TREAT TRAUMA WITHOUT ACCOUNTABILITY

What is particularly troubling is that that Compassionate Inquiry® promotes itself as a trauma-informed modality while bypassing the most basic standards of clinical safety, professional accountability, and ethical responsibility.

Your materials repeatedly blur the line between inspiration and treatment. There is a fundamental difference between sharing personal insights and offering therapeutic guidance. Yet you present yourself as an authority on trauma - without submitting your method to peer review, without clinical testing, and without any accountability framework for its application. In your lectures, books, and trainings, there is no distinction made between regulated professionals and those with no formal education in mental health. Your public does not seem to know or care. But we, as professionals, must care. We have an ethical duty to do so.

Trauma is not a soft, spiritual issue that can be "healed" through empathy, intuition, or borrowed techniques alone. Responsible trauma therapy demands rigorous knowledge of psychopathology, clinical ethics, and intervention safety. If a participant in a Compassionate Inquiry® session experiences dissociation, flashbacks, suicidal ideation, or retraumatization - what systems are in place to ensure their safety? What kind of emergency response protocol do your "practitioners" follow? Are they even trained to assess risk?

The consequences of poorly facilitated trauma work are not abstract. Untrained practitioners can cause retraumatization, confusion, emotional flooding, and a lasting mistrust in professional help. If these practitioners are not regulated or held to a professional code, survivors have nowhere to turn for recourse.

You do not address any of this in your public materials. And from what I witnessed personally, the situation is worse than omission - it is normalization.

In 2024, I attended a Compassionate Inquiry® demonstration session led by your co-director Sat Dharam Kaur. What I saw was not "gentle uncovering and releasing", but a fast track to retraumatization. The sessions typically followed this structure:

Ask a participant to recall a dark or painful life experience (someone with whom you have no therapeutic relationship and whose mental health history is unknown),

Evoke and amplify strong emotional reactions,

Then label the visible distress as "release".

Any trained trauma therapist knows how easy it is to trigger overwhelming emotions in survivors. And any practitioner familiar with the foundational three-phase model of trauma treatment knows that stabilization and establishing safety must come first. Skipping that phase is not just negligent - it is dangerous.

I am not alone in this concern. Participants in your courses have voiced similar doubts globally. But let me ask you this: Will a trauma survivor in distress be able to recognize such violations? Will they have the internal resources or support to take action if harmed? Or are they left, once again, to carry the consequences alone?

Unfortunately, it does not end there.

For some time now you offer a Compassionate Inquiry® Suicide Attention Training - a 25-hour online course described as a "comprehensive, experiential training for therapists, health professionals, and people working in education, medical, or personal development fields." You promise to equip participants to "hold space for clients in suicidal distress" and provide "effective therapeutic interventions that support the client's healing and growth."

What this actually appears to be is a skillfully marketed invitation to take clinical risks with people's lives - without oversight, regulation, or consequence.

Another thing that troubles me is your continued dismissal of suicidologists and licensed mental health professionals in favor of individuals who appear to lack adequate training. For example, this training is co-led by:

Camilla Monroe, an undergraduate in Arts, who now calls herself an "integrative psychotherapist" after completing your two-year Compassionate Inquiry® program and a year of Polyvagal (sic!) with Deb Dana.

Irina Ungureanu, an actress describing herself as a "trauma-informed therapist" with a background in transpersonal psychology and performative arts. She holds a PhD in interculturalism, yet her psychotherapeutic credentials are far more difficult to trace than her acting work.

This is not innovation. This is not advocacy. This is recklessness.

And as with your broader Compassionate Inquiry® approach, this model leaves vulnerable people exposed to significant harm - while those facilitating the harm remain legally and ethically unaccountable.

Hey Chart,

I just want to clarify that I'm not encouraging you to let go of your fear. I think it's always something we will have in us, but perhaps our approaches on how to manage it will change with time. Maybe it's how does my fear shape the choices I'm making towards my health and well being, which might be directed by fear, or perhaps another way of putting it is child consciousness? For example, is the approach I'm taking now towards my health furthering the struggle I endured as a child, and not coming from a place of adult consciousness?

I hope you spend time with your little four year old. I can only imagine that a young boy growing up without a father would have to find ways and ideas of having to be "big and strong" with no weakness to exist in the world.

Sending you support,
dolly

I actually don't go to doctors, except for my kids. I don't like to recognize that I am weak or broken or need anything.

I've come across it before in reading, and again recently in some Jay Reid videos, that trauma survivors are so used to things being difficult that that's what's expected. Actually, I think it was probably my EMDR t or my second t who also said, life is already so difficult, why make it harder? Again, I guess it crops up in prediction error ie we think we're going to be living in the same stressful environment over and over, so we have to be primed and "ready," but why not take the easy road? Why not try and get surgery for the hernia, or the shoulder? I think that I felt like this for a long time, and definitely still do subconsciously with some things, and that if I didn't have the fight, or the struggle then what did I have? It was always the struggle (or fear because I never know what is coming) that was familiar and without it, who would I be?

I hope all the best for your outer and inner family in 2026   

Yes, the one I have been using most is in the member's section. I wouldn't say I'm an expert, just some things that I have been found to be true for me. I always found myself constantly going to someone else about someone's behaviour to see if there was validation in it, or I was "crazy" for thinking that, but the whole process was dependent on "other," and had nothing to do with my own internal compass. This is what I had known growing up -- that my reality wasn't real, and I had to accept the reality of my unNPD mother, grandmother, and step grandfather as real, which required constant validation so it was "safe" to exist. My experience of that "emptiness" was both one fraught with fear because without a connection to those people, there was annihilation (explained well in Jay Reid videos this removal of the seat of Self that happens in scapegoating families), and my experience of emptiness/Great Mother (also, funnily enough, the spider woman in some cultures is the grandmother and weaver of reality/creator of all things) was through my gm in a way who told me she was my protector, as well as "all knowing" (more in my journal about this), which affects (and affected) my Self at a very primordial (?)/deep level. So, it was almost as if the connection to that Great Mother where I should feel whole is/was also filtered at some level through my gm (almost as a limitation to my personal power as well), and giving up that connection means giving up protection (but really just the idea or illusion of what I thought protection was), but I'm working this out. 

  Good luck with your new group SO.

Also, just to clarify the double posting from me -- one was supposed to be from the night before, but don't think it actually posted.

I think here's the part where it finally starts to make sense that the person I had to become to survive is not the one that can take me further and I have to grieve her too.

Yes, this is a great insight too. Wishing you all the light for the holidays and sending a hug of support if that's ok too 

These people remind me of something I haven't processed, apart from triggering deeply ingrained patterns. My contraction around this keeps happening because I haven't integrated enough of it. I'm not reacting to these people. I'm reacting to what's already within

What's interesting about this to me is that it doesn't seem like you allow yourself any validity to the fact that there might be some truth in what you were experiencing in the present moment for it to trigger the past stuff/reactions. That's not to say it's a complete overlay, but perhaps there were elements in that interaction that held a similar truth to what happened to you growing up? It's almost as if by discrediting it entirely, and putting it all on you (ie your projections/perhaps your "fault" etc), it is furthering isolation/lack of connection, which, of course, was likely the safe path, or protective growing up. I'm in no way saying this to blame etc, or that you're doing something wrong, but as a point that differed from my own experience in that moment and what worked for me.

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I have been seeing a NARM therapist for almost two years now, and I think it has been immensely more helpful in instilling a sense of agency and self than talk therapy. Yes, we are having things come up now, but I am finding that I am talking back (hhmmmm perhaps old stuff here with this word choice - speaking up might be better) when I feel like boundaries are crossed. I think it has done a lot to instill that sense of agency through breaking up those responses you talked about in the moment and reflecting on what is going on inside at the time (when perhaps there is a change of tone or expression). I think this is the experiential element you are talking about perhaps. She has also brought some validity to my responses to people ie that I'm not just imagining that these people don't have great intentions and could be "dubious." It also started to build a sense that I am not just imagining things all the time, that there was a sense of danger growing up, even though I was told I was loved etc; where that sense of self was not allowed to exist.

I also feel similarly about a lot, or perhaps most of what we do, being projection. The first few chapters of Tenzin Wengal Rinpoches's The Yogas of Dream and Sleep break down this concept of identity very well. In his practice, he believes that we have a lamp that lights us from within that casts the light or illuminates what is without. However, and I think this may be the fundamental difference, is that it doesn't mean we are disconnected. Everything comes, or stems from the Kunzhi where the paradox is that it is empty (the void), but not completely empty as everything stems from this primordial awareness. He also gave a great youtube talk about fear (which is also tied with identity) that I can find if you want, but again, and so so interestingly for me, is that he also terms this primordial space as The Great Mother, which is a space associated with "warmth, presence and well-being" -- that connection in aloneness that I think is so difficult for many of us. I have been working this out in my journal lately, and apologies if I took up some your journal to elaborate, but I think these are important things, or maybe nuances of what you're talking about.

Sending you support 

It seems to me our sense of self is easily influenced by the strong emotions of other people. It lacks the robustness of people who were allowed to individuate properly. The ICR is part of this too, but I believe a good chunck of this is the autonomic nervous system taking the wheel during certain social situations and cognition following suit.

This is a very good summation. I want to comment more, but don't have the capacity at the moment. Thank you for your response and sending you support.

Sending you support for your holiday L2N 

There's a deep fear that people with a lot of power to do something negative to me, are going to draw terrible conclusions about me by how I act or come across, which will set the doom in motion. In places I can't escape. That is a crucial ingredient, just like it was when it started.

You know SO, this reminds me again of how similar our stories are. I often struggle to explain this feeling to people that I somehow get engaged in these "power struggles" with other people, or my deep fear of someone else's "power" over me, and my reluctance to open up and share those parts of me that won't be spoken over; that are mine. It's comforting,and validating, to know that others experience this because I feel like it's chalked up to "old stuff," or dismissed as irrational (like I SHOULD be able to get a hold on this fear, or escape it, but it's often like it's so big, or inexplicable).

I am also reminded of your entry by our conversation about people "rewiring" what I say. At least this is how I remember it, that struggle to be heard. I am currently undergoing a back and forth about this with my t, where I feel the manner in which she says things are akin to the ways that emotion was used as manipulation growing up. She feels like I'm trying to "control" her expression, and I feel like I'm asking for just some recognition. I also had the experience where it was like being baited to give an answer and then "shown," or told that there were studies that showed how just letting a client talk wasn't that effective. To me, it's the same merry-go-round of not being heard as to what my needs, and inner world require, which would actually allow me to open up and trust. Ironically, I chose a t that was about agency and the "self." So, am just offering that there is someone else who understands a bit about the feelings/aftermath that result after having grown up with a critical/encompassing force. I don't know if you've seen them, or if they would be of use, but I've found Jay Reid's videos on scapegoating to be helpful in mapping out a sort of framework for this "displaced" self. Though, there's still more understanding to come.

Sending you support,
dolly

What if it isn't selfishness at all? What if doing that is an integral part of being a healthy human being? My mind runs from any hint at selfishness as dangerous due to my past. So I am learning to think that it is not that but the fundamental right of human beings to notice their limitations, boundaries, resources, and needs. And to communicate them in a respectful way to others. As well as then limiting the access of anyone who does not agree to them.

Because to ignore my needs and boundaries, isn't it to ignore my humanity and my value? And anyone repeatedly doing this would then inherently be unsafe to be around if they do not stop and repair? What do you all think?

I think this is an incredibly insightful way to look at it. I do feel like my body (and subconscious) have other ideas at times and that's where I find the problem that when faced with "danger" it will just switch into the fawn or freeze response. I guess at the moment I'm trying to understand what that concept of "danger" is? Like any kind of conflict or power struggle seems to flick the switch as I call it, and I'm trying to unpack that. Even if my brain says one thing, it's like my body does another.

Wishing you all the best with your new journal 

I am curious...who is shaming you? And who is hating?

Fear is an interesting concept that I have been thinking about recently too.

I hope you uncover all the things you are dealing with and give rise to that more integrated sense of self 

I'm sorry DD. I think that you did the best for yourself that you knew how to do at the time and it helped you to survive. I'm sorry as well that your parents put you in that situation, that's a horrible betrayal and I can understand fighting for the need to exist. It's also something I struggle with.

I have been listening to some Heidi Priebe videos lately and she talks about how to not be manipulated by looking at the ego version/idea of ourselves that we need to survive. For me, it's so hard to shake the idea that I have to be a nice person. Like it just throws my world off if I do not adhere to this, and healthy selfishness is something I'm working on. But I get how something so normal for others can be so outside my sphere of relating.

Sending you support and a hug if that's ok 
dolly

Hi noraw,

I think you did a very good job of finding the right words for what is happening with you.

I had an EMDR therapist and have also used IFS. The EMDR therapist wanted to do deep brain reprogramming and I felt a lot of resistance to that as it would be "rewiring" underlying perverbal parts that I didn't feel I had contact with at that time. I came from an NPD household and my sense of self dissociated/detached from a very young age I think. Jay Reid's videos of growing up as a scapegoat in a narcissistic household have helped me understand how and why this happens, and I can interpret how it relates to me.

I also started seeing a NARM therapist who I think has been very helpful in helping uncover that sense of self to a degree, though issues have come up as well. We are going into the space around the fear of connection, or I find I can now start to understand and stay with the fear/anxiety that comes with connection a bit better. I would say that I probably have dissociated or hidden parts (not DID), and feel in a better space overall to have these start "coming up."

I'm not sure if your therapist mentioned it, but there is a good book on IFS and dissociation by Joanne Twombly.

I've also been uncovering and dealing with underlying health issues that have also helped facilitate this (less anxiety, more calmness).

Sending you support and I hope you find what you need here.

dolly