Process Oriented Child and Family Therapy for working with young people and parents where extreme states and mental health difficulties disrupt family relationships with Gary Reiss PhD PW Dipl
April 18, 2012 in Child & Family, Uncategorized
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by popmoc
by popmoc
by popmoc
The Apricot Centre becoming a Care Farm & WellSpring Project for Community Wellbeing
January 15, 2012 in Child & Family, Marina, Uncategorized
For many years Marina and I have been interested in the connections between wellbeing and our connection with nature. It’s exciting now that we are moving increasingly into the area of wellbeing through becoming a Care Farm and the development of the WellSpring – Community Wellbeing project in association with other partners.
Marina has always been interested in farming and growing methods which are kind to the planet, a slow relationship to life, and back to the wild. Marina always encouraged me to think of the Apricot Centre itself developing ‘organically’, rather than pushing it along. Also i remember that when Marina setup the Organic Market Garden at Dartington in Devon, she used to work with very young people seeking
employment, but also bankers and other professionals who had lost their ‘role’ or career in the 1980s and were finding new purpose through their connection with the Land (I wonder how they are doing now?). In more recent times Marina and Aiden’s work with school children, the homeless, and Bangladeshi women, address themes of alienation and feeling at home, a sense of belonging, living sustainably, locally, within our means, and the enjoyment of the seasons, community and ourselves.
I have come to all of this from quite a different direction. Although i was always interested in organic food, and trained as an Arboriculturist. But my interest seemed to come more from a connection with nature, and then back to how we live and eat etc… From early adulthood i was interested in Jungian Psychology, meditation, Tai Chi, dreams etc… and this eventually led me to find a lifelong training path as a Process Oriented Psychologist studying with Dr Arnold Mindell, Dr Amy Mindell, Jean-Claude & Arlene Audergon, Dr Max Schupbach, and many other inspiring Process Work teachers. I have always considered
Processwork a nature and awareness-based approach to life and living. It is highly influenced my Taoism, Shamanism, Jungian Psychology, and Quantum Physics. Over time I have really come to realise that living according to your true nature is a far bigger thing than i would have ever thought, as we all have so much personal history, hurts, social expectations and imposed belief systems that overlay our direct experience. I have learnt though a great deal about bringing awareness to nature. Discovering what is trying to emerge from moment to moment, the potential unfolding within even the most difficult life circumstances.
Care Farming
So it is interesting that the Apricot Centre was envisioned and has then evolved ‘organically’, and at this point we find ourselves on the threshold of what we understand to be called ‘Care Farming’. Take a look at Care Farming UK and see how it is defined there. I think we already tick all the boxes, so in many ways it is not a huge step to identify ourselves with this direction. People will be able to come to the Organic Farm and participate in seasonal activities and celebrations throughout the year. We think that developing a relationship with nature can have a huge impact on wellbeing, simultaneously deepening your relationship with yourself (your nature), enhancing your relationships (the nature between us), and the earth. I think that people will be able to come to the Apricot Centre and Organic Farm and will felt accompanied in discovering their uniqueness. Welcoming diversity both inside and out. On a more practical level, people will develop skills in growing, harvesting, processing, cooking, sharing and enjoying fruits, vegetables, flowers, mushrooms …..
WellSpring – Community Wellbeing Project - can you complete our short survey?
We hope WellSpring may become a significant project funded to benefit disadvantaged people in Tendring, Colchester, Ipswich and Southend. If you are a local community leader then feedback from you about WellSpring would be invaluable. WellSpring is really a package of 4 wellbeing projects that can be designed and adapted to various community groups and contexts to boost the mental and physical wellbeing of the wider community. WellSpring can benefit many disadvanaged groups. From young to elderly people, teenagers, the unemployed, young mothers and families, – and other community groups – WellSpring will provide a range of sustainable techniques and tools to help develop resilience and unlock the potential of each individual. We are teaming up with the-Lightworks.co.uk, Lifeflows.org and the Dedham Vale Food Hub to develop and deliver packages of the following 4 WellSpring projects described in a nutshell below. For more detail read our invitation leaflet PDF – WellSpring Community Invite.pdf or watch developments unfold on the WellSpring Blog
4 WellSpring Projects – in a nutshell
1. The Kitchen Table – grow, cook share, and celebrate great food from the farm to the kitchen table with our organic farmers and chefs
2. Metaplay – an interactive life-game for young and old, to re-engage the imagination, have fun, build teamwork, and discover your life journey,
3. LifeFlows – Workshops to deepen our relationships to ourselves, to each other, to community and to nature.
4. CoolFire – Dynamic workshops that will develop a calm balance and perspective through gently connecting with your underlying feelings and emotions to help resolve challenging life issues and situations.
Thankyou for your interest and support.
Mark and Marina
by Mark
Aiden with the last of this season’s chard
December 18, 2011 in Child & Family
What a burst of colour came through the kitchen door so I had to take a photo
December 15, 2011 in Child & Family, Kenton & Anna
6th Dec 2011 (19 weeks pregnant)
Dependency
I am questioning my identity and how my life has unfolded. Will I make a good parent or not? Will I even be good enough? At this point I don’t know and don’t feel very confident either.
I have officially been made redundant from my job. I am soon to reach 40 (well two years away) and have been a working adult since I was 24.The last time I experienced dependency was not healthy. In fact it was barely satisfactory. I grew up being a very insecure and frightened little girl who didn’t have the father/daughter relationship that she craved. In fact I felt ridiculed, belittled, undermined and bullied. It took me 35 years to even enter into a relationship that resembles functionality and trust. My earning money helped me provide a safe place to call my own where I could be myself (albeit only in my own company). So the thought of being dependent has brought up a lot of concerns and insecurities for me. Can I trust him? What if once he has lured me in he starts controlling me (the fate I bore with a previous boyfriend).
We have talked at length about my fears and I feel still feel a bit wobbly at times to once again be dependent. Kenton and I have our daily struggles – though we have a deep empathy and understanding for one another.
Thinking again about whether I will make a good parent or not……………….I am thinking that I need to change my entire mentality and outlook, the way I relate to others (especially my partner) and basically everything I represent in the world. Well I have 5 months to do this in. Do you think that is enough time to have a personality transplant? No it’s not really is it. So – maybe for now we will just have to accept the one couples therapy session per week and hope for the best. I’ll keep telling myself that I just have to be good enough!
13th Dec 2011
Nature/Nurture
I am very concerned that I will pass on some very unfortunate traits to my unborn child. To say that I was a terrible and difficult teenager is an understatement. I was actually very hurt back then and in a lot of emotional pain. As much as I don’t want to pass on dysfunctional and destructive personality traits to my child are these traits already engrained in our child’s DNA pre birth? I have spent at least the last three 7 year cycles of my life coming to terms with a lot of my own traumatic experiences, pain and attachment issues and I fear that unconsciously I will pass these on. Part of me does actually think though that my child will be very artistically creative. I don’t want to say talented because in my experience, which may not be for everyone, talent comes at a very high price. How much will I project onto my child that is unresolved in me? Am I asking too much of myself? I guess the best I can do is show that I am constantly working on my issues and this maybe the best message to model!
15th Dec 2011
Arguments
Arguments between the mum and dad – how does this affect the unborn and young/developing child? We seem to argue a lot at the moment and I worry about the affect on the child.
by popmoc
OCA-Y – Open Channel Awareness – Yes!
October 3, 2011 in apricot centre, Child & Family
Charleen and I had a great discussion recently during which we shared our experience and learning as Process Workers over many years. What had we learnt? what hadn’t we learnt? and when are we learning? I think we are talking about a different kind of learning than the accumulation of information or knowledge (though that can be fun at times), but rather we explored how a fluidity of awareness can lead to a deeper sense of resilience and ability to interact with challenging situations.
I suggested the acronym OCA-Y for Open Channel Awareness – Yes!!, as a fluidity of awareness that we can discover to meet different situations (Dr Arnold Mindell described this with Shamanistic terminology as First and Second Attention, and then with his later concept of Process Mind. Ram Dass speaks of being able to exist in several different realities/worlds at the same time)
We were speaking about how easy it is to get caught in states of mind or states of being. Such as when we are with a respected teacher, how easy it is to feel that they have all the experience and knowing, and that we don’t, we are the ‘learner’ they are the ‘teacher’ and we are wanting. Do you recognise situations in which you react within the blink of an eye, polarising with another person or even reacting from a triggered memory such as a tone of voice, a smell, or a particular kind of room (I notice a tendency to feel ill when I’m in a hospital for example.. was i feeling so unwell when i came in?).
Open Channel Awareness is having your awareness open outside the event while you are within it. It involves being practically involved with a situation, while noticing the feelings, the level of dreaming, and the essence or genius of the situation. Open Channel Awareness also involves noticing that you are reacting or polarising and at the same time having access to other levels or other worlds. I often can’t do this. It’s fascinating to notice how often I/you exist in a habitual or fixed pattern of response to life. I spend alot of my life half asleep, and not placing much value on other levels of experience in that moment.
So the OCA-Y anocronym came about as a little reminder to myself when faced with anything or anybody. A little ‘OCA-Y’ beneath my breath to remind myself of all the other levels of awareness. It’s OK with a hippy ‘C’ soft and fluid, rather than the harsher ‘K’.
OCA-Y?
Making a Dragon at Ardleigh Primary School
October 2, 2011 in apricot centre, Child & Family, children, schools, Uncategorized
The Apricot centre was asked to make a dragon story telling seat in the school grounds from designs the children had done, only using materials from the immediate vicinity – aka Anglo -Saxon builders might have done. Quite an ask !!
We assembled the team … year 3 and 4 at the school, Mr Tucker, Marina … chief organiser and worrying how on earth she was going to do this, Aidan chief cob mixer and Kate Reynolds chief artist / dragon maker.
We decided that we would use straw bales for the body of the dragon, on top of car tyres to keep the damp out – ok Anglo – Saxons did not have access to either – but in the sprit of using what is close by and cheap / free these fit the criteria. We created the shape with the children and then came the mixing of the cob. …. a mix of top soil, sand and clay trampled with the feet of hoards of children then made into “pat a cakes” and put onto the horse- shoe shape.
We had to do 3 layers in total, the second layer needed straw added to the mix, the children made a nest in the bales and chopped it up and chatted, others still were happy to trample, others liked making the dragon face with Kate, and using broken pottery to create eyes, teeth, and other bits and pieces of anatomy that dragons have – sticky outy bits around the gills, horns, spines created by putting hazel poles into the straw bales and covering with sail cloth. The beast emerged from the mud.
We began to get tired so hired a cement mixer – not something the Anglo -Saxons had either but much easier that mixing it all with our feet – I told the children that the Anglo- Saxons would have used cattle to tramp the mixture but we didn’t have any so we used the cement mixer instead. It was still very hard work as the cob mix was so heavy and we needed so much of it.
By the time we got to the final layer, smoothing and preening, the Dragon had been born and called “Cyril” .. by us and Puff by the children. He exceeded my wildest imaginings and is rather magnificent and I hope that the stories told in his coils will be wild and exciting for the children.
by popmoc
Held in Mind
September 18, 2011 in apricot centre, Child & Family, children, Uncategorized
Being held in someone’s mind is no small thing. It is known to be a huge factor in child development whereby the child experiencing themself to be held in the mind of their parent becomes increasingly self-aware or self-conscious, learns about the separation and connection of self and the other. When children deal with separation from their parent it seems to be immensely helpful for them to have a sense that their parent is aware of their whereabouts and that they are in good hands. Children who are anxious about separating from their carer may need to know that you are thinking of them even when they are across the room or in another space. Children also benefit from feeling held positively in their parents minds and later in the minds of others.
From my experience of the more attachment-based therapies i have come to understand the value for both children but parents too, to be held in mind. It’s a great contribution to a parent’s resilience to feel they are held in the mind of therapists, but better still in the minds of their families and community. I wonder if this has both local and non-local aspects. A non-local connection may exist between people who are somehow entangled (as Dr Arnold Mindell calls it when he relates this connection to quantum entanglement).
We have found in the Child and Adolescent Service (CAMHS) i work within that very vulnerable parents seem to find it easier to sustain the parenting of their child or children when they know they will attend a therapeutic support group over time, and that there is a group of therapists thinking about them even during the long-gaps between contact.
I had the great pleasure to work with one young man and his mother at one point in my career whereby the boy was increasingly being excluded from school and had the label of being one of the most difficult students some of the teachers had ever taught in their long career. This pre-adolescent boy was in the last year of his primary school and he had a tendency to become very frustrated in lessons sometimes leading to him lashing out at others. When i met him, i was struck by a lovely young and childlike quality in him. He was constantly being cheeky and was wanting to play. There was something very intuitive about his thoughts and ideas, and at the same time i could see that he would suffer in a mainstream education environment where he would be expected to knuckle down to the learning task with the rest of his peers. The boy had an estranged father and his mother was struggling with him at home also. The minds of most of the adults around him seemed to struggle to see him in an appreciative light.
Over time we used sessions to work with reframing his behaviours and spending great amounts of time following his interests and his urges to play. His mother seemed terrified by the irrational nature of play, and thus was somewhat terrified of him, but over time she seemed to see him in a different light and began to explore and enjoy his nature to a greater degree. What became particularly fascinating to me was that really it was the mother who was supporting the greatest changes in this young man’s life, she seemed to relax and celebrate who he was. I, with another therapist began to see mother and son with increasingly lengthening spans of time. I felt the sense that our holding the pair in our minds somehow also contributed to the Mother’s ability to deal with some further very challenging moments.
I believe that the therapeutic relationship takes place not only during the framework of sessions given, but also in the spaces between, the entanglements and mind-holdings that take place over time. I am personally also grateful for some of the minds in which i myself feel held.
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First post from Anna
September 15, 2011 in Child & Family, Kenton & Anna
To add to what kenton has said. I had been monitoring my basal body temperature for at least 8 months every day and had taken a course of acipuncture to de-stress me and regulate my menstrual cycle. I am used to controlling things and did my best to control our conception but one of the biggest lessons at this time for me was to relinquish control, relax and ’let it be’. Not an easy feat! Well, we decided that life has to carry on despite trying to control a conception happening so we put an offer in on a house that was more of a project and needed alot of work. After a very rocky road of conveyancing we had a move in date. On this date the sale and purchase were set to go and I was ready to move then disaster struck! The purchase fell through! We had to move our stuff into storaage and stay with Kenton’s family. Well, all my fertility paraphernalia was in storage though I had a little idea as to when my fertile period was. My cycle usually varies between 28 and 33 days but now I was on day 39. We both thought I was pregnant and even recounted the fateful night! Anyway, my period came and the lateness was due to stress! So no thermometer or BBT chart, staying at Kenton’s parents and homeless! We went on holiday to Scotland and relaxed for two and a half weeks. On our return we went back to Kenton’s parents. The purchase problems were ironed out and we had a new move in date. We moved in to the house that needs loads of work and the day after I did a test and guess what! There were two marks instead of one! What goes through your mind when trying to conceive? You question your previous choices and mistakes and think that somehow you don’t deserve it. I had a termination earlier on in my life and i thought this was pay back and karma playing out on me that i will not be allowed to be a mum. We had the added pressure of the hideous ’body clock’ syndrome. Being 38 i am no spring chicken and the media certainly let ou know this. One weekend in the guardian i remember two articles on ’older’ mothers. One said that at 40 yrs of age you have 1% chance of conceiving (great!) and one said that you should accept a ’good enough’ partner to conceive much earlier then your 40 or so years! Two very discouraging articles! Well, I accessed various websites purely for reassurance that i was not ’over the hill’ to conceive and I realised I was accessing them often.
6 weeks pregnant
I feel so tired and unmotivated to do much at all, let alone all of the work I have to do! i just want to lie on the sofa!
First post from Kenton
September 15, 2011 in Child & Family, Kenton & Anna
We are finally setup. I wanted to go back to our earlier discussions with Mark when we both though anna was pregnant. It’s harder when you view things from a distance but I will try to give you my take on things. The process of trying to conceive has been a continuous flow of ups and downs. When we started I was of the belief that it would happen straight away, then when it doesn’t happen worry sets in, will it ever happen ? Then we both became sure we were pregnant and we wasn’t. It did feel sure, anna seemed to have changed, I could feel the difference, I felt different. She had a phantom pregnancy before and I wasn’t sure she was pregnant. But this time I did truly felt it. Desperation ? Then when we discovered she wasn’t I kind of gave up a bit..no maybe not gave of but thought this is going to take for ever. In fact didn’t I give up, I I in fact became a bit more determined I tried to make sure we have sex every day in her fertile period. I thought we really had to do or die. Then she had the pregnancy test and I didn’t believe it until the second one. In many ways I am still adapting to it, she isn’t showing yet. It’s weird we have told a lot of people (well Anna has) even though it’s not at that three month period. Most people don’t tell until then. But there would be so many complications with that. There are a lot of things that need to be sorted out between us, we act like kids a lot of the time, but we are going to have a real kid soon. Sometimes I feel that I shouldn’t be a father. I have such an idealistic view I guess of what a father should be how can I ever match up to those expectations ? I do know that the thought of having a little baby peering at me feels me with unlimited pleasure. Life without children would be incomplete. Is that selfish ? I don’t know, I do know I will try my hardest and I will really love our child so much.
