Clinical Psychology and Therapy Services ~ Herefordshire

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What Menstrual Cycle Awareness (MCA) offers your IFS practice

So you and/or the people you work with already have an Internal Family Systems informed (IFS) practice, and you have become blissfully aware that you are made up of not one, but many “parts”, all of whom ultimately have your needs in mind.

One of the greatest blessings of your IFS practice includes acceptance that you have wide ranging and sometimes conflicting beliefs, thoughts and feelings. You have come to understand that many of your parts, even the ones who can cause you distress (like the parts who drive unhealthy behaviors, anxiety, anger or depression) are in fact acting in defense of pain and intensity, which at one time was intolerable.

Even though you are learning to “un blend” from your parts, and seek more support from that growing well of “Self-energy” within you, you still HURT sometimes, and feel stuck in patterns that don’t serve you.

You want to deepen your practice further and involve the whole-body mind system in your healing.

Menstrual Cycle Awareness (MCA) is the practice of understanding and connecting with the different phases of the menstrual cycle, and be empowered to live in harmony with your cyclical nature. It involves paying attention to physical, emotional, and mental changes throughout each phase and with this knowledge, to make informed decisions about daily activities, self-care, and overall well-being.

As a woman with many years of practice tracking my own cycle, and a Clinical Psychologist and IFS therapist with a special interest in the role of the body in therapy, I have come to learn how beautifully these two healing modalities complement each other.

Just as you might already track your parts, notice when you are blended versus in a state of Self-energy, witness your parts’ fears, and identify areas for healing by attending to your internal family, MCA supports you to notice which parts are more likely to be activated, and how much access you have to Self-energy in response, according to the phases of your cyclical body.

Cycle tracking provides a guide for following and understanding the two key energy shifts that many people experience throughout the menstrual month; while your IFS practice makes sense of why you are more likely to blend with protector parts, versus younger, and more vulnerable exile energies, in the respective cycle phases.

Adding MCA into your IFS practice will give you a theoretical framework for:

  • Why angry protectors and exile energies are more active pre-menstrually
  • Supporting the un-blending process by meeting your body needs for rest and reflection
  • How cyclical distress could actually be your body giving you trailheads to your exiled parts
  • Why & how you “cope better” at other points in the cycle
  • What embodied healing is and feels like
  • The optimal time and way to witness and heal burdened parts
  • A natural, intuitive, non-judgemental framework for attuning to the body’s rhythms and communications
  • A guide to begin to explore the different states of Self energy, and how your cyclical body might gift you access to new levels of spiritual connection and guidance

If working in this way appeals to you, then you can request a free consultation to consider what it might be like to work 1:1, guiding your therapy from a genuine place of mind-body integration.

I have developed this framework in partnership with Dr Lara Owen, who is recognised internationally for her pioneering and continuing work on menstruation. Together later this year we are offering a 4-day training retreat, where we will present these ideas and concepts publicly for the first time, to a small group, in a beautiful unspoiled countryside retreat. The workshop sessions will be supported by a range of optional activities including swimming in the pool and lake, walks in the surrounding woodland, and restorative yoga, insuring that learning and self-discovery can occur in an optimal rested state. You can read more and book your space here: https://laraowen.com/trauma-and-the-menstrual-cycle/

Natural Cycles can support us to heal trauma

What is Trauma?

Through my many years of study and practice across a broad spectrum of emotional distress and mental “disorder” in NHS and private settings, I have come to hold a very broad concept of “trauma”. You can read more about my position, and the associated complexities here: https://thebodyinmind.co.uk/2023/01/26/can-i-call-it-trauma/ but to summarise, it is my belief that in fact, we all hold the imprint of traumatic and adverse events occurring perhaps years or moments prior to, during and/or post our births into this world. These events shape us into complex and interesting individuals. Navigating adversity is part of the human experience, and whilst often difficult and sometimes devastating, traumatic experience also offers up rich opportunity for growth, resilience and hope.

IFS-informed EMDR

What is IFS-informed EMDR?

Hopefully you arrive at this blog with a basic understanding of Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapies, separately. If not, I warmly invite you to read both prior blog articles to access these individual introductions.

What is EMDR?

Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR)

It’s helpful to know a little bit about what EMDR is before deciding whether or not it could be the right therapy for you. In order to understand what kinds of presentations/problems EMDR is most suitable for, first it’s important to discuss some of the basics about how traumatic experience gets stored and stuck, according to the theory underpinning EMDR.

The Body Comes to Therapy Too

Perhaps becoming more aware of “the body in therapy” is an idea you have heard lots about in recent years and with which you agree in principle? However, as a potential therapy client or even an interested professional, you still don’t necessarily feel you have a complete hold on – why and how does the body actually matter in therapy?

How are you, really?

A simple, methodical way to check in with yourself

Most of us ask and answer the question “how are you?” several times each day, but how often do you really give yourself the space to find the deeper answer?

Mental Health and the Menstrual Cycle

A core message I wish to share via my work as a body focussed psychologist is that there are many ways in which we can benefit our wellbeing and accelerate healing via connecting and listening to the innate wisdom of our bodies.

How to embody strength

There is POWER in your posture

Most of us are aware that non-verbal behaviour like posture, eye contact and movement greatly influence how others perceive us.

Your body as HOME

“If you think of your body as a house, movement is the large front door, swinging wide open to allow your awareness, your thinking, to enter back inside where you have always belonged”

hILLARY mCbRIDE, pHD

SIMPLE Somatic regulation

Orientation

Orienting is a skill you already have (because it’s hard-wired into your nervous system). But you can learn to strengthen or recover it during stressful times to help to communicate to your brain and body that you are safe during times when stress and overwhelm take you back to traumatic memory or forward in anticipation of something difficult.

Orienting helps you to focus on your external environment and lean into cues around that tell you where you are now, is safe.

The popular grounding technique of tuning into the five senses uses orienting to bring you into the moment:

Name
5 things you can see
4 things you can hear
3 things you can feel
2 smells and
1 taste

You could also try:

👀 Look around you and name one item to the front, one behind you, one to the left and one to right. Add extra detail if you like by going up then down.

✏️ Choose an object nearby and describe it in detail to yourself

🤚🏽 Reach out and touch the nearest wall or surface. Place both hands on and describe the feeling in detail.

👣 Take your shoes off and stand on the earth.

Psychology is full off fancy words for natural, inbuilt strengths which we can use to our advantage. I love uncovering the brilliance in our systems. As always, these strategies are even more powerful when they’re happen in the presence of another.

My childhood best friend and I used to ask each other “can you smell your nose?” then we’d curl the tips of our noses round into themselves and genuinely investigate 🥰 I still do it sometimes and find it really soothing.

What orienting strategies do you already use or could you build on now you know the idea behind it?

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