Stephen Brown is an Irish practitioner of Compassionate Inquiry,^® Internal Family Systems, Somatic Experiencing and Gestalt. His Four Pillars of Connection include:  Connection with Self, Connection with Community, Connection with Environment, and Connection with “something greater than”. His retreats in Ireland, the Sahara Desert and Bali include nature, adventure, ceremony, and ritual.

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Grounding Facts:

In 2024, more than 90% of schools in the north of Ireland are still segregated by religion. Catholics and Protestants are educated separately from the ages of four to eighteen. Mental health problems are the single largest cause of ill health and disability. One in five adults has experienced a mental health problem and, prior to the pandemic, one in eight children had an emotional difficulty indicating psychological distress. A Queen’s University study showed that ~39% of the study population has experienced a conflict related traumatic event.

This post references a short excerpt of Stephen’s story of growing up during the Troubles, in the north of Ireland. Listen to his full interview on The Gifts of Trauma Podcast. 

The north of Ireland has been an area of conflict for centuries. Today it is still suffering from the traumatic aftermath of the Troubles: a 40 year period of violence, bombing, segregation and separation that kept people in constant states of confusion, fear and vigilance. 

As a child of the 70s, the Troubles taught me that Protestants (Unionists) are bad, Catholics (Nationalists) are good. That level of sectarianism was pervasive, not just in our schooling, it dictated where we worked, lived, socialized, shopped and played. 

I’ll never forget the first time I traveled alone to Belfast. I was 17, and when I got off the bus, I saw red, white and blue everywhere. Union Jacks were painted on the roadside kerbs. This is tribal marking. Areas in cities, towns and villages were marked with specific colors and icons to show their allegiance. As a young Catholic, these markings told me I was in the wrong part of Belfast. I was shit scared, as I knew this area wasn’t safe for me. I feared I’d be beaten, shot, or killed.

Growing up in a Catholic Nationalist area in the north of Ireland, I attended a Catholic primary school, mixed (Catholic / Protestant) and Catholic secondary schools. The mixed school I attended was on the outskirts of my town, but getting there wasn’t easy. I wasn’t allowed to walk, because the route to school cut through a nationalist area. We took buses, which were often stoned. At school, stoning, bomb scares and evacuations occurred regularly, evoking life or death sensations.  

On one level, I was a Catholic, growing up in a Catholic town, but on another, I was mixing with the Protestant community in secondary school. My parents created integration, and its cost was vigilance; discerning where to go and not to go, what to say and not to say, where to look and not to look, who to look at and not to look at. So my nervous system was constantly searching for safety. I had to know who I was speaking to, and where they were from, to discern if they were safe. When going to a party or to someone’s house, I’d have to find out: What area is this? How am I getting in there? How am I getting out? 

I remember being asked by an adult, at 8 years of age, “Who are the good guys, the police or the IRA?” I don’t know how I knew, but my answer was, “The IRA.” It was the right answer for that person. Maybe I had an intuitive knowledge of what to say to somebody to keep them right, because I don’t recall learning this. Somehow it was already there.

The IRA, the Irish Republican Army were the defenders of the Nationalists, so to the Irish people, the Catholics, they were the good guys. To others, they were terrorists. The UVF, the Ulster Volunteer Force, and the UDA, the Ulster Defense Association were the defenders of the Protestants and Unionists. 

Being able to navigate these different worlds, to read people and see what was needed to make everything okay certainly enabled me to integrate and support and move with people, which has served me well over the last 30 years. Ultimately, my experience in different schools and communities supported my work with marginalized Catholic and Protestant at risk youth. 

In global conflicts, even in family, community and  organizational conflicts, there are so many opposing sides and ideas.  My teen experiences helped me see that there’s never one story, or one truth. It doesn’t matter if I believe something is true. Somebody else can have the exact same level of belief in their truth, which doesn’t mean they’re wrong. I can look up who did this and who did that. But the bottom line is that everyone lives with their truth, with what’s right for them.

Growing up in the Troubles put us in states of heightened tension, whether we knew it or not. That’s just how we’ve lived here for a long, long time. Even if we were somewhat shielded, we still knew to be on the lookout for certain things, not to go to certain places, say certain things, do certain things or be with certain people.

Today, we’re 30 years post conflict, but we still have conflict. It’s not the same. We don’t have the murders and the bombs. It’s a much different country today, but there are still conflicts, still bitterness between communities. There is so much, “I’m not wanted” in both communities. “There’s something wrong with me” is a core belief within us. Many things in our childhood gave rise to that belief. We wanted to be part of something that we couldn’t be part of.  Neither side belongs anywhere, yet both are fighting in different ways to belong somewhere. In truth, nobody really knows what they’re fighting for today. 

When we’re disconnected from ourselves, from community and environment, when we’re not connected to something greater than ourselves, and we’ve lived through fear and conflict and segregation and separation, it all gets very tight, tense and restricted. Our views get very limited. 

Compassionate Inquiry^® is about having more compassion, more understanding, of both what’s
going on for me and the other. Opening up this awareness offers great hope for how we show up
in the context of the north of Ireland.  

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The Gifts of Trauma is a weekly podcast that features personal stories of trauma, healing, transformation, and the gifts revealed on the path to authenticity.  Listen to the interview,
and if you like it, please subscribe and share.

David sat across from me in the comfortably lit therapy room, his shoulders hunched and a frown etched deeply on his face. He had come to me seeking help with his persistent financial struggles, but it soon became clear that his challenges were rooted in a belief far more insidious than mere budgeting woes.

Beliefs shape our perceptions and guide our actions, yet they are often based on past experiences, cultural conditioning, and unexamined assumptions. When we identify rigidly with our beliefs, we may become closed-minded, defensive, or resistant to new ideas. Cultivating the capacity to witness our beliefs involves questioning their origins, validity, and relevance to our current context, and a willingness to challenge them at times.

Engaging in reflective practices such as contemplation, participating in conversations with diverse perspectives, and reading thought-provoking literature, can help us examine our beliefs more objectively. By observing our beliefs without becoming entangled in them, we can remain open to growth and change. This openness allows us to adapt and evolve, fostering a more flexible and adaptable mindset.

To go even deeper, one can bring  in the somatic practice of examining the physical sensations associated with our beliefs, deepening our understanding of our body-mind connection in relation to them. I will demonstrate how this can look by continuing David’s story.

“Every time I start to make some progress,” David sighed, “I sabotage myself. It’s like I don’t want to succeed.”

I nodded, encouraging him to continue. “Can you tell me more about that?”

David hesitated, then his words tumbled out in a rush. “I just can’t shake this feeling that wealthy people are evil. I grew up hearing my parents say that rich people only get that way by exploiting others. It’s like, in my mind, having money means being a bad person.”

We explored this belief together, tracing its origins to his childhood. David recounted how his parents had struggled to make ends meet, often blaming their hardships on the wealthy. These narratives had shaped his worldview, planting the seed of a limiting belief that now choked his potential for success. 

“David,” I said gently, “it’s important to recognize that not all wealthy people fit the stereotype your parents described. Wealth, like any other tool, can be used for good or ill. The character of a person isn’t determined by their bank balance.”

We decided to somatically examine David’s belief using a step-by-step guide to understand its emotional and physical impacts.

Firstly, we identified the belief: David wrote down, “I believe wealthy people are evil.”

David began our exploration with a brief mindfulness exercise, taking deep, slow breaths to center himself and to become more present. I invited him to bring the belief to mind. He silently repeated the belief and focused on any immediate reactions or feelings.

David conducted a body scan, noticing areas of tension, particularly in his chest and shoulders. I encouraged him to focus on the sensations; he described them as heavy and constricting. I invited him to breathe into the sensations. David imagined directing his breath to these areas, visualizing the sensations softening with each exhale. 

We began exploring what was present with curiosity. He acknowledged feelings of anxiety and sadness accompanying the physical sensations. We made space for that: I encouraged him to breathe ‘space’ into each sensation, allowing them to be there for as long they were present, as if he were sitting with old friends.

We reflected on the origins of his belief, recalling his parents’ struggles and teachings. I remind clients that our families of origin are our first socializers, meaning, we learn how to be in the world from them, we learn our perceptions and beliefs from the views and interpretations of our families. We then internalize these messages as our own beliefs.

Over the next few sessions we returned to working with these sensations that were now fully in his awareness.  David gently challenged his belief by considering, “Wealthy people can use their resources for good.” And “I can be a wealthy person who uses his resources for good”.  He observed a slight loosening in his chest as he embraced this new perspective. This reframing resulted in a shift in his felt sense of money, finances and wealth. David sensed less constriction in his body over time regarding wealth and his relationship to it.

At the end of each session, David spent a few moments integrating his insights, acknowledging how the belief affected him somatically and emotionally. Finally, he practiced self-compassion, understanding that shifting deeply ingrained beliefs takes time. Compassion involves also acknowledging that our predecessors do the best with the tools they have; if their ancestors had limiting beliefs about wealth then that is what is typically passed down generationally, until a new belief is examined and internalized.

One day, David walked into my office with a newfound sense of confidence. “I’ve been applying for jobs that I would have never considered before,” he said, “jobs where I can actually make a difference and earn a good salary.”

Over time, David’s belief transformed. He no longer saw wealth as a sign of evil but as an opportunity for positive change. As his sense of wealth shifted, so did his feelings and actions, and soon he secured a position that aligned with his values and financial goals.

Months later, David sat across from me again, this time with a broad smile. “I never thought I’d say this,” he said, “but I’m actually looking forward to building my future. I feel like a weight has been lifted since I have reframed my beliefs about money”.

David’s journey was a powerful reminder of the profound impact our beliefs have on our lives. By challenging and reshaping his limiting belief, he unlocked his potential and embraced a brighter, more fulfilling future. Witnessing our somatic experiences, emotions, and beliefs without identifying with them nurtures inner peace and openness. Through this practice, we learn to honor our experiences without being defined by them, potentially unlocking a profound sense of freedom and well-being both in our bodies and in our lives.

Dr. Priya Duggal, ND, is a registered naturopathic doctor whose practice focuses on women’s health, breast cancer, autoimmune conditions, addictions, and mental health. She’s also a Compassionate Inquiry® Practitioner, Facilitator, Educator, Mentor, Circle Leader, and Vice President of the MammAlive foundation, a non-profit organization providing women’s health and breast health education, globally.

This post references a short excerpt of Priya’s story of transformation and healing through Compassionate InquiryⓇ. Listen to her full interview on The Gifts of Trauma Podcast.

Part of my mix of specialties is working with women experiencing Fibromyalgia. The keys to healing fibromyalgia are rest, relaxation and slowing down. Women struggle with this, as across the globe, we’re taught to serve, to care for others, to be good moms / daughters / wives…

My clients object, saying, “I have to do it, because no one else will.” Add to that, if someone in our home is upset, as women, we’re conditioned to take it personally, “Why are they unhappy? What did I do?” All too often, we’re attached to responsibility. When we are, we believe, “I’m responsible.”

Often, I’ll ask my clients to imagine a child, then imagine themselves telling that child, “You’ve got to work. It’s your responsibility to care for others. It’s your job to make everyone happy.” Then I’ll ask, “Would you actually say that to a child?” They always reply, “No, I’d never say it to anyone but myself.” That’s their ‘ah ha’ moment.

Buddha said, “…with our mind, we create the world.” So Gabor asks, “Who created our minds when we were kids?” Let’s say a little girl’s mom is sick, and that little girl cares for her mom, maybe her dad and siblings too. When she grows up and goes to work, the same thing happens. She takes on everyone else’s work. And when she goes home to her family, it happens again. It’s all an extension of that same belief, “I’m responsible, I have to do it.” She can’t say, “No.” This is covered extensively in Gabor’s book, When the Body Says No. Fibromyalgia is the body saying “No.”

The sad part is, when their bodies start saying “No,” my clients get upset with them. Even though they’ll acknowledge, “I’m really pushing myself. I’ll go to the gym even when I’m tired, busy at work and taking care of my family.” When I ask, “When do you rest?” They respond with confusion. “Don’t I need exercise?” “Yes,” I’ll say, “But you need sleep more.”

Often, I’ll ask a client experiencing Fibromialgia to close her eyes for a moment and ask her body what it needs. The answer is always, “I need sleep” or, “I need rest.” A few days into resting, guilt can come in. “The house is a mess. I’m not doing anything about it, and I’m feeling better.” When they set aside their old guilt programming, listen to their body and prioritize themselves, they experience huge shifts. They’re amazed that simply tuning into their bodies, resting and practicing self care make such a difference. Once rested, they begin to release their symptoms. “The pain, it’s not there anymore.”

Their body asked for rest, and when it got what it needed, so the pain evaporated. If they backslide and start doing too much again, their body reminds them. ” I did too much and I crashed.” Then they get back on track.

The most common beliefs underlying chronic conditions are, “I have to justify each moment of my existence or “I don’t matter”, and “I’m not good enough.”

These beliefs arise when, as children, we’re not allowed to share our emotions. If a child is sad about something, and she’s crying and her parents repeatedly respond by saying, “Don’t cry. What are you crying for?” She gets the message. It’s not okay to cry. When she’s angry, if rather than acknowledging her anger, her parents consistently say, “Behave. Be nice. Don’t be angry.” She often concludes that her emotions are not welcome and suppresses them. And since it’s not okay to show her emotions, if something happens that upsets her, she doesn’t tell anyone about it because… “I’m a burden if I tell.” Or, “I don’t want to add stress to my parents because they’re already stressed.”

These beliefs, “I don’t matter”, and “I’m not good enough,” cause anxiety, tension in the body, insomnia, depression, and more. “How can I be good enough?” We deal with our pain by exhausting ourselves, attempting to prove we are good enough. But when we’re alone, the small voice that says, “I’m not good enough,” shows up again. That’s our old trauma, it keeps coming back, just like the villain in a horror movie that’s seemingly impossible to defeat. Until our trauma is healed, no matter what we do, it continues to show up in our beliefs and in our behavior.

This cycle inflicts a lot of stress on the body. If someone believes they’re not good enough, they may become a workaholic to prove that they are good enough. In addition to emotional pain, overworking causes physical stress, which can lead to adrenal fatigue and other issues. When we get caught in this hazardous triangulation of trauma behaviors, the outcome is often disease.

I believe we are living in a pandemic of anxiety. These old beliefs drive us to work hard to justify our existence. As children, in our attempts to “Be worthy. Be good enough. To matter,” we not only suppress our emotions, but work diligently to become more intelligent, nicer, whatever helps us be
seen and acknowledged by our parents.

Many of us carry these ‘unconscious drivers’ into adulthood, where, after decades of relentless effort, they can manifest as Fibromyalgia, ALS, MS, cancer… any of an array of autoimmune disorders. When our body says “No”, and our need to drive, prove, or justify, is finally thwarted… a window opens that invites us to slow down, reflect, get curious and seek support… to finally heal our trauma.

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The Gifts of Trauma is a weekly podcast that features personal stories of trauma, healing, transformation, and the gifts revealed on the path to authenticity. Listen to the interview,
and if you like it, please subscribe and share.

Compassionate Inquiry has invited me into a unique and transformative journey of healing. Its powerful ongoing impact has significantly altered both my relationship with myself, and also with those around me in a way that will be foundational to my authenticity, embodied compassion and resiliency for the rest of my life. In my relationships, I am now more able to say “no” when my body says no. I have a deeper capacity to be present and compassionate. I am less reactive and more consciously responsive. 

The most profound area of transformation that CI has supported within me is the ongoing connection I now have with the parts of myself that were previously unconscious. Throughout my experience in CI, both as a client and a Professional Training student, my capacity for acceptance, curiosity and humility around taking responsibility for all parts of myself has grown and deepened immensely. Now, when I notice tension in my body, I am more capable of offering my gentle attention. Before CI, I often ignored tension, isolated myself or made it (and myself) wrong. 

CI has also supported an incredible blooming of my capacity to stay attuned, present and anchored in my body. My relationships with family and friends have become more harmonious, and, although not perfect,  I find I have more space to pause and notice what is happening for me in moments of tension or conflict. Knowing how to offer myself this pause connects me with the present moment and possibilities of agency that were previously veiled by the tension in my system. Being able to notice tension in my experience and take responsibility for it, my relationship to myself and those around me shifts from victim to compassionate participant. 

As a trauma-integrating, somatic healing practitioner, I now experience deeper embodied faith in a person’s healing process during sessions. I have a clearer understanding of the transformational power of healing in relationships, and offer my sincere, open presence to every person I work with. 

Compassionate Inquiry has elevated my confidence as a healing practitioner. This confidence is aligned with an inner, embodied knowing that the person with whom I am sharing CI in a session wants to know the truth. They are coming to the session to unveil a deeper, clearer truth about what they choose to focus on. 

This confidence, combined with the limitless faith I have in the innate healing process within all of us, continues to be a powerful catalyst for exploration in CI sessions. 

Finally, the element of playfulness inherent to CI has had a beautiful effect on my life and work. In CI we often explore the importance of play throughout a healing process, and I discovered that as we explore, inquire and embark on our healing pathways, brevity and playfulness are fantastic companions. From a place of play, we can remember how connected we all are. Play brings us to the resonant experience of interbeing. When we are aware of interbeing, we are attuned to the ever present possibility of healing through connection and relationship. 

Leigh Aschoff, B.F.A., M.S. (she/they)

• Trauma Integrating Somatic Healing
• Professional Compassionate Inquiry Practitioner + Private Mentor
• Advanced Akashic Records Practitioner and Teacher
• www.heartpeacehealing.com 
• Supporting wounded hearts returning to embodied wholeness. 
• I respectfully and humbly acknowledge that I am a settler who lives on the Confederated Lands of the Chumash, Lenni-Lenape, Salish and Kootenai Tribal Nations.

“Being a parent of adult children is seeing a version of yourself that on some days makes you immensely proud that your genetics created such wonderful, conscious beings… On other days you fear for humanity.” – A.W. (London, England)

As I write this blog post, the youngest of my four children turns twelve, and the eldest is twenty-two years old. I have been parenting half my life and I would say my parenting role never ends, although my kids may say I never stop parenting (it’s all about perspective, right?). It’s safe to say though that I am always learning about myself and we are all getting to know each other as we move through life as a family unit.

In our focus group Parents of Grown-up Children, parents gather to share about past or current experiences with their older kids, some twenty, thirty, or forty years later. Now, if you are thinking to yourself, “I don’t have any children” or, “My children are not grown up yet”, please don’t stop reading. Knowing as we do how the past shows up in the present, this affects us all, with or without kids at home. Whether we got to know our parents or not, how we perceived them can shift over time. My almost seventy-year-old mother recently told me how grateful she is to still have her one hundred-year-old mum around, which is not something she might have said thirty years ago. Being a child or parent doesn’t end once a child is officially a ‘grown up’, it is an evolving process. As we know in CI, child parts can stick around as the unconscious drivers in our grown-up lives. 

In Taiwan, where I grew up with my Korean mother and Swiss father, the virtue of filial piety  was all-pervasive in my childhood. Family, school, society all emphasised the necessity of respecting, obeying and caring for one’s own parents, elders and ancestors, so that familial and societal harmony would ensue. The will to participate in this tradition, to honour and pay respects to parents, family and elders was the norm, and I wanted to show gratitude and follow the traditions and values of my culture. I always did as I was told because only ‘Western’ children dared to disobey their parents. As a child, I would never have dared question my parents as my kids so casually did growing up in Europe, with an individualistic Dutch father. Even nowadays, I still struggle sometimes with questioning my parents or disagreeing with them.

In theory, filial piety sounds admirable, and when it works, it is a precious and valuable experience in any given family and culture. However, when parents start saying children ‘should’ be grateful for being born, fed, housed, clothed and sent to school, “I gave you life, you owe me”, then things can start to turn sour. Something gets in the way of willingly (and naturally) giving or contributing to a relationship with parents. Counter-will shows up, which Gabor described as “… the automatic resistance to any sense of coercion or pressure, physical or emotional. It’s a perfectly normal dynamic.”

I wonder, where or when did your own counter-will start to show up for you as a child? Where does it still show up today as an adult and how is the dynamic with your own parents or with your (adult) child(ren) playing out? As CI therapists-in-training, it is important that we keep training our empathy muscles with our own child parts so we can be with our clients and their child parts.

In our focus group, the topic of parents pushing their will onto children, e.g. “You really should settle down and get married”, crops up often. Regardless of a child’s age, the desire of a parent is generally rooted in well-meant intentions e.g. “You’ve put on weight” or “Don’t study dance, it won’t pay the bills”. Gabor says, “People are going to resist even if you try to push them in the right direction.” and sometimes this can lead to animosity, or even rupture.

One of my pivotal CI moments was when Gabor said that it’s never too late to find a way to mend relationships with adult children. He underscored the importance of compassion, empathy and understanding in this process of facilitating healing and reconciliation in oneself and, by extension, with our loved ones. My parenting belief in 2020 was that I had messed up my eldest two children, that they needed to be ‘fixed’ and I was the reason they were making poor decisions in their lives. With humility, CI helped me see how by doing our own work on our own guilt and blame, we get to grow our compassion towards ourselves. This can change the whole dynamic of trauma in the family system. Guilt—often expressed by parents within our focus group—truly can be transformed.

When we address our own pain, we develop the capacity to hold our family pain and to mitigate what gets passed on through generations. Space opens up for forgiveness. Through regular practice in self-awareness and self-compassion over a seven-year period, I was able to reconcile with my mother after a decade of conflict. In addition, I learned how humour could bring levity and presence back into an intense moment, and my parenting also changed once I befriended my mind and was able to catch the stories that were being spun.

In my experience, relationships encompass rupture and repair. Gabor has repeatedly demonstrated and explained how the dynamics of any relationship are shaped by past experiences and the unmet needs that arose following childhood events. Even though it is challenging to do sometimes, I truly believe that when we work on our own woundedness and care for our well-being, we plant seeds of growth for future generations and model a healthy healing process. 

The wonderful, conscious beings I mentioned in the beginning require dedicated effort on our part, to ensure their will is embraced, even decades into the future. May we see them for who they really are, not as projections of ourselves, but as separate people. May we also see our parents as separate people and as children of their own parents.