My lovely farming dad wrote one letter to me in his life shortly before an unexpected fatal heart attack at aged 68, signing off with this advice “Life is short, live it well.” MindfulPresence comes from here and my belief and hard-earned experience that living and loving well don’t happen by accident, but are created through purpose and practice.
My biggest teachings for how to do this have come via the world of mindfulness, beginning with my first ten-day silent Vipassana retreat in 1994, seeking a cure for the tendonitis & suspected fibromyalgia that were preventing me finishing off a big writing & video project. It was not long after losing my dad, and – in contrast to the stereotype of meditating for states of “bliss” – it was grief, pain and trauma that best describe what came up when instructed to “sit and stay with” the excruciating internal experience of my own mind, heart and body at that difficult time. There was no quick fix, but slowly over the ten days meditating, I become aware of how my own thoughts & stress reactivity were exacerbating the actual physical pain symptoms and also contributing to a stuck depressed experience, as opposed to the healthier emotional waves of grief.
These insights, together with a renewed sense of happiness and well-being, left me with a life-long belief in the power of mindfulness meditation and a new understanding that living and loving well take practice. I sought out a second long retreat after the equally sudden death of my beautiful mum, and this personal experience– especially around how trauma blocks grieving, and how mindfulness supports grief but protects against depression – led to me specialising in loss and grief counselling, and taking up further training and an internship with the Australian Centre for Grief & Bereavement.
Back then, trauma was seen as a separate and specialised field – a kind of big ‘T’ Trauma arising in the aftermath of earthquakes, floods and bushfires. But what was becoming evident to me, was that it was the less obvious, small ‘t’ traumas that seemed to take the edge off the everyday joys in life, compromise the ability to make and sustain healthy relationships, and prevent people from living the meaningful lives they wanted to live. These could be traumas from sudden changes & losses, from childhood sexual or other abuse, or from early family relationships where – due to their own history, external pressures or events, mental health or other issues – parents weren’t able to tune in emotionally in ways that were safe, consistent, and “good enough” to create secure attachment.
With the new understandings of the “plastic” brain adapting according to input and behaviour, the psychology field now believes that early attachment experience and patterns can influence brain structure, development and function throughout life. Early trauma, including insecure attachment, can affect capacity to regulate emotions, and our own adult attachment style, including our ability to parent, and to sustain safe and secure intimate relationships in our adult lives. This is why attachment theory underpins the newer relationship therapy models, including my primary therapeutic approach of Sue Johnson’s Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples (EFT-C).
Insight or understanding this intellectually is helpful, but more important for transformation is actually experiencing and practicing something different. New, felt experiences of safe relating fire new neural pathways, and lead to positive changes in our brains, nervous systems and lives. By practicing safe tuning-in and connecting with partners over time, it is possible to move from insecure to the more secure attachment style conducive to health and happiness, personally and in relationship. Awareness of how our brains and central nervous systems work, including our hardwired patterns of stress reactivity and how we can better emotionally regulate, is also tremendously helpful, and very much enhanced through mindfulness practices and approaches.
Other relationship models that I draw from and which also incorporate both attachment and this neuroscience of emotional regulation are: Stan Tatkin’s Psycho-biological Approach to Couple Therapy(PACT); John & Julie Gottman’s Gottman Method; and Intimacy from the Inside Out and its’ ‘parent’ model developed by Dick Schwartz, Internal Family Systems. From the mindfulness and compassion world, I also bring in the framework of universality - i.e. relationships are hard for ALL of us, because we’re all wired for both love AND threat, a tricky combination that means we all need to actually learn & practice how to live and love well, rather than taking this for granted. Wanting to learn how to do better myself was what drew me back to study for the Master’s in Couple & Relationship Therapy and various other Relationship trainings. I love to now share this with others in therapy in my private practice in Castlemaine and through teaching in the Masters of Counselling stream at Swinburne University and also at Relationship Australia Victoria (RAV) in Kew.
As much as I value counselling however, in recent years my primary focus has shifted to the retreats and other group work, because I so strongly believe in the power of the group process, especially the way in which groups implicitly convey our common humanity, emotional experience and challenge as human beings. Since beginning my mindfulness teacher training with Jon Kabat-Zinn in 2009, I have specialised in teaching mindfulness and compassion within group settings, both in weekly programs and on residential retreats. I am trained and registered to teach the following eight and six-week programs: Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction; Mindful Self-Compassion; Positive Neuro-plasticity; Yoga (400 hrs) and Brené Brown’s Daring Way & Rising Strong. More recently I founded and have been teaching my own 6-week Relationship Renew program.
On a personal note, I grew up in a large family on a Western District dairy farm. I met my North American husband 35 years ago while back-packing, and we live together in Castlemaine, now “empty nesters” after the last of our three adult daughters recently moved out to study in Melbourne. Our house adjoins miles of bushland, featured in the website photos, and which I try to walk or run in each day. Sadly Charlie, the beautiful chocolate labrador starring in all the website photos is no longer with us.
