Instagram story viewer> @ciuin> reels

Ciuin Doherty

@ciuin

22

posts

1.4K

followers

1701

following

Psychotherapist (MA, LMFT)
Individuals & couples
Trained in AEDP, EMDR & EFCT

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

When we hit rocky moments in our relationship, it’s easy to blame our partner: “They always shut down.” “They get so worked up they’re impossible.” “Why can’t they just act like an adult?”

We often react so strongly because our partner means so much to us. We are wired for connection. For all mammals, connection is protection. When it feels threatened, we enter what neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp called “primal panic.” Our body shifts into survival mode. Blood flow decreases in the rational, “adult” part of the brain and redirects us toward fight, flight, or freeze.

In couples, this often shows up as one partner “turning up the emotional heat,” escalating in protest. From the outside, it can look loud or critical. But underneath, their attachment system is crying out: “Where are you? I miss you. I need you.” At the same time, the other partner may withdraw—going quiet, pulling away—“turning down the heat” in an attempt to preserve what still feels safe.

These are old coping strategies formed in childhood, often in homes where love or emotional safety wasn’t consistent.

The invitation here is to respond with softness instead of judgment. To become a secure base, a loving anchor for one another.

“If you need a moment, I’m here.”
“Let’s feel this together.”
“All of you is welcome.”

When we do this, we offer a corrective emotional experience. We become a healing force for one another—and together, we rise.

108

17

5 months ago

In AEDP, receptive affective capacity is the ability to let feelings in—especially care, warmth, and connection—without shutting down or pushing them away. As this capacity grows, we can more fully feel our emotions, take in support, and allow change to happen. This openness helps repair relationships, regulate emotions, and create deep, lasting healing

76

5

7 months ago

Transformance is the innate drive to heal and thrive that exists no matter what we’ve been through in life. As an AEDP therapist, I focus just as much on amplifying glimmers of transformance as on attending to the places that hurt. Because right alongside our pain, there’s always a pulse of transformation waiting to unfold.

72

8

9 months ago

Real change in therapy doesn’t come from simply talking about our problems—it comes from EXPERIENCING something new and healing in the here and now.

When a client expects rejection but is met with warmth and connection instead, their brain gets a new message: maybe it can be different this time.

That’s the power of disconfirming experiences—they rewrite old patterns and open us to feeling, connecting, and living to our fullest potential

89

8

9 months ago

To survive as children, we learn to hide the parts of ourselves that trigger criticism or withdrawal of love from our caregivers and peers. Sadly, over time, more and more of our authentic self gets pushed underground, sapping our vitality and life force.

The good news? These vibrant, authentic parts of us aren’t lost forever—they went into hiding in relationship, and they can be reclaimed through relationship. Relational wounds require relational healing

151

23

9 months ago

Talking with psychotherapist @ciuin about how AEDP can lead to reparitve experiences in his work with men. For him, AEDP helps get underneath the stories to the words and feelings that are often uncomfortable. #aedp #aedpinstitute #mensmentalhealth #emotionalhealing #therapyformen #selfcompassion #innerchild #malevulnerability #mentalwellbeing

46

0

10 months ago

One of the most painful consequences of trauma (any experience that overwhelms our ability to cope) is that it can reset the nervous system to be hypervigilant (continuously scanning for anything it perceives as potentially dangerous). To the hypervigilant brain, being in states like joy, gratitude, connection, or spontaneity can feel extremely vulnerable as it’s near impossible to simultaneously scan for danger and surrender to these expansive, open states.

This is why our work as therapists is not only to help our clients process painful emotions and experiences but it is also to support them in staying with, and deepening into, positive feelings.

Just like attempting a new exercise at the gym we start with a light weight (“Can you stay with that good feeling for just a moment more?”) Then as the muscle builds we gradually make it more challenging (“Where do you feel that gratitude/ joy in your body? Could you imagine breathing it throughout you body, from head to toe?”)

Through practicing staying with positive states a little longer each time we start to build a more flexible nervous system. One that can still warn us of dangers when necessary but which increasingly allows us to truly experience the richness, beauty and good in life.

(Link to full podcast, Spaces Between with Gina Minardi, in bio)

60

7

5 years ago

I’m on Gina Minardi’s podcast Spaces Between where we deep dive into how and why therapy works. We explore co-regulation and “borrowing one another’s brains”, attachment styles and relationships, and harnessing neuroplasticity to heal trauma and create inner conditions of safety, strength and freedom. Feel free to take a listen :) Link in bio

98

22

5 years ago

The incessant criticism doled out by this internal voice can cause us such pain that our first response is often to simply want to eliminate it.

Unfortunately going to war with this part of ourselves only creates more inner division, stress, and a lack of safety, the very conditions in which the inner critic gets fired up. This voice develops in childhood, often as our best effort to keep ourselves safe when we feel vulnerable or under threat. The implicit logic is “If I criticize myself first then I can avoid criticism from the outside”. To a primal part of us our very life depends upon remaining acceptable to the “tribe” (our caregivers, family of origin and peers).

As the inner critic believes it has an absolutely essential job to do in keeping us alive, any attempts to simply eliminate it will be met with fierce resistance.

One way to step out of this loop is to turn towards it with kindness and gratitude rather than fear or hatred. Internally we might whisper something like “Thank you so much for your years of tireless work doing your very best to keep me safe. I so appreciate you and I’m ok now, I’m safe”. Softening our attitude in this way promotes harmony inside as opposed to division. Creating internal safety (nervous system regulation) lets the critic know on a visceral level that we’re okay, we’re not under threat and its services are not needed for the time being.

With practice we can start to carve out space from this critical voice, making room for more expansive states such as presence, connection, joy, spontaneity, and receptivity. As with changing any habit, it takes time and commitment but in my experience it is well worth the effort.

91

14

5 years ago

In “Sweet Darkness” the wonderful poet, David Whyte, invites us to let go of that which does not bring us alive. However, whether someone or something brings us alive also depends upon how we are showing up in the world... are we paying attention? How embodied and receptive are we?

SWEET DARKNESS

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone,
no part of the world can find you.

It's time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your home
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness
and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

...

‘Sweet Darkness’
From ‘The House of Belonging’
Poems by David Whyte

92

18

6 years ago

I’m excited and honored to have been invited onto the SoulFeed podcast to talk about “How Therapy Works”. In this lovely conversation with Shannon Algeo we discuss tapping into the wisdom of the body, tending to traumatic memories through the imagination, and harnessing the power of neuroplasticity to create lasting change. Link to the podcast is in bio :)

80

20

6 years ago

I keep hearing this term being used to describe things like procrastination, playing small, or failing to go after what we want. What really gets under my skin is the common assumption that it is caused by some kind of personal weakness or lack of commitment to oneself.
This could hardly be further from the truth. Every child comes into the world with an innate drive to explore, experiment and take risks. However, for many of us this natural expansion got interrupted; we played big or spoke our truth and rather than being celebrated for it, we were dismissed, criticized or otherwise lost love.
Now as social beings our very survival, particularly as children, depends upon being acceptable to our families, peers, and other important people in our lives.
So we learnt to play small or self-sabotage not because we were weak or insufficiently committed to ourselves, but because we were totally committed to living, because we had the courage to do whatever was necessary to stay connected to those around us, even if that meant sacrificing our voice, spontaneity, and expansion.
This is a heroic story of ingenuity, adaptability, and creativity – not one simplistically discarded by the thin, one dimensional, and self-satisfied cry of “self sabotage”. This brings tears to my eyes because more often than not we direct the cry of self-sabotage towards ourselves. It is how I talked to myself for so long, “You are not putting yourself out there because you are weak, because there is something fundamentally wrong with you”. But if we can understand that there has been very good reason why we are not yet all that we know we could be, then maybe we can find some compassion for ourselves. And over time this self-compassion can become the soil from which the tender new shoots of exploration and self-expression reach for the light once more.

80

31

6 years ago