Life Matters Counselling & Psychotherapy Centre

27/02/2026

Secure functioning is the foundation of a healthy, lasting relationship. It’s about creating a partnership where both people actively protect and prioritise each other’s emotional safety. As Dr. Stan Tatkin explains, our brains are wired to detect threat, so feeling secure with one another isn’t accidental, it’s intentional❤️

26/02/2026

Burnout is more than stress or exhaustion—it’s often rooted in the survival strategies we developed as children when our core needs went unmet. These strategies helped us adapt and survive, but as adults, they can set us up for depletion, resentment, and disconnection.

In this free webinar, NARM Post-Masters Fellow Janet Bystrom Micek, LICSW explores how our Adaptive Survival Styles show up in the workplace and contribute to burning ourselves out. Drawing from the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM), Janet invites us to reflect on the deeper patterns that keep us stuck in cycles of overworking, caretaking, or striving for perfection—and how self-acceptance and compassion can begin to shift these patterns.

To sign up for more NARM Post-Masters Fellows Present Webinars, check back regularly at https://narmtraining.com/pmf-present/--------------------------------...

26/02/2026

26/02/2026

In our last two posts, we talked about how trauma-informed work is usually described as either top-down or bottom-up.

Bottom-up approaches prioritize bodily experience and nervous system regulation.
Top-down approaches focus on meaning, cognition, and how we interpret experience.

NARM is distinct in that it works with both approaches simultaneously. Rather than privileging one pathway over the other, NARM practitioners pay attention to the ongoing dialogue between body and mind, sensation and meaning, regulation and understanding.

This integrated approach supports working with complex and developmental trauma in a way that addresses both how experience is organized in the body and how it is understood and lived in the present. Integrating both pathways helps support lasting and sustainable healing.

26/02/2026

Over the years, I’ve noticed a recurring question among therapists encountering PACT for the first time. It usually sounds something like this: How does PACT fit with what I already know? How does PACT integrate with other models?

03/02/2026

When we understand that each day isn’t one more day,
but one less,
everything begins to change.

Time stops feeling endless.
Moments stop being wasted.
People stop being taken for granted.

In Buddhism, this awareness is called maranānussati—mindfulness of impermanence and death. Not to create fear, but to awaken gratitude and clarity.

When you truly see that life is finite:

you argue less

you love more honestly

you forgive faster

you stop postponing what matters

You start choosing presence over pressure.
Meaning over ego.
Peace over noise.

✨ Nothing becomes darker when you remember impermanence—
it becomes precious.

So value the people you love.
Protect your time.
Speak what is true.

Because every day is not an addition—
it is a reminder.

30/01/2026

06/01/2026

06/01/2026

Anxiety and anger often hold stories we couldn’t express earlier in life. What once showed up as overwhelm or tension can, over time, become clearer and more workable as we reconnect with our deeper experience.

As we develop more capacity to stay connected with ourselves, these emotions can shift into forms of strength, clarity, and authentic self-expression.

19/12/2025

We can’t expect ourselves—or our clients—to simply let go of what once helped us survive.

Addictive or compulsive behaviors aren’t just “bad habits.” They often serve as attempts at self-regulation when no better options were available.

In NARM, we get curious about what these adaptations are still doing for us, and explore what becomes possible as new, more life-affirming ways of regulating begin to emerge.

Compassion creates space for change.

19/12/2025

Det handler ikke kun om udtrapning.

I sidste uge, på Inner Compass Initiative-konferencen i USA, brugte jeg mine 20 minutter på scenen på at dele de vigtigste fem ting, jeg har lært gennem mine 10 år med at hjælpe mennesker ud af psykofarmaka.

Den første – og måske mest oversete – pointe:

Når mennesker trapper ud af psykofarmaka, slipper de ikke kun et stof. De trapper ofte også en identitet ned.

For mange har medicinen været flettet sammen med en fortælling om dem selv:

“Der er noget galt med mig.”
“Jeg er defekt.”
”Jeg er psykisk syg.”
“Mine følelser er farlige.”

Og de fortællinger forsvinder ikke automatisk, bare fordi dosis bliver lavere.

Nogle gange har de også brug for langsom udtrapning, selvfortællingerne!

Når noget har været en del af vores indre liv i årevis, forsvinder det ikke bare fra den ene dag til den anden. Det bliver hængende. Og det vil helt sikkert stikke sit grimme hoved frem i øjeblikke af krise, udbrændthed og pres:

“Hvad nu hvis de havde ret om mig?”

Derfor er udtrapning sjældent kun en medicinsk proces. Det er også en psykologisk, relationel, måske endda eksistentiel proces.

En gradvis bevægelse fra
“Der er noget galt med mig”
til
“Jeg havde normale reaktioner på svære belastninger og livsforhold.”

På traumer.
Tab.
Umødte behov.
Braste drømme.
En livsbane, der ændrede sig pludseligt og uventet.
Grænser, der blev overskredet.
Et liv, der gjorde ondt.

Og så, når medicinen slipper sit greb og sløret letter, sker noget, ingen rigtig advarer folk om:

Følelserne vender tilbage.
Hele spektret.

For mange betyder det, at de skal lære deres følelsesliv at kende på ny:
Hvad er angst egentlig?
Hvad er sorg?
Vrede? Skam?
Hvad er en følelse overhovedet?

Aha! Det er noget, der vil bevæge os (e-motion). Beskytte os. Informere os!

Og det er smukt hver eneste gang, et menneske vågner op til sig selv igen.

Men også svært, og potentielt overvældende og uudholdeligt, hvis man ikke får støtte i processen, og hvis skiftet sker for hurtigt og pludseligt.

Jeg har samlet de resterende erfaringer fra mit arbejde – om udtrapning, abstinenser, følelser, identitet, krop, kost og modstand fra systemet – i artiklen herunder.

26/11/2025