Patience

Posted on by Chele Yntema
It feels overwhelming because it is overwhelming There are moments when the younger parts of us look up, wide-eyed and searching, hoping someone nearby knows what to do with all that is happening within. Patience may begin here, in the steadiness of one who stays close enough to be leaned into, and who has no need for the questions to be answered before company is offered. Over time, and with an Other alongside, our systems...Read More

Tending to the Other

Posted on by Chele Yntema
Busy tending to the Other When did someone last notice the thirst within your own roots?Caregiving so often begins as a way of staying close. For a youngling whose needs meet withdrawal, inconsistency, or alarm, attending to the needs of an Other becomes the surest path toward orientation, proximity, and attachment, a protective pattern formed in service of survival and belonging. Over time our systems learn to seek and sense the moods of those around...Read More

For when you feel lost

Posted on by Chele Yntema
For when you feel lost Feeling lost can be one of the most disorienting experiences we move through, often arising in times of transition, loss, or exhaustion, or when the ways we have long coped begin to loosen.Our systems seek and sense, receive and perceive, and reach toward interpretation, searching for something that might help us make sense of where we are. When there is more than can be integrated at once, our systems may...Read More

Even in Darkness…

Posted on by Chele Yntema
Even in Darkness... All night the sunflowers turn east, together, toward a dawn not one of them can see. There is no sun to follow, no warmth to lean into, nothing at all to confirm that the morning will come. Still they turn, slowly, and all through the dark still hours an inward knowing steadies them toward what is not yet present. And when the light finally peers over the horizon, it finds them assuredly...Read More

A Steadying Moment

Posted on by Chele Yntema
A Steadying Moment So much of what moves within us arises long before we have words for it: a tightening across the chest, a heaviness in the belly, a restlessness searching for somewhere to settle. Often, without us even knowing, our systems are still bracing, still scanning, still readying for what once came and what may come again. There is a deepening sense of alarmed aloneness awakening from within.In these moments, sometimes the most steadying...Read More

The Monster in my Mind

Posted on by Chele Yntema
The Monster in my Mind Fierce and frightened. Frightened and fierce.Many of us know something of the monster in the mind: the harsh inner voice, the relentless replaying, the shadowy sense of dread that looms larger the longer we meet it alone. Often it sounds certain, cruel, and convincing, repeating itself so insidiously that it can begin to feel like the truest thing about us.Perhaps the monster is also a protective pattern, formed in service...Read More

They named it connection…

Posted on by Chele Yntema
They named it connection... Perhaps you have long sensed something of this, albeit without ever quite finding words for it.We might name this the trauma of ambiguous care. Not of what was there, rather of what was not there.Ambiguous trauma is the trauma of what was missing. It is the organisational residue of unmet needs, unspoken misattunements, and absence in the very moments when presence was most vital.Where developmental trauma and where neurodivergence is part...Read More

Never Forget

Posted on by Chele Yntema
Never Forget Often it feels like we have a younger part of us still alive inside.Perhaps this is the part of us that learned, early on, when proximity meant survival, what it took to stay connected and protected by the Other. When care arrived inconsistently, or arrived only when we made ourselves easier to be near, our systems began to organise around that. We became watchful. We became accommodating. We became capable far earlier than...Read More

What if tomorrow is worse than today?

Posted on by Chele Yntema
What if tomorrow is worse than today? Sometimes we lie awake in the evening, parts of us exhausted from the day that has been, whilst other parts swirl into the yet-to-come tomorrows, anticipating the what-ifs and preparing the how-tos.Often the swirls linger into the morning light, the worry of worse still residing deep within. It is in these times we are pulled to share our swirls, to seek a sense of certainty in an Other.Yet...Read More

Persisting and Collapsing

Posted on by Chele Yntema
Persisting and Collapsing When our systems are shaped early by prolonged volatility, and when turbulence remains ever possible, our experience organises into patterns of protection, or parts of us, that implicitly learned how to adapt and respond to Others and the World whilst keeping the Self safe.Parts of us move toward daily functioning and toward getting through, they feel the push to persist. These parts learned long ago how to push on and push through...Read More

Reenactments

Posted on by Chele Yntema
Relational Replays or 'Reenactments' Not again. Not this. Not with them too.There is a particular kind of heaviness that comes when be begin to sense the past repeating itself. The moment we see the pattern clearly, and see also that we are already inside it, already moving in the way we have moved before, already feeling the old ache take shape in a room full of new people.It is here that we tend to turn...Read More

When the Body Shuts Down

Posted on by Chele Yntema
When the Body Shuts Down Perhaps you know the sort of exhaustion that sleep does not touch.Perhaps you have taken the week off and found that the rest restored nothing, or that stopping felt worse than continuing, and something within you began to hum with a pressure you could not name.Certainly this is confusing. We are told to rest, to slow down, to be gentle with ourselves, as though the stopping were freely available and...Read More

Respect

Posted on by Chele Yntema
Respect and Recognition I can see you. And I can remain with what is true for me. So much of what we wrestle with in our closest relationships sits beneath one question. Is it alright to stay with my own position when it moves against those we love? Many of us learned young that respecting someone meant agreeing with them, going along, keeping their pain away. Our systems organised around this adaptively and well. Agreement...Read More

Embodied Relational Knowings

Posted on by Chele Yntema
The body remembers what the mind forgets. It holds the story of love, of lack, of longing — not in words, but in gesture, in posture, in silence. Author Unknown Embodied Relational Knowings Have you ever reacted in a certain way with others that seemingly happens no matter how hard you try to change it?Appeasing or people-pleasing; distancing or doubting; shrinking or shielding?These may be embodied relational knowings - patterns of Self-protection that you implicitly...Read More