Healing, breaking trauma cycles + parenting the way you wish you’d been parented
Becoming a parent can be the impetus - and the gateway - to healing from your own childhood.
As a therapist, and especially one who specialises as an intensive therapist, working deeply with individuals and their trauma over an accelerated period of time, I learn an incredible amount from my clients.
In fact, working in this way with the deep, transformative and evidence-based modalities of IFS and Brainspotting, means that I often ‘accidentally’ develop new services or innovations depending on what clients tell me they truly want and need.
Understanding the Struggles of Parents as They Heal their Own Childhood Pain
Through my work as an intensive IFS and Brainspotting therapist, I've encountered many dedicated and thoughtful clients who share common experiences and struggles. These clients often exhibit patterns of anxiety, perfectionism, and people-pleasing, despite a list of impressive achievements and courageous acts as long as their arms.
Often clients come to me saying ‘but my childhood wasn’t so bad”, apologising for taking up any healing space, even when sat in their own therapy chair.
And yet. ‘Something’ has brought them to me. To seek help, to understand why they never feel enough, to make sense of a lonely or unhappy space they are noticing inside.
Becoming a parent brings you to therapy…
That ‘something’ is frequently becoming parents themselves.
Having your first or subsequent children, dealing with the challenges, joys and milestones of watching them grow and wanting to do the best job you can for these precious beings, brings many parents a deep yearning to gain a better sense of self awareness and to avoid the mistakes of their personal experience of being parented.
A significant thread among my clients is their own upbringing with emotionally immature parents, which I have talked about HERE and HERE and which frequently leaves them feeling inadequate and emotionally burdened, even if they downplay the trauma of their past and their childhood.
Gabor Maté describes how there is a difference between ‘small-t’ and big-T’ trauma. Most people find it easy to recognise big T trauma, severe and out of the ordinary events. But those who have experienced small-t trauma may not find this as easy to notice and offer themselves compassion for these repeated and ‘mundane’-seeming happenings - or even more tricky to pin down, the lack of something good being there for them in their family of origin.
As adult children of toxic family backgrounds or emotionally immature parents navigate all that goes with having their own family and have children, they often turn to therapy in the hope that it will offer them answers and peace.
They find themselves:
Desperate not to repeat the patterns that have caused them distress, confusion or to experience a void in their lives
Hugely aspirational about the sustainable happiness and well-being and mental health of their kids - and the whole family unit
Eager to learn - and embracing that their own healing is at the heart of their evolution as parents
Filled with questions about their toddlers, tweens, teens and young adults: often finding the arrival of a new phase brings with it new triggers, reminders and past experiences to heal.
As a result of this demand, I developed a powerful and unique intensive programme “The Healing Parent Therapy Intensive” to assist thoughtful, hopeful and committed parents to become the very best versions of themselves, firstly in their own lives and secondly for the children (and grandchildren!) that follow them.
What is a Healing Parent Therapy Intensive?
The Healing Parent Therapy IntensiveTM is an innovative, client-led and incredibly effective way of both healing yourself and making long-lasting and stunning changes in your own family.
This programme is bespoke to your unique family (based on questions at the assessment and workbook stage) and incorporates the following pieces:
Psycho-education around the latest, most evidence-based and psychologically safe parenting principles and concepts for all ages and stages.
Personalised and deep healing for each/both/all parents so that they can overcome their triggers and heal the parts of them that are still hurting decades on.
Are you ready to be the changemaker for your family?
If you are a parent who wants to break the cycles of intergenerational trauma and transform your relationship with your child, embarking on a Healing Parent Therapy Intensive may be what you’re looking for.
This unique programme is designed to help you create a nurturing and supportive environment for your family through simultaneously accessing your own deep healing AND through investing in your role as a parent in a distinct and empowered way, that is miles apart from the way you were parented.
The programme is completely non-judgmental and flexible/affirmative to families of all types: we welcome single parents, nuclear families, LGBTQIA+ families, blended families and polyamorous parents.
The Healing Parenting Intensive combines the principles of IFS with Brainspotting and targeted coaching, focusing on:
Healing Yourself: Sessions addressing and transforming the unresolved issues from childhood to build a healthier emotional foundation for yourself, your parenting partner/s and your family.
Transforming Parenting Practices: Learning (together with your co-parent/s) new, constructive approaches to parenting that foster a positive and nurturing relationship with your child, diverging fundamentally from your own upbringing.
Breaking Intergenerational Patterns: Utilising IFS and Brainspotting techniques to disrupt and heal the cycles of trauma and emotional immaturity that have been passed down through generations.
Coaching for Change: Providing practical strategies, accountability, resources and support to implement and sustain these changes in your daily parenting practices.
Why Choose the Healing Parent Therapy Intensive?
The Healing Parent Therapy Intensive offers a unique and comprehensive approach to creating lasting change. This immersive program provides:
Personalised Attention: Tailored individual therapy sessions (for all parties) to address your specific needs, triggers and challenges, ensuring that the work we do is deeply relevant and impactful. In addition, joint therapy sessions can be integrated when needed.
Integrated Healing Methods: Combining IFS, Brainspotting, and positive psychology coaching to provide a holistic and effective path to healing and transformation.
A Safe and Supportive Environment for learning and growing as a parent/as parents together: A dedicated space to explore and address your parenting concerns, allowing you to grow and evolve in your role as a parent.
This intensive does not constitute a more focused couples counselling programme (and these distinctions can be discussed on an exploratory call which you can book HERE), however by undertaking this intensive you are highly likely to grow as couple and feel many therapeutic benefits of harmonising your journey as parents.
A Healing Parent Therapy Intensive aims to bring you, your children and your wider family closer.
How does IFS and Brainspotting help create the most transformative + empowering Healing Parent Therapy Intensives?
In my practice, I've found Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy to be a transformative approach for addressing these deep-seated issues.
Key Benefits of IFS Therapy:
Deep Understanding and Healing: IFS helps clients identify and understand the issues (and “parts”) stemming from their upbringing with emotionally immature parents. It provides a compassionate blueprint for living and an intuitive framework for welcoming and healing the internal parts that developed as survival mechanisms. Being a parent is not easy; parenting with awareness of the principles of IFS makes this journey so much easier as all the adult systems can stay balanced in the face of their children’s (developmentally appropriate!) stormy seas.
Accelerated and Sustainable Change: The intensive format of IFS therapy that I specialise in allows for rapid progress and profound healing. Clients often experience significant breakthroughs and a renewed sense of Self in a short period of time - yet they also feel the long-lasting impacts of a kinder and more connected relationship with who they are at their core.
In addition, Brainspotting is widely regarded as one of the best, most gentle and powerful neurological tools for processing and healing from trauma:
Key Benefits of Brainspotting:
Deep Processing + Releasing: This calm and empowering approach helps people move beyond their stuck places and past experiences, so they can process and release their trauma and thrive in their future.
Attunement and Connection: This approach (and the intensive format) allows for a deep and attuned trust to be created; not only between myself and you in our sessions together, but, even more importantly, between yourself and who you truly are inside. This connection will equip you on your parenting and self-awareness journey long after the intensive itself is over.
Take the Next Step
If you are a parent who is committed to breaking the cycles of intergenerational trauma and being the change your family needs, I invite you to explore the Healing Parenting Intensive.
This unique (and highly-tailored) programme offers a powerful opportunity to heal from your past and create a positive legacy for your children.
Please reach out to me to learn more about how the Healing Parent Therapy Intensive can support you in your journey. Together, we can work towards a future where you connect with your true self and cultivate a nurturing, supportive and forever “psychological home” for your family.
Warmest wishes, Lucy.