Episodes 7 -10 of The Becoming Centered Podcast explore issues surrounding physical interventions and especially physical restraints. The focus is on how to minimize and be resilient to the stress of having to perform this type of work. Learn about some of the core dynamics involved in all physical interventions and how they produce stress hormones and neurotransmitters that stay in your body and brain. Prior to physical interventions, anticipation and training can reduce the impact of these harmful chemicals. During physical restraints, body awareness can help you begin to flush your system of stress chemicals. Afterwards, debriefing, processing, relaxation, meditation, and mindfulness exercises can help your brain and body return to a healthy baseline.
Episodes 4 – 10 of the Becoming Centered Podcast
Episode 4 of The Becoming Centered Podcast is now available on major streaming channels. This episode focuses on teamwork, an essential aspect of operating an effective residential treatment program. Since teamwork is also a key component of all sorts of endeavors, this episode has wide applicability.
If you don’t want to wait for future episodes of The Becoming Centered Podcast to be released (every Wednesday), you can preview episodes on the www.BearClanllc.com website. In addition to Episodes 5 and 6 which complete the Residential Counselor Orientation series, you can access the first podcasts in the Residential Treatment Issues series that focus on physical interventions. These podcasts present listeners with a framing for understanding the use of physical restraints (and other physical interventions), and how to reduce the traumatic impact on your nervous system of having to perform restraints.
Episodes 2 & 3 of The Becoming Centered Podcast
It’s rewarding to see that some people have been checking out the Becoming Centered Podcast! The first six episodes make up an orientation course for Residential Counselors and really anyone who works with children and youth to help them learn how to become centered. Episode 1 presented a particular way to understand the role of people who teach kids how to become centered. Episode 2 lays out the basic professional boundaries associated with such work. Episode 3 will drop this Wednesday and focuses on powerful ways to form a therapeutic relationship with kids. It introduces the concept of the Domain Compass and presents:
3 relationship qualities that support kids’ emotional life,
2 relationship qualities that support kids’ cognitive development,
3 relationship qualities that support kids’ learning how to regulate their behaviors, and
1 key relationship quality to support kids’ executive skills and social skills development.
Becoming Centered Podcast Launches!
I’m pleased to announce that the Becoming Centered Podcast is now available on all major podcasting channels! While the Becoming Centered Book (available at Amazon in Kindle and paperback) is a field guide to self-counseling, the podcast is more focused on people who work in residential treatment of children and youth. Since that work requires being personally centered, there’s certainly an overlap between the book and podcast; however, the podcast is more focused on how to help other people become centered.
If you’ve enjoyed the Becoming Centered book, you can be a big help by leaving a book review at Amazon. That sort of social proof is key to getting more people to check out my work!
If you’re interested in the podcast, you can find it and subscribe at all major podcast listing services and all episodes are available at my website (along with supporting materials): www.BearClanllc.com.
The first six episodes are an orientation course for new residential staff. The next episodes will focus on understanding and reducing the use of and need for physical restraints. Thanks for your continued support and interest!
Becoming Centered Book Published!
A lot’s been going on behind the scenes at Bear Clan, llc and this is the first of what will be several exciting announcements!
For the past two years, I’ve been retired from 40+ years of directing residential treatment programs, social service programs, and serving as a therapist for children and parents. I’ve focused instead on fully developing my integrated approach to therapy and counseling so that it can be more effectively shared with others.
One result is the publication of my first book, Becoming Centered: A Field Guide to Self-Counseling. It shares a powerful way to understand your own personal psychology, and tools and techniques for navigating your way through life’s challenges.
Integrating ancient traditional practices, multiple approaches to psychotherapy, principles of wilderness awareness, and perspectives from modern neuro-psychology, Becoming Centered teaches you how to use conscious and unconscious aspects of your brain to find your balance and find your path toward being the best version of yourself.
Through stories, concrete exercises, and eye-opening perspectives, you’ll learn effective ways to return to center when you become emotionally unbalanced; to become cognitively organized when you become confused; to walk the path of behavioral health; and to effectively tap into the conscious and unconscious abilities of your brain to manage your own life.
Becoming Centered: A Field Guide to Self-Counseling has just become available on Amazon in both paperback and kindle formats. I hope you’ll check it out and I hope it helps you see that you can be, and are, the hero of your own life-story!
Especially as a new author, if you find value in this book, I hope you’ll leave a review at Amazon and share its release with your network and tribe of people!
Big Changes at this Website!
I’m excited to let people know about some major development that have occurred at Bear Clan, llc. Having retired from full time work, I’ve been able to devote the past couple years to creating some new vehicles for sharing my approach to helping people.
Along with completely revising the content of this website, I’ve written a book, that will be available in May 2023 on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback formats. I’ve also developed a podcast will launch that same month. You can learn more about both projects on the new Start Here page of this website.
Both the book and the podcast focus on sharing what I’ve learned over the course of my career on how to become more resilient and how to help others, especially children and youth in residential treatment, to become centered.
I’ve also begun to add to this website resources that will help residential treatment programs train staff and better administer aspects of their operations.
So, please take a look at the new website material, check out the book and podcast, and I hope you’ll join me on this next adventure!
Anxiety as a Regulatory Trigger Mechanism
Increasingly, in my work with children and in current literature, clinical levels of anxiety has become a common problem and diagnosis. Does this observational data reflect something actually having changed in our children? Or, perhaps it’s a function of society and therapists simply changing the way anxiety is seen?
Regardless, I certainly work with many children who struggle with anxiety, to the extent that it impacts their emotional, cognitive, and behavioral health. I teach many techniques for better managing anxiety; but, I found that I lacked insight on the functional purpose of anxiety and how anxiety is different from other feelings.
Should it even be conceptualized as a feeling? I’ve been certified in one approach to crisis management that defines anxiety as a behavior. That doesn’t seem correct to me, but it underscores the difficulty professionals have in how to even frame the concept. Anxiety seems to have a lot in common with other feelings; but in some ways, it seems more like a mood in how it persists in the background of a person’s brain functioning.
I teach that the brain is composed of many specialized parts. These parts need to work together. That means there needs to be a communications network between these different parts.
Here’s the problem:
Only some of the brain parts communicate in English (or any other spoken language). Only some parts of the brain understand what we commonly think of as “language.” So how do the other parts of the brain communicate?
One form of communication is feelings. Something “feels” a certain way, and that cues you to focus on a part of the body or part of your environment. Some parts of the brain communicate more with images, some with dreams, and some with intuition.
From this perspective, anxiety is a mechanism of communication within one’s own brain!
Emotions grow more complex and nuanced as one gets older. Anxiety seems like a very early emotion, present even in newborns. Therefore, it must be a very basic form of internal communication. It seems to me that what it is communicating is the message “something is wrong.”
In the Bear Clan Meta-Compass perspective, using the Archetype Compass, we are all born Artists. As newborns, we have relatively few behaviors (The Warrior can’t even turn over yet) and relatively few thoughts (The Scout seems to mostly be interested in exploring ways to get basic needs met). The closest we have to executive skills (The Chief) are regulatory mechanisms in the brain that keep our heart beating, our lungs processing oxygen, and all the other tasks grouped into the autonomic nervous system.
The autonomic nervous system is, I believe, the origin for The Chief, and for executive skills that will develop over a person’s lifetime. Let’s imagine that the part of that newborn’s brain that monitors oxygen levels in the blood detects insufficient oxygen. How does that part of the brain communicate this situation to the parts of the brain that can take action to address that problem? To further complicate the situation, there are multiple parts of the brain that could resolve the issue. Is this simply a time to take a relatively deep breath, a time to burst into tears and screams, or a time to change body position?
The oxygen-sensing part of the brain needs to communicate with multiple other parts of the brain. Perhaps it sends an electrical / biochemical signal that triggers anxiety (or perhaps on a molecular level is anxiety). Something is wrong. Other parts of the brain focus on that “wrong feeling” and a particular corrective action is initiated.
In this conceptualization, anxiety starts out as a communications vehicle of the brain’s regulatory mechanisms. Thus anxiety is a necessary phenomenon that focuses parts of the brain on some dysregulation. So why does it sometimes go so wrong and what can we do about it?
On the level of the Bear Clan Archetype Compass, the answer is to strengthen The Chief!
Kit Learns Cougar Muscle Relaxation
Part 14 of the Two-Wolves Story Arc
Kit thought for a long time about the story of Monster Bear and how the most fearsome of all the bears was overwhelmed by a flood of humans working together.
“Bear,” said Kit, “you said that you changed after Monster Bear was no longer part of the bear spirit. Do you ever miss that part of yourself?”
“Over time, all creatures change,” said Bear. “You have not spent much time around Grizzly Bear, and none at all with Polar Bear. The Bear Spirit is still plenty fierce! But now, I have become more thoughtful. I do not miss Monster Bear’s rage. More than anything, that rage made it too hard to feel the Spirit-That-Moves-In-All-Things. Just as all the bears share the Bear Spirit, all the creatures of the earth, all the plants, all the rocks, even the waters are connected by a single spirit. The world is not only rock, it is not only water, it is not the plants, it is not the animals… all things together are the Earth.
“Monster Bear’s arrogance, Monster Bear’s anger, prevented the Bear Spirit from being able to appreciate the gift of Humility. Beneath the fur, Monster Bear was no different from other bears. But Monster Bear feared that others would realize that. So even more than fur, Monster Bear wore a cloak of fear. Monster Bear was so fearsome that most humans thought Monster Bear was not even made of flesh and blood. This cloak of fear did not make Monster Bear brave. The gift of Bravery is being able to take action despite fear, not because of fear. This made Monster Bear a bully and a coward. So no, I do not miss Monster Bear.”
“Bear…,” said Kit.
“Yes,” said Bear.
“I am no bully… but I think that I might be a coward.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Bear.
“When I still lived with human beings… some things happened… bad things. I did nothing that stopped it. I am still afraid a lot of the time. I was so afraid of Wolf, even though Wolf had promised to help me, that I didn’t even ask about the Two Wolves that live inside all human beings.”
“Fear-of-Animals, the fear of being attacked, Fear-of-Water, the fear of being overwhelmed, are powerful,” said Bear. These fears live in our muscles. They live in the large muscles in our arms and legs and chest. They also live in the small muscles needed for speech.
“If you wish to be Brave, if you wish to feel the Humility that lets you sense the Spirit-That-Lives-In-All-Things, then you must walk The-Path-of-The-Warrior.
“The true Warrior is not just a fighter. The true Warrior accepts the fears all creatures feel, and takes brave action anyway. The true Warrior knows that there are always more powerful forces, and humbly takes action anyway. The true Warrior knows that no one can, every time, be successful; but still the true Warrior takes action.
“The true Warrior acts not to make others feel fear. The true Warrior’s actions inspire others to feel courage. The true Warrior acts not to receive praise from others, but because The Chief has given a mission, necessary to the good of the whole community.”
“Can you show me this path?” asked Kit.
Monster Bear and the Flood of Humans
Part 13 of the Two-Wolves Story Arc
“There are many individual bears. There are different types of bears. But a single Bear Spirit connects all bears. Long ago, there was a type of bear that made the whole Bear Spirit more angry, more arrogant, more aggressive, and more feared by all the other animals. Humans called this bear the Monster Bear.
“Monster Bear was so large, so fierce, that even the other giants of that time, the Long-Toothed Cougar, the Dire Wolves, and even the great tusked Mammoth, feared Monster Bear. Monster Bear did not feel Fear-of-Animals. Monster Bear did not Respect any other animal. Monster Bear ate other animals but did not experience Love for the gift of food. Monster Bear killed not only the old and the weak, but even the mothers and the leaders among the other animals. Monster Bear did not feel the Spirit-That-Moves-In-All-Things.
“Monster Bear took from the earth without concern for the other animals and without concern for the future. It took a lot of food to support Monster Bear’s huge size. Monster Bear would compete with humans for the same sorts of food. Large groups of humans were too noisy, so humans would hunt in small groups. To Monster Bear these humans, with their sharp sticks, were easy to kill. The hunters became Monster Bear’s food.
“Sometimes, Monster Bear would find large groups of humans all living together. Then Monster Bear would kill many people, more people than Monster Bear could even eat. Monster Bear did not want to share the forest with the humans. But always there seemed to be more humans.
“The humans learned to fear Monster Bear. They did not know if Monster Bear was a mortal creature or some kind of supernatural demon. Humans did everything they could to avoid contact. Still, Monster Bear killed many humans.
“One moon it rained and rained and rained. Great floods swept the land. A group of humans found the body of a Monster Bear, drowned by the flood waters. No animal, no mater how strong, can match the power of water.
“These humans studied Monster Bear’s body and learned that on the inside, Monster Bear was the same as other animals. With this knowledge, the humans found their courage. They had seen the power of water. They had seen how a wolf pack could bring down a much larger animal, and they developed their plan.
“The human hunters set out in a much larger group than normal. All the other animals heard them coming and ran away. But Monster Bear never ran from anything.
“Each human had a long stick with a sharp rock attached to the end. They tracked Monster Bear to Monster Bear’s home. They stood in two circles around Monster Bear. The humans in the inner circle would jump forward and stab Monster Bear with their sticks. Then they would quickly jump back and the outer circle of humans would rush forward, stab Monster Bear and quickly jump back.
“Monster Bear could have broken through the circles of human hunters and escaped. But without Fear-of-Animals there is no Gift of Bravery, only aggression. Monster Bear would never flee. Monster Bear would never freeze. Monster Bear would only fight.
“Without Fear-of-Water, there is no Humility, only arrogance. Monster Bear could not imagine being defeated. Monster Bear had no recognition that always there are more powerful forces than any one creature.
“So Monster Bear fought! Monster Bear hurt some of the humans, but always two more humans would jump in with their sharp sticks. It was a flood of humans! Monster Bear could easily kill one human, or even several humans. But this flood of humans, attacking from all sides, overwhelmed the mighty Monster Bear. Monster Bear was defeated. Monster Bear was killed.
“In this way, the humans killed all the Monster Bears. Monster Bear left the Bear Spirit and I, the Spirit of All Bears, learned how to experience and express Respect and Love for other creatures. I learned how to seek Truth and Honesty in my thoughts. I learned how to act with Bravery and Humility. It took a great deal of work, but I learned how to walk The-Path-of-the-Chief and became the Spirit-Keeper of the West.”