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Clearing Retreat - Case Study - Rosa
(name changed at client's request)
(December 2008)
Rosa was a schoolteacher in her late 40's a daughter of a Spanish immigrant family. She told me she was deeply depressed to the point that on the weekends she would spend hours lying in bed. She reported that she was "not interested in anything". She had a teenage daughter that she claimed hated her and had two failed marriages. Her last husband was an immigrant who married her just to get his Canadian citizenship and then left her soon after they were married. Rosa felt deeply betrayed and also constantly berated herself for "being so stupid" to not notice his real intentions. Despite spending thousands of dollars on many popular personal development seminars and spending 6 weeks meditating with a guru in India she was still deeply depressed.
Rosa took a weekend off, scheduled a Clearing retreat and booked a room at the Ecology Retreat Centre.
In the first session Rosa got in touch with a pervasive sense of self- hatred and permanent state of being closed-down in order to protect her from pain. She noted some negative beliefs such as " I'm not lovable" and "I'm not good enough" that solidified her depressed state. She began to connect how this state of being created the circumstances in her life, including the betrayal of her second husband.
In the ensuing 4 sessions, Rosa through a technique called "Time Line" was able to locate the origin of this state around the time of her birth. Through a therapeutic strategy called "Past Incident Recall" she realized that her mother had wanted a boy and had rejected her at birth. As we replayed the birth several times, more memory was recovered and the emotional blockage of the event was discharged.
Rosa then realized that her mother too was depressed and desperately needed to be loved to the point that she expected Rosa, her daughter to love her the way her mother (Rosa's grandmother) never loved her. Rosa realized that she was caught in an impossible neurotic dynamic. She was expected to provide motherly love to her mother, when it should have been the other way around.
Rosa realized the truth. The reason she felt unlovable was because her mother wanted a boy and felt unloved herself and therefore was not able to provide Rosa love. Rosa realized that the reason she felt "not good enough" was because she was expected to give her mother, motherly love and this was impossible, she was only a child. When Rosa as a young child could not give her mother, motherly love Rosa concluded: "I'm not good enough" In a flash, Rosa understood that she had made herself responsible for her mother's problem. When she realized this, the truth set her free. In an instant, the anger that she had felt for her mother was replaced by compassion, as she understood the source of her mother's issues.
Through a process called "Mind program 4" Rosa was cleared of the negative beliefs associated with her real circumstance in childhood and then she was led through another process of letting go of the guilt and shame that had imprisoned her in her depressed state. Finally we did some "inner child" work to recover and reconnect her lost child self to her adult self.
This work was completed remarkably in only 5 sessions over the weekend. In addition to the sessions Rosa did journaling and Labyrinth walks at the retreat centre to further supplement the deep work she did.
Two weeks later I contacted Rosa and she related that she felt wonderful and had not relapsed into depression. She was bright, cheery and talkative...a different individual from the personality that she presented at the beginning of the first session.
She felt much more present in her life and was still amazed that it took her only one weekend to find freedom from the state that had imprisoned her most of her life.
Clearing Retreat - Case Study - Jennifer
(name changed at client's request)
March 2009
Jennifer came to a Clearing Retreat because she said she felt stressed out and just was not enjoying her life anymore. She had recently been promoted from a senior position in a national human resources company to acting vice-president and was not only doing her old job but took on her duties of her new job while her boss was on a leave of absence for stress.
She was a divorced and a single mom with a daughter with learning disabilities who needed special attention from her to complete her schoolwork most nights.
She remarked that she rarely went out because so was so busy all the time and felt lonely, powerless, overwhelmed ("like on a treadmill") and shutdown emotionally and could not allow herself to feel sad. She said she felt like she was in a dysfunctional pattern with men, in that she had to be the strong one, as a result always attracted "needy" men. For a while the relationships were okay but soon she felt weighed down as if she were being "held hostage by them" and broke up the relationships. She was concerned that one of the men she had broken up was still calling her frequently, telling her he "needed her" almost stalking her.
As we began exploring Jennifer's situation, it became clear there were withheld communications in a number of her close present-time relationships. I got her in the session to complete these communications through a technique called "Communication to Others" and as she gained some emotional relief new insights arose. She realized that her way of attracting companionship was by denying her needs and pretending she was strong and "low-maintenance" and this would then attract needy men, who because they needed strength would never leave her. But because they were needy she would never get her needs met.
She realized she was caught in a "false solution" i.e. trying to get her needs met by denying her needs. This was an important realization for Jennifer and she felt a sense of relief in now identifying the real problem even though she didn't know what the solution was.
With this new awareness in mind, we began the project of isolating when this issue arose. Jennifer walked an imaginary "Time Line" and to her surprise found that the origination was around the time she was 3 1/2. She had thought it would be around the time that her mother had died when she was 15.
In contacting the "little Jennifer" she understood that around this age her mother, who Jennifer had felt the closest to, had gone to work in the evenings in order to save enough money so that she and her husband could buy a home in a better neighborhood to raise her daughter in. Jennifer realized that back then she had made a decision to just behave and be a "good girl" and deny her need to be with her mom. Because if she "made a fuss" and demanded the attention of her mother then her mother would have to deny her needs. Jennifer not only denied her needs but even denied feeling the sadness she felt.
So Jennifer then understood why in her relationships with men she didn't get what she wanted. It was a way of creating and maintaining a relationship just like she did with her mom.
But Jennifer also noticed there was an even deeper dynamic going on with her older brother. Jennifer communicated that when she was born her older brother who was 12 got ignored and he was extremely jealous because his need for attention was not met.
Jennifer realized that if she demanded to get her needs met, when her mother was working, that her brother might hurt her, seeing that she got more attention than he did.
Jennifer realized that deciding "My needs are not important" was a way of protecting herself from her brother. She was using the belief as an indirect way of saying to her brother "Don't hurt me".
In the session, Jennifer imagined her brother to be there and worked on communicating the message "Don't hurt me". When she completed this communication she finally became free of acting out of the attitude "My needs are not important".
The difference in her demeanor after this clearing was dramatic in the session. She was cheerful, alive and vibrant. There was new colour in her face and a sense of optimism and hope that was not there at the beginning of the sessions. She become aware of the reality that it was important for her to get her needs met. She realized that if she were healthy in this way, then she could truly help others. The sense of duty and imprisonment was gone, replaced by a relaxed and amiable prescence.
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