Transcription

• Speaker #0

  Familiarity is sometimes mistaken for love or chemistry or possibility. I never have a sense of belonging. And so that's what the orphan part would feel like. I never quite belong. Where do I fit? I'm always a guest. So as children, we learn these ways of relating to people long before we can put the experiences into words. And if those relationships were marked by abandonment or rejection or inconsistency, those patterns are going to follow us. into our later relationships if we don't look.

• Speaker #1

  All right, welcome back to the show, everybody. Today, we have the amazing Kelly Reed, who is a licensed therapist in Dallas, Texas. Kelly has been so graciously agreed to come onto the show and talk to us about abandonment. Before we get into the topic, I will let Kelly herself introduce her background and how she got into this line of work.

• Speaker #0

  Hi, so my name is Kelly and I've been a therapist for five years, licensed, but worked full time in my internship for another year before that. And my journey started out just a funny little thing. When I was a little girl, I first wanted to be a veterinarian. And then my next. career choice was I wanted to be a therapist. But life happened and kind of got in the way. And I got married and people said that was kind of a funny pursuit. And so I raised four sons and got into my later life and was like, what am I going to do with myself? And then my dream reemerged. And so I went to graduate school in my late 40s and became a therapist, just like I thought when I was 10 years old. And I originally thought I'd work with children, but I mainly see adults, maybe like an older teen I would see. But it is just a passion of mine. And I'm particularly passionate about people's stories related to abandonment wounds, adoption stories, especially people that are adopted and don't know why they're experiencing a feeling of not. fitting in or feeling like they belong, a lot of belonging issues, attachment wounds, complex trauma. I've even done a lot of work with addiction and personality disorders, especially cluster B personality disorders. So yeah, a lot of fun, a lot of really exciting work and I think there's so much help out there and so much hope and I love being a part of that.

• Speaker #1

  I love that. A month ago when we first connected on the phone, I think you and I kind of came together and decided the topic of today would be abandonment because there's so many people experiencing the trauma or the impact from being abandoned. And it seems to me abandonment can look very different to a lot of different people and it takes in different forms. before we started recording, I shared, you know, my parents left me with my grandparents and I said, I don't think I'm an orphan, but like, you know, it did impact me. And you shared that it could mean that I was an orphan. Could you help us to define abandonment and being an orphan? What does it mean professionally and how does it look like day to day?

• Speaker #0

  So. I see. So abandonment can feel like a lot of different things. It could be that you had a childhood where you just felt neglected or ignored. It can even be that you were a highly sensitive child and just emotions were suppressed or kind of told they were too much. And that can feel like an abandonment because you're forced to suppress your natural state. But it also manifest in your story as what I would actually call legitimately an orphan, when our parents leave us, whether they leave us emotionally or physically, they leave us in the care of another or to only care for ourselves, we're abandoned and we're supposed to have a mother and a father. And when we don't, no matter what the circumstances are, even if it's that they weren't allowed to keep us for some reason, or they physically couldn't. There's this part of us inside that knows these other people raising me, they're not my parents. And somehow I didn't fit. And therefore, there's always a feeling of I'm a guest in whatever home I'm in. And I never have a sense of belonging. And so that's what the orphan part would feel like. I never quite belong. Where do I fit? I'm always a guest. And so that's why I was saying that your story could be very legitimately related to the orphan story. And then more traumatic is that you've shared that your parents came back to visit yearly.

• Speaker #1

  Yes.

• Speaker #0

  And it reminds you of the fact. Every year, they're not going to take you home with them.

• Speaker #1

  Exactly.

• Speaker #0

  Because you're a guest. Okay.

• Speaker #1

  Thank you for validating me. I really did feel abandoned as a kid. And I think what I hate the most is that the parents will keep saying that we're not. abandoning you this is for a better cause this is for better circumstances for the future right like we're doing this for you because we need to leave you temporarily to create a better life so in the future you have more opportunity so i think internally there's always a tug of war where like how should i feel about the situation like you know intellectually i understood why they left, but then emotionally and mentally, even maybe physically, I feel unsafe because now I don't know if somebody else will leave.

• Speaker #0

  Right. I think you touched on something really important there. So you touched on the idea of like your parents did this for a better future. And I could see that, you know, financially or however they thought they were providing for your needs, that might have been so. The problem is we don't think about emotionally, what am I doing to my child and how is that affecting their future? And so this is where it's hard because you're now carrying your parents' egg, essentially. You're carrying all their burdens because they've given this to you. We're doing this for you. Well, it doesn't feel like that when I'm left with my grandparents. And my mom and dad, who gave birth to me, only visit me once a year. And so it's like I'm trying to understand on the one hand what my parents are going through and what they're trying to do and they're doing the best they can. But on the other hand, I'm carrying the weight of this doesn't erase my pain. My pain is still my pain. I'm left here.

• Speaker #1

  Right. My previous therapist always have. reminded me intention and impact are two different things. And I would like go into the therapy session. And while I'm telling my story, I'm like defending my parents, right? Like I don't want other people to judge them because they made the decision like 30 years ago. But then I think that my therapist helped me to really understand that people can make a mistake, but you don't have to pay for their mistakes. mistakes but they also think that it took me such a long time like honestly I feel like it was yesterday I'm not kidding like I was just like you cannot carry your life story on my back because I have my own things and just understanding feeling heavy always is not just because of my life but also I'm living for them in certain ways um it made me feel exhausted to even like carry on to in my own life because part of my identity was my past and then part of my past was my parents abandoning me right

• Speaker #0

  i'm hearing so much of what i experience with people that i work with so many people i work with one of the hardest parts is they want to protect their parents because you We all want to believe that our parents loved us. And likely they did, you know? And so because of that, and because I want to keep them like, they loved me, it's so hard to then say, but it still hurt. But these two realities can be true at once. They loved you, and they unintentionally hurt you. And what she said, intention and impact. Very, very true. And it's a really painful part of the process to kind of take your parents off this throne that we want to keep them on. and then look at them in a very real way. Because we think, if I take them off the throne, I'll never love them again. And I'll be one of those people who doesn't talk to my family, and I'm a hater. And I don't think it has to be that way at all. I think we can take our parents off the throne. We can look at what happened, intentionally or not. And then we can resolve, how do I want to relate to that?

• Speaker #1

  I love that.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah.

• Speaker #1

  So... Some people can eventually understand the reason why their parents abandoned them. Some people might never find the answers, you know. Does recognizing the reasons why you were abandoned actually help you heal?

• Speaker #0

  I actually think so. And I think it's helpful. Let me say this. I think it's an important part of the process, right? But it's not going to heal the wound. I think it's important because it helps us to see our parents as more human, to take them off the throne, to, you know, have that kind of understanding that they're just struggling people like me. However, that's really focused on your parents, right? So that's not focused on your own healing. Your pain is still your pain. So the healing journey is going to be learning to care for yourself, providing for yourself and giving you the things that you didn't get. That's the healing part, if that makes sense.

• Speaker #1

  It makes perfect sense. How do we do that? Like, how do we start to care for ourselves?

• Speaker #0

  Oh, that's a big one. So I kind of have like a three part. process for that. I wrote it down because I'm sometimes like I lose track. But basically, I look at it as there's three tasks, okay? We have regulation, agency, and meaning. And so the first part that, and I've noticed this, by the way, this model applies so broadly to so many things, even with addiction, which is another thing I've worked a lot with, there's always an abandonment story, almost. every time there's a rejection or abandonment wound at the heart of the story. So I see this in adoption stories and addiction stories, everything. So the first is regulation. And in regulation, before we can explore the past, because it's really scary to look at this stuff and go, oh, not everybody's who they said they were. It's not just me in the story. Our nervous system has to feel safe enough to go there. So otherwise, we're just going to kind of get overwhelmed. and want to close our eyes again. And that's where I use, I have a lot of sand tray here, I'll show you in my office. I have a whole big shelf of sand tray figures in here, but I use a lot of sand tray, somatic experiencing, other experiential approaches. And what I use them for is to create regulation and safety in your body, because that's part of where our trauma is stored. We're not trying to relive the trauma. That's something that people misunderstand. They want to talk about trauma and process it and process it. We're not trying to just overwork it. We're trying to feel safe and experience these memories while remembering that we're still here and we're going to be okay. And we're lightly touching back so that we can renegotiate some pieces and notice missing parts. that we then can take care of in the present. But the past is going to inform us of what we need to work on here. Does that make sense?

• Speaker #1

  Makes perfect sense.

• Speaker #0

  So that's first step. Second step is agency. And so this is how we're going to respond now. And this is the work that we're doing in the here and now. And that's where we take responsibility for how these early wounds are affecting our lives today. As we know, a lot of people that have been abandoned, abandoned people. Yeah. And so it's not about blame or shame, right? It's about recognizing that we aren't responsible for what happened to us, but we are responsible about what's happening moving forward. And so that involves then being able to be with the fact that I'm continuing to repeat these patterns. because I felt unsafe, but now that I feel safer looking at those past things because we worked on the regulation, how can I then translate that to feeling safe now? How can I translate that to feeling safe with me, the therapist in the room? Because that's even scary sometimes. And so we just work on that. I do a lot of co-regulation work too, a lot of like, oh, what's your nervous system experiencing with me? Oh, I'm kind of experiencing this. I felt a real jump with you right then. And so we're working on those kind of feelings. We're creating healthy attachment and we're noticing where we're both responsible and we're owning and talking and negotiating. And so, and then the third is meaning. And that's... that's the third part for me. And this part's become more important to me because healing isn't just about feeling better. It's about living differently. And so we're going to take what we're doing in real time and we're going to start making edits. Like, hmm, I noticed that this was kind of working. I kind of flubbed this up with this friend the other day or this romantic partner? How can we, how can we re-approach that? And then we'll even look at the relationship I have with them and we'll use examples from that because there's so much misunderstanding and repair that even goes on in the therapeutic relationship. And then we'll translate how could we take that to this relationship so that you can feel safe. What is it that you need to ask for today from your partner? What is it you need to tell them about what you've been doing that has been hurtful? Whatever it is. We start doing that. What do you need to explain to someone who's not understanding? And so even though we can't change what's been written, we can change the chapters moving forward by making these little edits together and creating a meaningful life. And the goal isn't really to erase the past. It's to stop letting it determine how you're going to relate to people in the future.

• Speaker #1

  I love that. And I used to... always think that there is a day where like all the trauma is gonna get erased I'm just gonna live this the most happy life and then unfortunately I have three therapists and they're just like oh like you know it doesn't really end you can always find something to work on I was like well that just sucks like I mean what's the goal like you know even though we talked about the goal is to you know not let your past to write your future but how does success look for you and your client where are you trying to get them to place in their life where how would they feel and how would you say they have made progress that's a great question so

• Speaker #0

  i don't think it is a miraculous process right i don't think somebody's going to come out and look completely restored. In fact, it was funny. I was talking to a client today, and without saying too many personal things, he's walking into a very serious relationship, and they're considering marriage. And when we were talking, I was trying to explain, okay, it may be that everything doesn't look perfect as you walk in, but the deal is You don't heal on your own and you're over there like this little separate being in a corner and you're internally relating to yourself and you come out this healed individual and now you find this healthy partner and there's no struggles. That's BS. The reality is we heal in relationship. So this is what I'm talking about with these real-time edits. We're encountering each other for a reason, most likely because you There's something that connects us that drives the connection. And it could be healthy or not healthy. But in that, we're working over things. Even my clients that I've worked with, they don't arrive to me by accident. They know me because we're meant to know each other. And so this is the safe. So in therapy, we're kind of experiencing this safe place to explore a relationship. We're going to take that out of there. And what I see is, oh. I notice how I get really angry and I walk off all the time and I shut people off. I can't keep doing that. I got to go back and tell her I'm sorry. Or, oh, I've got to tell him that when I get really needy like that, it's because I'm so scared that he's going to go or these kinds of things, right? And we own, we start working through owning mistakes, taking responsibility. So the progress I see is like when you have these epiphanies like that. I don't think it's this one thing. I do agree. And there's always edits we can make on ourselves. Urban Yalom, who's one of the most famous therapists in the world, said he'll be in therapy always and forever working on himself if he asks other people to work on themselves. So I just look at it as it's a forever process, however much you want to invest. But I have seen clients, as far as success, I've seen them build healthy long-term relationships. I've seen them find recovery communities or religious communities that are healing. I've seen them create chosen family. I've seen them reconnect with family members and be able to have a new understanding and acceptance, even if those members failed them. I've also seen them just do like ordinary things like go to Six Flags with friends. And that's a big success, you know, because they didn't think they could have friends to even ask to go do something. So all of these things I think are success. Does that make sense?

• Speaker #1

  It makes perfect sense. I think it looks very different to everybody. I have, I made a lot of mistakes in terms of understanding the definitions and measuring myself against other people's success. But then gradually understand that we're all on our own journey. Now going back to before, well, first of all, thank you for sharing the example. I can relate to this person. always thought I'm not going to get into a relationship until I'm healed. Because I guess the politically correct way of framing that is like, I don't want to put my burden and my trauma onto the other person. But the actual fact that I'm just so scared of being abandoned again, or I don't think I'm worthy of a relationship. So, and then, and then when I'm dating somebody and like things get a little too serious. I don't even think that I purposely do it, but then I just all of a sudden, I'm just not interested. But just like, I just feel this frustration coming from my physical body and I'm just like over it. Like, I don't want to do this anymore. You're so annoying. I gotta go.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah.

• Speaker #1

  So I'm just going to start with why do people... who have been abandoned most likely or more likely abandoned other people?

• Speaker #0

  Well, there's a phrase from Sigmund Freud that I always keep in mind. What we cannot remember, we will repeat. The way I like to say it is we repeat what we don't remember. Okay? So as children, we learn these ways of relating to people long before we can put the experiences into words. And if those relationships were marked by abandonment or rejection or inconsistency, those patterns are going to follow us into our later relationships if we don't look. So if I grew up expecting that people are going to leave, I'm going to move into every new relationship waiting for it to happen, right? This is going to be how it goes. So I might become clingy. I might pull away first. I might test the relationship. I might... sit over here and do a little of that. Like, I probably don't even like them. I might even push them away before they get a chance to reject me. That's a favorite one of people I've worked with. They've even done it to me if we get close. You know, oh, I don't like you. You're not helping me. Right? And this is because underneath all the behaviors is the same fear. Eventually, they're going to leave me too. So let's get it over with, right? And the tragedy is people aren't choosing these things on purpose. This isn't like, oh, wow, I just want to do this. You're just trying to protect yourself from being hurt again. But these strategies that helped you survive because you needed them to survive end up reinforcing the loneliness and the fear of abandonment over and over again.

• Speaker #1

  Is this the reason why some people who experience abandonment also choose? unavailable partners?

• Speaker #0

  Oh, yes. Yes. Unavailable partners is a big, you know, I think that's that repeat, but we don't want to remember, right? So when what I've known growing up is emotional unavailability or inconsistency, right? It can feel strangely familiar as an adult. And that's even part of my own story. So, but we won't go into that today. Unfortunately, familiarity is sometimes mistaken for love or chemistry or possibility. Like I meet somebody, I go, gosh, I feel like I've known them. You know what I'm saying? Well, anyway, Dr. Roseanne Christian, who is one of my great mentors in therapy, she told me this story when we started working together, and this has stayed with me. So she knew of this woman. And this woman had a father who struggled with alcoholism. And this woman left college. It was somebody she knew from her, you know, like a story from her town. And then the woman left college to go back to an alcoholic boyfriend. And a group of them gathered together, and this woman was with them. And the woman was talking about she'd been in a series of relationships, never married, always dating. alcoholic you can predict the story right right and then they're sitting there and they're in a bar area and an intoxicated man is at the bar and he comes over to the table to talk to them who's the person he approached the lady the lady and i don't tell the story because i think this lady caused it i tell it because our histories shape what's familiar to us and that influences the kind of relationships. that we get into. So that means I'm familiar with it. And somehow that's what I keep encountering because it feels familiar. So what we have to do in therapy, and this is the encouraging part, is familiarity can change because I'm going to become aware. I'm going to become awake. I'm going to start learning what it feels like to feel safe so that safety feels familiar. And when I practice feeling sick, safe with my therapist and I start feeling what that feels like, I start finding it in other places in the world. And I go, well, that feels familiar. I remember that feeling somehow. It's like muscle memory, right? And so then unhealthy relationships begin to feel less familiar. And we stop chasing what once felt normal and we start pursuing what feels kind of healthy. And I'll use a short example of something even from my own life. I worked in a more hectic environment before I went into private practice, and it was really great. But my home life that I had a long time ago was very hectic. And so it felt normal to me to be in this very hectic environment. And now my home life is very peaceful. And I started noticing the mismatch. The more I had this peace over here, the more I was like. This feels really good. I think I want more of that. And that's exactly what we're trying to do with these feelings of lack of safety and trust is grow these feelings of what does that feel like? Oh, I think I want more of that. And then we start noticing, oh, it's not right there, is it? Okay, where can I find it? Does that make sense?

• Speaker #1

  Makes perfect sense. It made me understood how. our nervous system or body operates. I think that in the therapy world, a lot of big words are being thrown. Like earlier today, even when we're talking about nervous system, there's a moment where I was like, let's define that, right? Like, because people who are not familiar with this work, they're like, what does that even mean? Like, is it my nerve or is it my body? Like, I think it's very confusing to people. And I think the way how you explained it, it's just... what you repeatedly get exposed to becomes your reality. And we are slowly introducing to the most that your nervous system can take, slowly and gradually introducing a different lifestyle, a different way of living or feeling. Eventually that bleed into who you, what you're made out of in a way.

• Speaker #0

  Right. Can I? I want to comment on that. So sometimes what it is, so our bodies, we're reacting to things all day long. And we're completely unaware of it because as a society, what we do is we talk about it's all in your head. Well, it's really not. It's in here too. We do have these bodies dragging around with us. They do things. And what happens is our bodies are reacting to all kinds of things that... we're aware of our nervous system is you know we get tight stomach You know, I'm a little scared, right? My chest gets tight. I get a little stiff. I'm angry. I feel myself heating up. So our bodies are reacting all day long and we're ignoring them. And then we're not resolving it because we don't realize all these moments we go through. The animal population deals with these things because, you know, they don't have to have manners and things like we do. So they just shake it all off. And you can watch videos of this. This is all Peter Levine stuff. boring for the average person. But that being said, we're ignoring all the stuff that we're holding all day long. And then we're wondering why at the end of the day, I'm just nervous inside. I feel lonely. I can't figure it out. I feel like I just want to curl up, you know, and protect myself. And I don't understand.

• Speaker #1

  Right.

• Speaker #0

  And so. This is why we have to address that part. So that's when I'm talking nervous system. It's all those things. That's where feelings come from. We're primarily interacting like this. The feeling is there long before it's here.

• Speaker #1

  That makes a lot of sense. I think that sometimes I like wake up with anxiety and I don't even know why. Like I don't have a reason to be anxious, but then I'm just like have this like. head in my stomach is the other phrase um you just feel unsettling um yes and then like and then you start thinking about it like i follow this guy uh dr joe dispensa i don't know if you're familiar with him so he says something he's like you cannot all think how you feel so yes usually you will have a feeling and then your brain start making sense why you feel this way And all of a sudden you catch yourself thinking all kinds of the worst scenarios. So he teaches meditation where like you recondition your body to feel a certain way. And then your thoughts are catching, body starts to catch up on the changes.

• Speaker #0

  And that can be, I work a little more off of maybe like whatever the feeling is that comes, it's okay to just welcome it. Because the feeling's there for a reason and the feeling is still real, even if it's not based on reality in the moment. It's just communicating something. And we can tend to it as if it is real without validating it and making it a big fact, right? So I can feel lonely and I can say, gosh, I'm in a room full of people. Why would I feel alone? I don't know. but I just do feel alone. What could I do for myself right now as I feel alone? Just to be with that. Do I need to move closer to somebody? Would that help? Do I just need to hold myself? Do I just need to be a little tender with myself right now and not do too much? Do I need to tend to it later because it's not the time? But whatever that is, I think it's okay to treat it as if it is real. instead of to control it. But that's just my take, you know.

• Speaker #1

  That makes sense. Now, my, not counter-argument, but like what I think might be tough, especially for people who do not have a therapist, is that when it's such a messy, a ball of anxiety with so many different reasons, it's really overwhelming. Like... As you mentioned, sometimes we just like cover our eyes because we can't deal with it. We don't even know where to start. Therefore, you know, for the people who might not be in this journey of having a therapist or not there yet to be able to distinguish what, how do they even feel? Like, is this sadness? Is this fear? Is this anxiety? What would be the first step for them to help themselves in that moment and in the long run?

• Speaker #0

  That's a really good question. So I think some of the techniques you're talking about are useful, right? So I think it can be very useful to know how to regulate yourself, how to breathe through something. But I look at those skills, those are like coping skills, and I put them more in the category of survival, right? We have to learn how to survive in this world. Even as a therapist, You know, I can't go around. tending to my feelings all day. I actually have to see clients and be there with their feelings.

• Speaker #1

  So

• Speaker #0

  I may be feeling really hurt and upset because I've gotten a disturbing family call and I've got, you know, somebody. Sarah, I'm making up a name, coming in and she wants to talk about the death of a family member. Okay, I can't be sitting there, oh gosh, I just got a troubling call from my son. I got attended this, excuse me. So I'm going to have to breathe, get myself in place to be with. But the problem is that I see for people is that we're wanting to do all of that in our personal work so that we can endure life. and have, you know, healthy emotional feelings or whatever. But then we don't go back and tend to them at some point. Even if you're not in therapy, tending to yourself is like self-care. It's like you go to the doctor because you have a cough and some mucus. You have to go back and you can't leave all the emotions sitting over there. and keep breathing through them and pretending they're not there. So, and we can do that on our own. There's a great book. It's called Constructive Wallowing by Tina Gilbertson. And I absolutely love it. I don't know if you've ever seen it, but she writes about tending to your emotions. And she talks about them like they're little rabbits. Our emotions are little rabbits and they're hopping around wild. And we take the rabbits and we... We try to put them in a cage because we don't have time for them. But the problem is we never go back and get the rabbits out of the cage. And so after a while, we're stuffing more and more rabbits. And so every so often one's going to pop out and surprise you.

• Speaker #1

  Exactly.

• Speaker #0

  Because we don't deal with it. And we don't have to do that in therapy, but we can do that with a friend, with another healthy individual, a mentor, someone.

• Speaker #1

  Now let's talk about... talking about your problems and your trauma with your friends at one point it becomes less productive and more about being and like feeling bad for oneself which is legit like that's valid i'm just saying like as you know there's there is obviously benefits to go through therapy because you guys are trained professionals you know when you're hearing versus even now like i thought i was pretty i i think i know enough but then like when people are talking to me i'm not seeing it from like a objective lens i'm like you're absolutely right this guy's such a jerk like i get my emotions get involved so what does therapy or therapists offer that you know everyday folks might not be able to offer

• Speaker #0

  Oh, yeah, I think there's a lot there.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  So you're right. Talking about it isn't enough. I think sometimes it alleviates some of the immediate burden, but it's really why I incorporate other techniques into my work because even I don't use complete talk therapy. So I use a lot of body work with somatic experiencing. where we allow some of these sensations to inform us of what's really going on, and we allow them to naturally work through your system. So meaning like I might have a pit in my stomach, and as we tend to the pit in our stomachs, we're just going to notice it, and it might travel. It might travel all the way up out your throat. It might tighten up. We might have to find a spot. where you're feeling better, so we can let the other part wiggle out. But we're letting some of these things kind of, it sounds weird, but almost like wiggle out of your body to work their way through because we're not taking care of them. So we're doing a lot of that and we're maybe hopping back and forth between past and present and even a little bit into future resolve so that we kind of have some hope to keep working back in the back part of the story. It's called T minus five to T plus five, if you want to know. So we go back and forth in the story so that we can resource into where we know you're going to be safe, but where we can still go back and look at the painful part and say, ooh, this was a little scary, but now I can see how the story was playing out all along and it was going to be okay. Because at least I'm here. whatever. Or I might find a figure of something that I realized, oh, that was observing me. I had no idea that was there as I scanned the scene. Or maybe we actually rework the scene and we actually do something that you weren't allowed to do in the scene. In my own work, I worked through a traumatic motorcycle accident that I was in, and I wasn't allowed to see the person that died. He He was speeding and crashed into me and almost killed me with him. But my sadness was really that I just wanted to see him and touch him. I had no idea that's what it was. But in my work, I allowed myself to go back and just put my hand on him and tell him I was so sorry that he was a young boy. And that must have been so terrible of a day for him. And I understand about making mistakes. And it was so freeing. And I actually found out when we talk about trauma stored in your body, my neck had been locked up here for years and I was never able to turn like this. And two weeks later, I noticed, oh, my neck doesn't hurt. And this was all from something from 20 years before. And so these are the things we're resolving. We're also working on things like when we actually give visuals, like when I talk about using sand tray. We're allowing someone to kind of get a flyover of their lives so that I can separate from it and I can create something figurative to imagine my reality. And it seems more tangible and contained because it's in a tray. I can manipulate it. I don't have to tell you what it is if I don't want to. If I don't want to look, I don't have to. And I can create a story. where I have a little bit of distance because I'm using figures so it's not the real individuals involved. And so these are things that we can do in therapy that you can't do with your friends that really are very helpful for your healing process. We can resolve conflict in the tray. Oh, wow, if I moved this perspective, I had someone I worked with a while back that everybody was, he was here and everybody was opposed. And he was like, I wonder if we just brought everybody together like we're a group. And he was like, oh, that feels good. I'm a part of. I'm not me against.

• Speaker #1

  That's incredible. It reminded me of a recent experience. I've done this thing called Family Constellation. Are you familiar? So very similar concept. We are coming up on. on time. So Kelly, if people do want to work with you, how can they best find you?

• Speaker #0

  So they can find me through my website. It's kmcdallas.com. And it's or it's KM Counseling Dallas if you want to look me up. I think that's the best way.

• Speaker #1

  I love it. Well, thank you so much, Kelly. You are so authentic, honest. I loved every single example that you have shared. I think that you have helped so many people to understand therapy better, abandonment better. Thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate you.

• Speaker #0

  I want to tell you thank you so much. You made me work and really think again about how I would articulate things.

• Speaker #1

  Thank you so much for being here with me today on the Zen Podcast. If this episode resonated with you, make sure you're subscribed and leave a comment with your biggest takeaway. That's how we grow this community and get these conversations in front of more people who need them. And if somebody came to mind while you're listening, please do make sure to send this episode to them. You can also find me on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. All linked below. Until next time, stay sharp, stay intentional, and be good.