Connectfulness Practice

We need relationship in order to survive. If you were raised without a secure base you likely learned early on to modify yourself. In this episode I am talking with Kelly McDaniel, LPC, NCC, CSAT, author and psychotherapist, about the complex trauma of chronic loneliness and how to heal from the toxic stress of disconnection.Kelly McDaniel’s first book Ready to Heal (2008) was written for women healing from addictive love and sex. Her new book Mother Hunger arrives July 2021 from Hay House. For full show notes click here. Resources: kellymcdanieltherapy.comFind Kelly on Instagram: @kellymcdanieltherapyLearn more about Rebecca’s practice at connectfulness.com and explore her upcoming online offerings: If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive in deeper, consider joining the next cohort of my Supporting Your Relational Self 6-week-online-course. This course is based on the teachings of Pia Mellody. We’ll cultivate lifelong practices to sustain you, untangle core issues that affect us all in relationships, and weave in relational skills to expand your Self care practices. Learn more at connectfulness.com/offeringsAlso, my colleagues Jules Shore and Vickey Easa and I are currently working behind the scenes to produce and launch a new podcast. And we are also offering another authorized online presentation of Terry Real's RLT Essential Skills Relationship Bootcamp. Open to individuals, couples and therapists. Learn more about the podcast and the bootcamp at WhyDoesMyPartner.comThis podcast is not a substitute for counseling with a licensed provider.After listening, we invite you to deepen into the discussion with us on instagram and please support the show by sharing and reviewing the episode.Mentioned in this episode:WDMP Integrating Heart+MindWDMP Integrating Heart+Mind

So often in the journey of relational healing we discover parts of our Selves have been disowned — the parts of one's spirit which allow spontaneity and imperfection and cultivate abundance and joy. In this episode we explore the creative process as a way to bear witness to these parts of Self.My guest, Chris Zydel, The Wild Heart Queen, works with people using creativity and artistic expression as a way to get in touch with the deeper aspects of who they are. Chris says the ‘creative juice’ is our ability to meet the mystery of what we don’t know within ourselves and within each other.Join us on a reclamation of trust in our deeper knowings and permission to reshape how we see ourselves and develop new cultures, together. Resources:creativejuicesarts.comLearn more about Rebecca’s practice at connectfulness.com and explore her upcoming online offerings: If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive in deeper, consider joining the next cohort of my Supporting Your Relational Self 6-week-online-course. This course is based on the teachings of Pia Mellody. We’ll cultivate lifelong practices to sustain you, untangle core issues that affect us all in relationships, and weave in relational skills to expand your Self care practices. Learn more at connectfulness.com/offeringsAlso, my colleagues Jules Shore and Vickey Easa and I are currently working behind the scenes to produce and launch a new podcast. And we are also offering another authorized online presentation of Terry Real's RLT Essential Skills Relationship Bootcamp. Open to individuals, couples and therapists. Learn more about the podcast and the bootcamp at WhyDoesMyPartner.comThis podcast is not a substitute for counseling with a licensed provider.Mentioned in this episode:WDMP Integrating Heart+MindWDMP Integrating Heart+Mind

Sexuality is a part of who we are and we all deserve to learn about it in a way that is safe, comfortable, and judgement-free. Learning about positive sexuality is transformative for individuals and society overall. My guest, Elizabeth Greenblatt, strives to support young people develop the skills to navigate their sexuality in a healthy and fulfilling way and believes young people must be at the center of this work.Elizabeth says “we must understand that young people are the experts on their lives and listen to them. We must be willing to listen without judgement and provide support that helps them to make healthy decisions and think critically about their choices. And we must talk about pleasure. Only talking about sex within the context of disease and pregnancy prevention does a disservice to young people and doesn't help them build skill in prioritizing healthy and pleasurable experiences.”Being listened to is huge, it teaches us how to listen to (and know) ourselves. Knowing the Self is such an important starting point. And yet, generations upon generations of parents pass down their own not knowing. One of the biggest ways we can change this narrative is through listening. These skills are building blocks for health romantic relationships and communication. Listening is a huge part of having consensual conversations. With the holidays approaching and COVID on the uprise around the country I hope our conversation about how sex education can be done well also may shed light on how we can navigate necessary but often challenging conversations around public health, consent and differences in risk tolerance while tending to ourselves and listening to one another. If there’s a silver lining from the pandemic it’s that we have daily opportunities to practice talking about consent, risk, our differing comfort levels, and develop conversational skill around bodily autonomy. RESOURCES:Elizabeth Greenblatt has been teaching about health and sexuality for over 25 years. She currently works with Sex Savvy Hudson Valley to support and provide comprehensive sexuality education to students, teachers, administrators, and staff. Elizabeth also provides community and online workshops parents/caregivers, adults, and young people. Learn more about her upcoming online sex-ed program for 3rd-5th graders at sexsavvyhudsonvalley.com/eventsLearn more about Rebecca’s practice at connectfulness.com and explore her upcoming online offerings: If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive in deeper, consider joining the next cohort of my Supporting Your Relational Self 6-week-online-course. This course is based on the teachings of Pia Mellody. We’ll cultivate lifelong practices to sustain you, untangle core issues that affect us all in relationships, and weave in relational skills to expand your Self care practices. Learn more at connectfulness.com/offeringsAlso, my colleagues Jules Shore and Vickey Easa and I are currently working behind the scenes to produce and launch a new podcast. And we are also offering another authorized online presentation of Terry Real's RLT Essential Skills Relationship Bootcamp. Open to individuals, couples and therapists. Learn more about the podcast and the bootcamp at WhyDoesMyPartner.comThis podcast is not a substitute for counseling with a licensed provider.After listening, we invite you to deepen into the discussion with us on instagram and please support the show by sharing and reviewing the episode.Mentioned in this episode:WDMP Integrating Heart+MindWDMP Integrating Heart+Mind

We’re excited to bring Juliane Taylor Shore, LPC, LMFT, SEP (AKA Jules) back to the podcast — last time she joined us, on episode 18, Jules introduced us to the brain science around how to stay relational when our protective systems are activated during times of chaos, like these. In this episode we’re talking about how your relationship can help you heal…and the brain science behind why and how it works. Expect lots of delicious neurobiological explanations around how healing occurs in the subcortical system. Jules says that healing trauma means what was, is not what always will be. Think about it like this, you were born into this world with vast and varied needs: to be safe, heard, seen, soothed and to matter. Your early life experiences installed a kind of knowing around what to expect, how to react to increase wellbeing, increase safety, increase justice, or decrease suffering. But in order to cultivate the recipe for this healing experience, you need to stay inside your unique "window of tolerance". In other words, how much sympathetic nervous system charge your system can tolerate before flipping into a state of dysregulation. When you’re scared, in a state, of warning, fight, flight or a collapse you’re already outside the window of tolerance. Your brain has to be safe enough, to be in the experience of whatever the emotional knowing is without flipping your lid. Through cultivating a healing space within your relationship you can create a lasting corrective emotional experience through a process of memory reconsolidation, which is created in a magical moment when your limbic system detects a mismatch between what your experiencing in the present moment and the original experience. This episode features a brief overview of a process which we suggest undertaking with professional guidance. Consider joining Jules, Rebecca, and our colleague Vickie Easa, for a RLT Essential Skills Relationship Bootcamp this October 24th & 25th 2020 — it’s open for both couples and individuals. Therapists can also attend either on their own or with a partner. Everyone is a participant to the degree they choose to be. Learn more and join us here! RESOURCES MENTIONED:Juliane Taylor Shore, LPC, LMFT, SEP (AKA Jules) specializes in trauma recovery and relational health. She has worked with couples and adults in her private practice in Austin, TX since 2009. She teaches Interpersonal Neurobiology to her interns, at local universities, and privately. When she's not working, Jules spends time in the hill country and with her husband, daughter, and dog. Learn more about her clinical work at ipnbaustin.com.Also be sure to visit Jules’ new site cleariskind.com (will be live very very soon) to learn more about her interpersonal neurobiology teachings.Dr. Dan Siegel's hand model of the brainBruce Perry's work on how to repair the natural rhythms of the brainBruce Ecker & Coherence TherapyThe Power of Discord: Why the Ups and Downs of Relationships Are the Secret to Building Intimacy, Resilience, and Trust by Ed Tronick and Claudia M. GoldLearn more about Rebecca’s practice at connectfulness.com and explore her upcoming online offerings: If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive in deeper, consider joining the next cohort of my Supporting Your Relational Self 6-week-online-course. This course is based on the teachings of Pia Mellody. We’ll cultivate lifelong practices to sustain you, untangle core issues that affect us all in relationships, and weave in relational skills to expand your Self care practices. Learn more at connectfulness.com/offeringsAlso, my colleagues Jules Shore and Vickey Easa and I are currently working behind the scenes to produce and launch a new podcast. And we are also offering another authorized online presentation of Terry Real's RLT Essential Skills Relationship Bootcamp. Open to individuals, couples and therapists. Learn more about the podcast and the bootcamp at WhyDoesMyPartner.com This podcast is not a substitute for counseling with a licensed provider. After listening, we invite you to deepen into the discussion with us on instagram and please support the show by sharing and reviewing the episode.Mentioned in this episode:WDMP Integrating Heart+MindWDMP Integrating Heart+Mind

In this episode, La Shanda Sugg and I talk about a generational healing, a topic that truly affects us all. And if there is one message we want you to walk away from this episode with, it’s that generational healing is possible! Trauma can be caused, and passed down generation by generation, in many ways. Often we didn't even notice because it became woven into the fabric of who we think we are and what is our ”normal.” When something triggered a lack of safety — could be a physical, emotional, social, or moral trigger — we do what we’re wired to, avoid and disconnect from the pain, that's why we respond this way. But we have a choice. Generational healing resides in the power that comes from reshaping how we seeing ourselves and rightfully updating the stories and perspective that tells us what we can and cannot do and how we can exist in this world. RESOURCES: Find La Shanda online at thelaborsoflove.comLearn more about Rebecca’s practice at connectfulness.com and explore her upcoming online offerings: If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive in deeper, consider joining the next cohort of my Supporting Your Relational Self 6-week-online-course. This course is based on the teachings of Pia Mellody. We’ll cultivate lifelong practices to sustain you, untangle core issues that affect us all in relationships, and weave in relational skills to expand your Self care practices. Learn more at connectfulness.com/offeringsAlso, my colleagues Jules Shore and Vickey Easa and I are currently working behind the scenes to produce and launch a new podcast. And we are also offering another authorized online presentation of Terry Real's RLT Essential Skills Relationship Bootcamp. Open to individuals, couples and therapists. Learn more about the podcast and the bootcamp at WhyDoesMyPartner.comThis podcast is not a substitute for counseling with a licensed provider. Mentioned in this episode:WDMP Integrating Heart+MindWDMP Integrating Heart+Mind

Shena Tubbs, Relational Trauma and Love Addiction Expert, Coach, and LPC joins us to talk about how early trauma manifests in our adult relationships, recreating a cycle from childhood. As Shena shares, healing begins with getting the language and words around family trauma and what did/didn’t happen. Persistent love addiction/love avoidant adult relationships are often a recreation of early trauma, of seeking out people that would do the same, in hopes that it will turn out differently.Shena is the host of the Black Girls Heal podcast and the founder of Black Girls Heal, an online community dedicated to helping women of color break the cycles of unavailable relationships & love addiction, heal unresolved childhood trauma and improve their self love to make way for the love they want. RESOURCES:Find Shena Tubbs’ Podcast, Recovery School, Self-Love Intensive, and Mini Program 'The Healed and Loved Woman', online at BlackGirlsHeal.orgLearn more about Rebecca’s practice at connectfulness.com and explore her upcoming online offerings: If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive in deeper, consider joining the next cohort of my Supporting Your Relational Self 6-week-online-course. This course is based on the teachings of Pia Mellody. We’ll cultivate lifelong practices to sustain you, untangle core issues that affect us all in relationships, and weave in relational skills to expand your Self care practices. Learn more at connectfulness.com/offeringsAlso, my colleagues Jules Shore and Vickey Easa and I are currently working behind the scenes to produce and launch a new podcast. And we are also offering another authorized online presentation of Terry Real's RLT Essential Skills Relationship Bootcamp. Open to individuals, couples and therapists. Learn more about the podcast and the bootcamp at WhyDoesMyPartner.com This podcast is not a substitute for counseling with a licensed provider.Join our conversation on instagram & leave us a review on apple podcasts.Mentioned in this episode:WDMP Integrating Heart+MindWDMP Integrating Heart+Mind

This episode highlights helpful ways to tend to our selves, reclaim power, and perhaps help us soothe our selves when we don’t have the power to change our situation. My guest, Dr. Jane Tornatore is a Therapist & Speaker Seattle, WA. A recovering perfectionist, she knows the pain of being bogged down by old beliefs and never quite measuring up to expectations. She supports people in converting outdated patterns and stress into more freedom, joy, and authenticity that come from being gentler with the self and living more from the heart. We recorded this episode in February 2020. I’ve been holding onto it given all that’s been uprooted in the world. Contextually, the world was different when we recorded this episode and I wonder how a world filled with pandemic and uprising might have altered the core our discussion.  RESOURCES:Find Jane online at EveryDayLove.me and at DoctorTornatore.com Grab a copy of Jane’s book Everything is PERFECT, Just not ME!: A Roadmap to Self-AcceptanceLearn more about Rebecca’s practice at connectfulness.com and explore her upcoming online offerings: If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive in deeper, consider joining the next cohort of my Supporting Your Relational Self 6-week-online-course. This course is based on the teachings of Pia Mellody. We’ll cultivate lifelong practices to sustain you, untangle core issues that affect us all in relationships, and weave in relational skills to expand your Self care practices. Learn more at connectfulness.com/offeringsAlso, my colleagues Jules Shore and Vickey Easa and I are currently working behind the scenes to produce and launch a new podcast. And we are also offering another authorized online presentation of Terry Real's RLT Essential Skills Relationship Bootcamp. Open to individuals, couples and therapists. Learn more about the podcast and the bootcamp at WhyDoesMyPartner.com This podcast is not a substitute for counseling with a licensed provider.Mentioned in this episode:WDMP Integrating Heart+MindWDMP Integrating Heart+Mind

Systemic racism is real and deeply rooted in society. When we center our society around whiteness but don’t discuss it we’re ignoring the problem of racism. Distancing ourselves from the problem of racism is to perpetuate it by allowing countless more injustices to be committed. When we become conscious we can take responsibility and change course. The opposite of being a racist is not being not-racist. The opposite of being racist is being antiracist.In this episode, Robin Mallison Alpern, the Director of Training at the Center for the Study of White American Culture (CSWAC), joins me for a conversation about the work involved in de-centering whiteness and being anti-racist.  It’s important to acknowledge that we’re two white woman having this conversation.Listening to this episode, allow yourself to open to new information.RESOURCES: Visit the Center for the Study of White American Culture (CSWAC) at euroamerican.org for books, workshops, and trainings. SURJ: showingupforracialjustice.orgThe Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture The Culture of White SupremacyHealing Your Thousand-Year-Old Trauma by Resmaa MenakemCSWAC offers this book database for a deeper diveRELEVANT PAST EPISODES:Mending Racialized Trauma: A Body Centered Approach with Resmaa MenakemPeeling Back the Layers of Multicultural Competence with Sonya Lott, PhDLiberation-Focused Healing: A Call to Action With Shawna Murray-Browne Learn more about Rebecca’s practice at connectfulness.com and explore her upcoming online offerings: If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive in deeper, consider joining the next cohort of my Supporting Your Relational Self 6-week-online-course. This course is based on the teachings of Pia Mellody. We’ll cultivate lifelong practices to sustain you, untangle core issues that affect us all in relationships, and weave in relational skills to expand your Self care practices. Learn more at connectfulness.com/offeringsAlso, my colleagues Jules Shore and Vickey Easa and I are currently working behind the scenes to produce and launch a new podcast. And we are also offering another authorized online presentation of Terry Real's RLT Essential Skills Relationship Bootcamp. Open to individuals, couples and therapists. Learn more about the podcast and the bootcamp at WhyDoesMyPartner.comThis podcast is not a substitute for counseling with a licensed provider. Mentioned in this episode:WDMP Integrating Heart+MindWDMP Integrating Heart+Mind

In this episode relationship therapist and host, Rebecca Wong, talked with Emily Nagoski, New York Times bestselling author of Come As You Are & Burnout. It goes without saying that we’re all living in a deepened state of stress in this pandemic time. Emily helps us to understand how stress affects sex and learn more about what we can do to reclaim confidence and joy and transform our sex lives.Resources:Emily Nagoski’s mission in life is to teach women to live with confidence and joy inside their bodies. Learn more about her work at: emilynagoski.comLearn more about Rebecca’s practice at connectfulness.com and explore her upcoming online offerings: If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive in deeper, consider joining the next cohort of my Supporting Your Relational Self 6-week-online-course. This course is based on the teachings of Pia Mellody. We’ll cultivate lifelong practices to sustain you, untangle core issues that affect us all in relationships, and weave in relational skills to expand your Self care practices. Learn more at connectfulness.com/offeringsAlso, my colleagues Jules Shore and Vickey Easa and I are currently working behind the scenes to produce and launch a new podcast. And we are also offering another authorized online presentation of Terry Real's RLT Essential Skills Relationship Bootcamp. Open to individuals, couples and therapists. Learn more about the podcast and the bootcamp at WhyDoesMyPartner.comThis episode is brought to you in partnership with Coronavirus Online Therapy, a volunteer-based, nonprofit organization developed to connect essential workers across the United States with free or low-cost online therapy during the coronavirus pandemic. Learn more at coronavirusonlinetherapy.org.This podcast is not a substitute for counseling with a licensed provider.Mentioned in this episode:WDMP Integrating Heart+MindWDMP Integrating Heart+Mind

I'd like to introduce you to TMI Project, a nonprofit near and dear to my heart, that uses writing and true storytelling for social justice movement building, to ignite human connection and as a healing modality for personal transformation. I have gone through the workshop as a participant and became a trained facilitator of their methodology. I recently sat down with Eva Tenuto, the co-founder and executive director of TMI Project, to talk about how storytelling can enhance connection and resilience during times of social isolation.    Resources:  Eva Tenuto is the co-founder and executive director of TMI Project, a non-profit organization offering transformative storytelling workshops and performances in which storytellers divulge the parts of their stories that they usually leave out. Since 2010, Eva has brought TMI Project from her living room to a host of performance spaces, high schools, colleges, detention centers, mental health facilities, theaters and the United Nations. Eva is the editor and director of multiple solo shows, one of which was awarded Best Comedic Script of 2014 in the United Solo Festival. Her directorial film debut, Vicarious Resilience, a docu-short, celebrated its world premiere at The Woodstock Film Festival in 2018. Her essays have appeared in assorted anthologies and at Longreads.com.​ Learn more at evatenuto.com and TMIproject.org   While these discussions will guide you into the Connectfulness Practice, the podcast is not meant to be a substitute for counseling from a licensed provider. Reach out. Initiate the ripple.   Learn more about my connectfulness counseling practice, intensives, and our collective for therapists in private practice at connectfulness.com/work-with-me.    This episode is brought to you in partnership with Coronavirus Online Therapy a nonprofit organization with pending 501(c)(3) status whose mission is to deliver free or low-cost online therapy by licensed professionals in all 50 states to essential workers during the coronavirus pandemic. If you’re on the front lines seeking a referral, if you’re a therapist who’d like to join the initiative, or if you’re interested in getting involved in another way, go to coronavirusonlinetherapy.org.   Please support the show by sharing and reviewing the episode.Mentioned in this episode:WDMP Integrating Heart+MindWDMP Integrating Heart+Mind