Transformation Group:
Awareness & Skills to Transform Trauma

Note: No classes or workshops are being offered at this time.

Download the flyer Transformation Groups:
Awareness & Skills to Transform Trauma

“I can feel very alone in this journey, but I don’t have to take this journey in isolation. We are conditioned by our society and culture not to talk about our pain. But if we don’t talk, if we don’t create a language to express our feelings, healing will not take place. We will continue to store up and re-create the cycles of suffering. What is helpful and necessary in this process is a safe container such as a therapeutic environment or a community of like-minded people who can assist, help, support, and encourage each other in this process of waking up.”
~ Claude Anshin Thomas, “At Hell’s Gate: A Soldier’s Journey from War to Peace”

“Coming out of isolation and separation is, in and of itself, healing. One of the most inspiring parts of group sessions is being part of a larger emerging wisdom. When people practice with others who have similar backgrounds, they discover they are not alone. They experience kinship. Over the duration of the group, participants learn from each other, and contribute to each other through both their struggles and their triumphs. And by holding strong common intentions, the group becomes a community of support and authentic inquiry.”
~ Dierdre Fay MSW, “Becoming Safely Embodied Skills Manual”

 

Trauma arises from any event or enduring circumstance that is markedly distressing and overwhelms your ability to cope with a perceived threat to your physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual well being. The traces of big and small trauma that remain in your nervous system and mind can be released, freeing a new relationship with your self and your life.

Transformation Groups focus on the development of new capacities to transform past traumatic experience. Because revealing much of one’s “story” can trigger yourself or others, this group’s focus is not on talking about our history. Instead, the group is dedicated to helping you develop the awareness and practical skills to create safety, stability, and support; develop internal and external resources; transform your relationship to past trauma; promote mind-body-emotion regulation and integration; and create the conditions for optimal personal and relational health and well-being. This group may be a valuable adjunct to individual therapy or a first step toward exploring your relationship with your past.

I strive to create a safe, peaceful, and fun group environment that supports stability and well being during the group and in your life. Each week will draw upon practical tools of mindful awareness, self inquiry, mind-body awareness, conscious boundaries, and empowered choice to allow you to safely enter your internal world; begin to transform your mind and body into safe places for rest, reflection, and well being; and, take steps toward the life you want to live…

 

Week 1: Setting the Foundation
Practices that support safety, stability, and choice. Set intentions and group boundaries. Experiment with curiosity and fresh discovery.

Week 2: Belonging
Offset isolation and alienation, reconnect with the self, discover the threads of connection to others and the larger world.

Week 3: Mindful Awareness
Observe and notice without judgment, stay in the present, dis-identify from what is arising and triggers, develop the capacity to focus and direct attention, increase tolerance for internal kindness.

Week 4: Internal Information Flow: Thoughts/Feelings/Body Sensations
Build distinctions between thoughts, feelings, and body sensations, sustain awareness, notice habitual associations and deconstruct triggers.

Week 5: Separating Facts from Feelings
Separate facts from interpretations, evaluations, and habitual beliefs. Experience more calm if over-aroused and more energy if under-aroused, stay within your “window of tolerance.”

Week 6: Addressing Parallel Lives
Separate the past from what is happening in the present. Discern between the adult/wise part of the self and those parts of the self that are triggered. Tools to actively notice triggers and choose adaptive responses.

Week 7: Working with Internal Parts
Stay centered in the neutral observing witness. Experiment with awareness and choice, support communication between different parts of the self, calm internal dys-regulation. Self-soothing strategies.

Week 8: Carving Out a New Path
Step-by-step means to change experience and choose new directions. Anticipate resistance. Identify small steps, support for success, and choices for the life you want to live.

Week 9: Telling & Retelling
Letting go of the old and developing new perspectives to observe your life. Discover empowered approaches to painful and entrenched life situations.

Week 10: Finding Guidance from an Older, Wiser Self
Access the inner wisdom that guides you through the challenges of healing from trauma. Listen more deeply to your inner “knowing” of your path and direction.

Week 11: Conscious Closure
Support for internal and external resources. Experience ending in a supportive, nurturing way. Integration and beyond.

Registration:
Note: No classes or workshops are being offered at this time.
Groups of 6-8 participants meet weekly for 1½ hours, for an on-going 11-week series. Day, evening, or weekend.
Contact Marilynne at (925) 962-1042 to discuss your interests and questions. Initial consultation prior to beginning the group.

Fee: $440 for the 11-week series. (Sliding scale available.)
Individual therapy available by appointment.

Cancellation Policy: Refund up to first session, credit thereafter.

May all that suffer find peace
May pain give rise to kindness and equanimity
May our intimate contact with suffering bring forth
A world of compassion and joy.