The house

COMPASSIONATE INQUIRY

Compassionate Inquiry is a psychotherapeutic approach developed by the world-leading expert on attachment, trauma and addiction, Dr. Gabor Maté. We – Sofie and Fredrik – are both trained in Compassionate Inquiry. For us, it’s not just an approach to our work. It’s a way of life.

Compassionate Inquiry is the basis for how we meet all our clients and customers, and also what we guide our customers and clients to.

We have many years of experience in client-oriented work, as well as operational and strategic leadership.

All the knowledge and results that have come from this work clearly show that without compassionate inquiry, the effect is short-lived or even non-existent. In short, we get you where you need to be – to become aware.

We will never meet you with an agenda, there is no checklist to check off, not even an idea of where the conversation will lead. If having an agenda serves a purpose for you, we will safely ask what it does for you. Who you are when it is important, and also who you would be if it was not allowed to be important. You always lead the way, we follow you wherever you go. If it feels far away, it's far away we will go.

"At first I thought you were provoking me, when you mirrored what I said, turning it around - asking if it was just about me and no one else? You didn't back down, you asked again, again and again. You didn't let me hide from myself. Now I dare to face me - when you are there."

COMPASSIONATE INQUIRY

Compassionate Inquiry is a psychotherapeutic approach developed by the world-leading expert on attachment, trauma and addiction, Dr. Gabor Maté. We – Sofie and Fredrik – are both trained in Compassionate Inquiry. For us, it’s not just an approach to our work. It’s a way of life.

Compassionate Inquiry is the basis for how we meet all our clients and customers, and also what we guide our customers and clients to.

We have many years of experience in client-oriented work, as well as operational and strategic leadership.

All the knowledge and results that have come from this work clearly show that without compassionate inquiry, the effect is short-lived or even non-existent. In short, we get you where you need to be – to become aware.

THE ROOMS

We will never direct you to a room and thus never a theory or a method. Our craft is about tuning in and meeting you where you are. We will not explain why you feel the way you feel, or behave the way you do. That is not real for us. Real for us is when you find the answers within you, that make sense to you. Allowing yourself to see the truth - and finding your way requires compassion, authenticity and safety - that's our part.

"You can name any emotion and know that I have never felt it. The only thing my body knows is pain. But when you guided me to the present, before the session started, I felt warmth in my hands. I have never felt warmth in my hands before, ever."

ATTACHMENT THEORY

The need for security
There is one need that trumps all others. The need to connect with a safe attachment figure. Let's rewind the tape in evolution to when humans lived on the savannah and climbed trees to protect themselves from dangerous animals.

The child safe on the mother’s chest or back. Losing that security meant then – as it still does now – an immediate danger to life.

Evolution
Mentally, we have not changed nearly as much as we might like to think. Our reactions when separated from our attachment are the same. Thus, our attachment to our parents (or other attachment persons) will form the basis for how we subsequently create relationships with other people. Like how we learn to understand ourselves.

Unconditional security
The most important task for a parent is to protect their child from external danger. And thereby create security. It’s also important that the child understands themself in relation to the outside world. What feelings do they have? How do those feelings manifest?

With the support of a confident adult, a child can face all kinds of feelings and be confident that these emotions are not life-threatening, and that they subside – and come back – and that that is OK. 

If a child is not faced with a confident parent, with the ability to ensure the security of the child’s external and internal world, the child will adapt in relation to their environment – adaptation in the form of strategies that do not threaten the vital attachment.

Attachment styles
These strategies then become styles of attachment that we carry within us throughout our life. Attachment is not in itself a diagnosis, but studies have shown that 80% of people who seek help for mental ill health also have insecure attachment.

Depending on the type of care we received as a child, we can see different styles in the way we attach to other people and ourselves. These styles affect our ability to provide care, security and love for our own children. 

There are four different attachment styles in attachment theory
- Secure attachment
- Anxious-ambivalent attachment
- Anxious-avoidant attachment
- Disorganised attachment.

Secure attachment
The child can rely on the reaction of the environment when it cries, is hungry, or needs its nappy changing. The child will seek contact with the parent when it is worried, to be comforted and to dare to explore the outside world, knowing that the parent is there when the child needs security.

Anxious-ambivalent attachment
The child does not trust the parent to give it what it needs every time. Sometimes the parent gives security, sometimes it doesn’t. The child is often perceived as worried, and the presence of the parent does not ease the worry. The child seeks security from the parent, but is not calmed and is afraid to explore its surroundings.

Insecure avoidant attachment
The opposite of ambivalent. The child hyperactivates their exploration of the environment rather than seeking closeness/security with the parent. The child suppresses emotions and focuses on the outside world.

Disorganised attachment
A simultaneous avoidance and rapprochement; here the attachment person is actually the source of the child’s fear – both the presence and the absence of the parent frightens the child. Often linked to the parent’s trauma. “Fear without end.”

Our work is based on attachment theory. Always with curiosity and compassion.

THE WORK – THE POWER OF THOUGHT

What thoughts control your life? Can you be 100% sure they are actually true?
A thought can only hurt you when you believe in it. If the thought is not true for you, it has no power over you either. Think about the thoughts you have. Then examine the thought.

Who are you when you believe in the thought? Who would you be without the thought? Can you be 100% sure that the thought is actually true? If not, there are good reasons to let the thought go! We are inspired by “The Work” by Byron Katie to be able to love what is and to be freed from thoughts that limit us and our life. 

IFS - INTERNALL FAMILY SYSTEM

The Internal Family System (IFS) is a therapeutic method based on systems theory, which describes how people are made up of different parts. We have parts that manage our daily lives, make life work and react strongly to danger and fear. We have parts that have the task of protecting us and parts that carry our inner wounds from life.

Within this inner system is our Self, the authentic part of us. Looking at ourselves in different parts, with different roles, is liberating and can compassionately dissolve traumatic experiences within us. So that we can react in the moment - without being influenced by our history.

The purpose of IFS is to lift the burden from all parts of your inner system, discover the value of all parts and allow the Self to take a greater place.

TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS

An ego state theory

Transactional analysis (TA) is a personality theory and a systematic psychotherapy for personal development and change. According to transactional analysis, people are multifaceted individuals with a unique ability to observe themselves, reflect and make independent choices. Hence the ability to consciously change - if she wants to.

Transactional analysis helps us explain and understand how we currently function, feel and behave based on our upbringing and life. According to transactional analysis, we have three different ego states: the parent ego, the adult ego and the child ego.

In the Parental Self, we act according to the learned patterns we were taught as children. What is right or wrong. The adult self is the most rational and realistic state. Here we think and reason in a realistic way. Decisions are made “sensibly”, without allowing ourselves to be influenced by our feelings. In the Child Self we pursue our dreams, are spontaneous, creative and enthusiastic. We make decisions impulsively.

These three ego states have been affected by the attachment and care we received as children. They have bound us to a kind of inner life script. We usually have all these three states within us and alternate between them, depending on how we feel, what situation we are in, and how we are treated.

Using transactional analysis, we can make our life script conscious. Understand our behavior. And how we communicate, through words, body language, attitude and emotions.

Among psychological approaches, transactional analysis is unique in its theoretical depth and wide range of applications. It can be used not only for personal development, but also the development of relationships, self-leadership and leadership.

With the help of transactional analysis, we can understand in which self state we respond to a dialogue and how this affects the outcome of the discussion. If, as a leader, you always talk to your employees based on an authoritative parent self, the employee will often respond from their defiant child self. If we instead engage in dialogue in an adult state, where you as a leader talk from your adult self, the employee is more likely to respond from their adult self.

Here, transactional analysis can help us to understand what it is that triggers us in different situations; what makes me fall into my defiant child self? What feeling is inside me and when was the first time in my life I felt that way?

POLYVAGAL THEORY

Our autonomic nervous system controls our “automatic physiological reactions” and through it our brain provides information about our perceived safety. Our autonomic nervous system has three states: ventral vagal, sympathetic vagal and dorsal vagal, hence the name Polyvagal theory.

Ventral is the state in which we experience security and the ability to interact socially. Sympathetic is the state in which we experience mobilisation and danger, fight or flight. Dorsal is the state in which the danger is perceived to be so great that we shut down – and shut off – our reactions as a survival instinct.

With a well-functioning autonomic nervous system, we have the ability to switch between the different states and amalgamate them. We can be safe while moving ourselves. And we can feel calm when we relax. During periods of high stress, neglect during childhood, or trauma, this function is partially disabled. We then unconsciously misinterpret situations as dangerous/stressful even though this may not actually be the case. Awareness of your autonomic nervous system and finding your way home to the ventral vagal state allows you to experience more security within yourself and make the right decisions, at the right time in life.

ACE – Adverse Childhood Experience

The ACE study was published 20 years ago. It showed that people who have experienced traumatic events or abuse in childhood are more likely to have problems with alcohol, drugs, unemployment, smoking, lack of exercise, obesity, diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke, depression and suicide attempts.

Twenty years ago, the ACE study did not receive much attention, but today we know that unfavourable conditions during childhood can lead to illness later in life. The ACE study offers ten different types of trauma or abuse that a human being may have experienced as a child. The ACE study has shown that having an ACE score of four or more increases the risk of developing alcoholism by 700%. There is also the correlation between ACE scores and early introduction to alcohol, greater risk of psychiatric conditions, and drug abuse as an older adult (50+ years). For each additional ACE score, the use of prescription drugs increases by 62%.

By using the ACE score, we can help our customers understand the reason for the strategies, conscious or unconscious, they have used to deal with the adversities they experienced as children.

With curiosity, and hopefully also compassion, we can approach acceptance. And also understand how this affected their social relationships, health and well-being as adults.

Below are the ten areas that constitute an ACE within the ACE study.

Household dysfunction

• Substance abuse
• Loss of a parent
• Mental illness
• Violence in the home
• A parent in prison

Neglect

• Emotional
• Physical

Maltreatment

• Physical
• Psychic
• Sexual

BODY-BASED METHODS

TAY (as support)
We offer Body-Based Practices free of charge to all our clients who go using our services. Why? Well, because we believe it is important. As you know, body and mind are connected. And if we are to become truly aware of what is bothering us, the body must be involved.

Trauma and anxiety are not in the parts of the brain that we can logically "think away". To access these feelings, we need to work with the body. This is why body-based methods are included in all our therapies and courses.

Want to read more about the research that supports the theory that there must be a link between the body and the brain to access trauma and anxiety? Read here

What remains in the body after something bad happens to us? How does the body feel when we do not release an emotion, but instead suppress it? How can we work with our body and nervous system to get to know our authentic self?

Yoga, for example, which is designed for people who have experienced events that have stayed with them, can help relieve the burden of what is weighing them down. In addition to yoga, other self-help methods to relieve stress and anxiety such as Tappping and Havening are also available.

“Trauma-informed yoga is based on the principle that the body itself can enable and facilitate recovery with methods that address the imbalance in the autonomic nervous system that results from traumatic stress and thus contribute to increased inner peace and security.”  
Josefin Wikström, founder of trauma-adapted yoga

MINDFULNESS
We offer various ways to help you be present in the moment, land in your body, and become aware of your breathing. For some people what works best is listening to guided relaxation; for others it is progressive relaxation, a process of tensing a muscle and then relaxing it for twice as long. We don’t offer one way that works for everyone. We help you to find your way. 

Trauma Tapping Technique (TTT) for stress reduction
This involves tapping on specific points of the body to calm the nervous system. During periods of high stress, Trauma Tapping Technique can be an effective tool to restore calm. By tapping specific points in a specific order, we can regain control and a sense of inner peace. It’s also a tool that you, as a client, can quickly learn and use in your everyday life.

HAVENING
This is based on sensory touch, using the palms of the hands to stroke areas of the body in order to neutralise the body’s reactions and conditioning in the nervous system. Havening has a calming effect, as described for TTT, and is an option that suits some people better.

WHAT WE SEE WHEN WE LOOK OUT 

What happens to our nervous system, our attachment to our children and parenting, what happens when we diagnose what could be seen as adaptations we have had to make to survive or fit into our environment? What happens when the self is not present when we practice self-leadership? What happens when the norms we relate to in society go against what is natural for us and thus go against what is good for us? What happens if we do not see trauma in society even though it is in front of us all the time? The fish don't see the water they swim in, we argue that the same applies to the trauma that exists in our society - without being seen or heard.

"Trauma sounds so hard, I've never thought that's what I have. I have thought that trauma is when you come from war. I have had a very good time compared to people who have been through war. But now I know that it can also be when you don't get what you should. That I have never been told that anyone loves me, or even received a hug. I've only heard that I'm an annoying ADHD kid. No one has asked me how things were at home when I was little. It was always my fault."

The nervous system

Our nervous system is an ingenious creation, with several important tasks in the body. The nervous system acts as a kind of mediator between the different parts of the body. So that everything works as it should. It’s the nervous system that allows you to walk, run and jump. It controls our internal organs. Our senses. And allows us to remember things.

In simple terms, the nervous system consists of three elements

• The central nervous system – the brain and spinal cord
• The peripheral nervous systems – nerve fibres
• The autonomic nervous system – which cannot be controlled at will

Autonomic nervous system
Konciensia focuses on the part of the nervous system known as the autonomic nervous system (ANS). The name implies that it works automatically - without us being aware of all that it does for us. The autonomic nervous system decides how we should respond to a situation. Using what is called neuroception, it reads the situation and decides whether we should be safe or unsafe.

Neuroception
- Means that our nervous systems talk and react to each other. In everyday speech, we call this a ‘gut feeling’ – what in many other contexts we have been told to ignore and focus on rational thinking, logic and knowledge.

We believe that if we can instead be curious about what the autonomic nervous system is trying to tell us, get to know it and respond to it, we might feel better. Not only that, but we may also be able to communicate in a different way with our children, customers and colleagues if we can understand our own autonomic nervous system, as well as the autonomic nervous system of those we meet.

If your autonomic nervous system signals danger, you will be unsafe in a situation and thus react and communicate accordingly. Instead, if you are safe in a situation, you will ...? Exactly; react and communicate accordingly. The goal of the nervous system is to find safety in every situation and depending on whether it signals safety/unsafety will also affect our health, mentally and physically.

How do we work with the nervous system together with you?
Konciensia helps you to feel safe through somatically oriented therapy and body adapted methods, for the simple reason that everything is connected. This means that we work with the body and mind as a whole, based on evidence that the cause of trauma/anxiety often lies deeper within us than we can access through talk therapy alone.

The brain and body must be secured here, through trauma-adapted yoga or other body-based methods, so that we can open the door within us that carries the wounds behind what hurts - alongside a safe context for talking about what is happening.

To heal, we need to heal as a whole. This means that all parts of us need to heal. Can't there be parts that feel good, that don't need healing, you might ask? No, in order to become whole, all parts within us need to be included, analyzed, met, embraced and given self-compassion. Some parts of you will find it easier, while others require more time, more security, more presence.

The difference in becoming aware of what we carry and thus what the autonomic nervous system reacts to, is that we can then relate to it and thus can choose consciously. Otherwise, you will do as you have always done, perhaps be disappointed in yourself, burden yourself with guilt, shame, "I should have known better".

What if you instead see it as: "Until today I have done my absolute best, with the conditions I had and with the adaptations I made as a child. Until today, I have not been able to choose. But now I have a choice. Now I can more easily make the right decision, regardless of my feelings."

Parenthood

Everything we humans do, our behaviour, depends on the situation, the context, in which we find ourselves. For example, we can be a driving force in one context, but completely passive in another. Often these are strategies we developed as a child. As an adaptation to protect the attachment to our parents.

In order to understand why we behave in a certain way, we need to stop. Look and feel inward to make us aware. Look back at the context in which the behaviour first developed. What made me suddenly take on all the responsibility as a child? Why do I react so strongly when my child is unhappy? Why does everything have to be perfect for me to feel calm?

Why do I have a hard time showing emotions? Why don’t I enjoy playing with my child? Why do I get angry when my child misbehaves? Why am I ashamed of my child? Why do I find it hard when my child wants closeness? Why do I feel like I’ve never done enough as a parent?

Do you recognise yourself in any of the questions above? Konciensia parenting is a way to take a curious and compassionate look at how you respond to your role as a parent. So you can have a wonderful relationship with your child – and yourself. A relationship where your own wounded child self is not involved in raising your child. Because parenting is always about the parent, never about the child.

Self-leadership

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again; self-leadership is about the self. Not about how others affect you. Only about what you do. Developing self-leadership requires curiosity. Who are you? What parts are you carrying with you? Because we all carry different parts as an element of an inner system. All our parts have a role, a task. They have come about for what is often a good reason, but sometimes they constitute an obstacle that unconsciously harms us.

By facing all our parts, each of which at some point saved us, and creating a relationship with them in the present, we can achieve self-leadership. A self-leadership in which our authentic true, adult, present-in-the-moment Self, leads. As opposed to when we let the parts that came about through our upbringing as protection, take over, lead and harm us.

Diagnoses

A diagnosis tells us about our physical or mental state of health. It is based on the systematic science of medicine. But there is something missing. Because despite the fact that the diagnosis is related to the person’swell-being and social life, this is rarely mentioned. The diagnosis explains even less about how this state of health, with its behaviours and emotions, developed.

To heal, we need to look at ourselves with compassion. We need to understand how our behaviours, reactions and patterns came about. How has it affected us – and still affects us. We need to understand why we unconsciously chose this track at some point in our life.

Without that understanding, we will continue to believe that we are a certain way, when we actually act in a certain way for a reason. As good a reason as any – that it saved us earlier in our life. But now it’s causing us problems.

The normal thing in today’s society is that we need a diagnosis to get help – but the diagnosis does not help us to understand the cause of it. That’s why we won’t ask about your diagnosis. We’ll ask about the pain behind it.

Norms/natural

There are many norms that govern our lives. Which are commonplace. And that we are expected to live up to in order to be accepted. Girls should be good, while it's ok for boys to be naughty. Women have to adopt 'male behaviors' in order to have a career. Children should hug an adult, even if they don't want to.

These norms can feel overwhelming, especially if we can’t identify with them. Norms are rarely natural, nor are they good or healthy for us. By discovering the difference between norm and natural, we create the inner peace we lack in our culture today.

Trauma

Trauma can often be perceived as something far away from us, such as trauma due to war or an accident. The definition of trauma on the website Psykologiguiden.se is as follows: "The word trauma means injury. A psychological trauma is often the result of a shocking and painful experience that creates so much stress and overwhelming emotions that they become difficult to manage."

We believe that trauma is our internal wounds that remain after an overwhelming event. And that most traumas occur in relationships. As a child, we never received the security and love we should have received. 

Our first trauma is when we lose touch with ourselves. When we learn that who we are is not ok. It leaves traces within us, and creates patterns within us. We then follow these traces and look for these patterns in life, like a script. We keep hurting ourselves in the belief that it is the right thing to do. Even when our gut tells us otherwise.

Can you consider that thought for a while, the feelings it generates? The idea that trauma is what remains inside us after something overwhelming has happened, or after we didn’t get what we needed as a child. Or does that feel a long way away?

“If it does feel a long way away, then it’s a long way we’ll have to go." Wretman

Konciensia helps you to create a safe relationship with yourself through compassion for your thoughts, feelings and physical reactions.

Attachment

The need that trumps all others
There is one human need that trumps all others. Something we call attachment. In order for a child to grow up to be a confident individual with a good sense of self, they need to feel attachment to at least one person. If you did not have the chance to experience this highly emotional relationship as a child, there is a significant risk of it having an impact on you as an adult.

It’s something you will perceive in your relationships. And in your basic assumptions about yourself. But that impact doesn’t have to be a life sentence. You can be free of the chains that bind you. The medicine is compassion. Compassion for how you, as a child, felt you needed to adapt.

The greatest threat a child can be exposed to is not being able to feel close to its parents, its most important source of protection. The need to feel closeness is natural, and something that we all experience. When the contact with our parents is threatened, a warning light goes off. Our whole internal system knows that this represents a mortal danger. 

This is why we react the way we do; instead of blaming the parent for not meeting the child's needs, the child blames itself. In the belief that it has done wrong. Therefore, the child adapts to what it thinks is right, in order to re-establish the attachment to the parent.

The adaptation we make, when we change ourselves to fit in, is never natural to us. That adaptation follows us through life. As a definition of who we are. When you can
question these adaptations with compassion, you can become free. And stand up for/meet/know your true self without fighting it.

Attachment vs Authenticity
Attachment, the need that trumps everything, is related to our authenticity - our true self, our essence. What happens when we as children perceive the risk of losing attachment to or losing distance from our attachment figure/parent is that we let go of our authenticity. We sacrifice our Self, to ensure our primary survival.

It's a battle, but the extension will always emerge as the winner. Always. As a child, I will sacrifice who I am to reduce the risk of losing the attachment to my parent in some sense. If, as a child, we have done exactly that, adapted to secure the attachment, we shut down our authenticity and lose it.

The result is always stuck inside us as an adaptation to how and who we think we are. Then we need to seek our authenticity, our true self, secure it, hold it gently and meet it. Meet it in awareness of why you let go, show yourself compassion for the reason and then be able to choose whether you want to be authentic or not.

Healing

The purpose of therapy is to become whole. To heal. To heal, we need to face the emptiness in the chest, to find out what it is that hurts. We do this by approaching what feels far away. Because there, somewhere in childhood, is your true self. We need to experience that truth, the one hundred percent certain truth - the one that heals us.

You can do this when your self-compassion is present. The pain you experience today did not start today. What you are experiencing today did not start with you, what happened to you? To experience the answers to these questions with inner peace is to heal.