My journey to…
Self-understanding started early…
As far back as my earliest memories, I've held a deep fascination with understanding myself. My childhood was challenging, like many childhoods are. I grew up in a family with deeply entrenched traditional beliefs, particularly when it came to the roles of women. Pursuing my personal aspirations was often secondary to the expectation of becoming the matriarch of a family — a good wife, and mother.
But, I wasn't certain if that was what I truly wanted. My desires diverged from the path my family envisioned for me, and they couldn't provide the support I needed.
I was headstrong, and my parent’s found that to be an affront to their vision for me.
My parents would move every two or three years. My dad worked for IBM, and we were a corporate family, uprooted continuously. We lived in many places from Germany, to the states to Tokyo, where I graduated high school.
Living in so many places intuitively taught me much about the world, and instilled in me a real sense of moral relativism; that is, where you don't ascribe morals to behaviors — because what's moral in the United States is really different than what's moral in Tokyo, for example. This was a huge turning point in how I viewed my world and later on, my practice….
My Calling to Psychology
Childhood dreaming
From a young age, as early as my pre-teen years, I had a strong desire to become a psychologist. Maybe that’s odd for a child to dream up, but for me, it was always present.
However, my mother's response was disheartening. She told me early on, "Only crazy people become psychologists; it's not something you want to do." It took me a long time to realize that from my family's perspective, they were trying to protect me. They wanted to guide me into a world they understood, not necessarily the one I wanted to inhabit or that aligned with my true self.
One significant lesson I learned from my family was that they valued my achievements more than who I was as a person. This led to a particular attachment style, common among those who are praised for their accomplishments rather than their authentic selves. I developed a sensitivity to rejection, feeling as though I might be rejected for simply being myself. But more on that later.
Despite these challenges, I did end up pursuing my dream. I defied my family's expectations, embarked on extensive ivy league training and eventually became a psychologist.
But the path to get there had many twists and turns.
Discovering My Path:
College, depression, and seeking
20 something Maureen was deeply deeply unhappy. Anxiety crippled me, and I felt overwhelmed at all that was expected of me. I was trying to figure out what is wrong, because what I was feeling was completely disconnected from on the surface explanations of my life. I found myself — as we all find ourselves at some point — seeking change and desiring a sense of meaning.
In search of relief, I delved into Eastern religions and Jungian psychology, both of which set me on a transformative course of self-exploration.
My calling to pursue psychology felt in line with the fascination I had always held for the human mind and spirituality. I was finding breadcrumbs…
The Fascination with Attachment
After becoming a psychologist, my interest shifted towards attachment theory. I yearned to understand myself better in light of my upbringing. I kept circling the question, "How did my early attachment styles influence my relationships and my identity within those relationships?" This curiosity led me to delve deep into attachment theory, a journey that proved profoundly illuminating.
Studying attachment theory allowed me to comprehend myself more fully, to see the well-intentioned aspects of my family's upbringing, and to acknowledge how it had not entirely aligned with my true self. It also provided insights into my healing process.
However, there was a missing piece, a crucial aspect of healing that resided within my body…
The somatic connection:
Listening to the body changed me in ways I couldn’t anticipate.
I have to be honest, when I first encountered and began training in Somatic Experiencing, I was almost too numb to take it in. It took time.
My husband had just survived stage four cancer. It was when he was freshly on the mend that I went into the SE training and I was completely frozen. I was suffering from back aches all the time, and in a fairly numb state.
I would go to the trainings and wasn’t entirely sure what I was learning. My thinking brain is usually a very good student, but with this work I really felt that I wasn’t understanding it, and that was weird and intriguing for me. But I just kept going.
For a long time I thought, well, this might be useless. I'm not even sure it's helping me. I don't even know if it'll help anybody else…
A couple of years in though, I started to recognize something in me was getting better. I was becoming far less frozen, and people in my life could tell. It changed me in ways I couldn’t anticipate. I had all of this cognitive knowledge from psychology, but now my body was starting to heal.
This holistic approach, encompassing intellect, emotions, and the body, influenced my teaching and leadership style today.
What it’s all become:
Somatically Informed Inner Relationship Focusing (SIRF)
My path led me to teach somatic experiencing and inner relationship focusing as an embodied approach to healing. This work is a complement to both traditional psychotherapy and somatic practices, offering a broader spectrum of healing modalities to a world in need.
I'm rooted in traditional training but I've always been drawn to uncharted territories, because nothing about being human can be mapped exactly. Life is messy.
My life has been devoted to the innate human capacity to transform in relationship to that ‘mess’. I hope you feel that in the offerings and teachings present here.
Compassionate relationship is what transforms. Together, we can bridge the gap between the change we seek, and all that changes us.