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Grace Jensen

About Grace Jensen

Posts by Grace Jensen:

Building a Lasting Connection® Taking Off in Iran

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by Hamed Fatahian, MA, LMFT

Certified Lasting Connection® facilitator

Hello to all BLC facilitators,

I would like to provide you with some updates regarding the progress of BLC in Iran. The journey of BLC in Iran began in early 2021 during the midst of the pandemic. I conducted an online workshop for 11 couples with my Iranian colleague, Maryam, who chose BLC for her PhD thesis. This was followed by the first facilitator training, during which I trained more than 30 Iranian facilitators. This was just the beginning. Since then, we have conducted three more facilitator training sessions, resulting in a current total of over 96 trained facilitators in Iran!

As mentioned previously, during my initial trip to Iran after the pandemic last year, I organized the first in-person BLC workshop for couples in Tehran, the capital of Iran. We had 19 participating couples, and I invited more than 11 BLC-trained facilitators from over 5 cities in Iran. The experience was immensely rewarding for all involved.

This year, we held another online BLC workshop for Iranian couples around the world, conducted in Farsi. We had 28 registered couples and 15 helpers who joined us. The workshop spanned five weeks, with each session lasting three hours. Participants received the materials in advance, and for the practical exercises, we created 15 breakout groups, each led by a facilitator, with two couples collaborating on the exercises in the comfort of their own homes, guided by the facilitator. This innovative approach resulted in a wonderful experience, and we received numerous positive feedback comments. I strongly encourage you to consider implementing a similar format.

I would like to conclude by sharing another significant development. During my recent trip to Iran, we organized the inaugural gathering of BLC facilitators in Tehran. Around 30 facilitators from all over Iran (more than 7 cities) attended this meeting, during which we discussed strategies for further developing BLC in Iran.

Looking ahead, I am excited about the continued growth and development of BLC in the years to come, achieved through our collaborative efforts.

-Hamed Fatahian, MA, LMFT, Certified Lasting Connection® facilitator

https://www.hamedfatahian.com/

How to Improve Any Relationship With A.R.E.

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with Dr. Debi Gilmore, Co-creator of Building a Lasting Connection®

on the Marriaging Podcast with Jessica Fairfax

Listen on Apple
Listen on Spotify

Co-creator of Building a Lasting Connection® Dr. Debi Gilmore was a guest on the podcast “Marriaging” hosted by Jessica Fairfax to tell the story of how Building a Lasting Connection came to be! Dr. Gilmore discusses how to implement A.R.E. in our relationships (spousal, parent/child, etc) to foster secure attachment, and talks about how the Connection System guides couples in practicing A.R.E. You can listen to the episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

From Despair to Connection—in One Therapy Session

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By Dr. Debi Gilmore

Co-Founder of Building A Lasting Connection®

Recently a couple came to me to determine if there was anything left to fight for in their marriage. Normally, I would encourage them to commit to several sessions and gently move into some EFT work. This would allow me to help them uncover their hidden longings, disowned needs, and reveal the negative patterns that have kept them so disconnected. I knew they were blinded by their own loneliness and pain. However, they told me they were only willing to give it one session… one session? Seriously? It likely took them years to fall into this trench of darkness and pain. I silently pondered, “How can I help clear their vision just enough to help them both capture a glimpse of hope?” Aha! I knew what to do; I pulled out the Connection System® mat, unfolded it, and carefully laid it on the floor. 

Fortunately, they were willing to give it a try. I had them stand on the “Pause Place,” which is where we always begin the Connection System® session. This offers a sense of grounding, mindfulness, and synergy that prepares the way for clarity, confidence, and personal direction. I slowly guided them through the preparatory process. That was when the magic took hold. As they moved from “Slow,” to “Breathe,” and to “Touch,” the energy and emotion in my office slowly grew, expanded, and influenced the process with a sweet spirit of hope. One partner was reluctant to touch the other, but with my gentle encouragement, and as they took their time and allowed the embrace, I felt a distinct shift in power. Suddenly the mood was softer. The reluctant partner looked over at me seeking reassurance. With my smile and nod, and my knowing look of confidence, the reluctant one shifted from withdrawal to acceptance. 

The next hour, we spent slowly uncovering thoughts, feelings, fears, and new awareness that had never been discussed before. This couple appeared to be learning about each other for the first time, and on a much deeper level—in a way they had never been able to explore before. The Connection System® created a structure and level of emotional safety that allowed the couple to unlock feelings of otherwise hidden pain that up until then, had not been possible to be revealed. They were able to hear each other differently, understand each other more clearly, and found levels of compassion for themselves and their partner that otherwise would not have been possible in just one session! Through the gentle containment of the 8’ x 4’ Connection System® mat, they were able to safely discover new possibilities.

That day, this couple committed to multiple sessions of EFT, and began to slowly heal the hurts, injuries, loneliness, and barriers that prevented them from being their true selves. This new journey helped them become the lover, the sweetheart, the best friend they wanted to be for each other, but just couldn’t find the way. I will never forget this experience, and many others like this, that was made possible through the powerful tool of our Building A Lasting Connection® program and Connection System® mats. 

We would love to hear about your success stories! Please send them our way so we can share them with the world as more couples discover the magic of Building A Lasting Connection®.

A Way to Help Clients Move From Escalation, Disconnection, and Conflict Towards Safe and Secure Connection

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By Ed Peterson, LCSW, MBA

Certified Lasting Connection® Facilitator

The Lasting Connection System® WORKS with my clients! Period. I will now share, from my perspective, why this system works. As you can tell, I am a huge huge fan.

My name is Ed Peterson, LCSW, MBA and I am the co-owner of Peterson Family Therapy. My wife, Candace Peterson, LCSW, is my partner in the business and life. I’ve been a therapist for 20 years, and I am trained in Jungian Therapy, have extensive experience with addiction, and, most importantly, am an EFT Certified Therapist and a Certified Lasting Connection® Facilitator. 

From my perspective, at its most basic the Lasting Connection System® is a way to help clients move from escalation, disconnection, and conflict towards safe and secure connection, and a feeling of having their partner be an emotional safe haven. Building a Lasting Connection® helps my clients have different and new conversations, and ultimately bonding moments that create a new story for the couple and push them towards being true partners. Building a Lasting Connection® does this by helping trust and safety grow. 

There are many specific moves and interventions I use with the Lasting Connection System®, but here in this article I will share the basic and vital experiences that I use with the mat and my clients.

The first is to make sure that clients start on the PAUSE place, and linger there to start the process. This can start out being wonderful and connecting, or it can be highly triggering. This is where I step in to process with them what is happening or what just happened on the PAUSE place. This is vital and powerful.

The next vital and basic thing about the Lasting Connection System® is making sure that both the SPEAKER and the LISTENER are able to process their experience. As the SPEAKER is going around the DOTS, there is usually lots of emotion that comes up, and the same for the LISTENER. So, I love the connection system because it helps me as a therapist to have a clear plan of how to make sure the clients have true experiences in the present process or emotion. 

I could say so much more, but to sum up: I’m so grateful that I am a part of this program. I’m so grateful that I have the Lasting Connection System® as a powerful tool that makes me a better therapist. BLC has made a huge positive difference in the positive therapy progress in my clients.

Ed is also the creator of the vlog/podcast “THERAPY, EMOTION, & SEX- conversations that matter.” He interviews therapists on topics such as self-of-the-therapist, transference, spirituality, and balancing family and work.

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Outcomes of Building a Lasting Connection®: A Pilot Study

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by Genny Lou-Barton

The Study

This two-year follow up study (that occurred across COVID) evaluated the effect of the Lasting Connection® workshop and Lasting Connection System® on participants who did and did not practice with the Lasting Connection System® at home. Workshop results improved cohesion in all couples, with the biggest improvement in couples’ scores going from distressed to non-distressed levels. Couples who used the Lasting Connection System® at home at least one to two times after the workshop improved in all areas; Consensus (decision making, affection and values) Satisfaction and Cohesion, compared to those couples who did not use the Lasting Connection System® at home.

The Findings

The findings provide preliminary support for the effectiveness of the Lasting Connection® workshop and Lasting Connection System® in bolstering couples functioning and relationship satisfaction, and the use of the Lasting Connection System® as a take-home tool to increase affection, improve decision making and support long-term change in relationship satisfaction.

Reference: Lou-Barton, G. (2022). Outcomes of Building a Lasting Connection®: A pilot study, California School of Professional Psychology, and Alliant International University

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Rejection-how the nervous system remembers. . .

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By: Camille Pack, MA, BLCF

She couldn’t look at her husband while she spoke to him. “I told you I felt sad, and you told me, ‘it wasn’t that bad if I looked at it differently.’ Then my heart sank, so I shut up. I thought, ‘Fine, I’ll handle it alone, like I always do,’ and I changed the subject.”

Her tears spilled over. “It made it worse. I felt more alone.”

She almost hadn’t brought up the exchange. It seemed like a small example, but we know attachment wounds are born in such moments.

“Lack of support in the midst of wounding seems central to the movement from potential trauma to embedded trauma,” says Bonnie Badenoch in The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships.

Left without emotional closeness many times over the years, you won’t be surprised my client was skilled at hiding her feelings.

Until this conversation, her husband was unaware of the rupture. Now, to me, he looked blindsided.

Perhaps from confusion about how the distance had ballooned between them, or distress he’d contributed to her pain, or hurt that his intentions were grossly misinterpreted, or fear that it happened outside his awareness. From this soil, a crust of anger and defensiveness seemed to flit across his face.

Later, we found out he had no idea he’d minimized and dismissed her experience—he’d withdrawn so fully and innocently in the protective perspective of the exploratory system that he couldn’t see his impact on her. He didn’t know he’d been emotionally absent long before she put up the wall.

Attachment is the study of emotional safety and the impact it has on the human nervous system.

What does a nervous system do when it has emotional safety? What does it do when it doesn’t? How does emotional safety change our views about our place in the world?

Four predictable attachment patterns give us a window into how well two brain systems are integrated: the attachment system and the exploratory system, described by Harvard psychologists Daniel P. Brown and David Elliott in Attachment Disturbances in Adults: Treatment for Comprehensive Repair.

Our exploratory system prefers a state of certainty, action, and doing. As the exploratory system activates, we automatically turn down the dial on emotion. This attachment position is commonly referred to as an avoidant pattern.

The exploratory system attends to analytical details, information-gathering, and problem-solving with logical efficiency, but it removes events from their context and gets judgmental. We might metaphorically experience such coping strategies as though they dip our feelings and relationships in liquid lidocaine.

In high doses, it may leave us with a numb sense of growing despair.

We might be alerted to someone’s shift into an exploratory perspective when we feel the loss of their presence as they scroll through their phone. Perhaps we notice being assessed with judgmental eyes. Maybe we see a parent prioritizing their child’s behavior over the quality of their relationship. Maybe we notice ourselves getting brisk and task-oriented, impatient or annoyed by interruptions.

Even as you read this, you may notice how the quality of our experience has changed as I moved from a shared moment to analysis.

We need our exploratory system to make sense of our lives. We need it to support our relational values, so we can have a rich and full life. But as we shift into exploratory-dominance, as Bonnie Badenoch says, “meaning has a tendency to get lost.”

It’s difficult for us to notice and interpret body language correctly. We are more likely to misinterpret people’s intentions. We miss the hurt in our child’s averted eyes. We overlook the changes in our partner’s tone that might tell us of their unmet attachment needs.

Western culture leads with, prioritizes, and celebrates the independence of the exploratory system. It is the adaption our nervous system shelters in to turn off conscious awareness of pain when relationships have been a source of emotional rejection, as far back as infancy.

In neglectful or critical environments, if we sought emotional support and experienced rejection, such as a well-intentioned caregiver repeatedly telling us to push down our feelings, buck up, toughen up, and do it on our own, we will orient to the world through our exploratory system.

We’ll be successful, independent, and emotionally isolated—often without awareness of our isolation.

. . .

When our nervous system defaults to the exploratory view, we tend to get more rigid and isolated. But without the support of the exploratory system, our attachment system enters the chaos of pursuit. This attachment position is commonly referred to as an anxious pattern.

The fourth pattern, called disorganized, combines these approaches, alternating unpredictably and sometimes simultaneously between hyper-activation and down-regulation of the attachment system and the exploratory system.

Our sweet spot seems to balance the two with the attachment system taking the lead, knighting our exploratory system as its able emissary. This attachment position is called secure.

Co-regulating presence is the wellspring of security.

Presence. Intuitively we know it’s a gift. It is where we come to be together in the unknown. It might call to mind a space of firelight and laughter, poetry and lingering meals, blowing bubbles and softly meeting each other’s eyes as we sing. Our attachment system needs such co-regulating accompaniment to connect to our aliveness and meaning.

The perceptual world of security is present, curious, open, accepting, comfortable with ambiguity, sensitive to suffering, and quick to offer our support without expectation that someone be any different than they are.

Our attachment system prefers this state of being. As we attend to being fully present in this moment, we are wrapped in the awareness of many streams of somatic communication coming from our body, our environment, and each other.

Security is a state of mind we may easily return to when we cuddle our animals and listen to their responsive snurffle-sounds, or when we get out on a trail and into the embrace of the forest, or when our partner gently strokes our arm and whispers.

From this fountain of security, even without words, the softness in our face, our gaze, and our voice will convey messages of safety through our presence: I see you. I’m here. I treasure you. Your feelings make sense. Thank you for letting me be with you.

In our shared Zoom room, the husband looked at his feet for help. They were both standing on the Connection System®, a floor mat that’s part of the Building a Lasting Connection® Workshop. BLC structures sharing and listening to increase intimacy and strengthen secure attachment.

The Connection System® helps us release judgements and share a new moment as it unfolds in the space between.

This is where intimacy and compassion bloom.

The husband found what he was looking for and returned his gaze to his wife. “I’m really glad you’re sharing,” he said, offering his soft presence. “I want to be with you when you’re sad, and I’m glad you’re giving me another chance.”

Her eyes filled with tears of relief and warmth. She smiled.

Later, when it was his turn to share, he told us about the tightness he felt in his gut when she shut him out and the fear she wouldn’t come back. His wife cried and squeezed his hand, fully with him now. It meant so much to hear his feelings and even more to simply feel him with her because he usually kept such a tight lock on himself.

As he shared and she attuned in kind, their connection cleared away the knot in his gut and a radiating warmth filled his heart.

The flow of emotional support and deep sharing gave them a window into the secure connection they longed for.

. . .

In what feels like sacred moments, such as these, I witness what Stephen Porges says: “Safety is treatment.”

It also brings to mind memory reconsolidation research. How when we remember a trauma, the neural net where it lives activates, bringing up a felt sense of the original loss. When this activation happens gently, and we’re accompanied by a trusted-other who provides a disconfirming experience, healing may begin as that neural net weaves with other more resourced areas throughout the nervous system. Each subsequent awakening may then be accompanied by the integrating nourishment of remembered support.

“If we felt alone, we needed a sense of accompaniment,” says Bonnie Badenoch. “If we were frightened, we needed protection. If we were shamed, we needed acceptance. If we were hurt, we needed comfort. It is as though the part of us who experienced the original rupture of safety has been waiting ever since for the repair to arrive.”

I’m grateful to know the power of such arrivals, that shared presence can weave a nest of safety and belonging around our pain.

 

Camille Pack is the founder of StoryKeeper, a safe, healing community for cultivating the art and practice of secure attachment skills to increase authenticity, mindfulness, and belonging. She is a certified facilitator of The Building a Lasting Connection® Workshop developed by Rebecca Jorgensen and Debi Gilmore and offers facilitated mat work for couples on the Connection System®. Camille also offers IPF (ideal parent figure) coaching to individuals seeking to heal early attachment wounds. Learn more at officialstorykeeper.com.