Mother's Dark Heart - Week 1

Embracing Mother’s Dark Heart

Session Five: Contacting Positive Darkness

Mark BradyMothersDarkHeart @gmail.com

Jeanne DenneyJeanneDenney@ gmail.com

April, 2011

“ The most protean aspect of comedy is its potentiality for transcending itself, for responding to the conditions of tragedy by laughing in the darkness.” ~ Harry Levin

Body Psychotherapist and Healer in/ around New York City

M.A. Psychology Mother of Michael (23) ,Grace (20),

Peter and Gil ( twins 16) Retired Bridge Engineer – P.E. Hospice Worker and Death

Educator Birth Doula

• Social Neuroscientist, Whidbey Island, WA • Ph.D. in Psychology• Father of Amanda (27)• Author of Safe and Secure and

A Little Book of Parenting SkillsThe Committed Parent blog

• Professional House Builder

Mark Brady Jeanne Denney

Guidelines for Engagement

There is no mandatory participation on the call or online in Caucus

Speak in the First Person

Respect Confidentiality and privacy of participants.

Hold to the Principle of Excellent Imperfection: This material is not intended to support self-criticism.

We will mute listeners during presentation portions.

Use sidebar screen to type questions or desire to share during presentation. We will unmute during the call and bring participants in to share periodically.

Please be aware of background noises and environment when you are off mute.

Recordings of sessions will be available after each session is complete.

This material will likely bring greater awareness of our own shadow.

We intend to support increasing shadow awareness without demanding that you do this as a personal process.

This series is intended to support our process as parents.

If your process is especially intense or difficult, you may want to seek local therapeutic help. If you should need this kind of support. Mark and I will try to help you find local referral sources.

We recommend doing courses such as these with psychological support that fits well for you.

“Be Kind. For everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.” - Philo

Mapping the Embrace

Week 1 – Introduction to Dark Heart – Introduction to the pulsating bicameral brain.  Darkness, duality and polarity in the brain, mind,heart, body and in human experience.    Week 2-  The Dawn of Darkness - Trauma and our own history; formation of sub-personalities and the critic; encountering transference and ‘reclaimingprojections. The formation of dark and light images.Week 3 – Dark Heart Denied – Role of Community and Culture  A brief history of  motherhood and family life in the West;  the effect of cultural images and expectations on mothers and children.  Interpersonal neurobiology, attachment and mirror neurons. Neuroscience perspectives on healing and connection.

Week 4 - Calling off the Judge - Opening the Heart Reviewing the basis for compassion in the task and accepting human limitations. Opening to pain and need under judg-ments. Approaching primitive emotions and the body in mothering; heart/brain interactions; the neuroscience of resilience.

Week 5 - Contacting the Positive Darkness  Dark Mother archetype in myth and folktales; indigenous perspectives on initiation, birth and the community’s role in childrearing; forming new, more adult images of the mother; claiming ferocity; neuroscience views of healing from early disorganization and the Unthought Known.

Week 6:   Embracing the Dark Mother as ally   Accepting and working with our own darkness (and that of our partners);  working with ourselves and our bodies; teaching children to have resilience and to make sense of our darkness; the role of chaos and destruction in creation and growth.

Objectives of this Dark Heart Series:

Specifically Understanding:

· When Shadow gets invited in, it’s ears perk up. Be prepared for Shadow to show up in your lives.

· Trauma Basics: The origins of personal “darkness” in neurology (the wound or trauma) and behavior.

· That wounds(trauma) produce a byproduct of sub-personalities identified by Jung and Assagioli.

· That there are both societal and personal taboos around Mothers owning and skillfully working with these parts. · Why working with our own early wounds is essential for our children’s welfare

· How these taboos, as well as transference and projection from others ,produces unrealistic demands of self as mother and trigger unconscious emotion.

We would like for you to end this Series with an expansive picture of Mothering (or Parenting), one that transforms self and supports child development as a tandem, pulsating process of co-creation, excellently imperfect.

· Why basic knowledge of brain workings – how memories are stored, learning happens and the effects of good and bad stress. can make it work better.

· How to accept and respect primitive aspects of the psyche (brain).

· That the work of claiming and integrating the polarized sub-personalities is one key to energy, empowerment and creativity.

· The principle of resilience and how our personal process with this material can promote our own resilience as well as our children’s.

· That this work yields a positive feminine darkness that is helpful and grounding to our children’s development.

· Practical Tools for day-to-day struggles. 

The Shades of Darkness

What is/was your first association with the word “Darkness” or “Mother’s Dark Heart”?

(Consider this word and share in Sidebar).

Darkness in our culture is often first associated with that which is Evil or Bad, or that which we fear.

Cross-culturally Darkness did not necessarily have this connotation.

Church History has probably influenced our perceptions of dark and light.

It may be that thing that we most resist.

It may be that thing that we project outside ourselves.

In Jungian and Freudian Psychology, Darkness, or Shadow is considered the part of the psyche that we are not aware of.

Three Shades of Darkness:

Darkness as that which provokes our shame, fear or guilt. That which subverts our own deepest needs and wishes; energies that get in our own way and the way and rights of others.

Darkness as that which we deny, are unconscious of, or which we project outside of ourselves (Freud and Jung’s view).

Darkness associated with the primitive, intuitive, natural, mysterious, non-linear or the feminine (Radical Feminist view). We could see this darkness as associated with the right brain.

Unconsciousness has Neurological Correlates

Single photon emission computed tomography

(SPECT) is a nuclear medicine tomographic imaging technique

using gamma rays.

The Experience of unconscious material can be Shame, Fear and Guilt…

Shame and Guilt are byproduct sof wounding and polarized consciousness

ShameSome Shame as a byproduct of violating cultural values

or idealized behaviors. Some see it as having focus on self, rather than behavior.

GuiltSome see Guilt as having a focus on the behavior and

violation of personal values and our code of idealized behaviors.

So Shame and Guilt are both a product of idealizations on personal and cultural levels.

It is a problem that we are not taught how to work with this aspect of self. Family, culture, and society are selective about what they will accept, reward and nurture.

There also seems to be some kind of reflexive or innate inability for our ego/super-ego to accept some aspects of our being, particularly more primitive, defensive aspects.

What is rejected (either positive or negative responses or attributes) becomes unconscious. It becomes “Dark”.

A child’s mind lurks within our polarities:

. Shame and guilt often becomes a silent inner torturer of parents…

The Perverse Mental Chatter of Motherhood is run partly by our empathy, partly by an unexamined childself and partly by collective ideals of motherhood.

Bad Mom Cards…Collect them all…or not.

Alternating Hemispheric Pulsation

Dark Mother as MedicineFrom To

Neural Integration“Only connect!” ~ E.M. Forster

Gauss’s Brain

Prefrontal Cortex

The prefrontal cortex is the anterior portion of the frontal lobes. It lies in front of the motor and pre-motor areas. The prefrontal cortex is thought to be involved in planning complex behavior and in the expression of personality and appropriate social behavior.

The prefrontal cortex has been shown to discern events separated by time and is responsible for the executive functions, which include mediating conflicting thoughts, making choices, and governing social control. When the pathways between the prefrontal cortex and the rest of the brain are damaged personality changes can result.

The prefrontal cortex responds mostly to stimuli signaling the need for movement; nevertheless it is also responsible for many other specialized functions. It gets information from alll sensory systems and can integrate a large amount of information.

Closing discussion questions for Caucus:

Find at least one image you are carrying of the good/bad mother.  It may get catalyzed around the words “always” or “never”.

How does it form your behavior as parent?

How might it relate to your childhood experiences or wounding?