Psychodynamic Therapy and Shamanic Healing Come Together
- Susan Hollins
As a grief counsellor in Fife, I work with people locally and online to help them process profound loss and rebuild their lives. This is the moving story of “Karen”, who came to me many years after the sudden death of her husband. Through a combination of psychodynamic therapy and shamanic healing, she was able to reconnect with life and find peace. You can read more about my approach on my grief counselling page
Blown Away by This Testimonial
Always, I’m touched to the core and thrilled to bits whenever a client offers encouraging feedback for the hard work we’ve undertaken together, often over many months, week in week out. Such feedback not only validates the work I do and, importantly, how I practice, but equally importantly endorses the immense change I’m privileged to witness in Clients who come to me worn out, burdened and brought to their knees by immense loss and grief and who leave me light of step, of heart, mind and spirit, well-resourced and able to re-engage fully with life once again.
Working Together Through Loss
Karen and I worked very deeply for over a year in relation to the tragic death of her Husband in a road traffic accident the day following their tenth wedding anniversary.
Karen had carried her heavy grief and her love for her Husband very stoically for many long years, until the weight became too heavy.
Why Psychodynamic Therapy Helped
Psychodynamic Therapy is the foundation from which I work with all my clients. I love psychodynamic therapy for its profound capacity to engage with every aspect of our selves: our dreams, our imagination (or lack of it), how our body responds to and stores distress and trauma, psychic phenomena, spiritual and religious beliefs and practice.
Psychodynamic Therapy enabled Karen and me to explore her long-stored grief including my invitation to Karen late on in the therapy to explore whether her grief had texture, shape, and colour: a large piece of shiny black granite was discovered by Karen which proved to be an invaluable source of essential information crucial to her emergence from the heaviness of grief into feeling and knowing completely that she belongs fully in life once more.
Through learning to ask questions of her dreams, of her inner self, Karen gained a lot of confidence in this approach. So, in a later dream in which Crow held a hard white object, Karen was well able to ask questions of Crow to find out what this object was and why Crow had it.
As you’ll read in Karen’s testimonial, Crow and the hard white object appeared in the Shamanic Healing, which I undertook later on.
Introducing Shamanic Healing
Karen is someone who often has what I term significant dreams. In our work together such dreams provided a means for Karen to explore her grief and its effects on her, and to gain immense insight into it.
Given Karen’s dream capacity it seemed utterly natural to ask if she might be willing to engage in Shamanic Healing as being a wondrous resource which heals the wounded parts of us which not even brilliant psychodynamic therapy can reach.
Then followed a very full conversation about Shamanism and Shamanic Healing with lots of questions posed and answered. Karen then went away to think about it all. In our next session Karen said that she’d be very open – if understandably nervous – to my undertaking Shamanic Healing.
Now, let Karen’s words speak for themselves.
The Missing Part
I didn’t know it was missing until I had ‘the dream’ and shared it with Susan. A hard, white object like sea glass but angular. Crow holding onto it, protecting it, making sure no one got it. The bit of me that was missing, preventing me from living my life fully and with joy. The bit of me that had been taken from me when Steven was killed and somehow, I had adapted to being without it and over the years and had forgotten that it had ever existed.
It took a year’s worth of therapy with Susan to get to this realisation. Hard yards put in, some sessions almost unable to speak, incapable of ordered thought, let alone articulate it, other days warming to a theme and finding the words more easily. Eventually finding Steven again and finding a peace. Accepting that Steven had died but he could still be part of my life was a new concept. No longer expected ‘to get over it’ and ‘move on’ but encouraged to have him in my life and communicate with him: the peace that brought was so welcome and for a while more than enough. But then it didn’t seem so peaceful anymore and my connection with Steven weakened.
More therapy, searching in areas that at times seemed to have nothing to do with Steven’s death or my grief but slowly it was untangled by Susan – I wasn’t complete, part of me was missing and as it turned out Crow had it. I tried to retrieve it but lacked the skill, belief, or connection – I don’t know which, perhaps all of them. Fortunately for me Susan does and was willing and able to undertake a Shamanic journey where she bargained with Crow to release my missing part and returned it to me. Steven was present, it was a lovely feeling.
What has changed for me since then? I am stronger, I am happier, I am more peaceful. I speak or write to Steven every day but he’s still not so good at getting back to me! For a long time this was an issue for me but now it’s ok, I know without doubt that he is present in some form or another, I don’t need a physical manifestation. He is in my heart and my soul, he is still my granite but not so rigid and unyielding. He is part of my life in a healthy and spiritual way.
I can’t imagine that I would ever have got to this point without Susan’s input. Her unique skill set as Therapist and Shaman underpinned by a deep kindness and straight talking – how I welcomed the straight talking unhindered by therapeutic jargon! – got me here.
Sometimes I dreaded our sessions but only because it required work and soul searching from me. I trusted Susan implicitly from the very start which allowed me to revisit and discuss the most distressing feelings, it felt safe.
Thank you Susan.
From Loss to Peace
Karen’s journey shows that grief is not something we simply “get over” – but something we can learn to live alongside in a healthier, more connected way. For some, psychodynamic therapy alone can help this happen; for others, like Karen, integrating additional approaches such as shamanic healing can unlock deep emotional change.
If you have experienced loss and are seeking support, you can find out more about my approach on my grief counselling page.
