Reclaiming the Core Self through Fierce Love
We are born with a Core Self, the innate capacity for love. But when the world we meet is traumatizing, we respond by rejecting and condemning ourselves, creating a Wounded Self built on false beliefs about the worth of the self and its place in the world.
Core Self Reclamation Therapy (CSRT) is a relationally bold new form of therapy devoted to undoing the structure of the Wounded Self so that the Core Self can be reclaimed. CSRT is based upon the fundamental belief that the deepest source of human suffering is caused not by traumatic experience itself, but rather by the self-destructive meanings we take in about ourselves and the world at large in the wake of traumatic experience. Using targeted, specialized interventions, the CSRT therapist pierces and melts the entrenched defenses and toxic shame states that keep patients stuck in self-hatred and suffering. Standing in on behalf of the patient’s Core Self, the CSRT therapist deftly guides the patient back to their birthright of love.
The model has its roots in memory reconsolidation research, affective neuroscience, attachment theory, and mother-infant intersubjectivity research. CSRT is also inspired by other clinical models, including Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP), Somatic Experiencing (SE), Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP), Eriksonian Hypnosis, and Nancy Napier’s parts work.
The Fierce Love Therapeutic Stance
The Fierce Love therapeutic stance is about honoring our patients’ wholeness no matter how split off from themselves they are, or how irreparably broken they fear themselves to be.
CSRT therapists hold and embody the steadfast belief in patients’ capacity to be healed no matter how traumatized/cut off/disconnected they are. It is precisely this fierceness that protects and invites the person’s wholeness into the process.
Fierce Love is about championing and advocating on behalf of our patients’ Core Self, the self that has been waiting to “Be” all these years.
Why Love?
Love is not just another emotion.
Love is the container in which everything is held.
We are born with the birthright of love.
Trauma and its consequent psychopathology involve a failure of love -- its lack or its profound distortion.
CSRT reclaims the word love as a powerful and central force in healing the Self.
It’s a love that reminds our patients of what they didn’t get but always deserved.
It’s a love that holds on to the steadfast belief in our patients’ ability to reclaim their Core Self, no matter how broken they feel.
It’s a love that communicates to our patients in our words, our expressions, our felt presence, that they were and still are worthy of love.
Why Fierce?
Our patients come to us in deep intrapsychic pain; we see a suffering that is unnecessary, wrong, and unjust and are thereby emboldened to redirect, to lead, to refocus -- to get to that place of deep healing as quickly as possible. As therapists we learn to err on the side of caution by remaining neutral, by waiting for our patients to reveal what needs to be healed at their own pace, and by believing our patients aren’t strong enough to heal; but often, in doing so, we end up colluding with the defenses, at the expense of our patients’ suffering.
Every day spent living in the Wounded Self is a precious day lost.
Our patients need us to be bold on their behalf.
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