FEP54 Flower Essences for Mental Health with Maureen Clancy
Show Notes:
Trauma therapist Maureen Clancy joins us on the podcast to chat about supporting mental health with flower essences.
Discover Maureen’s favorite essences for anxious states vs. depressed states, and how she incorporates them in her practice in conjunction with other therapeutic modalities such as EMDR.
We also talk about how to know when flower essences aren’t enough on their own and further mental health services are indicated.
Join us for this illuminating look into flower essences from a psychotherapist’s perspective.
Audio:
Video:
Flower Essences discussed during the show:
- Rescue Remedy aka Five Flower Formula
- Borage – Green Hope Farms
- Red Clover – Green Hope Farms
- Redwood – Green Hope Farms
- Maple – Green Hope Farms
Resources:
- Maureen’s website: https://www.maureen-clancy.com/about-flower-essences
- Maureen’s TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@maureen.clancy
- Maureen’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themaureenclancy/
- Green Hope Farm
- Delta Gardens
Show Transcript
Rochana Felde: [00:00:40] Welcome back to The Flower Essence Podcast and welcome new listeners. Kathleen and I, Rochana, are here today with a guest, Maureen Clancy, and we were really excited to find out about her and get her on the podcast because she is a therapist who also practices flower essence therapy, and we’ve been wanting to delve more into other types of practices that incorporate flower essences. And so we thought Maureen would be the perfect one to start this conversation with. Maureen Clancy is a licensed therapist in New York and New Jersey, a group therapy practice owner, and a trauma expert. For the past 21 years, she’s been helping women who’ve experienced childhood trauma grow through big life changes. She’s the creator of the Gate Passages Framework, a structured bottom-up approach to healing trauma. She’s certified in EMDR and trained in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Internal Family Systems, and Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy, which she combines with Reiki, tarot and flower essences. She’s also a certified clinical supervisor for social workers seeking advanced licensure and runs supervision groups for therapists looking to gain skills in healing trauma. As well, she’s a certified yoga teacher, a 20-plus year meditator, a self-taught artist, and a potter who lives in coastal New Jersey with her husband and their menagerie of pets. She loves to garden, run and play pickleball. Welcome to the podcast, Maureen.
Maureen Clancy: [00:02:23] Oh, thank you. I’m so excited to be with you.
Kathleen Aspenns: [00:02:27] We’re really glad to have you here. Would you help us get started by sharing a little bit of your story with flower essences? I’d love to know how they became a part of your life.
Maureen Clancy: [00:02:41] I love talking about that. And really, it happened accidentally, which is kind of a fun way to find out about things. But I was going through a really difficult period in my life and I had to stop working. I was a newspaper reporter and I was having a lot of physical pain in my body that made it so I really could not work any longer and experienced a lot of depression around that and a lot of anxiety. And it was a really difficult thing to manage. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that badly before. I was so excited to be a journalist. And really this was the end of that dream. And I was having a lot of physical pain through a repetitive strain injury.
And so it was recommended by a bunch of different people who I’d been seeing for assistance with that, that I try an antidepressant and I thought, I’m not so sure about that. Let me see what else I can do. And probably months went by and I was in a local health food store and I overheard someone talking to the owner of the health food store. And the person was saying, Oh, we’ve just been through a terrible shock in my family. We really are struggling to try to get past this, if we can. And the owner of the health food store said, oh, I think you should try some flower essences. And I was kind of like hiding out in an aisle. And it really perked up my ears. I thought, well, I’m going to check this out. Whatever she’s going to say, I want to know. And she directed the customer to Bach’s Rescue Remedy. And she said, “Here’s this little yellow box. You can take it throughout the day and the flower essences in it will really help you start to feel calmer about the crisis that’s going on in your family and more capable.” And I thought, “Oh, I have got to have this. Whatever it is, let me get my hands on it.” And so I bought a bottle and I remember driving to the Sound. I was living near Long Island Sound at the moment in New York. And I opened the bottle. I saw this little bottle and I thought, how could this possibly help me? And so I took out the dropper and made sure there was plenty in it. And I put some on my tongue. And right away, I noticed this ripple effect in my body. And I suddenly felt a lot calmer than I had felt before. And I was really surprised about that. So I just kept using it. And pretty soon the bottle was gone.
So I kept using just the Rescue Remedy, but eventually, I started to get really curious about what is in this bottle, what is exactly happening here? And that led me to investigate the single flower essences that were in the Rescue Remedy. And I started taking one of them, I can’t remember which one, and that even calmed me down further. And it really gave me a sense of, okay, there’s going to be a life beyond what’s happening right now. And it was really quite a magical experience. I was sold on flower essences at that point. And so I tried different flower essences whenever I saw them in a health food store. I thought, let’s see what I’m drawn to. And each time I took one, it was the same kind of experience. It happened in my body, but it also was like an uplifting emotionally of something that I wasn’t even quite aware of. And at the time I wasn’t even a therapist. And so once I started practicing with clients, I thought, this needs to come in somehow because it had such a profound effect on me, I knew that I was going to find a way to bring flower essences into work with clients. And so after a few years when I got my advanced licensure, I thought, “Okay, now I’m going to do it. I’m going to gently bring this in.”
And there were clients who were really excited about trying something new and clients who didn’t want to. But I noticed that clients who were interested in trying flower essences, they started to feel better and more grounded and capable and like there was a life beyond what we were working on faster than the other clients. It was fascinating to notice that. And I thought, “Oh, we’re really onto something here. I’ve got to keep using this in my work with clients.” So then I started offering blends. And to this day, I offer individually made flower essence blends for clients if they want them. And it’s so much fun to do. It’s really deep in the work. And flower essences, it’s so difficult to describe what they’re like because they live outside of the realm of language. But really, the best thing I can say is that clients who use them have such a different experience in therapy than the clients who don’t. And that’s a really interesting thing to notice. Yeah. And all of my clients are very sensitive. And I knew from my own sensitivity in my response to the flower essences, that that was going to be something really harmonious to their systems and their sensitivities. And yeah, it’s been an exciting journey. I love using flower essences with my clients. It really helps. It really supports the work that we’re doing in therapy. Yeah. So that’s a long answer to my own journey with flower essences.
Rochana Felde: [00:09:01] I just love hearing this and I have so many questions. I want to dive in a little deeper to this work that you do with clients in flower essences. But first, which essences do you use? Do you use the Bach flowers? I believe you make your own. What are the common lines of essences that you use?
Maureen Clancy: [00:09:25] Oh, a great question. There are so many, and I feel like I’ve just scratched the surface. But I do often recommend the Bach Rescue Remedy for clients because it’s so easy to obtain these days, which I’m just giddy about. But I also make my own. I have a tiny little plot of land here in New Jersey, and I like growing flowers into flower essences. So I will grow as much as I can on my own here. But I also really love the essences from Green Hope Farms, and they’re based in New Hampshire. And one of the things I love most is that their flower essences are preserved in Red Shiso, which is a plant in the Mint family, and because it’s preserved in Red Shiso, there’s no need for alcohol as a preservative. And because my clients are so sensitive, they tend to also be sensitive to alcohol. And the response to the Green Hope Farm essences from clients has been really wonderful. So those are the ones that I’m using most often now. But there’s so many to dive into. Like I said, I’m just at the beginning of sampling different ones. Oh, I should also say that I’ve also used several of the flower essences from Delta Gardens. And I use them personally. I haven’t given them to clients yet because I feel like the relationship to the flower essences at Delta Gardens is just beginning and I really want to know more about that before I recommend it to clients.
Kathleen Aspenns: [00:11:11] I’m enjoying that aspect of the relationship, the personal relationship to the flowers, like you were saying, when you’ve grown them and you’ve made the essence yourself, there is a layer that comes through. I know that when I work with clients and I’m listening and I’m feeling into what they’re asking for, a lot of times the plants that I know personally, whether I’ve made their essence or whether I’ve met them in real life, those are the ones that tend to be like, “Me, me, me, I want to come in. I can help this person. I have something to offer here.” There is something much more embodied about it rather than just like I know it from a repertory. So do you recommend for your clients to try to have personal relationships with the plants that you’re offering as essences?
Maureen Clancy: [00:12:03] Always. Oh my gosh, and I think that’s the funnest thing about flower essences. And I’m so glad that you brought that up. It’s been so personal for me to have a relationship with the flowers that I’m using personally, so I’ll always recommend that to clients. And one of the things that I’ll say is, “Go for a walk around your neighborhood and see what flowers are drawing your awareness to them and see what you notice in your body when you’re with the flower.” And you could just crouch down and tune into the flower and see if it wants to talk to you about something and see what that’s like in your own body. Not everyone wants to do that, but with clients who do that, I’ll say, “Okay, so you can make a flower essence out of that. And it’s really easy. Here’s how. Here’s how I know how to do it.” But I know for myself, the flowers that have been most impactful for me are the ones that I always want to have growing here on my little plot of land. And that’s Borage. Borage is always with me. I feel like Borage and I have a deep thing going. It’s an amazing flower essence, and it’s something that it goes into every flower essence blend that I make for clients. At least the first one that I make, Borage is always in there because it’s so uplifting and it has such a gentle way of opening a pathway to self-love if that’s really been shut down for mental health reasons like anxiety and depression and sometimes trauma also.
Rochana Felde: [00:14:50] Do you bring them into your session with, say, a new client right away, or is it something that develops over time after you get a feel for their openness to it?
Maureen Clancy: [00:15:03] That’s a great question, too. So I used to kind of hide the fact that I was doing flower essences. And I know this is a common thing for mental health providers who also are really interested in using alternative methods too. There’s a sense that, okay, so my mental health stuff has to be on one side, and the alternative things that I do have to be on the other side. And so in the past seven years or so, I have really worked to bring that all together. So clients are prepped already if they look at my website to know that I work with flower essences. And sometimes in a consultation before we start working together, they’ll say, “I want to work with you because you have the flower essences and you’re bringing that into the work.” So they already are curious about how that can impact their healing and facilitate the therapy. But there are clients who are not interested. For whatever reason, that’s not something that they want to explore with me or in the therapy as an accompaniment, and that’s totally fine, it doesn’t matter. I feel like even talking about flower essences somehow brings that energy into the space and plants a seed for later, they might be interested somewhere down the road in it.
Kathleen Aspenns: [00:16:32] Well, it fits in really well with the approach to practice that you have, which is a very embodied approach. The different therapies that you offer, I’m a little bit familiar with EMDR and Internal Family Systems, but they’re very different from what a lot of people might think of therapy where it’s talk, and it’s very much in the head. And so many of us are so disembodied often as a result of trauma that the therapy that you offer helps bring them back into their body and helps them develop a better relationship with their body. And then if the flowers can come into play, great. But if not, I’m sure you’re doing so much good for them, just helping them start to come in. Your description of encouraging your client to go out for a walk and looking around, I mean, isn’t that where EMDR came from? A story I read about how somebody figured out, I forget his name, but figured out the process of EMDR, is the eye movement where he was walking and he was looking at this on this side and looking at this on this side. And he found that it sort of naturally unwound some of the traumas. I’m sure you could speak to it a lot more better, a lot better than I can. But that process of being in nature is itself a healing process. It sounds like you’re bringing all of these pieces together into what you offer with clients.
Maureen Clancy: [00:18:05] Yeah. Oh, okay, so it’s Francine Shapiro. The EMDR people out there might be excited to hear that. And yeah, she was sitting on a park bench and had the spontaneous movements of her eyes looking at, I think, clouds. And that action of moving her eyes back and forth was the genesis of EMDR. But yeah, she was outside. And one of the things that I really encourage clients to do, if they don’t do this already as a way of moving in their bodies and becoming more settled in their bodies, is go out in nature, go for a walk, do it every day if you can. And that really brings about a sense of embodiment that is gentle and that most clients, if they have had that disconnection, that profound disconnection from their bodies, that usually comes about with anxiety, depression, and sometimes trauma. And that’s a way of bringing themselves back into the body. And certainly, flower essences support that. But yeah, that’s one of the most– it’s like the easiest healing tool to use is getting out in nature and just going for a walk and see what you see. Yeah, it really helps to bring about that sense of, I am in my body, I am walking, I am doing this. And it’s not scary. Because a lot of the disconnection is about having sensations in the body that have been scary or things that you feel like you can’t control very well, or sometimes a sense that the body’s let you down. And so I feel like a lot of the work that I do in flower essences always support that is helping bring my clients back into a gentle relationship with their bodies after there has been a disconnection or a sense of, I don’t want to feel anything in my body, or I can’t feel anything in my body. Yeah. And that’s one of the funnest parts of my work. I really love that when they’re back in their bodies and feeling something and not afraid of it. That’s a really fun spot in therapy.
Rochana Felde: [00:20:20] You were talking about your clients that use flower essences versus the ones who don’t and the differences that you noticed and you noticed them progressing faster, which is amazing and fascinating, but not surprising. I love that you have this clinical experience to share. Are there certain issues that you’ve seen helped by flower essences more than other issues or certain types of people that are helped more by flower–? What are some other sort of generalizations that you can make with your years of doing this?
Maureen Clancy: [00:20:59] Oh, that’s a great question, too. The two things that clients are coming to me most for are anxiety and depression, and I really see that as a nervous system response to something that is either ongoing or a one-time thing that’s happened. So for clients who have anxiety, there’s usually a baseline of anxiety that they’re feeling and it’s something that is and can most often be a response to an environment that’s overwhelming. And so for those clients, there are specific flower essences that I’ll always recommend and put in blends for them that can really dial down that sense of being on guard. And so anxiety for me is always about hypervigilance. How can I be–? It’s almost like the analogy of a lighthouse, and the lighthouse is always on and scanning for boats in the horizon and scanning for boats coming closer. And really that’s a function of anxiety for many of the clients that I worked with. There’s a sense of, okay, how can I watch what’s happening all the time so that I can anticipate what’s going to happen next so I can keep myself safe? And so with those clients, one of the things that I love most initially is using Red Clover. And Red Clover can really dial down a sense of hypervigilance.
I always combine that with some kind of grounding essence too, because with anxiety there’s a sense of, no, I’m not safe in my life, in my experience, in my world, in my relationships. And so a grounding essence to combine with Red Clover is a wonderful thing, and I’m often doing that. My favorite is Redwood. I love Redwood. It is amazing. I’ve never been with a Redwood. I have yet to do that. I am super excited to have that happen sometime soon. But just sitting with the Redwood flower essence, it’s always given me a sense of sitting with a wise soul who is helping you see beyond the chaotic current events to a sense of a more eternal space. And that is really helpful for anxious clients because there isn’t a sense of grounding and there isn’t a sense of being able to see beyond that chaos. And so the combination of the two, the Red Clover and the Redwood are two of the things that I love using for anxious clients and what I’ll reach for most.
But for depression, there’s something different happening in the nervous system. So if anxiety is really sped up in a sense of, I really can’t relax here at all, otherwise, something bad will happen, depression is really about a slowing down of the nervous system and a sense of, I’m just going to do the absolute minimum because if I do more than that, that doesn’t feel safe either. And so Borage is one of the things, and I mentioned that before, I really have a love affair with Borage, Borage is one of the things that can really help shift a sense of, I don’t want to be here or I can’t–how do I want to put this? I don’t want to digest this experience, whatever it is. And Borage will help bring about a sense of, maybe I can. Maybe it’s not so bad. And I hear that so often when I prescribe or put Borage in a flower essence for clients who are depressed.
I also love putting in another grounding essence with that for depressed clients like Maple. And the reason why I like Maple as opposed to Redwood is that Maple has a sense of a great grounding into the ground, but also of a reaching up, and reaching up into something. The times that I’ve sat with Maple myself, that’s what I’ve experienced. And so I’ll use a combination of those two for clients who are depressed. And really the frame that I look through for what might be helpful for a client is what’s happening in their nervous systems, and really zeroing in on that. And some clients are wired towards a hyper-aroused state, that’s anxiety. And some clients are more wired toward hypo-arousal, which is more of depressed, slowed down. Yeah, so that’s what I’m using these days for clients, especially in the beginning of a treatment together.
Kathleen Aspenns: [00:25:59] I really appreciate that aspect of encouraging the grounding. You’re working with sort of the heart level, the Red Clover and the Borage to bring an ability to hope, an ability of management. But it’s also so important to be grounded into the body, grounded into the earth, and the trees for sure bring that quality. I’m sure Ro’s very excited about the Redwood because that is her personal favorite ally. And I can also see how the Maple has such a strong, springtime signature, that rising up energy. It really gives that upward flowing. And I’m looking at it a little bit through that Chinese medicine lens, that Liver chi. And when the Liver chi is repressed and smashed down by life, you do feel depressed, that is part of the picture. And having that really strong, uprising Maple energy to bring that up and go, okay, break through the logjam of that depressive state, it makes a lot of sense to me how you’re using it.
And one more piece about that grounding, the trees have this– they offer a level of perspective that I think that maybe the annuals and perennials don’t offer quite as much. The trees, they go through all the seasons, they grow through all the years, and they’re stable and solid, and having a tree in a formula is always going to bring that quality in of perspective of like, “Yeah, we’re in the middle of a storm right now, but it’s going to be okay. You’re going to get through and the sun will come out, the spring will happen, the continuity of life.”
Rochana Felde: [00:27:51] I wanted to chime in there, too. I mean, I was like, “Yeah, you’re speaking my language with the Redwoods.” And I definitely agree. I don’t think I ever do a blend without a tree in it. I love how this juxtaposition of the sped-up nervous system versus the slowed-down nervous system and the difference between those two grounding tree essences, it’s so clear. I love this example. And you can see with the Redwood being evergreen and how tall it gets and how it has this perspective because of its height that it can just kind of see and because of its longevity, it knows that this too shall pass and it gives that perspective of timelessness that is so calming. And with the Maple, I’m surrounded by not just Redwoods, the California Redwoods, but also Bigleaf Maples. And every year I’m observing them as they completely lose everything, all their leaves, they’re deciduous. And then in the spring, they start to bud and flower, and there’s this energy of unfolding as they grow back all their leaves. There’s so much energy of going from nothing to something. And it happened so fast. It’s like, there wasn’t a tree– it looks like there wasn’t a tree there, And then all of a sudden, there’s a tree there after it has all of its leaves come in. So it’s really I hadn’t thought about Maple the way that you had described it, but it makes so much sense. Really, probably any deciduous tree that’s kind of exploding into growth seems like it would really make sense for that scenario that you outlined with the slowed-down nervous system and needing to kind of bring that energy up and out, I love that.
Maureen Clancy: [00:29:50] Yeah, I love that perspective. And I hadn’t really thought about the fact that the leaves are gone and it looks like there’s nothing happening, but there is this tremendous amount of springtime energy coming into the Maple to bring forth those leaves. And it’s really the same with clients who are depressed. I see depression as a part that’s trying to help the client be as quiet and as still as possible for some reason. And there are lots of different reasons for that, but there’s definitely a need to bring that energy forth. So there is a, this too shall pass because there is going to be this change, and Maple really helps to bring that about. I love that perspective. That’s really cool.
Kathleen Aspenns: [00:30:42] And the thing that I love the most about essences is they assist you with that organic timing of that change. They don’t push you. There are a lot of strategies that humans have created to get people past this depression and get you past– and it’s very forceful. And there’s this quality of essences that you take it and you keep interacting with it and engaging with it and then spring emerges, right? Nobody’s going, “Come on, spring, you do this thing right now.” It happens in that sense of like, this is the moment. Right now is the moment, and that energy just naturally arises.
Maureen Clancy: [00:31:34] I love that. Because many of my clients have tried psychiatric medication or they’re currently on and want to get off of psychiatric medication, and really, that psychiatric medication is that like– I feel like it can be like a sledgehammer on the system. And so there’s not that organicity of, okay, I’m feeling this now, but there’s something different that’s going to be arising. And I find that when clients go off of medication, and flower essences are so good at that. But when they go off of psychiatric medication, all of the parts that were forced into either a sense of silence or forced into a sense of like, okay, this is going to be the prominent feeling now, those parts it’s almost like they were– felt like there was some kind of spell put on them, or somehow the forcefulness of the psychiatric medication was just too much. And when it leaves the system, it can be so jarring to the nervous system, to the energy body to try to cope with that.
So I love that perspective. But it’s interesting that you say that too because I’m always telling clients, especially if they have no experience with flower essences, this is going to be a subtle relationship. It’s not going to be anything that is like, Whoa, what’s happening here? It’s really going to be much more harmonious with your particular energy body and your energy system. And so it’s going to be subtle. You might not notice anything right away, but over time, something will be different. And so I always encourage clients to really start tracking, if they can, what it’s like every day since the day they took it, and seeing what happens in a week, what happens in a month, what happens in a couple of months, because it is that long engagement and it really is more harmonious than the psychiatric medication. Not that it doesn’t have its place, it can, but flower essences are different.
Rochana Felde: [00:33:53] Shifting focus just a little bit, I have on my mind the question of when it comes to mental health, we as flower essence practitioners, we’re working with a lot of the similar types of clients and similar types of issues, but we’re not licensed in a mental health practice. Flower essence therapy is considered an unlicensed practice in the United States, and we have to be careful about that line, and I think it’s good to have an understanding of where that is, where that line is, and be able to hear the flags for referring somebody to a mental health professional. And so I’m wondering if you have advice for us or anyone even not being a flower essence practitioner, just somebody working with friends, what are those red flags to look out for to know maybe you should be working with a mental health professional?
Maureen Clancy: [00:35:04] Oh, another great question. I think for me, one of the things that I would be listening for is a sense of a, especially if you’ve had trauma, a sense of a survival response that doesn’t turn off. And by that I mean the survivor response of the nervous system is just a few responses, and that’s fight, flight, freeze, fawn, collapse, submit, and cry for help. And over time, if that has been something that’s been needed in your environment, in your relationships, to keep yourself safe, there’s a sense of, it’s not turning off. And so there might be a part inside that is really not onboard with it being turned off. Even though the flower essence can encourage that, there might be a part that doesn’t even recognize that there is no longer any danger. And there might be something that’s so entrenched in the nervous system and in the neural pathways of the brain that flower essences alone or some kind of alternative counseling or healing alone isn’t enough to support the healing that that person is looking for. And so that’s when I would reach out to a mental health professional for assistance with that because things like EMDR can really help re-wire the neural pathways in the brain. So whatever, for example, if there’s a fight response that keeps coming out, and it keeps coming out as like anger in relationships or anger at a sense of abandonment, EMDR, and that’s just one of the modalities that I use, can really go to the first example of that, the worst example of that, the worst experience of that, or the most recent one, or all three, and help to bring about a complete change from, “I’m not okay because this happened,” to, “I’m okay even though this happened.” And that can help in a much shorter amount of time than flower essences or any kind of alternative healing work alone can do.
Certainly, if there’s some kind of organic psychosis going on like schizophrenia, that’s definitely something– I mean, that’s probably obvious, but that’s something that would require further mental health services to treat, but also sometimes things like a profound depression that can veer into suicidality, that is something that a mental health professional can be more equipped to work with and assess for the seriousness of that. So that’s when I would definitely bring that in. Yeah, those are two of the things that I would most be listening for, some entrenched beliefs about a sense of danger and who you are in the world and what’s possible, as well as those organic mental health issues that involve a sense of unreality or what we call derealization, which means that nothing looks real anymore, everything is looking kind of fake and no longer animated, and that you don’t even feel real yourself, those are things that mental health professionals can help more with than alternative healing alone.
I always think it’s really great for any kind of practitioner to develop a network of different practitioners, whether they’re licensed or not, to help them with working with clients where they feel stuck, or there’s a sense of, “It’s just not working. I’m not really sure if I’m missing something or if I have a blind spot somewhere. What else could be needed?” I know for me, I’ve been a mental health professional for 20 years and I have supervision all the time with other licensed professionals. But I also have a network of flower essence practitioners, massage therapists, clinical herbalists who I often will consult with and say, “You know what? What else can I bring in here? And can you help me conceptualize what this person is suffering with most and what else can be helpful?” So I feel like it’s important for anyone in a healing capacity to develop relationships and a network with colleagues who can provide another perspective and help to ease the suffering of a client they’re working with.
Kathleen Aspenns: [00:40:06] And I appreciate that aspect of bringing in community. For my trauma recovery as a cult survivor, humans were not safe. And I had to develop a relationship with the natural world which cultivated my nervous system and got me to a place where I could start to trust other people. And that’s been a really important part of my journey, is to get to a place where I realized other people could help me, and I was attracting people who were kind and not attracted to my hurt parts who were able to assist. And that aspect of not one thing can do everything. When we first start on the healing journey, we’re like, “I’m going to find the thing and that thing is going to be the only thing I need.” The more we learn and the more we experience this process, the more we realize how much we need so many people and therapies and different aspects of the whole healing spectrum.
Maureen Clancy: [00:41:15] Yeah, agreed. Yeah, there’s not just one way to do it. Although we long for that along the way that there’ll be that one thing. I had a clients once tell me this, it was interesting. She was experiencing the aftermath of a death of a beloved brother, and she was doing therapy. And then one day she said, “I’m going to go skiing. I think somehow that’s going to heal me.” And so she went down the mountain and then went back up the mountain and went down the mountain about 50 times. And she came to therapy the next time and she said, “I don’t know what happened on that mountain, but I’m a different person now.” And so it’s not just that one thing. I mean, she loved the work that we were doing, but it wasn’t enough. And she found something in herself that was speaking to her to help her do that. I think clients are always in touch with what’s going to be really helpful as long as there’s a space to listen for that.
Rochana Felde: [00:42:18] Yeah. And how indicative of the healing process itself going up and down the mountain, not just once, but many, many times.
Maureen Clancy: [00:42:30] It’s a great metaphor. Yeah. That’s interesting.
[/ppp_patron_only]Rochana Felde: [00:42:34] I’d love to hear more about your Gate Passages Framework you mentioned on your website, and it sounds like something that you’re bringing groups of people into.
Maureen Clancy: [00:42:46] So Gate Passage is my term for a time of enormous change, and we all go through many gate passages in our lives. And one of the most universal is puberty, we all go through that. But there are gate passages that feel very unique to us. And when you’ve had childhood trauma and you’re going through a change later in life, it’s very often the case that that’ll bring up something in the trauma that you never dealt with or that you just suddenly have a different perspective on. So there’s another layer of healing that can happen there. And so the framework really starts with the body, and it starts with listening to the story that the body is telling. And by that, I mean when I’m working with a client and they’re talking about something that was hurtful, often their bodies will start moving in a particular way. Either it will be a sense of contraction, like drawing in the shoulders and getting smaller, or a sense of looking over their shoulder, orienting to something that they may have seen or wanted to do during that experience.
And so one of the things that the Gate Passage Framework does is to help re-consolidate body memories that continue to emerge in the present like a persistent survival response and like you can’t relax so that your body can feel more at ease and so that your body can feel like more of a home that supports you in the life that you’re in. And so using that body-first approach is something that is really exciting for trauma survivors because there’s a particular wiring that can happen with the nervous system for trauma survivors. And talk therapy really doesn’t do anything to work with the body. There might be some mention of the body. There might be, I have a headache, but really looking at it from a different perspective, like, what does it mean if you suddenly have a headache and you’re talking about something really painful that happened to you? Well, it could be a part that is going, “I have to shut this down.” There’s a headache. You’re going to be unable to function pretty soon because we should stop talking about this, it’s too much. And so the Gate Passages Framework really starts with all of that and brings in things like flower essences and Reiki and sometimes tarot cards to get the nonclinical information for clients who are interested in that. And it’s a three-phase approach, which is a standard approach in trauma treatment. There’s Phase 1 that’s stabilization and safety, Phase 2, which is processing the deeper things that continue to show up in the present, and Phase 3 is what’s life like now? How do I want to make meaning of how I understand life now? And that’s something that I haven’t created myself. It goes back to Pierre Janet, who is a psychologist in the 1800s, and that really describes an approach to healing that is structured. And that’s what the Gate Passages Framework is based on. And it also brings in, like I said, that alternative healing that’s really missing from a lot of mental health treatment.
Kathleen Aspenns: [00:46:27] Well, thank you so much for sharing that, and that helps me to understand even more about how you integrate all of these healing modalities that you use into your work. Thank you so much for being with us. It’s been really lovely spending this time with you. How do our listeners find out more about you, reach out to you? Where should they look?
Maureen Clancy: [00:46:51] Oh, I invite your listeners to my online home. That’s maureen-clancy.com. And that’s mostly where people find me. I also recently got into TikTok, which is itself a whole other thing. But I’m active on there now and you can find me under my name, Maureen Clancy.
Rochana Felde: [00:47:17] Wonderful. It’s been so great to chat with you, and thank you for being on the podcast and for the great work you’re doing in crossing this bridge between therapy and flower essence therapy. I am so heartened to hear this. We’ve been kind of looking, who’s doing this. There’s got to be somebody doing this. And so when you came into our awareness, it was exciting to hear that. And now speaking to you, I’m really just happy and excited that you’re doing this work. So thank you for treading this ground and for talking to us and our listeners.
Maureen Clancy: [00:47:58] Oh, it’s a pleasure. It’s a pleasure to be with you and to talk about flower essences and mental health and how I incorporate the two. And my hope is that more mental health practitioners will start to incorporate flower essences in their work with clients. It’s been really, really helpful and I think that there are so many people who can benefit from it.
Kathleen Aspenns: [00:48:21] Thank you so much. Until next time. Bye-bye now.
