How a Disastrous Therapy Session Transformed My Use of Family History

How a Disastrous Therapy Session Transformed My Use of Family History
Episode 67, Heather Murphy, Stories in Our Roots

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Stories in Our Roots. I am Heather Murphy. I am launching a new 12 week group program called Rooted Success in January of 2023. That uses family history as a method to help you live your own version of a successful life. I'm also offering one-to-one coaching, using the same framework.

The group program is on sale for 40% off until the end of November. And then will be 25% off until mid December. You can find a link in the show notes and I would love to have you as part of that group. Now in this episode, I will share with you how disastrous therapy session transformed my use of family history and how that experience shaped the framework that I use in my signature programs.

A couple of years ago, I decided it was time for me to go to therapy for the first time. I had been struggling for quite some time with terrible fatigue. And it was really limiting the way I wanted to live life. I went to my doctor and we did blood work. We found out that my cortisol was acting kind of wonky, but the treatments weren't helping it wasn't changing anything.

And after not finding answers, I just knew inside of me that my physical problems were triggered because of my mental health. Well, my therapy visits seemed to go all right. At first, when I told my therapist about my life and the struggles that shaped my present view of myself and how I interpreted what happens around me. In between sessions, I would come home and like pull out my journals, the first of which I had when I was a first grader, to help me remember different events in my life and how I reacted to them.

When my therapist felt that she had gone through enough of my background. She explained the modality of Internal Family Systems and moved into treatment. Well, by the middle of that session, I have never felt so angry at someone in my entire life. The experience was extremely triggering. I felt trapped and like my body would explode. And that was the end of working with that therapist. And it took me a long time to try therapy again.

Even though that day is not one that I want to repeat. I did learn some things from the entire experience that shifted how I interact with my family tree. And opened my eyes to the benefits others could have from looking at family history in just a little different way.

Now I have over 20 experience working as a genealogist, graduated with a degree in family history and genealogy. I have helped so many people research their ancestors, teach them how to do it, to do the research on their behalf. I've spoken to small groups and hundreds of people at RootsTech. My brain loves solving the problems and the data processing that are involved in researching someone's life.

My therapy experience opened my mind to see how the process of family history research can I help someone heal and see themselves and the world in a healthier way so they can live a more fulfilling and satisfying life. The therapy modality of Internal Family Systems has a concept called Self. This is who we are at our core. An example would be children who live life full of joy and curiosity and excitement before life's experience has had a chance to put a damper on those things. We all experience uncomfortable situations in life and learn to adapt, to try and keep ourselves safe. In Internal Family Systems these protection mechanisms are referred to as managers and firefighters. Parts of us that try to manage situations so we don't get those uncomfortable feelings. And the firefighters come into action to rescue us from the feelings if they just get to be too much.

Self is characterized by what is referred to as the eight C's, calmness curiosity, creativity, clarity, connection, compassion, courage and confidence. Now all these parts, self, and the managers and firefighters are important but when they get out of balance, we don't function. Optimally. When a person about is out of balance and they may experience overwhelm fear, procrastination, guilt, feelings like you aren't enough. Resorting to addictive behaviors to try and feel better, being reactive in situations, brain fog, fatigue, and a whole list of others.

As I continued my own family history, exploration. And as I have interviewed dozens of people on this podcast about their experiences with family history. I saw more and more evidence that a family history practice could help people develop these eight C's. That's why I stopped handing clients research reports, and instead devoting my time to developing a system for people to understand and change themselves using family history as a tool and a framework so they can live happier, more successful and fulfilling lives.

I like to show you what this looks like by going through the seas and giving examples. These characteristics aren't linear. You don't have to check one off to move on to the next, but I've put them in an order that works in my brain, at least, with the process of family history.

Number one. Calmness.

Life is crazy for most people, between your obligations with family, work, and friends, and not to mention maintaining a home or troubleshooting car problems. There's always things for you to do. And in fact, our brains like to be continually solving problems, so much so that sometimes they even create eight problems to solve.

That's what's happening when you lay in bed at night, worrying about something you have absolutely no control over. Your brain is firing on all cylinders, trying to fix things that might have a chance to cause you a problem later on. My brain does this all the time. Trying to keep me safe from feeling certain feelings.

But a busy brain doesn't mean a healthy brain. Have you ever tried meditation and felt your insides freak out because you don't know how to be calm and still. That's a good indication your brain has been conditioned to feel safe only in constant problem solving mode.

A family history practice can foster a sense of calmness. For me, genealogy is very systematic, which can be calming for my brain. I decided on a task and then I go through a process to accomplish it. Choose a family, identify what information is missing, work through the list of possibilities, and then revise the plan with the information that I find. Sometimes though I can't find what I'm looking for and then my brain starts going into overdrive, tripping over itself to try and solve the problem as fast as it can even if it doesn't have what it needs to solve the problem. That's my opportunity to practice stopping, taking a breath, re-evaluating my situation, and making a plan for moving forward. As I practiced doing that in my family history research. I teach myself to follow that practice outside of research. As I go about my day and I feel my brain start to bounce all over. I've trained myself to stop and take a minute to call my mind so that I can continue being present in the moment instead of 10 steps ahead.

There's a difference between calming though and zoning out. One of my favorite analogies came from my interview with Katherine Willson. She said, sometimes we sit at our computers and do family history as if we are sitting at a slot machine. We sit there to accumulate as much as we can, whether that is information or coins, pulling that handle over and over, or clicking that mouse over and over to get our reward. Well, if your goal is a calmer mind, that approach won't help you. The people I work with learn to approach your family history practice with mindfulness, using breath, work, and intention to clear the mind and prepare it to be successful. And even success can mean different things at each session, depending on where your mind is.

Number two. Curiosity.

At first glance, this one connects pretty easily to family history. You're curious about your ancestors and so you research them. Another word that also fits, but has a different feel to it is inquisitive. So use whichever one fits for you for awhile? I couldn't do curious. I was like, I'm not curious, but I can be inquisitive. So these things can flex a little bit, depending on what fits in your brain. That's part of the curiosity is how does your brain work?

So curiosity can start with you wanting to know when someone lived and died and then broaden out to other documented events, success such as where they lived and what property they might have left behind.

But it can also deepen into a curiosity about aspects of their life that might not have any documentation to support. Why did they make certain choices? How did they feel when a certain event happened? What was important to them? How do they view their role in their family or in their community? Even if you can't find an answer to those questions there are benefits to practicing that curiosity.

You can then redirect the curiosity you developed focusing outward on your family to also focus inward. Why do you make certain choices? How did it events in your life affect you? What really motivates you to do what you do? Is it because you love what you're doing?

Or is it because you were expected to do that and you keep doing it because it feels safe? Why does it feel safe? What experiences did you have that helped create that belief? How did the experience of past generations affect how you have that belief.

Number three is creativity.

Creativity isn't only about creating, like painting or gardening. It's about using your imagination. And this goes right along with curiosity. Curiosity asks the questions and creativity fills in the blanks that research can't fill. Our minds, often as the result of input from our family and society ,create rigidity in our lives. Creativity is about opening up to possibilities you didn't notice before. It's about learning how to create the life you want in your time in place. And not just copying what others have done and their time and place.

Number four. Clarity.

One of my favorite tools in family history to get clarity are timelines. The more you add to a timeline, the more clearly you can see a person's life. Starting with their events, then their children, siblings, or parents. Fronts and adding in local and world happenings. You really get a good view. Another set of tools are my Story Data Charts that I use with my clients, which helps you to look at the last several generations of your family in a way that helps you see patterns or anomalies, or sometimes just things that pop out at you that you didn't realize before. These charts can have information such as which of your ancestors had a parent that died while they were still young. Which moved large distances? You can then use that information to gain clarity about why you or your family have certain beliefs and practices.

Learning about your family over generations helps give you perspective. It's helpful to see that everyone's life has ups and downs and each person uses different strengths or approaches to get through life the best they can.

I heard a lot about my family stories when I was young. But I have learned that my interpretation of those stories or the way my brain remembers them aren't necessarily accurate. Either I remembered the information incorrectly or maybe it was told to me that way. Also, we interpret stories differently. I remember one family story one way, and my sister remembers it differently.

In my mental files is the story that my grandfather's plumbing business failed taking my dad's college savings with it. So my dad had to quit college after one semester. He never went back and worked as a laborer the rest of his life. My brain created the story that my childhood would have been very different, not one of poverty and instability, if my grandfather would have been better at having his customers pay him rather than just trying to help everyone.

This last summer, my grandmother moved out of her house and into apartment. And so I got boxes of anything that had to do with my dad or our family. And I was going through those papers and among them were his grade reports scattered throughout from grade school all the way through that first semester of college.

Well, it turns out that money probably wasn't the only reason why my dad didn't keep going to college. His grades weren't very good. Like almost on the verge of getting kicked out not good. It was interesting because then with that new information, I was able to change the story in my mind and see things differently. And how many times do we have stories that we don't remember accurately or that in different times of our lives, when we hear the same story, we see them differently just because our life experiences are completely different.

Number five is connection.

Innate in everyone is the desire for connection and belonging. Over and over on this podcast, you have heard guests mentioned about that connection, belonging and grounding that has come to them as they learned about their ancestors.

Within a family history practice is the opportunity to find connection and several ways. With the ancestors you research. Family members as you ask them about their lives and the ancestors that they knew. Connecting with cousins you didn't know you had connection to the land or the community in which you live. Or connections with others who also find value in researching their family.

One of the reasons I am excited to expand my services to include group coaching is because I know it will help foster that feeling of connection and belonging that people need in their lives. Also in the process of connecting with our ancestors, we also have the opportunity to connect with ourselves more deeply even more so if we are purposeful about it as we're doing our research.

Number six, compassion.

Have you ever heard the anecdote of someone getting upset with a slow driver in front of them and then they see it as their grandmother and their attitude completely changes? Why did that person suddenly have more compassion? Because they knew their grandmother and more of her story.

The more we learn about ourselves and our ancestors, the more compassionate we become. Then we can use that compassion in our interactions with our living family and even people we don't know. Iris didn't know why her father parented the way he did. When she learned the story of his childhood and his parents she had more compassion for the way he had learned to get through life. The curiosity we develop can help us to be less judgmental and more compassionate as we gain better clarity about all the factors that make up why we do certain things.

Compassion can also come through shared experiences. Knowing the stories of an immigrant ancestor or one who experienced poverty, or made different life choices than your own can help you to be more compassionate when you encounter people whose lives are more similar to your ancestors than they are to your own experiences.

Number seven. Courage.

Now we all can use more courage in our lives. I am definitely on that list. We need courage to face so many experiences, so things that happen outside of us, that we have no control over sometimes, and even things that from within, we need courage to overcome our fears and our internal hangups that block our way.

Life just can be hard and scary and full of unknowns. Connecting with our ancestors can help us summon up the courage to meet our challenges. Not to get rid of the fear and uncertainty, but to help us walk with that fear. I don't know about your family tree, but the majority of my ancestors were not superheroes who laughed in the face of danger. They were regular people, just like you, just like me, that struggled, and triumphed, and struggled some more. I loved how Mia talked about the strength of her ancestors. She quoted "that power is in me. It flows through my veins. "And reflecting on David's relations and the struggles that they got through he said "how would they feel knowing their cousin was the one who gave up." The moments we take courageous action, even in small ways, will affect the generations who come after us.

Last one. Number eight is confidence.

Confidence comes through practice. We can gain confidence in skills, like in using genetic genealogy to determine relationships, or public speaking, or performing surgery. We can also gain confidence in our abilities. Our ability to build a life that fulfills us and will benefit future generations. Confidence in our ability to keep moving forward comes as we keep getting back up when life knocks us down. Confidence in our ability to face scary things comes as we continue to work through them as they come up. As we grow in these C's of Self, we can have the confidence that the decisions we make and the life that we choose to live are the result of our intentions and our choices.

Most likely, if you are listening to this podcast, you are interested in learning about your family history. Why not dig deeper into those roots and use them to make your life better? I can't tell you the number of times over the last more than 20 years that I have been involved in talking to people about family history when I tell them what I do, they look at me and they say, " oh, I should do that sometime. I really mean to," but you can just see in their eyes that they're not actually going to take a step towards doing that. And I don't want that to be you. I challenge you to build a family history of practice. One that is, has intention and purpose to fortify elements of Self so that you can move forward and create a life full of what is meaningful and fulfilling to you.

Now I didn't create this approach to family history with the intention that every time you sit down to do family history You'll be in a mindset of deep introspection. The purpose is to learn how to open your mind to other possibilities. To see yourself more clearly. To give yourself the tools you need in your life to be that child full of joy, curiosity, and excitement as you move through life. Fortifying that part of yourself will help you get through the days and the situations that are hard and discouraging.

Now I'd love to hear from you if you want more clarification about how I work with people in this process of building up themselves using family history. Thanks for listening today. And for those of you in the United States, have a wonderful Thanksgiving. And no matter where you live take some time in these last few weeks of the year to be curious and ask family members questions that maybe you hadn't thought to ask them before. Kind of push those boundaries of what motivated them and how did they feel and not just what happened to them. Whether you're sitting down across the table or through a screen take the time now to find out those things, ask those questions and gain more clarity and to who you are and the world and family in which you find yourself.