Another was that soul loss is not a singular experience as originally theorized, but rather a spectrum of experiences involving a range of psychospiritual injuries including soul wounding, soul withering, soul shattering, soul flight, soul theft, and soul murder. A key finding was that the soul loss construct is clinically relevant to a subpopulation of CSA survivors. I explored this theory using intuitive inquiry in conjunction with narrative, imaginal, and somatic analysis. ![]() Soul loss is defined as the felt sense of psychological decompensation experienced at the deepest level of the survivor’s identity. This is an exemplary, exploratory study of 12 women (N = 12) within that specific, delimited group. I theorized that CSA represents a form of ritual defilement that is subjectively experienced as soul loss in a subset of CSA survivors. While considerable research efforts have been directed toward understanding the biopsychosocial impact of CSA, less effort has been directed toward understanding its psychospiritual impact. Within the existing trauma literature, childhood sexual abuse (CSA) has been shown to result in a range of pathological symptoms. The author therefore proposes Mindfulness Based Feminist Therapy (MBFT) as an integration of these two approaches. The implications for these findings are that the tools that mindfulness-based modalities employ could be useful to feminist therapists and clients. Theoretically then, this self-in-relationship becomes the interior working model of the securely attached ‘self’ capable of empathic, and therefore ethical, agency. The mindfulness-based group helped women learn affect regulation skills, and arguably also gave them skill for attending and responding to others with ‘true’ empathy, that is not losing the ‘as if’ quality of sharing another’s emotions. The feminist-based group seemed to be better at facilitating story telling, breaking women’s sense of isolation, reifying their experience for them and at the same time challenging internalized oppression and raising their political consciousness. The qualitative data, analyzed using Doucet & Mauthner’s (2008) Listening Guide, suggested that each modality had great strengths and ameliorating effects for the participants. When more layers were examined, data showed differences in the subscale scores of the Self Compassion Scale (Neff, 2003) that suggested a different kind of change was present, one modality compared to another. The quantitative research showed that both modalities significantly increased the women’s mean scores in both self-compassion and empathy, showing the positive healing effects of both modalities. ![]() From there it evolved into a mixed-methods exploration of the effectiveness of two different modalities, one feminist-based and one mindfulness-based, for increasing empathy and self-compassion. The study started with the theoretical premise for the connection and importance of empathy and self-compassion in how we come to understand the ‘self’ then established the positive correlation between self-compassion and empathy using two psychometric scales, the Self Compassion Scale (SCS) (Neff, 2003) and the Balanced Emotional Empathy Scale (BEES) (Mehrabian & Epstein, 1972) with a population of university students. The intent of this research was to study the role of self-compassion and empathy for healing the sense of ‘self’ with women who survive interpersonal violence. Now Maté brings his perspective to the great untangling of common myths about what makes us sick, connects the dots between the maladies of individuals and the declining soundness of society- and offers a compassionate guide for health and healing. For all our expertise and technological sophistication, Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person, ignoring how the toxicity of today’s culture stresses the body, burdens the immune system, and undermines emotional balance. Over four decades of clinical experience, Maté has come to recognize the prevailing understanding of “normal” as false, neglecting the roles that trauma and stress, and the pressures of modern-day living, exert on our bodies and our minds at the expense of good health. Prescription drug usage, high blood pressure, mental illness, and so many other troubling issues are on the rise. In 'The Myth of Normal' renowned physician Gabor Maté eloquently dissects how Western countries that pride themselves on their healthcare systems are actually seeing an upsurge in chronic illness and general ill health.
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