“…risks that deliver you back to yourself.”
Rythea Lee has been an Inner Bonding® Counselor and trauma specialist for the past 24 years. She has her Masters in Spiritual Psychology and is a certified Inner Bonding® practitioner. She has had a private practice in Northampton, MA but also works with people all over the country through phone sessions.
Rythea’s Approach
Inner Bonding® is an emotional and spiritual modality created by Dr. Margaret Paul and Dr. Erika Chopich. This work explores outdated belief systems and the childhood experiences from which they were formed. A loving adult is created through time that can distinguish the past patterns from present day challenges so that old patterns are updated. A connection to spiritual resource is also developed to strengthen a sense of grounded guidance and life purpose that is not sabotaged by childhood wounds. There is a 6-step process that clients learn so that they can utilize them between sessions and as a life-long tool.
Rythea specializes in working with survivors of childhood sexual abuse and other traumas. Trauma education is a strong component of her work; giving clients a context for understanding how trauma manifests in the body and interrupts emotional, physical, and spiritual ease and functioning. She outlines and facilitates how the healing process works in terms of tracking and integrating memory, unwinding the nervous system, and building sturdy internal and external support systems. Rythea has seen how healing trauma and creating a life of action and intimacy is possible for those who engage in this work.
Peer Counseling
Peer Counseling is a peer to peer practice Rythea has been teaching in Northampton that is based on the work by Harvey Jackins and Re-evalution Counseling. Rythea has used many of the basic principles that were originated in Re-evalution Counseling and added and changed the format to fit her values and experience. It is a form where peers get together and take turns listening and supporting each other for an allotted amount of time (like 20 minutes or a half hour each) on a regular basis. The underpinnings of the form is to offer caring, focused listening (a unique skill) while also seeing the inherent goodness in the person you are supporting. This alone creates a loving environment for people to be heard, seen, and healed.
Peer Counseling also fosters the release of emotions and presents sound theory on how and why this is useful. Participants learn to name and allow emotions to be expressed, felt, and then shared with their peer counselor. Because most of us have been taught to repress and judge our emotional reactions, the permission to be present with feelings is generally powerful for most people. Peer counselors also learn how to track their feelings back in time to “old” historic material that has needed attention for a long time. The connection between present-day emotion/distress can then be linked to childhood experiences and offer insight and release to previously repressed feelings.
The process of discovering deeper, embodied emotion and at the same time feeling connected to another person (your peer counselor), is very effective in bringing forth feelings of peace, hope, creativity, relief from stress, clear thinking, and expressive freedom in general. It interrupts a deep loneliness and isolation that many people feel and offers a lifestyle of support and closeness.
Learn more through enrolling in Rythea’s Peer Counseling Series or email her: rythea@crocker.com.