Vist Young Matthew – See Career Building phase @ the Integral Health Network & Resources for Surviving SF – Center this so far.
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“My Own Exhale”
Matthew Breuer (_____) joins the conversation today. A current Integral and Transpersonal Psychology Doctoral student at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), Matt is a licensed therapist and former NAMI Peer Group Facilitator. Matt holds an MA in Integral Counseling Psychology from CIIS and a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and minor in Religion from Ripon College. Matt brings lived experience with different mental health symptoms, diverse spiritual and religious traditions, and as a marriage and family therapist and mental health advocate to our conversation.
Matt grew up in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin and attended Catholic school from preschool through eighth grade. However, Matt attended a “more secular” high school. At 14, Matt was diagnosed with Bipolar Type I. Like Kay Redfield Jamison, Ph.D., who wrote the famous book An Unquiet Mind, Matt says, “What I see is an inaccurate cluster of symptoms. I’ve had a long journey of discovering that the story put on me isn’t my own sense of self.”
“The evolution of who we can be as people is too often limited by the beliefs of others. Yet, if we can free ourselves of those governing structures, we don’t have to be chained to their ideology.”
Matt’s undergraduate experience at Ripon College became a place of religious transition as Matt moved away from Roman Catholicism towards various brands of Protestantism. “Really in deep,” in addition to being active as a Ripon College Campus Christian Fellowship student leader from 2009-2011, Matthew was memorizing the Christian Bible. They had already read front-to-back and took a class to learn ancient Greek to translate for themselves the New Testament.
“My faith community connections impacted how my self-understanding and spiritual identity evolved. I went through a phase of no longer being a Christian. Now, I’m exploring what the Christ archetype means to me.” While at Ripon, Matt extensively studied Religion as well as Psychology. “Senior year, I had a juncture experience (Hartelius, 2018) when I confronted the unconscious. I began really diving into my dreams. Experiencing the world more magically and mystically, I opened to otherworldly, para-psychological phenomena.”
“This led me to CIIS, where studies incorporating Eastern wisdom inspired me to explore Buddhist philosophy. Today, I feel more centered in a place of Buddhist philosophy. Still, I have kept a lot of the Judeo-Christian background.”
After graduating from CIIS, Matt earned the Marriage and Family Therapist licensure, practiced in downtown San Francisco, and began a Psychology Ph.D. Program. Matt has since returned to Wisconsin and continues a good amount of reading and research from the Ph.D. program and has passions with many overlapping themes. Matt understands our human selves are composed of parts. Following Object Relations Theory and Therapy and concepts like the id, ego, and super-ego, Matt’s thinking also resonates with some concepts from transcendentalists, Walt Whitman, and deism.
“So you incorporate multiple traditions both professionally as a mental health practitioner and on a personal, spiritual level,” I say. “Yes! I’m authoring various fiction and nonfiction pieces. I hope my perspectives help others on their own paths of spiritual transformation. I am passionate about the strength of being vulnerable and want to share my story.” Matt is a former NAMI Dodge County Connection Support Group Facilitator and Social Hour Volunteer. Matt expresses excitement for the newly established 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Matt praises NAMI for its instrumental role in 988 implementation and advocacy.
Transpersonal psychology says human consciousness is “evolving along a spectrum.” Matt says we are tasked with navigating between the different aspects of ourselves and the numerous roles we and other people play in society. We’re all figuring out how to sustain ourselves with the resources inside us and others’ help. “As you care for yourself, you are more able to care for others.” With trauma, Matt reflects, it’s best to find ways to “tend to our own wounds and ask for help from others.”
Trauma disrupts our nervous system and emotionally charged and intellectually based beliefs (archetypes). For Matt, examining archetypal theology looks like exploring unity consciousness and Jungian and Freudian themes.
“We have different therapy modalities to help us re-own or reintegrate the split parts of the human psyche into our self-understanding. Something as simple as getting a neck massage can release an emotion or memory connected to a trauma memory.”
It’s important to discuss trauma and therapy with paradigms unconfined by Western ideology. As we’re able to restore harmony and integrate our nervous system, we feel safe. Matt uses somatic therapy practices and subtle energy medicine work to accomplish this.
“Language around identity is evolving. I’ve been boxed into things, categorized in ways that never fit me. This includes my emotional spectrum – how much I feel, how I feel, or how I express my feelings.”
“My identity incorporates various points on the feminine and masculine polarity. Many people don’t fall into that. The ‘genderbread person’ illustrates how our identity can differ from our expression.” This parallels how the expression of those with disabilities may not meet some folks’ expectations.
“Sexual repression and heteronormative standards have been a big part of my mental health disturbances and disequilibrium. I’ve continually made peace with and owned different aspects of my identity, even if society doesn’t approve. That’s where I’ve found my own exhale and ability to really breathe.”
Drawing on transpersonal psychology concepts and modalities like Somatic Experiencing Therapy, Matt individualizes therapeutic work to each client. Matt emphasizes entheogenic-assisted therapy, which utilizes psychedelics such as cannabis, ketamine, and mushrooms for both a therapeutic and deep spiritual purpose. Matt strives to integrate more earth-based, Eastern, feminine, and wisdom traditions. Matt does this to balance out a disproportionately patriarchal, Caucasian psychiatric model.
“The medical model is an abusive power structure that represses other spiritual communities and people who embrace plants as medicine and the importance of entheogens as a way of getting in touch with the gods and goddesses and all that is.”
Late best-selling religious studies scholar Huston Smith, who took entheogens mescaline and psilocybin, described witnessing, first-hand, realities depicted in ancient mystical texts such as the Hindu Vedas. One Good Friday, Huston vividly perceived the only appropriate response to the miracle of life. The response, Huston recounted, is to, at “every moment,” be “mindful” and show “care toward everyone we meet.”
For Matt, making peace in relationships is a meditative practice that includes contemplating healthy boundaries. Neuroscience applies to our relationship with ourselves and to interpersonal connections. As we self-regulate, “the frontal lobes restore the amygdala from being in the fight or flight trauma response.”
“My practices attune me into myself and into other people.” Matt constantly returns to the breath, charged with spiritual or religious personality or power, as a place of “entering in.”
“Coming into the prayerful pose, I fully inhale and exhale using the diaphragm, initiating the parasympathetic nervous system. Relax, rest, and digest. Tend and mend. This is the opposite of the fight or flight, faint or freeze trauma response we are trying to get out of – the pendulation of the trauma, from resourced to activated, in small amounts, called titration. As I go within myself and come back out, I notice my thoughts, physical and emotional sensations, and if and how they fluctuate. Moment to moment, I ground myself and allow new thoughts and changes in my physical and emotional sensations to wash over me. ”
Dialogue that incorporates working through the individual, group, and global trauma between different people is a part of bringing peace, Matt says. Inspired through conversations with colleagues at Ripon and classes with Dr. Joseph Hatcher, Matt seeks to be helpful to others. “By returning to our breath and bringing more peace to the disequilibrium in ourselves, we are strengthened to bring peace into the world.”
I reflect, “Daily identity- and hate-based attacks and threats uniquely affect each of us. How do we find the healthy space we need to cope within our individual selves and communities specific to a targeted identity or identities while not isolating from each other in ways that cause further harm? The trauma-informed, mindful dialogue you mention gets at this. This sort of conversation, of which interfaith is a part, builds mutual understanding, the discovery of common values, and the potential to organize for each other’s rights – including mental health care.”
“Yes,” Matt replies. “Through different events and experiences, I’ve realized that the roles we play are connected to the trauma we may experience in our families of origin or choice. In supportive communities, we can explore ways to affect what’s happening to us.”
Meditation, as a practice, returns us to nature and has been a crucial aspect of Matt’s healing journey. Other components of Matt’s self-care are acupuncture, a steady gym routine, and yogic practices such as meditative pranayama, dhyana, and pratyahara. Matt is also exploring other meditative practices: tonglen, metta and mantra.
“My primary practice is gratitude which unifies all my other practices. I begin and end my day with gratitude and strive for it to be in my interactions with others.” With Metta-lovingkindness meditation, Matt attends to the heart as the central entry place to serve and feed the self in order to go out to serve and feed others. Closing our conversation, Matt says, “I wish all of us ease, grace, and well-being and to take deep breaths whenever possible.”
Check out Matt’s Embodied Spirituality as Transpersonal Development and professional services.
References
Adams, D.H. & Belasco, J.L. (2015). The Mythic Roots of Western Culture’s Alienation from Nature. Tapestry Institute Occasional Papers, 1(3). https://tapestryinstitute.org/publications/occasional-papers/mythic-roots-alienation-vol-1-no-3-july-2015.
Berzoff, J., Flanagan, L. M., & Hertz. P. (2021). Inside out and outside in: Psychodynamic
clinical theory and practice in contemporary multicultural contexts (5th ed.). Rowman &
Littlefield.
Ducharme, E. L. (2017). Best practices in working with complex trauma and dissociative identity disorder. Practice Innovations, 2(3), 150-161. https://doi.org/10.1037/pri0000050
Freud, S. (2012). The basic writings of Sigmund Freud. Modern library.
Grunwald, S. (2021). Embodied Liberation in Buddhism, Participatory Theory, and Feminine Spirituality: A Metamodern Critical Hermeneutics.
Hartelius, G. (2018). Does spiritual awakening exist? Critical considerations in the study of transformative post-conventional development. The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 37(2), iii-iii.
Human Psyche Map Based on Jung’s Work.
https://www.integralworld.net/hemsell.html
https://traditionalmedicine.net.au/jung-and-traditional-healing
Jung, C. G. (2014). Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self. Routledge.
Moustakas, C. (1959). Psychotherapy with children: The living relationship. New York: Harper and brothers.
Rider, E. (2013). Jung, Alchemy & the Tree of Life Teleseminar. Reclamingsoul.com. http://reclaimingsoul.com/teleseminar-details/.
Şar, V., & Öztürk, E. (2007). Functional dissociation of the self: A sociocognitive approach to trauma and dissociation. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 8(4), 69-89.
Winnicott, D. (2014). Through Pediatrics to Psychoanalysis Collected Papers. London: Routledge.
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