Fierce Love is a relationally bold clinical method that heals the patient’s Wounded Self by championing the Core Self so that the Present-Day Self can flourish.
At the heart of suffering is self-rejection, caused by a reaction to traumatic experience/s in which the patient internalizes self-hatred in the form of Core Erroneous Beliefs and Pathogenic Affects (e.g., “I am unlovable, it’s all my fault, I am bad.”)
The Fierce Love therapist stands in on behalf of the patient’s Core Self, piercing the defenses and the toxic shame states, to guide the patient back home to themselves.
We keep our True Selves hidden from a world that feels unsafe. Fierce Love therapy seeks to bring that True Self out of hiding, by deeply attuning with the client, feeling for them what they may not allow themselves to feel.
“When you are felt you exist.”
DW Winnicott
“The therapist must give to the patient a replica of the birthright of love which was denied, as an infant or a growing child, but which, if granted, would have assured him full stature as an individual in his own right.”
Izette de Forrest (1954). a student of Sandor Ferenzci, (1954),The Leaven of Love.
“To be safe in the here and now, you have to give people what they needed in the there and then.”
Bessel van der Kolk