Serge
Hi, Merete.
Merete
Hi, Serge. So you recently wrote an article about trauma, but an unusual article.
That's right. The unusual thing is that I use a trauma event from my own life when I was 14 years old as the case. That's unusual.
Serge
Yeah.
Merete
And the title in the article is, it isn't only mine, it's ours. So it's really an article focusing on how we can get from a traumatic event just being only about you, and then lifting it out into a collective container, where we can see that it really isn't only about me. These kinds of events happen. It's not because of me, it wasn't my fault, etc., etc. But it's that lifting process from individualization into collective being together about it, Yeah, that's the focus of the article.
Serge
Yeah, yeah. So that sense of isolation, which contributes and increases the trauma and that shift from isolation to finding a context for it in which it can be healed. And something very striking, what you describe in your process of exploring your own trauma, is something that you started feeling in your chest. And so maybe I'm inviting you to describe the process and how it manifested in your body.
Merete
Yeah. Thanks for asking that, Serge. I like that you focus there, because in a way it holds an essence in the article, or an essence in what emerged for me when writing this article. I had had an impulse for several years now for, in some ways, getting this story out. to get personal attention, not to kind of be seen as... it wasn't really about me and so I was looking for a long time for how can I do this and I finally decided upon writing an article. When you write articles, especially in peer-reviewed journals. You have to find references. And I have had a process around this trauma. This trauma is me as a 14-year-old girl who gets perpetrated by a female scout leader. So this is female to female sexual perpetration. And what I have experienced during all these years, all these years of trauma healing, is that I have never met anybody else who talked about female to female sexual perpetration. I have met a lot of talk about male to female or male to male sexual perpetration, But this aspect of female to female is and still is way more hidden. I have over years made searches. This event happened in the Girl Scout, the international Girl Scout community. So I started looking for, can I find any material about this? And every time I tried, I didn't find anything. And then I noticed that not finding any acknowledgement out there for this kind of story existing, not finding that, had a deep impact in my body. It was as if I was pushed back into myself. Oh, oh yeah. Oh yeah. Again, isolation and this is just about me. This is a very special trauma. I have nobody to share it with and I need to do all this work alone. and I'm showing it in my body now because it was really this feeling of being pushed backwards on my breastbone. Instead of a full inhalation where you expand and fill up yourself, it's like... It's in a way like being... What do you call it when you puncture a balloon?
Serge
Yeah, the deflation.
Merete
Yeah, it's like you get deflated.
Serge
Yeah.
Merete
So from my knowledge about body patterns, this means I went hypo-responsive in some of the tissue in my whole breathing system.
Serge
So, Mirate, maybe as we talk about this, you and I, and maybe other people who listen to us, can replicate a little bit that experience. So that, you know, it's a felt experience. And so maybe one way to do that is to kind of cave in, you know, feel the chest caving in as it's totally deflated. And so noticing that and then noticing what it's like when there is air coming into the lungs. And it's like a balloon that's inflated and the walls of the balloon are pushing forward. And as I do that, I feel my chest pushing forward. So from here...
Merete
Filling up, right?
Serge
Yeah.
Merete
Either losing energy or filling up on an in-breath. And then my suggestion for those who listen to this and also for you, Serge, is to just connect it to this fact that you may have an experience inside of you. something that happened in your life or some inner state or where you would like something out there to meet you. But it feels like there's nothing out there. There's an absence. Instead of there's a meeting, there's an absence. And that absence is what makes you withdraw again. It's almost like the absence is a kind of push or it initiates the collapse or the withdrawal. It's a deep withdrawal that happens.
Serge
Yeah. Back into isolation. When I do that, that sense of expanding, there's the expectation to be met. Yes. And not being met is kind of a sense of shame. And that's that collapse coming in. And so...
Merete
Now you say the word shame in it, and I think that's very precise. Because shame doesn't only come with words. It also comes with absence. What is not spoken, what is not openly included in a society, in an outer context, is treated as if it doesn't exist. And that is an aspect of what is called systemic shame. The system simply doesn't acknowledge the existence of whatever it is, in this case, female to female sexual perpetration. It's as if it doesn't exist, but it happened to me. So, then it ends up being only about me. it ends up being pushed into or collapsed into me because of the absence out there.
Serge
Yeah.
Merete
So you could say that it's the result of, if we speak a more theoretical language, It's the result of denial, of minimizing, of avoidance, basically of avoidance.
Serge
So, you talk about systemic shame. I want to go from the concept to the experience. And when I let myself inflate from the inside out, there is a sense of it's what allows me to stay there, to go there and stay there, is an implicit sense of being supported, at the very least met. Yes. And so when we talk about systemic shame, usually we expect shame to be something that's explicit or you're bad. But what you're talking about is actually the implicit nature, the absence of support, the absence of talking about it that makes it disappear. And that's where the collapse in the body corresponds to the lack of acknowledgement in society. and so you have no place to be supported.
Merete
That's very precise. And it's an aspect of systemic shame that I find it very important for us to start talking about. Because it's simply something, it's the result of something missing. It's not the result of something actively being done to us. It's something not being done.
Serge
Yeah, something not being done. And so the same way as it is now common knowledge that children who are neglected, how profound a form of abuse, neglect can be. And so what you're talking about is that notion of neglect, that there is no mirroring, no validation, no acceptance of what's happening. And so then there is that profound neglect.
Merete
Yeah. And this profound experience that it's all about me. And I'm all alone with it.
Serge
Yeah. All about me in a very, very negative thing. There's something wrong with me.
Merete
Yeah. So if I go back to the story about writing the article, it was in this process of actually what really started my decision of now I'm going to write. It was that I had a conversation with one of my very old friends who is a film director. So he is not a psychotherapist. He is from a little... But he has dealt with... He has been training people in making films about something that really matters for them. And I told him this story of my 14-year-old trauma that he had never heard before. And I told him that I had this impulse to get it out. But I also had this, you know, a difficulty that whenever I spoke to people in my own professional field, the psychotherapy field, there was, I met some hesitation because you don't, you just don't do that. You don't, you don't use your own case story. It's considered, it's actually considered making it only personal. And it was the opposite I wanted. But this guy, he didn't have that response. He wasn't kind of inside the norms of the psychotherapy field. He was in the filmmaker field. And he just felt this strong impulse from me for getting it out. and he got that this was not about me getting personal attention, this was important for us
Serge
this was important
Merete
for all of us and that's why I wanted to write it and that support helped me to make the decision that, okay I'm going to go for it, I'm going to give it a try and I knew that I was going up against all the rules in this peer-reviewed journal that I would submit it in. You just don't do it. You just don't use yourself your own case. And some part of me just knew that this was, I can't explain that, but it was very strong. It was really an impulse to pass it on. to say, here it is, this isn't only mine. And I get touched even when I say that. This isn't only about me. I want all of you to pick it up. We can carry it together. But if we individualize it, if there's so much denial about it, we really hurt individuals.
Serge
Yeah, yeah. And so as you say that, as you say it's not only about me, I feel moved. Because what you're doing is describing not just your situation, but your process.
Merete
Yes.
Serge
And the process and the reflection about what happened, how you dealt with it, is something that can be shared with other people. Because it can give a marker for how other human beings react to the situation as peers. As opposed to, you know, you put yourself in the hands of a therapist and the therapist works their magic to heal you. But this is about how you experience it. And so there's an invitation for people to see how does it feel for you when you're there.
Merete
It's really another word for what you say is that it's asking for a subgroup.
Serge
Yeah.
Merete
It's saying, I can bring in this voice. Is there anybody else who will join me in that? That's the invitation. And that is a symmetrical, it's an invitation for a symmetrical relationship. It's not saying, I'm a big trauma therapist and I know a lot about this. That happens to also be the case that I can reflect as a trained trauma therapist about this, which I also do in the article. But the reaching out in the article is symmetrical. It's really going for forming a subgroup around. How do we get out of these traumas where we have collapsed inwards because there was no acknowledgement? And you could say the interesting thing about this type of trauma is that that lack of acknowledgement is there in the psychotherapeutic field as well.
Serge
Yeah.
Merete
Psychotherapists know very little about female-to-female perpetration.
Serge
Yeah. So I want to highlight something there. On the one hand, what's very, very important is finding a subgroup and the validation that the very specific instance of your trauma is something that is more widely shared than you thought. But on the other hand, there is also happening that as you are being very specific, in some way, you reach out to a much wider sense of group. It's not just people who have experienced a similar kind of situation, a similar kind of story, but where the trauma comes from the lack of validation, lack of acknowledgement, isolation, systemic shame.
Merete
Yeah, that's right. Which is actually why I didn't name the article anything about female-to-female sexual perpetration, because in a way that is not the headline. I could say the headline is to describe a pathway out of personalization due to systemic shame, due to avoidance. And that happens with many types of trauma. So it points to this, to that trauma healing is a systemic process. i could and that is really what that is what i uh realized in a surprising way for myself when i did this literature search and i finally found now i found quite a lot of articles i found books, they all write that, yes, there's not a lot written. You know, so on one hand, I got this recognition that, yes, you really need to look for it, because it's way less acknowledged, but it is there. And I still remember that impact, and I can still feel it in my chest bone, in my breast bone. That when there's literature out there, it's as if, you know, then it's not hard work to breathe in. It's as if energy comes in by itself into my ribcage and I just expand. Because what has been sitting in there in isolation, it gets connected to something outside of me. That's an amazing sensation.
Serge
Yes. So I want to maybe invite people again to remember that experience of the collapse in the chest and the opening. And I think that's a transition to the experience of trauma where what's happening is that in some way what is most remarkable is what's not noticed, what seems to become invisible. And so that's where we come back to your life work about the hypostates. And maybe do you want to just say something about that?
Merete
Yeah, I think one of the strong impulses for bringing this story out was that it's really, if I hadn't had that experience as 14-year-old, I probably wouldn't have become an international expert in working with hypostates. Right? Because I was with that event that got dissociated completely right after the event. So I had, as 14 year old, I had no idea what had happened. I just knew that something had become very, very weird. And I felt awful. And I turned it against myself. Something must be entirely wrong with me. Today I know that that was a deep collapse in my system. It was a natural hypo-arousal response to a high overload of impact. I got drugged, I got strongly sexually stimulated. It was a completely overwhelming event. What do we do in that? I couldn't flee, I couldn't get away. You collapse. And I did. My whole system collapsed. And then I functioned on top of that. So then entering, it had a huge impact on my life. I was expected to have an academic career, have a good head. I started studying at university and it didn't work. Nothing really worked because something had gone completely out of balance and nobody tried to reach into me. And this is where the hidden, things that go hidden, they are very often in our cultures left alone because they don't really call for attention. If you are very hypervigilant, it's visible. And other people get disturbed by it. That isn't fun either. But at least it's visible. Where these parts that go into deep hypostates, they really go invisible. And often, that's just considered, okay, she became a little quiet. But nobody tried. family or school or church or scouts or nobody. So I was left with this huge change in my autonomic nervous system and in my muscle system and with no help. Then, through different ways, I figured out that it was a good idea to work bodily. So I became a psychomotor trainer, which was really on one hand helpful because it awakened my body again. But again, the dosage was too high. I did way too much bodily. So I awakened and then I lost it again. I said in a different language, I came out of dissociation and then I dissociated again. And that roller coaster happened over my whole training.
Serge
Maybe let's just stay there a bit so that notion that trauma, stress, something that's too much. Yeah. It brings either something that's too much energy or something about that collapse, that disappearance. yes it's not that too much energy is good but at least it's visible yes and when it disappears it's not there there's nothing to see so there's nothing that we can do about it and the you're pointing out that in paying attention to the body and engaging the body, you were doing something. But because you were not actually engaging your parts that were collapsed at the level of energy where they were, it was too much energy and so it did not work.
Merete
That's right. That's right. And in a way that I have learned later, I have come to realize that that is an experience that many people have that we go into therapy and maybe maybe we experience a big release a big expression of emotions etc but it doesn't last then we go home and after two days it's as if it's gone or we can't replicate it. And I have come to, I very often in my groups, I ask about this. I tell this story about myself, not the event, but this phenomenon of doing a lot bodily, getting energy, and then not being able to sustain it. And many, many people recognize that. And a way to understand that mechanism is that if you don't include the hypoparts, and if you don't listen to what dosage they can work in, and what helps them to build up energy and keep it, If you don't do that, if you primarily focus on how do we get out of the tension, how do we get some release, how do we get some expression, if that's the primary understanding of the process, then the hypo parts of whatever you work with, they show up after. And they inhibit integration. so you get the release but you can't sustain it that's why I have called it sustainable that working with hypostates supports sustainable change
Serge
so maybe let's use the example that we talked about at the beginning about chest and so when the chest is collapsed I'm not aware of the chest. I might be aware of some tension in my shoulder. I might be, but I'm just not noticing the chest at that point. If I force the chest to expand with a sense of it should expand, yes, I can do it, but it's not going to really be sustainable because everything else, you know, conspires to just bring it back down. So what we're talking about is that kind of attuned connection with the collapsed part to find a very gentle way to allow it to find some opening in a way that it can support, it can sustain. Otherwise we get into that yo-yo effect of, hey, I do it, but then it comes back.
Merete
And if we take it right into that movement in the chest, it could mean to do it as a much smaller movement and slower, so that you're not focusing on, oh, now I want to get my breastbone all the way out there. but go to a much smaller. It's like getting, just getting the beginning of that movement. Oh my God, my chest bone can actually lift a little.
Serge
And so...
Merete
And then comes my in-breath, you know?
Serge
Yeah.
Merete
Whoa.
Serge
And so when I describe it as, it's not about the intention of doing a movement for the sake of a movement, but it's actually engaging with that body part in saying hey i see where you are how would it be for you to just do a little bit and let me see let's feel it and then back and forth and so there is a connection and so we're talking about engagement and connection which is very relational and the exact opposite of the isolation that you were describing that's true
Merete
And I think that is a key aspect of working with hypostates. It's that by acknowledging that they are there, knowing that they are there in the body, you can choose with your conscious part. You can choose to reach for them. You can choose to invite them out. And with that, you deliver the relationship they never had. And they need the hypo parts. They need that invitation. They are not going to come out by themselves. Right? So it's this, and that is what I have worked on in all my professional career. It's to find methodology that can support that process and understand that process and why it is such a different process compared to the thinking that comes with working with hyper parts, where you are tense and you benefit from release, you benefit from expression. It's a whole different world. And again, like with the type of trauma I had, it's the same thing with the hypostates. Very little is written about them. Today, there's much more written about it. It's hypoarousal, the collapse, is much more included into the understanding of trauma reactions. So we are in a way better situation today than just 20 years ago in trauma therapy. But what is still much less included is this understanding on a very concrete body level in our muscle system. That we can both go tense, but we can also give up. We can also go flaccid. So when we get stressed, for example, we sit there, I don't know, I sit with my computer, I get too many emails, I have too much to do. What does my body do? Well, I lift my shoulders and I tense up in my diaphragm. Very typical tension pattern. But where do I go flaccid? And when I remember to ask myself that, then immediately I come down and I start realizing, oh yeah, when I sit there and get too efficient and pushy, then I lose energy in my core. Sometimes I even lose energy in my feet. Sometimes I lose energy in my pelvic floor. I lose some support from underneath. Now if I can go there and engage in a precise dosage with these parts, I gain more access to more of me. With that I have more information available and I have more realistic choices. for example I could take a break before I move on or I could I could choose the easy emails before the most difficult ones or I get I get access to I am here I get out of the overwhelm and kind of the tension solution which is to just push through
Serge
yeah
Merete
so systems thinking that lies in that, well, when we get impacted, we do both. We both tense up, but we also disappear.
Serge
So that's a major part, that notion of system, because I think what the prevalent idea is that activation goes one way in the whole body-mind. And so that you are either hyper-aroused, hypo-aroused. And what you described beautifully in the case, for instance, very simple, we're not talking about major trauma, we're talking about everyday situation of dealing with email at the computer. And that what is manifested first is the tensions. That's what you would notice. So first we don't even notice them, but paying attention, you start noticing the tensions. And if you only focus on that, you're not seeing what is invisible. And what you're describing is that noticing the tension is an entry point to the curiosity about connecting with the part that are not engaged, that are disappearing. And I find this very moving in the context of your story, of that lifelong quest for finding connection, validation for what was invisible and finding the connection. so that when we're talking about this, yes, okay, it's applicable in terms of the whole story. It's also a nice metaphor, but it's not just a metaphor. It's also an embodied reality of what happened. Yes, yes, it is.
Merete
Yeah. And it's that, you could say, it's that embodied reality that I have lived my life in and that created a deep, deep necessity in me for keep looking for what is it that can make a difference? What is it that can bring me more back to myself? And what I realized during that journey was that in a way I had to walk in front. I had to develop the methods. I got help under the way, but I also got help that was not helpful. And it has to do with this invisibility and the real challenge for us as therapists, as human beings. What do we do with what has really gone missing? How do we reach for it in a way that actually works? That's an interesting question. And I used all my professional life for keep looking for what is it that works there. And I mean, I can be grateful if I want that, or I can thank the event as 14-year-old for having become an international expert in hypostates. It probably wouldn't have happened without it. said in a different language, a lot I have developed or a lot of post-traumatic growth has emerged for me in this process. And for a lot of other people, because I am not the only one who has been sitting with these deeply given up parts. It's a normal part of overwhelming trauma. And as I said before with the example of the emails, there's also just a smaller version of hypo that is just everyday life. And if we can start with acknowledging that, that's a big step in itself. If we just start being curious in everyday life about not only where I tense up, but also where I go flaccid. then we start including those voices, we start inviting them in, and then it becomes easier to approach the deeper giving up. Start with the small one. To become more resilient and more inclusive to this part of being human.
Serge
Yeah, yeah. And so what I find moving there is a sense of, you talk about the sense of giving up, and the engagement as a way of connecting with these parts, the sense of you matter, and all of you matter, and all of the parts matter, and so what is invisible matters.
Merete
Here they matter, and parts of us live in them. That's always what touches me also. It's not, they're not just gone. Something lives in there. But we need to acknowledge the state they are in. We need to acknowledge that they are hiding. hypo is really hiding it's going invisible and we only do that because it's a necessary survival strategy both the big hypo and the small hypo we do it to solve something that we don't seem to be able to solve in other ways than going invisible or giving up on parts of our life energy or parts of our impulses, parts of our emotions that just seem impossible to integrate in the outer context we are in. So it's deep compromises. But inside these parts, there's information. There's information lying in there. Either it can be memories, as it was with this kind of dissociated trauma. The forgotten memories were lying inside the deep collapse. So there can be memories, there can be emotional states, there can be impulses in the body. What was it I wanted to do in that situation and couldn't do? Et cetera, et cetera. and even in the example with the email you know there's valuable information if I slow down and track oh now I forgot my core what is if I take time and ask my core and bring a little energy into it with just moving a little around my core what is it telling me it's telling me I'm sad it's telling me I'm tired it's telling me it's telling me things that I push away when I go into a more narrow-minded efficiency
Serge
yeah, yeah but so what you're describing there is integration in everyday life And so it's not something so amazingly complicated you're describing that is, hey, I slow down a little bit. I pay attention. I'm curious about what's not present. And I play a little bit with my torso or my abs and my core. And then so the integration is that sense of engagement. at a bodily level. Recovering the parts that for the moment are not present.
Merete
I'm with you. In a way, it's simple. What keeps surprising me is that even people who I know about hypo, they forget it. as soon as they get stressed even I, myself there's a phase where I forget it there's something in that mechanism that I'm really curious about and I have come to understand that there's a body process of recognizing and training how to access these parts that have lower energy. That's a bodily training. But the other thing is a cognitive training. I've come to understand how important it is to take it into your vocabulary, into your map, simply into your understanding of how we function as human beings.
Serge
Yes, yes.
Merete
Because if you don't do that, you don't expect it to be there. And then the disappearing just works. Well, I would say... Then they hide and they are not discovered, you know?
Serge
Yeah, yeah. But I would say that, you know, that experience is in a way, I would go back to the title of your article, that it's not just me, it's us, that in some way as a human being, it's inevitable that there will be moments where I will not remember to do that. However, if I am with other people who can remind me, so if the knowledge is distributed, if there is connection, then it will help me at the moment when I need support. And so it's in a way the sense that, yes, you know, that the sharing is important because we need other people to remind us of that.
Merete
Yes. That's right. And I think that was also part of why I wrote the article. It's that I realized that it actually matters that we share. that we do bring out these voices.
Serge
Yeah. So does this feel like a good place to end, or is there something you would want to add?
Merete
Oh, I like we covered it. I like that we went from the article and the bodily essence of that with the breastbone and then into the methodology. Because that is really... This whole focus on hypostates came from that event for me. First as a deep necessity and then later as a deep, deep realization of how important it is that we are willing to reach for those parts that have gone missing.
Serge
Yeah.
Merete
So kind of becoming an advocate for them. And that's the spirit we are talking in. Right?
Serge
Yes. Yes. And I think also of sharing it. That sense of sharing it is not just helping other people, but helping all of us.
Merete
Yeah. Yeah, that's my intention with it. Yeah. Thank you. Yes, thank you, Serge.
Copyright 2026 ProactiveMindfulness.com. All rights reserved.
Hi, Merete.
Merete
Hi, Serge. So you recently wrote an article about trauma, but an unusual article.
That's right. The unusual thing is that I use a trauma event from my own life when I was 14 years old as the case. That's unusual.
Serge
Yeah.
Merete
And the title in the article is, it isn't only mine, it's ours. So it's really an article focusing on how we can get from a traumatic event just being only about you, and then lifting it out into a collective container, where we can see that it really isn't only about me. These kinds of events happen. It's not because of me, it wasn't my fault, etc., etc. But it's that lifting process from individualization into collective being together about it, Yeah, that's the focus of the article.
Serge
Yeah, yeah. So that sense of isolation, which contributes and increases the trauma and that shift from isolation to finding a context for it in which it can be healed. And something very striking, what you describe in your process of exploring your own trauma, is something that you started feeling in your chest. And so maybe I'm inviting you to describe the process and how it manifested in your body.
Merete
Yeah. Thanks for asking that, Serge. I like that you focus there, because in a way it holds an essence in the article, or an essence in what emerged for me when writing this article. I had had an impulse for several years now for, in some ways, getting this story out. to get personal attention, not to kind of be seen as... it wasn't really about me and so I was looking for a long time for how can I do this and I finally decided upon writing an article. When you write articles, especially in peer-reviewed journals. You have to find references. And I have had a process around this trauma. This trauma is me as a 14-year-old girl who gets perpetrated by a female scout leader. So this is female to female sexual perpetration. And what I have experienced during all these years, all these years of trauma healing, is that I have never met anybody else who talked about female to female sexual perpetration. I have met a lot of talk about male to female or male to male sexual perpetration, But this aspect of female to female is and still is way more hidden. I have over years made searches. This event happened in the Girl Scout, the international Girl Scout community. So I started looking for, can I find any material about this? And every time I tried, I didn't find anything. And then I noticed that not finding any acknowledgement out there for this kind of story existing, not finding that, had a deep impact in my body. It was as if I was pushed back into myself. Oh, oh yeah. Oh yeah. Again, isolation and this is just about me. This is a very special trauma. I have nobody to share it with and I need to do all this work alone. and I'm showing it in my body now because it was really this feeling of being pushed backwards on my breastbone. Instead of a full inhalation where you expand and fill up yourself, it's like... It's in a way like being... What do you call it when you puncture a balloon?
Serge
Yeah, the deflation.
Merete
Yeah, it's like you get deflated.
Serge
Yeah.
Merete
So from my knowledge about body patterns, this means I went hypo-responsive in some of the tissue in my whole breathing system.
Serge
So, Mirate, maybe as we talk about this, you and I, and maybe other people who listen to us, can replicate a little bit that experience. So that, you know, it's a felt experience. And so maybe one way to do that is to kind of cave in, you know, feel the chest caving in as it's totally deflated. And so noticing that and then noticing what it's like when there is air coming into the lungs. And it's like a balloon that's inflated and the walls of the balloon are pushing forward. And as I do that, I feel my chest pushing forward. So from here...
Merete
Filling up, right?
Serge
Yeah.
Merete
Either losing energy or filling up on an in-breath. And then my suggestion for those who listen to this and also for you, Serge, is to just connect it to this fact that you may have an experience inside of you. something that happened in your life or some inner state or where you would like something out there to meet you. But it feels like there's nothing out there. There's an absence. Instead of there's a meeting, there's an absence. And that absence is what makes you withdraw again. It's almost like the absence is a kind of push or it initiates the collapse or the withdrawal. It's a deep withdrawal that happens.
Serge
Yeah. Back into isolation. When I do that, that sense of expanding, there's the expectation to be met. Yes. And not being met is kind of a sense of shame. And that's that collapse coming in. And so...
Merete
Now you say the word shame in it, and I think that's very precise. Because shame doesn't only come with words. It also comes with absence. What is not spoken, what is not openly included in a society, in an outer context, is treated as if it doesn't exist. And that is an aspect of what is called systemic shame. The system simply doesn't acknowledge the existence of whatever it is, in this case, female to female sexual perpetration. It's as if it doesn't exist, but it happened to me. So, then it ends up being only about me. it ends up being pushed into or collapsed into me because of the absence out there.
Serge
Yeah.
Merete
So you could say that it's the result of, if we speak a more theoretical language, It's the result of denial, of minimizing, of avoidance, basically of avoidance.
Serge
So, you talk about systemic shame. I want to go from the concept to the experience. And when I let myself inflate from the inside out, there is a sense of it's what allows me to stay there, to go there and stay there, is an implicit sense of being supported, at the very least met. Yes. And so when we talk about systemic shame, usually we expect shame to be something that's explicit or you're bad. But what you're talking about is actually the implicit nature, the absence of support, the absence of talking about it that makes it disappear. And that's where the collapse in the body corresponds to the lack of acknowledgement in society. and so you have no place to be supported.
Merete
That's very precise. And it's an aspect of systemic shame that I find it very important for us to start talking about. Because it's simply something, it's the result of something missing. It's not the result of something actively being done to us. It's something not being done.
Serge
Yeah, something not being done. And so the same way as it is now common knowledge that children who are neglected, how profound a form of abuse, neglect can be. And so what you're talking about is that notion of neglect, that there is no mirroring, no validation, no acceptance of what's happening. And so then there is that profound neglect.
Merete
Yeah. And this profound experience that it's all about me. And I'm all alone with it.
Serge
Yeah. All about me in a very, very negative thing. There's something wrong with me.
Merete
Yeah. So if I go back to the story about writing the article, it was in this process of actually what really started my decision of now I'm going to write. It was that I had a conversation with one of my very old friends who is a film director. So he is not a psychotherapist. He is from a little... But he has dealt with... He has been training people in making films about something that really matters for them. And I told him this story of my 14-year-old trauma that he had never heard before. And I told him that I had this impulse to get it out. But I also had this, you know, a difficulty that whenever I spoke to people in my own professional field, the psychotherapy field, there was, I met some hesitation because you don't, you just don't do that. You don't, you don't use your own case story. It's considered, it's actually considered making it only personal. And it was the opposite I wanted. But this guy, he didn't have that response. He wasn't kind of inside the norms of the psychotherapy field. He was in the filmmaker field. And he just felt this strong impulse from me for getting it out. and he got that this was not about me getting personal attention, this was important for us
Serge
this was important
Merete
for all of us and that's why I wanted to write it and that support helped me to make the decision that, okay I'm going to go for it, I'm going to give it a try and I knew that I was going up against all the rules in this peer-reviewed journal that I would submit it in. You just don't do it. You just don't use yourself your own case. And some part of me just knew that this was, I can't explain that, but it was very strong. It was really an impulse to pass it on. to say, here it is, this isn't only mine. And I get touched even when I say that. This isn't only about me. I want all of you to pick it up. We can carry it together. But if we individualize it, if there's so much denial about it, we really hurt individuals.
Serge
Yeah, yeah. And so as you say that, as you say it's not only about me, I feel moved. Because what you're doing is describing not just your situation, but your process.
Merete
Yes.
Serge
And the process and the reflection about what happened, how you dealt with it, is something that can be shared with other people. Because it can give a marker for how other human beings react to the situation as peers. As opposed to, you know, you put yourself in the hands of a therapist and the therapist works their magic to heal you. But this is about how you experience it. And so there's an invitation for people to see how does it feel for you when you're there.
Merete
It's really another word for what you say is that it's asking for a subgroup.
Serge
Yeah.
Merete
It's saying, I can bring in this voice. Is there anybody else who will join me in that? That's the invitation. And that is a symmetrical, it's an invitation for a symmetrical relationship. It's not saying, I'm a big trauma therapist and I know a lot about this. That happens to also be the case that I can reflect as a trained trauma therapist about this, which I also do in the article. But the reaching out in the article is symmetrical. It's really going for forming a subgroup around. How do we get out of these traumas where we have collapsed inwards because there was no acknowledgement? And you could say the interesting thing about this type of trauma is that that lack of acknowledgement is there in the psychotherapeutic field as well.
Serge
Yeah.
Merete
Psychotherapists know very little about female-to-female perpetration.
Serge
Yeah. So I want to highlight something there. On the one hand, what's very, very important is finding a subgroup and the validation that the very specific instance of your trauma is something that is more widely shared than you thought. But on the other hand, there is also happening that as you are being very specific, in some way, you reach out to a much wider sense of group. It's not just people who have experienced a similar kind of situation, a similar kind of story, but where the trauma comes from the lack of validation, lack of acknowledgement, isolation, systemic shame.
Merete
Yeah, that's right. Which is actually why I didn't name the article anything about female-to-female sexual perpetration, because in a way that is not the headline. I could say the headline is to describe a pathway out of personalization due to systemic shame, due to avoidance. And that happens with many types of trauma. So it points to this, to that trauma healing is a systemic process. i could and that is really what that is what i uh realized in a surprising way for myself when i did this literature search and i finally found now i found quite a lot of articles i found books, they all write that, yes, there's not a lot written. You know, so on one hand, I got this recognition that, yes, you really need to look for it, because it's way less acknowledged, but it is there. And I still remember that impact, and I can still feel it in my chest bone, in my breast bone. That when there's literature out there, it's as if, you know, then it's not hard work to breathe in. It's as if energy comes in by itself into my ribcage and I just expand. Because what has been sitting in there in isolation, it gets connected to something outside of me. That's an amazing sensation.
Serge
Yes. So I want to maybe invite people again to remember that experience of the collapse in the chest and the opening. And I think that's a transition to the experience of trauma where what's happening is that in some way what is most remarkable is what's not noticed, what seems to become invisible. And so that's where we come back to your life work about the hypostates. And maybe do you want to just say something about that?
Merete
Yeah, I think one of the strong impulses for bringing this story out was that it's really, if I hadn't had that experience as 14-year-old, I probably wouldn't have become an international expert in working with hypostates. Right? Because I was with that event that got dissociated completely right after the event. So I had, as 14 year old, I had no idea what had happened. I just knew that something had become very, very weird. And I felt awful. And I turned it against myself. Something must be entirely wrong with me. Today I know that that was a deep collapse in my system. It was a natural hypo-arousal response to a high overload of impact. I got drugged, I got strongly sexually stimulated. It was a completely overwhelming event. What do we do in that? I couldn't flee, I couldn't get away. You collapse. And I did. My whole system collapsed. And then I functioned on top of that. So then entering, it had a huge impact on my life. I was expected to have an academic career, have a good head. I started studying at university and it didn't work. Nothing really worked because something had gone completely out of balance and nobody tried to reach into me. And this is where the hidden, things that go hidden, they are very often in our cultures left alone because they don't really call for attention. If you are very hypervigilant, it's visible. And other people get disturbed by it. That isn't fun either. But at least it's visible. Where these parts that go into deep hypostates, they really go invisible. And often, that's just considered, okay, she became a little quiet. But nobody tried. family or school or church or scouts or nobody. So I was left with this huge change in my autonomic nervous system and in my muscle system and with no help. Then, through different ways, I figured out that it was a good idea to work bodily. So I became a psychomotor trainer, which was really on one hand helpful because it awakened my body again. But again, the dosage was too high. I did way too much bodily. So I awakened and then I lost it again. I said in a different language, I came out of dissociation and then I dissociated again. And that roller coaster happened over my whole training.
Serge
Maybe let's just stay there a bit so that notion that trauma, stress, something that's too much. Yeah. It brings either something that's too much energy or something about that collapse, that disappearance. yes it's not that too much energy is good but at least it's visible yes and when it disappears it's not there there's nothing to see so there's nothing that we can do about it and the you're pointing out that in paying attention to the body and engaging the body, you were doing something. But because you were not actually engaging your parts that were collapsed at the level of energy where they were, it was too much energy and so it did not work.
Merete
That's right. That's right. And in a way that I have learned later, I have come to realize that that is an experience that many people have that we go into therapy and maybe maybe we experience a big release a big expression of emotions etc but it doesn't last then we go home and after two days it's as if it's gone or we can't replicate it. And I have come to, I very often in my groups, I ask about this. I tell this story about myself, not the event, but this phenomenon of doing a lot bodily, getting energy, and then not being able to sustain it. And many, many people recognize that. And a way to understand that mechanism is that if you don't include the hypoparts, and if you don't listen to what dosage they can work in, and what helps them to build up energy and keep it, If you don't do that, if you primarily focus on how do we get out of the tension, how do we get some release, how do we get some expression, if that's the primary understanding of the process, then the hypo parts of whatever you work with, they show up after. And they inhibit integration. so you get the release but you can't sustain it that's why I have called it sustainable that working with hypostates supports sustainable change
Serge
so maybe let's use the example that we talked about at the beginning about chest and so when the chest is collapsed I'm not aware of the chest. I might be aware of some tension in my shoulder. I might be, but I'm just not noticing the chest at that point. If I force the chest to expand with a sense of it should expand, yes, I can do it, but it's not going to really be sustainable because everything else, you know, conspires to just bring it back down. So what we're talking about is that kind of attuned connection with the collapsed part to find a very gentle way to allow it to find some opening in a way that it can support, it can sustain. Otherwise we get into that yo-yo effect of, hey, I do it, but then it comes back.
Merete
And if we take it right into that movement in the chest, it could mean to do it as a much smaller movement and slower, so that you're not focusing on, oh, now I want to get my breastbone all the way out there. but go to a much smaller. It's like getting, just getting the beginning of that movement. Oh my God, my chest bone can actually lift a little.
Serge
And so...
Merete
And then comes my in-breath, you know?
Serge
Yeah.
Merete
Whoa.
Serge
And so when I describe it as, it's not about the intention of doing a movement for the sake of a movement, but it's actually engaging with that body part in saying hey i see where you are how would it be for you to just do a little bit and let me see let's feel it and then back and forth and so there is a connection and so we're talking about engagement and connection which is very relational and the exact opposite of the isolation that you were describing that's true
Merete
And I think that is a key aspect of working with hypostates. It's that by acknowledging that they are there, knowing that they are there in the body, you can choose with your conscious part. You can choose to reach for them. You can choose to invite them out. And with that, you deliver the relationship they never had. And they need the hypo parts. They need that invitation. They are not going to come out by themselves. Right? So it's this, and that is what I have worked on in all my professional career. It's to find methodology that can support that process and understand that process and why it is such a different process compared to the thinking that comes with working with hyper parts, where you are tense and you benefit from release, you benefit from expression. It's a whole different world. And again, like with the type of trauma I had, it's the same thing with the hypostates. Very little is written about them. Today, there's much more written about it. It's hypoarousal, the collapse, is much more included into the understanding of trauma reactions. So we are in a way better situation today than just 20 years ago in trauma therapy. But what is still much less included is this understanding on a very concrete body level in our muscle system. That we can both go tense, but we can also give up. We can also go flaccid. So when we get stressed, for example, we sit there, I don't know, I sit with my computer, I get too many emails, I have too much to do. What does my body do? Well, I lift my shoulders and I tense up in my diaphragm. Very typical tension pattern. But where do I go flaccid? And when I remember to ask myself that, then immediately I come down and I start realizing, oh yeah, when I sit there and get too efficient and pushy, then I lose energy in my core. Sometimes I even lose energy in my feet. Sometimes I lose energy in my pelvic floor. I lose some support from underneath. Now if I can go there and engage in a precise dosage with these parts, I gain more access to more of me. With that I have more information available and I have more realistic choices. for example I could take a break before I move on or I could I could choose the easy emails before the most difficult ones or I get I get access to I am here I get out of the overwhelm and kind of the tension solution which is to just push through
Serge
yeah
Merete
so systems thinking that lies in that, well, when we get impacted, we do both. We both tense up, but we also disappear.
Serge
So that's a major part, that notion of system, because I think what the prevalent idea is that activation goes one way in the whole body-mind. And so that you are either hyper-aroused, hypo-aroused. And what you described beautifully in the case, for instance, very simple, we're not talking about major trauma, we're talking about everyday situation of dealing with email at the computer. And that what is manifested first is the tensions. That's what you would notice. So first we don't even notice them, but paying attention, you start noticing the tensions. And if you only focus on that, you're not seeing what is invisible. And what you're describing is that noticing the tension is an entry point to the curiosity about connecting with the part that are not engaged, that are disappearing. And I find this very moving in the context of your story, of that lifelong quest for finding connection, validation for what was invisible and finding the connection. so that when we're talking about this, yes, okay, it's applicable in terms of the whole story. It's also a nice metaphor, but it's not just a metaphor. It's also an embodied reality of what happened. Yes, yes, it is.
Merete
Yeah. And it's that, you could say, it's that embodied reality that I have lived my life in and that created a deep, deep necessity in me for keep looking for what is it that can make a difference? What is it that can bring me more back to myself? And what I realized during that journey was that in a way I had to walk in front. I had to develop the methods. I got help under the way, but I also got help that was not helpful. And it has to do with this invisibility and the real challenge for us as therapists, as human beings. What do we do with what has really gone missing? How do we reach for it in a way that actually works? That's an interesting question. And I used all my professional life for keep looking for what is it that works there. And I mean, I can be grateful if I want that, or I can thank the event as 14-year-old for having become an international expert in hypostates. It probably wouldn't have happened without it. said in a different language, a lot I have developed or a lot of post-traumatic growth has emerged for me in this process. And for a lot of other people, because I am not the only one who has been sitting with these deeply given up parts. It's a normal part of overwhelming trauma. And as I said before with the example of the emails, there's also just a smaller version of hypo that is just everyday life. And if we can start with acknowledging that, that's a big step in itself. If we just start being curious in everyday life about not only where I tense up, but also where I go flaccid. then we start including those voices, we start inviting them in, and then it becomes easier to approach the deeper giving up. Start with the small one. To become more resilient and more inclusive to this part of being human.
Serge
Yeah, yeah. And so what I find moving there is a sense of, you talk about the sense of giving up, and the engagement as a way of connecting with these parts, the sense of you matter, and all of you matter, and all of the parts matter, and so what is invisible matters.
Merete
Here they matter, and parts of us live in them. That's always what touches me also. It's not, they're not just gone. Something lives in there. But we need to acknowledge the state they are in. We need to acknowledge that they are hiding. hypo is really hiding it's going invisible and we only do that because it's a necessary survival strategy both the big hypo and the small hypo we do it to solve something that we don't seem to be able to solve in other ways than going invisible or giving up on parts of our life energy or parts of our impulses, parts of our emotions that just seem impossible to integrate in the outer context we are in. So it's deep compromises. But inside these parts, there's information. There's information lying in there. Either it can be memories, as it was with this kind of dissociated trauma. The forgotten memories were lying inside the deep collapse. So there can be memories, there can be emotional states, there can be impulses in the body. What was it I wanted to do in that situation and couldn't do? Et cetera, et cetera. and even in the example with the email you know there's valuable information if I slow down and track oh now I forgot my core what is if I take time and ask my core and bring a little energy into it with just moving a little around my core what is it telling me it's telling me I'm sad it's telling me I'm tired it's telling me it's telling me things that I push away when I go into a more narrow-minded efficiency
Serge
yeah, yeah but so what you're describing there is integration in everyday life And so it's not something so amazingly complicated you're describing that is, hey, I slow down a little bit. I pay attention. I'm curious about what's not present. And I play a little bit with my torso or my abs and my core. And then so the integration is that sense of engagement. at a bodily level. Recovering the parts that for the moment are not present.
Merete
I'm with you. In a way, it's simple. What keeps surprising me is that even people who I know about hypo, they forget it. as soon as they get stressed even I, myself there's a phase where I forget it there's something in that mechanism that I'm really curious about and I have come to understand that there's a body process of recognizing and training how to access these parts that have lower energy. That's a bodily training. But the other thing is a cognitive training. I've come to understand how important it is to take it into your vocabulary, into your map, simply into your understanding of how we function as human beings.
Serge
Yes, yes.
Merete
Because if you don't do that, you don't expect it to be there. And then the disappearing just works. Well, I would say... Then they hide and they are not discovered, you know?
Serge
Yeah, yeah. But I would say that, you know, that experience is in a way, I would go back to the title of your article, that it's not just me, it's us, that in some way as a human being, it's inevitable that there will be moments where I will not remember to do that. However, if I am with other people who can remind me, so if the knowledge is distributed, if there is connection, then it will help me at the moment when I need support. And so it's in a way the sense that, yes, you know, that the sharing is important because we need other people to remind us of that.
Merete
Yes. That's right. And I think that was also part of why I wrote the article. It's that I realized that it actually matters that we share. that we do bring out these voices.
Serge
Yeah. So does this feel like a good place to end, or is there something you would want to add?
Merete
Oh, I like we covered it. I like that we went from the article and the bodily essence of that with the breastbone and then into the methodology. Because that is really... This whole focus on hypostates came from that event for me. First as a deep necessity and then later as a deep, deep realization of how important it is that we are willing to reach for those parts that have gone missing.
Serge
Yeah.
Merete
So kind of becoming an advocate for them. And that's the spirit we are talking in. Right?
Serge
Yes. Yes. And I think also of sharing it. That sense of sharing it is not just helping other people, but helping all of us.
Merete
Yeah. Yeah, that's my intention with it. Yeah. Thank you. Yes, thank you, Serge.
Copyright 2026 ProactiveMindfulness.com. All rights reserved.
