Santina Camilleri Counsellor
Mind-Body Practitioner
MBCT Trainer
(Mindfulness based Cognitive Therapy).
Specializes in Addictions
Counselling Services
Individual Counselling
A safe therapeutic and transformative space to heal your mind, body and heart.
On Line sessions
On line sessions are also available from wherever you are.
Workshops
A safe therapeutic and transformative space where we come together on our healing journey.
We live constantly supressing uncomfortable or unpleasant feelings like it is the most normal thing to do. We have even got used to lying to ourselves, even believing our very own lies. Maybe we do this to avoid conflict, or to avoid criticism or maybe in order to feel accepted, loved, seen or validated.
How much longer can we ignore how we feel? How can we honestly live to our fullest life if we supress, we lie, deny, hide, cover, reject. ignore, betray our own personal experience of our life?
With things left unattended to symptoms start appearing, and we panic wanting to get rid of them as soon as possible and get on with it. Symptoms can include, increased fear, anxiety, depression, weight loss, addictions and obsessions/ food disorders, relational problems, excess irritation, hair loss, gut acidity, headaches, well the list goes on.
What is the use of treating the symptom while ignoring the cause?
The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves. (Bessel van der Kolk).
THIS SPACE
This space is a safe space of self-awareness and transformative work. A journey of exploring and challenging core beliefs that may be hindering your full potential. A journey of how you have been influenced through conditioning, how you came to understand who you are in this world. Our beliefs and thoughts shape our lives.
This space is a journey of moving inwards towards a wholeness, to a conscious and mindful way of experiencing your life. A space where you are supported in learning new ways of letting go of old patterns and behaviour and creating new ones, where the focus will not just be on your current situation in your life but where a new foundation is built, where you can become enough for yourself, where you rediscover who you truly are and your powerlessness starts fading away.
“The abnormal has become the norm; the unnatural has become the inescapable.”
Gabor Mate
Inner Work
We all have an inner world.
Ignored, rejected and supressed.
A world unknown to us.
We live in our heads, in our thoughts, constantly exhausted,
and disconnected from our inner resources. We invest all our energy in our external worlds. We lose curiosity, calmness, creativity, connectedness and compassion for ourselves, others and the world around us.
A mindful compassionate approach is used in order to create a safe space within the self, fostering understanding and acceptance, removing judgment and criticism, which liberates you from whatever it is that is standing in your way to becoming all you truly are.
We are human.
Feel, Reveal and Heal.
BACKGROUND
For 24 years Santina managed various Units in one of the two major drug addiction rehabilitation centres in Malta.
Santina has met with thousands of people battling with addiction, she has sat by their side and listened to their stories… some she would meet in rehab, some in prison cells, some in psychiatric wards, others on the streets, others we have lost.
Her understanding of this deeply complex behaviour, addiction, has, over the years evolved into a wider, deeper understanding of addiction.
Santina has always believed that the core root of addiction lies beneath the surface. She has expanded her focus from addiction to childhood trauma and fragmentation of the Self. Today she works with many people struggling with a variety of presenting problems besides addiction, issues related to anxiety, depression, stress, toxic relationships, domestic violence, emotional abuse/neglect, childhood trauma, loss, and many other symptoms.
She has come to realise how addiction goes far beyond the obvious consumption of substances.
Some of these many so called addictions or compulsive behviours often go unnoticed, unseen, denied or merely misunderstood as they socially accepted and even praised.
Our current focus on understanding addiction is merely to remove that ‘specific’ addiction. So a drug addict may for example stop drugs and get ‘addicted’ to alcohol, or to ‘love’ receiving praise he comes to believe he is on the right track, but deep down he still is relying totally on something totally external to help cope with life. The fear of losing that ‘addiction’ remains there.
Consequences of course vary, but if you stop and think about it, many of the following compulsive behaviours (alcohol, excessive eating, excessive exercising, hypersexuality, internet/on line addictions, shopping addiction, worrying, gambling, prescribed medication, fame, money and power, consumerism, porn and many others), have become commonplace today. Many may be understood as non problematic until the person realises that he can not function without that compulsive behaviour. Remove the behaviour and the person can not find meaning in their lives.
Socially-accepted obsessive behaviours are behaviours that are normalised despite their harmful consequences.
Are we ready to delve deep into these voids/dark spaces that compulsive behaviours tend to fill and truly explore what they are about instead of constantly making an effort to ignore them like they don’t exist.
Addiction/compulsive behaviour is not merely about symptom control and is clearly much more complex than that, addiction will always remain a compensation for the sense of being devalued as a human being.
“In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts,” (Mate, 2008) emphasizes the importance of viewing addiction not just from a clinical or moral view but from a complex human experience that is intertwined with deep emotional pain and trauma.
In today’s world it is evident that people fill their lives with excessive hours at work, excessive exercise, overthinking, obsessive behaviours in relationships, food, prescribed medications, shopping, pornography, video games, gambling, betting, social platforms, well….. the list is endless.
Today we are more and more driven to believe that we need to add value to our lives, and we usually rely solely on external validation. This is where it becomes clear that addiction is not merely about the drugs. Drugs is just one of many behaviours we interact with, nor is it just about the behaviour. We unconsciously create a life for ourselves that just does not add up to health, wellbeing and happiness, yet we keep searching for it somewhere ‘out there’.
We are living in a very toxic society that strives off external consumerism and validation.
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
You start questioning, ‘How did I end up here?’ You start searching ‘What is the meaning of my life? The most popular reaction to this is to find something or someone external, project our emotional state on it, blame it, and start to feel more and more powerless.
We start sensing a feeling of helplessness, often becoming angry and bitter at the world out there.
Becoming triggered by anything out there, things start getting worse, it becomes too much to handle even small chores, and things you once enjoyed start slipping out of your hands.
Why do people feel the way they do? Are you lost in obsessive thoughts, thoughts that are beyond your control? Have you lost control of what you ‘choose’ to think about? Why do you think what you think? What are your core beliefs? Are they valid? Do these beliefs nourish you or deplete you? What concept do you hold of yourself? What relationship do you hold with your emotions, with your discomforts, with your fears and pain? How do you react or respond ? How do you show up in the world? How do you cope? What do you find difficult to cope with?
Is it a sense of not fitting in, of not being good enough, is it anger, fear, frustration, loss, boredom, loneliness, guilt, shame, a lack of a sense of belonging, a yearning to fit in, to be accepted, to be heard, to be seen, to be loved…..validated and acknowledged, the list is endless really.
Some believe that their self worth is tied to their level of productivity, power, money, achievement. So we invest in an image of perfection. Some get lost in their careers, lost in their role, policeman, mother, father, CEO, director, manager and so on, far from the true meaning of being human and truly alive. For those that get lost, then we can only clench really tight in fear of losing it, whatever it is.
“That’s basically it. Feeling alienated within the system: a system that demeans people, marginalizes them, exploits them, and creates a situation in which our value depends only on our capacity to consume.”
Glover
This often leads to more stress and anxiety, where the symptoms start to appear, like anxiety, trembling hands, touretts, depression, insomnia, burnout, stomach upset, autoimmune diseases, fatigue, high blood pressure, to mention a few, like the physical body can not keep up and attempts to get your attention through various symptoms, hoping you will listen, tune in and invest in aligning your self.
Learn to read the symptoms not only as problems to be overcome but as messages to be heeded.
Gabor Mate
In a culture that idolizes doing more, acquiring more, being more, we might find it very difficult and uncomfortable to pause, to rest, to listen. We have come to believe that if we are not productive than we have wasted a day.
We have learnt from a young age how we have to behave, we have have to think, what we have to believe and how we are expected to feel. This create a self far from our authentic self.
But we did not realise, we were far too young and we grow up believing that its just the way we are.
We become unrecognizable even to ourselves.
What is wrong with me?
Your Inner Journey Begins Here
Take a moment to heal your mind, body and heart.