http://www.artbash.co.nz/article.asp?id=1574
An item on ArtBash, by someone who may or may not be Christopher Moore on the devastation in Christchurch and how it impacts on the art scene.
Harville Hendrix workshop
More reports and reflections on the Harville Hendrix workshop for Imago practitioners in Auckland on 20 March 2011. Most of what he said was not new to me, and what I will note here is mostly what I heard him say. What was unexpected was the power of his ability to do, be in the moment with us what he was talking about. Present, connected, empathic, and making eye contact in such a way that if let at times he was talking just to me, in fact he was, totally there with me in those moments.
The Importance of Theory.
The theory allows the practitioner to know what to do beyond the application of techniques. H also mentioned the importance of research. Brian mentioned there was a swag of research quoted in Wikipedia Imago entry.
Relational Paradigm
The main theory he presented for most of the day was the relational paradigm. Summed up thus: being as relationship. Thus placing this as a shift in consciousness going beyond the philosophers of being such as Heidegger and Sartre and also Ken Wilbur, who has a heirachy of consciousness that is about individual beings.
“Being as relation, that is a revolution in thinking.”
Did Harville say Ken was stuck in the past? I think that he is as this relational thinking is deep and profound, and changes everything. This became really evident to me later in the day as H spoke about self. Self is a negative or remainder once all projection and judgment is withdrawn.
Relationship is a spiritual practice one can do any time when there is another.
“Empathy without judgment is my spiritual practice. Everyone offers you an opportunity.”
See the other as Thou
Observer Effect
H referred to quantum physics. I heard a new angle on this, not just that the observer changes that which is observed, but that the thinking the observer brings to the observed, the intention and attitude will change the situation. What power we have, for good or ill!
The medical model is challenged with this understanding. If we see people as sick, then they can’t get well. It might work with physical illness but not in the psychological world.
“It is important how we see people who come to see us.”
Empathy
How to be with people, we can’t be other than how we are. The essence of being in relationship is to be in empathy.
“Empathy is felt connection.”
When a group member suggested that Maori were a people who were in a connected state H noted that this was an earlier level of connection, more like fusion of the tribe. The empathy he spoke of was connection from a differentiated self.
“Move from the imagined connection to the felt connection and there is participation in that. Getting otherness is terrifying, you have to surrender. To abandon the world you have imagined is terrifying.”
The other person “experiences you experiencing them”. Or even further … They then experience you experiencing them experiencing you… the empathic stance:
“I’m experiencing you experiencing me having my experience. ”
Why people come to us…
“Something has punctured their ability to be connected. They are scared. Some are really scared.”
Thus we make a safe place and there is a transference to the space. ‘This is the place we feel safe, you won’t let us fight.’
“How we hold them in our mind is how they respond to us.”
“We can hold them if we are not anxious”
You can’t connect with a person you are merged with. Differentiation is a sort of birth for each. The self emerges not by saying “I am me!” It is by releasing the other, tolerating the differentiated other. Imago is a process of giving birth to the other person. I’m the mother of their birth. and this is where my birth happens as I am the remainder, what is left as I surrender.
How to be non-judgmental with violence. (( missed a lot of this discussion))
Thou.
“You are as dangerous to them as they are to you.”
“You are the co-creator of the transaction.”
Vicarious introspection
I understood this as seeing through the violence to the wounded child and reflecting that back to the person. I think of doubling as we use it in psychodrama.
The talking cure is the listening cure.
Book: Biology of Belief, Spontaneous Evolution (Bruce Lipton) – culture is the petrie dish of the cell.
Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future (and a Way to Get There from Here) – Kindle edition by Bruce Lipton. Politics & Social Sciences Kindle eBooks
“all negativity causes chaos”
I am nudging, nudge nudge, nudge. It is facilitation not therapy.
Phrases Harville used in a dialogue:
Make eye contact. Feel your eyeballs and relax so your pup is will increase in size and that will relax her. Deepen your pupils by taking a deep breath.
Breathe together, set up a resonance.
Look when that happens you see a glow on her face.
Stay with the terror till it passes.
Lead lines
Am I getting a good sense of that now?
When I feel this frustration in the future I’ll …
… and the gift to our relationship is that …
Reference
Lipton, Bruce (2009), Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future (and a Way to Get There from Here) – Kindle edition. Hay House. Amazon
Nothing humanitarian about U.S. intervention
I can never really understand what is happening in the world till I read what the socialists say. I am not sure I really have a handle on it, but this is worth a read:
Nothing humanitarian about U.S. intervention | SocialistWorker.org:
WORLD LEADERS and their defenders in the mainstream press are praising the West’s “decisive” military action against Libya’s Muammar el-Qaddafi, but as the long record of “humanitarian” intervention demonstrates, the governments with the ability to use force in Libya have aims and strategies that will not serve the Libyans they are supposedly there to help.
Harville Hendrix 3 questions
I just read Maya’s three questions she asks before commencing relationship therapy.
How do they compare with Harville Hendrix’s ones we just heard in the Auckland workshop?
1. What do you want in this relationship when you finish with me?
2. What have you done to prevent this from happening? (You, not the other partner)
3. What has to be taken out? What has to be put in? What will you take out, put in?
If you have the power to make it this bad, you have the power to make it good.
This couple could be creative and take self responsibility”
Just compared them and you can see who taught her!!
Maya’s three questions : https://psyberspace.walterlogeman.com/2009/three-relationship-questions/
Helen LaKelly Hunt
Radio New Zealand National : Programmes A-Z : Saturday Morning with Kim Hill : 2011 03 12:
Helen LaKelly Hunt Author and activist, and founder of Women Moving Millions, an initiative for the advancement of women’s lives through a massive change in giving to girls and women. She also co-founded the Institute for Imago Relationship Therapy and has co-authored several bestsellers with her husband, Harville Hendrix. (duration: 34′59″) Download: Ogg Vorbis MP3
Interesting, and interesting how well she puts the idea in my previous post on relationships being the healing force. (Of course I learnt it via Imago… but it is not just an idea, we have expereiice in common about this stuff)
Stanislav Grof on Future Primitive
Personal Experience and Spiritual Quest « Future Primitive Podcasts:
Stanislav Grof, M.D., is a psychiatrist with over fifty years experience researching non-ordinary states of consciousness.
There are two things that I’ve appreciated about Grof that have made a real difference in the way I do psychotherapy. One is the importance of perinatal experience, traumatic and otherwis3. The other is Co-ex systems. Both come up in this interview, though the latter is not named specifically.
The relationship has the answer to the relationship problem
I like the related posts feature in this blog. Just noticed one that had this passage. Fits well indeed with the previous post:
… right here, now, in the relationship is the solution to the relationship problem. How to get there might be painful and hard, you will need to learn skills, make effort, but individual therapy or leaving, or searching for a better mate has all those problems and will lead to similar relationship problems, or to no relationship at all.
(me quoting myself)
Relationship and Attachment
How Do Attachment Issues Impact Adult Relationships?
Around twenty years ago we started turning our attention to the attachment system in regards to adult
relationships. Hazan and Shaver were two of the first researchers who postulated that attachment patterns play
out in adult romantic relationships. They developed a series of questions designed to isolate behaviours in adults
that mimic attachment styles in infants; secure, avoidant, ambivalent, dismissive, disorganised and reactive.
What they found was that not only were adults similar to infants in the way that these behaviours played out in
relationships, but that there was a direct correlation between the style in which someone was parented and the
attachment that person would develop later in life. Hazan and Shaver’s research was pivotal for the way that we
see relationships today, and their work ultimately led to the development of many assessment tools attempting to
gauge attachment styles in adults. One of the more popular tools today is the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI)
developed by Mary Main. Yet the field of studying attachment in adults is still vastly unexplored, and this leaves
many adults searching for answers and therapy that would address their issues.
Attachment disruption is one of the hardest problems to address by parents and professionals due to the fact
that solutions are often counter intuitive and that the symptoms often go unrecognised. Below I have compiled a
list of characteristics I often see in both children and adults with attachment issues. This is by no means a
comprehensive list, rather a cluster of symptoms to look out for when treating a client with identified attachment
problems originating from the first three years of their life.
This is a quote from Mark Coen’s paper presented at the NZAP conference this year (I was not there, but just found it on the website, here.) Copy: TheAttachmentContinuum.pdf
The quote is in line with my experience as a therapist, and he goes on the describe the various relationship styles, useful.
The guidelines for treatment, I’ve just checked again to be sure, do not mention couple therapy explicitly and there are no guidelines there for relationship psychotherapy.
This prompts me to present a relationship therapy paper, it is so essential that the relational paradigm is presented. And a paper won’t quite meet my other principle, that experiential learning is the way to make this case, not really papers. Maybe both would be best.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes – Trauma Recovery
An excellent resource. Its all over Christchurch
I’ve saved it twice!
Greetings to all Save the Mokihinui supporteMokihinui
I just got this email from Debs Martin.
This is a cause worth getting in behind!!
~~
Greetings to all Save the Mokihinui supporters
(and apologies if you receive this email more than once),
Thanks for your efforts over the past few weeks to pass on the message to Meridian that damming the Mokihinui is unacceptable. Over 2600 emails have been sent and numbers are still rising. March 31st is the last date for sending an ecard – so let your family and friends know!
How else can you help us win the battle?
To assist with the Environment Court case, we have
just launched our Save the Mokihinui shareholding
campaign.
You can purchase one of 140 limited edition shareholding
certificates (featured left) of $100 each – securing your
part in the battle to save the Mokihinui River.
Beautifully illustrated, the certificate encapsulates all that is valuable in the Mokihinui – from its enigmatic great spotted kiwi to its earthquake-shattered limestone gorges.
We hope this certificate will be an important piece of Mokihinui memorabilia in years to come as a reminder of battles won!
To buy your certificate and virtual plot click here.
Warm regards,
Debs Martin
Regional Field Officer
Top of the South
Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of NZ Inc
03-989-3355
14/03/19
