As many of you already know, I came to Mexico not just to travel and learn Spanish, but because I wanted time and space to process. I wanted to have time to heal, to recuperate, to connect with myself. I learned after I got here that I am also here because when I was in close proximity with my family I had a hard time maintaining my personal boundaries, and from this distance I actually have enough boundary (distance) to begin to know who I am, how I differ from those I love, and which feelings are actually mine. It has taken me being here and them there for me to do that.
This Thanksgiving/Christmas I am here by myself, and though it feels weird to be here when all my family is there, and I have no plans to go back until spring, it feels exactly right. I am doing a tremendous amount of emotional work, I feel incredible support, and I am grateful for this time to redefine myself in terms of my personal life, the way I work, and my evolving professional identity based on this growth.
The work I am doing is multifaceted and deep, and is absolutely blowing my mind. Developmentally, I feel that I am finally completing my individuation process (that under the best of circumstances is largely completed by age 3, with a blessed make-up period at age 14). At 52, I’m thrilled to finally be feeling the reality of this–what the Weinholds call psychological birth (with which comes a much stronger sense of a durable boundaried self).
This transformation process isn’t just something I woke up one morning and decided to do. It’s an assignment that’s been shown to me and told to me in so many ways from mentors and way-showers, my own dreams and intuitions, and from just watching the patters of my life and following my guidance from day to day. It involves a lot of not knowing, and that can be uncomfortable. And it involves breaking out of old patterns, which is also uncomfortable. It involves a lot of being with myself, which I actually can’t get enough of, and it has also involved being with others in new ways, which can be uncomfortable, but I’m willing–stretching myself, and eager to grow into this new, more embodied skin I’m stepping into. I’m making progress in releasing control over outcomes, and my intention is to be more guidable by the forces of nature that are wiser and greater than my mind. Notice that the photos I include below are upside down. I decided that I was not going to be perfectionistic about this and left them upside down because today I’m not in the mood to troubleshoot that. Progress!!
One of the ideas I’m currently developing I got from the Weinholds. It has to do with the Drama Triangle I talked about a few blog entries back. It also fits nicely with the section of Being In My Body that deals with self abuse (in the Violence and Abuse section of Chapter 5 – Healthy Adult Intimacy).
What I am now noticing in my own processes, and the processes of my new clients, is a version of the Drama Triangle (DT) that is played out inside one person’s head. The Weinhold book, How to Break Free of the Drama Triangle and Victim Consciousness deals primarily with the DT being played out in families, communities, and between nations, where it is so prevalent and so confusing. When this chaos plays out inside one person’s head it can be even more so because it’s hard to see who is playing which role, and roles can quickly switch from one to another, which makes it all impossible to decipher without appropriate support.
Another idea I’ve been thinking about (also compliments of the time I spent in Colorado with the Colorado Institute for Conflict Resolution and Creative Leadership) has to do with Surrender, one of the key features of many spiritual disciplines. The way the Weinholds explain it, Surrender has a masculine essence and a feminine essence. The masculine essence is our willingness to take charge of our lives without guilt or shame. The feminine essence is our willingness to receive without resistance or judgment. I am seeing how these two sides of Surrender play out in virtually every aspect of connecting, whether it’s between two people, or the parts inside an unintegrated mind, what I refer to in my book as the fragmented self. There is so much to learn here as I play with this idea of Surrender, superimposed on the Drama Triangle.
What happens for me, personally, is that with these tools I can more easily recognize internal abuse when it begins to happen. As is usually the case with my practice, new clients have been coming in with questions that invite me to expand to better meet their needs–which mirror mine in many ways. Together we are cultivating different kinds of alliances that are better suited to meet our more refined needs. What it feels like I’m developing is a fairly reliable well-balanced Inner Marriage that makes both Masculine and Feminine contributions to my day-to-day, moment-to-moment movement in the world. And of course all of this is built on my new level of commitment to staying fully embodied.
I am immersed in ideas that are begging me to develop them, and I’m doing my best to keep up. They include collaborations with other people, where we’ll have a chance to play with sharing leadership, and of course I continue to privately explore, write and follow my muses. My attention returns again and again to such ideas as pleasure and play, healing touch, expressive movement and so much more.
Thank you for your interest. I’d love to hear what you think or what you’d like.
Stay Tuned for my online course: Learning to Parent Your Tender Vulnerable Self: Getting Off The Internal Drama Triangle for Good
I’ve been working on an Online Course based on the Drama Triangle and how it can play out inside us (with the different parts of the triangle represented by different parts of us in our minds: The Victim, The Rescuer & The Persecutor). This online course will break the Drama Triangle down into simple terms so that it can be more easily understood and applied in order to stop inner abuse and self sabotage in its tracks.
During the course, participants will learn how to replace the Drama Triangle with its magical counterpart, the Empowerment Dynamic, to help overcome early relational trauma. They will also gain a framework for better knowing when and how to trust themselves, which naturally impacts knowing when and how to safely trust other people.
I’d like for this course to provide the container for an online community where participants support each other in their process of becoming empowered and taking charge of their lives without guilt or shame and receiving their hearts desires without resistance or judgment. The class will include a series of lessons, visual diagrams, lectures, assignments, a sharing forum, one or more individual Skype session(s) and other materials to supplement learning, facilitate sharing, and deep, safe and lasting connections.
Look for it in early 2017.