I love, love, love that you guys – my wonderful readers in this group – have absorbed the main point that I’ve been pushing all along –You’re not broken!
You’re not sick!
You’re not evil!
But…..
You (and I) are human!!
So how, exactly, are human beings put together, anyway?
In this group, and in my program, Love Yourself Love Your Marriage, my team and I subscribe to the following principles:1. You have a beautiful Soul, which we call the Self. It is filled with wisdom, perspective, patience, connection, and compassion, to name a few gorgeous qualities of our souls.
2. You were born with this smart, capable Self. You do not need “training” to learn what you didn’t get growing up.
3. The Self is generally covered up by parts of you that came to help when you were a child because circumstances caused your parts to feel the need to protect you.
Parts take over that can be –
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angry
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demanding
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hurt and feeling like a victim
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depressed
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anxious, scared
Etc.
These parts meant well all along, but as we grow from childhood to adulthood and our wise Self knows better, the parts keep doing their job to protect us.
4. The goal of this group – and the personalized therapy that we offer as part of a full program – is to get to know and appreciate your parts and also uncover your Self so it can take Leadership over them.
What would #4 look like, exactly? Here’s an example –Jerry grew up in a difficult home.
Jerry’s father died when he was young and his mother, who was totally unprepared to handle life and kids without him, remarried a bit too quickly.The man she married did love her which is great, but he didn’t really want to be bothered raising children.
Jerry felt alone and hungry for love.
There was a part of the child that he was that hit on the idea that the attention he missed wasn’t important. In fact, he logically proved to himself that people were fine all alone.Logic became his friend. He used it for everything.
And he forgot that he had feelings.
His mother didn’t notice. She was glad that Jerry was “a good boy.” His stepfather left him alone which was a joy in and of itself.His Self with all its feelings had to go underground so that his protective part could do its work. That part replaced feelings with logic, just the opposite of who he really is.
One day Jerry met the woman of his dreams. She understood the deep Jerry, the Jerry underneath all those defensive parts.The only problem is that he literally forgot who he was after all the years of his protective parts running the show.
Not only that, but, frankly, he was still afraid to discover who he really was!This is totally normal and expected. Discovering yourself means being vulnerable.
And that’s scary.
So it took a while for him to read the posts that I write and for him to finally say, “Yeah, that’s what happened to me.”And, frankly, he kept reverting back to using those wonderful protectors to keep him safe.
Except that his wife, Melissa, did not like that at all. Who would?
She finally confronted him. “When I want some emotion from you and you are like a stone, does that feel good?”Jerry had no idea what she was talking about. He’d forgotten the world of feelings that he’d lost.
He was almost going to say that she was wrong, but he realized that you can’t use logic to say there’s no such thing as emotion. He knew he’d lost something although he had no clue how to get it back.So she said, “Let’s get help. I’m sure I need it too. I don’t react well when you’re cold. Let’s solve both our problems – and our old traumas.”
Jerry was in agreement, so they enrolled in the private Love Yourself Love Your Marriage program.So how would DrDeb’s team work with a person like Jerry to get his Self to become the Leader of his defensive parts?
In addition to the 4 principles listed at the beginning of this post, there are 3 more that we hold dear:5. We separate couples until they do feel the joy of being in Self energy so that they can relate to each other from that place of Self Leadership over their parts.
6. We know that once they speak about sensitive topics, they will most likely trigger each other’s parts anyway. We expect that and we go gentle with everyone, encouraging a return to Self energy. Eventually the process catches on.
7. We rely on the power of the imagination to correct and heal the past. This principle is based on a thousand years of hypnosis, suggestion, and use of the placebo effect.
Here’s a scene from a typical private session:Therapist: So, tell me what happened.
Jerry relates the scenario.
Therapist: Jerry, I’m wondering if you felt that part somewhere in your body?
Jerry: Yeah, right here in my neck, like it’s coming from my voice.
Therapist: Okay. Does it have anything to tell you that it needs you to know?
Jerry, now focusing on the possible message of this protective part, is silent a while. The other thoughts that might have been buzzing through his head have silenced as he is focusing hard.Jerry: That’s odd. I just get a feeling of tiredness, like this part of me is tired of this.
Therapist: I don’t blame it at all! It’s a lot of work pretending to not feel when you really do! Can you send some appreciation to the part for all its work?
The sessions will go through this process of getting to know and value all the parts.In addition, Jerry will remember scenarios of how the frightened little Jerry was treated and this will be witnessed by the adult Jerry.
Little Jerry will also get a chance, in his imagination, to do something he wished he could have done as a kid, such as tell off the step-dad.The imagination is a very powerful thing, so between witnessing his younger Self’s story and fixing what went wrong in the past, it literally changes the emotional tone of those events; they are no longer painful.
So now we can answer the original question: Is something wrong with me?Nothing is wrong with you, but your defensive and protective parts may need to be reined in by a Self that takes Leadership.
Can you relate to this?