Therapeutic Approach

Your beliefs about yourself and other people were likely developed long before your brain developed its highly sophisticated brain-part called the pre-frontal cortex (rational thought, goal-making, decision-making, sense of others etc.) before you were able to understand language and communication. You did not choose (consciously) your survival response. The brain used what it perceived to be the best response to actual lived experience of danger or a perceived threat. You activated a response necessary to keep you family connected to you. In other words you developed a survival /stress response to kept caregivers from abandoning you, emotionally or physically harming or neglecting you. Although effective in its purpose, it set may have in motion a false-self of stifled natural emotional responsiveness, creativity, spontaneity and left you with a sense of feeling not quite right. What prevailed and continued to receive positive reinforcement was the false-self: The inner voice and name-caller of such proclamation as "you are unworthy" of love, success and attention just the way you are!  It is the false-self cultivated out of self preservation and perpetuated through habit, reinforced by caregivers and our culture that saturates our core identity and casts rigid negative self-concepts that you are not perfect, special, unique and lovable AS IS right now!  The brain did the best it could with the brain growth, lived experience and caregiver resources available at the time you learned who you could safely be and how it was safe to be around others.  

There may be times when you can hardly stand each other, but you still love your partner and are committed to the relationship? Uncover the problem under the problem, underneath the problem. The fundamental idea of Imago relationship therapy is that people tend to marry/couple the person that they hope (unconsciously) will solve their own problems from childhood—a person who, paradoxically, often appears to exacerbates those problems. Shifting communication styles  reduces the intensity of disagreements, creates a safe moment to re-check the intent of our message and highlights the exquisite importance of holding space for what someone said and how they feel. "But, no matter what their conscious intentions, most people are attracted to mates who have their caretakers' positive and negative traits, and, typically, the negative traits are more influential."  Logically you might think you have chosen a partner that compensates for the inadequacies of your early carer (parent/ caregiver) treatment that left you feeling abandoned or emotionally engulfed. Paradoxically, you may have ultimately re-create the conditions of your childhood environment, so the that wounds can be healed.

Most of the time people are listening for the  how they can insert their counter-point in ever pursuit of BEING RIGHT, correct, smarter and unfortunately that means one person is going to have to settle for the less appetizing portion of being "WRONG."  No one has to feel wrong in order for a disagreement to end amicably.  Imagine the freedom that might be awarded a couple that can communicate, show tenderness and compassion even while activating feelings of anger, sadness, fear, jealousy or embarrassment.  You do however feel these emotions in often a soul wrenching experience  that longs to be understood and held in a heart space of acceptance and reverence.  The paradox of being present with the one we love in you most vulnerable moments of sorrow, despair, shame, regret and embarrassment can be the moment you set free the constraints  preventing never before experienced intimacy, sexual vitality and healing.

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Cut out all negativity,  easier said than done…what if it means you two are tender, kind, passionate and in love again? Would  you do this experiment?

It takes courage to admit your own OUCH let alone acknowledge you hurt the person you love. Defining clearly for oneanother the “ouch” can be aware of conscious of what feels likes a put down, insult, dimissed, ignored, abandoned or criticism.

Gaceful return….control the comeback “I know you just said something this is important to you, and I want to hear what your saying. Right now all I hear is the criticism.

BLS -

Bilateral Auditory Stimulation (Equiptment:TheraTapper)

Bilateral Visual Stimulation

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DAS -

Dual-awareness Stimulation

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