The model and skills presented here will challenge the way relationship models have been explained over the past hundred years. Everyone will recognize something they have read, tried, heard about or failed at before. There is nothing new offered here. What is unique is the way the material is assembled, presented and measured. By continually asking the questions “What’s Missing?” and “Why are relationships so complicated and difficult?” we will go several layers below psychoanalysis into the mythological realm for answers.
How Was the Model Assembled?
What has been assembled here are pieces from many models, research and writings of exceptional men and women over the past 5000 years – from ancient Chinese writings to brilliant new twists on ideas that corporate clients have had in training sessions. These are woven into an explanations of “What’s Missing?” at the core of humankind’s relationships and what makes them difficult. As a mentor once said to me, “There is nothing new, just new combinations and the twist to their significance in present time.”
We will explore why, even with free will, our choices are mostly reenactments of habitual and predictable patterns. Without even knowing how it happens, we repeatedly cycle through these patterns and end up acting out the same way under stress, getting the same results every time. There is little chance of behavioral change. What is missing is the understanding of a part of the deep unconscious I will call the Golem, which is in control of our hardwired behavior.
How is the Model Presented?
“What’s Missing?” in other models are demonstrable, predictable and consistent results. Consistent results, that improves human interactions and improves mutual satisfaction, across all human experience. In traditional relationship training, a few people are able to apply the concepts, yet most return acting out their chronic patterns. What is missing is the source of the underlying addictive-compulsive behavior.
“What’s Missing?” is the understanding that everyone is part of the problem. Verbalized of not, we all are abusive, violent and disruptive in some relationship or another. This includes teachers, politicians, therapists, social workers, scientists, priests, pastors, plumbers, consultants and the rest of the human race. As professional helpers, we cannot disregard our own relationship struggles and failures and expect to aid others with theirs
“What’s Missing?” is a general acknowledgement from professional help givers that their own struggle to being seen, understood, chosen and valued in relationship taints their effectiveness. It is only logical that if a help giver has not resolved personal relationship issues, they will be unwilling to go into those shadow areas with others.
“What’s Missing?” probes the question, “Why do good intentioned people, under stress, say things and behave in ways that results in others reacting negatively?” The answer is deeper than stop being ‘right’, stop being so aggressive or stop being so demanding. A persons entire lifetime can be used up fruitlessly, trying to change ineffective behavior patterns, and yet, remain empty and depressed in the end. If time is taken to reflect on the key issues we struggle with today, the issues are the same ones that existed in our teenage years. The answer lies within each of us and the people we interact with every day. We created the problem to survive. The cost for living a life from survival patterns is harmful to our hearts, minds and bodies, not to mention the interactions with others. The responsibility to solve the issues is ours, however, like brain surgery, impossible to do on our own.
This last question, “Why do good intentioned people, under stress, say things and behave in ways that results in others reacting negatively?” is central to our model. The first answer and solution can be found in understanding the mute, controlling, all powerful, yet hidden unconscious personality we each created in early childhood to help us survive! The second answer is in the mythological realm of the unconscious, where metaphor and symbols clarify and illuminate the terrain. However, before we fully dive into these two subjects, let us look at how ‘consistent results’ in training is measured.
How is the Model Measured?
Not high percentages and best tries falling short due to extenuating circumstance. In order to stop the endless waste of energy, time and resources, we must have a way to radically and permanently change how we value others and communicate our desires. Such a model must be so fundamental, so core to the human condition, that it applies to ALL people despite their culture, gender, race, geography, education, life experience or chronological age differences. It must be able to be used in any situation with the same consistent results.
Since 1984, I have guaranteed this relationship communication model to corporate clients. What this means is we measure our value to them when they determined, as an individual or a group, that the training was radical and had a long-term effect on their personal and professional relationships. We are looking for behavioral changes that can be observed by co-workers and family members. These changes must be available not only at a workshop or in a therapist’s office, but when needed in real world, real time situations.
Knowing What to do Next
Successful leaders are not perfect communicators! Rather, they know in the heat of an interaction, when and why they are not being effective and what to do next to remedy the problem. Knowing what to do next is the key. Leaders are able to go back to a person, change the misunderstanding, and draw value from the return visit. They know how to get seen, understood, chosen and valued. They know what it feels like to not get heard, and how it feels to get heard by the people around them. Leaders leave people with a greater sense of their value and thus assure higher productivity and job satisfaction.
The Intentional Language Relationship Model focuses on a segment of the psyche that remains disguised deep in our unconscious, yet is present in every communication we have with others. Everyone we meet shows it to us in their facial muscles, their tone of voice, the words used, gestures made, and in their choice of friends, spouses, and careers. Our bodies and emotions feel the impact of this hidden part of our psyche, yet we are unable to point to its location within. We see and communicate with it everyday, but like a center line on the highway, it is soon replaced by another and then another, until we can no longer keep up with the speed at which the lines shift their shape before our eyes.
The Intentional Language Relationship Model points to and describes the shape shifting tendency of our psyche’s. One aspect I will call The Golem. Everyday the Golem grows in strength, though we are unaware of it’s size and power to control of lives. It has been in control of our feelings and behavior for so long we can no longer identify it as separate from who we think we are. It is like an alien living inside our bodies and minds, about which we have become indifferent. Yet, we created The Golem and it’s passive, needy counterpart, The Survival Child, by splitting our psyche in two at a very young age. We spilt our psyche in order to become the child that our caregivers found acceptable. We became the children who would toe the family’s line and disguise the family secrets in appropriate family behavior. From the psyche’s point of view, it was better to become less than whole in order to survive.
The Intentional Language Relationship Model will show how and why The Golem and The Survival Child were created during early childhood development and where it manifests in our personal and professional communications. Then, in detail we will walk through the process that transforms the split into a set of powerful relationship and communication tools that become our model. To understand this model and use these tools will change the way your relationships develop, how children are raised and how work groups communicate. The skill set will allow each person to be seen, understood, accepted, chosen and valued as a worthy partner and contributor.
Then we will introduce two feelings that need to be felt at the same time. One from The Golem and one from The Survival Child. Two feelings felt, without rejecting either, when communicating with other people. One feeling is the reactive feeling related to The Survival Child and controlled by The Golem. This feeling is amplified whenever we see or hear trigger-behaviors in others. Trigger-behaviors are emotional reactions to a set of behaviors that we are personally hypersensitive to when seen or heard in others.
The second feeling is the responsive feeling of being connected. This feeling is present when we have communicated in a way that allows both people to be seen, understood, accepted, chosen and valued. This responsive connection is expressed well in the common Swahili equivalent for hello, “I see you” and in the mirrored response; “I am here.”
Finally we will describe in detail The Intentional Language Relationship Model and how it can be used at home, in the community, while working with other employees and in any other fellow human beings we find ourselves interacting with in the future.
So, hold on to your vulnerability with both hands, keep one eye on your fears, and open your mind to the real possibility of relationships beyond your wildest dreams.
Copyright © 2020 Scott Taylor Consulting All Rights Reserved.