The model and skills presented here will challenge the way relationship models have been explained over the 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 the psychology and into our deeper hardwired structure 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 given to me by corporate clients I have had the pleasure of training. These are woven into explanations and models that shed light on “What’s Missing in relationships?” They make up a story about the core of human 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 the present.”
We will explore why, even with free will, that 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 with a hardwired model like this. What is missing is the understanding of two parts of the deep unconscious I will call the Golem and the Survival Self. Combined, they have life time 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 root cause of the underlying addictive-compulsive behavior.
Asking “What’s Missing” reveals that everyone is part of the problem. Verbalized or 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 must be honest regarding our personal relationship struggles & failures. We must share with clients how we resolved our problems with our significant others! Without this bold honesty therapists are like helium filled balloons. Welcome at first, but disappointing in the long run.
Having professional help givers ask “What’s Missing” in their own relationships is a refreshing acknowledgement that their own struggle to being seen, understood, accepted, chosen and valued in relationship and it colors 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 issues, into the shadow areas, with clients.
“What’s Missing?” as i am using the question asks specifically, “Why do good intentioned people, under stress, say things and behave in ways that results in others reacting negatively?” In other words why do we hurt those we love?
The answer is deeper than stop being ‘right’, stop being so aggressive or stop being so demanding. A person's 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 answers hides within each of us and the people we interact with every day. The cost for living a life from survival patterns is harm to our hearts, minds and bodies, not to mention the social connectivity we crave from 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 answer and solution can be found in:
- Understanding the mute, controlling, all powerful, yet hidden unconscious personalities we each created in early childhood to survive! The Golem and Survival Child.
How is the Success of This Model Measured
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. 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 they measure my value to them when they determined, as an individual or a group, that the training was behavior changing and had a long-term effect on their personal and professional relationships. These must be 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. In other words the people who live with, play with, work with the client must be the judges of changed communication behavior.
Knowing What to do Next
None of us are perfect communicators! However, we can learn in the heat of an interaction when & why we are not being effective and what to do next to remedy the problem. Knowing what to do next is the key. Learning new options allows us to go back to a person, change the misunderstanding, and see value in the return visit. We learn how to get seen, understood, accepted, chosen and valued. We know what it feels like to get truly heard by the people around us. Options allow us to leave people with a greater sense of their value and thus assure higher productivity, job and life 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. By it’s nature it is hard to focus on. 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.
Use of Words Reveals Unconscious Dynamics
The Intentional Language Relationship Model points to and describes the shape shifting tendency of our psyche’s personalities. We use words and thus descriptions in order to have a frame of reference. This way we can relate. One personality I will call the Golem. The name Golem comes from a wonderful Polish folktale where his purpose is to be a mute, yet powerful enforcer of rules, what is normal and what works under threat. He knows how we should be acting under duress and has the power to make us do it - for better or worse. Have you ever been surprised or shocked or disappointed in your behavior? This is the Golem silently manipulating us to be normal. There are as many positive outcomes as negative, as will be explained, so don't become a Golem-hater.
Everyday the Golem grows in strength, though we are unaware of it’s size and power over 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 childish needy counterpart, the Survival Child. They are the byproduct of heightened tension as a child - The "We are not OK the way we are” statements we heard from parents as they socialized us. This our psyche split in half at a very young age leaving us with split personalities. I suggest these are the “voices” disturbed people hear.
We unconsciously spilt our psyche in order to become the child that our caregivers found acceptable and normal. This was pretty brutal. So we became the children who would toe the family’s line and disguise the family secrets with appropriate family behavior. From the psyche’s point of view, it was better to become less than whole in order to survive. Wounded by not being OK, we charged the Golem with keeping us in line and the Survival Child to remind us of who we were.
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 new set of powerful relationship and communication tools that become our new model. To understand this model and use these tools will change the way you choose relationships, how 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.
Two Feeling One Body
Next 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 other's. 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 with 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.
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