why wait to be happy

Version 2.4 – June 4, 2013

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-‐NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-‐nd/3.0 The author’s purpose in using this Creative Commons License is to encourage readers to share this body of work. However, the material can be used only in its existing form and must always be attributed to the original authors. Reology™ is a registered trademark of Jake and Hannah Eagle and cannot be used without their express written consent. All rights in the mark are reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-‐in-‐Publication Data Eagle, Jake and Eagle, Hannah Why Wait To Be Happy? p. cm q. Includes bibliographical references r. ISBN 978-‐0-‐9841362-‐6-‐1 (electronic publication) ISBN 978-‐0-‐9841362-‐5-‐4 (paperback: 1 color text) I. Self Help, Personal Growth, Psychology, Spirituality 2013938096

This book is dedicated to all those people serious about change, people who want to make the most of their lives.

Introduction

reology.org Why Wait To Be Happy? 1

Why do so many people feel unhappy, anxious, unfulfilled, or unable to create sustainable loving relationships? As co-‐founders of The Reology Institute, we will share with you our answers to this question. Our answers are based on the work of pioneers who have led the human potential movement for the past fifty years, as well as researchers who have, more recently, used neuroscience to validate the physiology of our emotions. We also draw upon our own personal experiences as health care practitioners who have worked with hundreds of people, and as a married couple who have learned how to create and enjoy a wonderful life together for the past twenty years. This booklet is relatively short, not because it lacks rigor or thoroughness, but because we boiled the story down to its essence. Here, we identify and explain three basic causes that contribute to unhappiness. When you understand the genesis of your emotional pain, you will have an advantage in finding your own solutions. While many solutions exist, few of them address all three causes. By focusing exclusively on just one area that contributes to our emotional pain, we can exacerbate the other areas, thus never experiencing the satisfaction we seek. One of the causes of emotional pain isn't sufficiently addressed by any approach other than that developed by a psychology professor at Caltech in 1960—our mentor, John Weir, PhD. His approach, developed along with his wife, Joyce, was passed on to us and has become the cornerstone of Reology.

Regardless of the approach you choose to foster your own growth, we invite you to learn about Reology and about ReSpeak, which is a new way to speak to yourself and others. This unique way of speaking—and thinking—will complement and enhance whatever personal growth and spiritual path you choose for yourself. Life is short—often shorter than we expect. Why wait to be happy? We don’t think you need to wait. Based on our experience, there are specific things you can do to pull happiness from a “someday” right into the present. The best way to really learn and take ownership of the concepts in this booklet is to attend a Reology Retreat. We’ve been teaching these since 2001. We affectionately refer to these workshops as “labs,” from the word “laboratory,” because they are a safe place for people to learn and experiment with new ways of seeing, being, and communicating. We hope that someday we’ll get to share this remarkable experience with you. Jake and Hannah Eagle

Overview


We all want to be happy, to love, and be loved, and live meaningful lives. Yet an awful lot of us aren’t satisfied and don’t have sustainable, loving relationships. Instead, we live in discord and disharmony—sometimes with the people we say we love. Too many of us are in emotional pain, feeling overwhelmed, and suffering from confusion, internal conflicts, and depression. Why is this the case? Why are we, smart people—who have so much in so many ways—unsatisfied with our lives and relationships? One reason is that most of us never had someone model or teach us how to love, to be loved, and to find and pursue our passions. And there are other reasons, too. Reology has identified three primary causes that contribute to our unhappiness. Together, they create what we call The Anxiety Cycle—an endless cycle of anxiety that feeds on itself and creates more anxiety. When we’re stuck in this cycle, happiness eludes us.

1. Nurture—the way we were raised

2. Nature—our inherited temperament

3. Culture—living in a world of judgment

The Anxiety Cycle

What do you believe holds you back from living your life the way you want to? Is this the result of your upbringing (Nurture), your temperament (Nature), or do you feel held back for fear of judgment (Culture)? The answer may be more than one, if so, list them in priority order from the most problematic to the least.

______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________

Culture Judgment

Nurture Upbringing

Nature Temperament


The Anxiety Cycle causes us to feel insecure and unworthy, to behave immaturely or inappropriately, and prevents us from having sustainable, loving relationships. Most of us experience anxiety; for some of us it is mild, for others it is severe. But even mild anxiety can prevent us from fully appreciating the positive things in our lives. Anxiety tends to overshadow the present with concerns about the future. This cycle not only exists within our lives, but there is a larger cycle that cascades from our parents to us and from us to our children. However, with understanding and the proper tools, we can break this cycle.

Reology offers a truly unique strategy for overcoming The Anxiety Cycle We can resolve the problems related to our upbringings (Nurture) in two ways. One involves learning to get the nurturance we didn’t get as a child—if that’s possible. The other involves becoming more mature. There is one primary way to deal with our temperaments (Nature), and that is to become more self-‐accepting. However, it’s extremely hard to become self-‐accepting unless we first deal with the problem of living in a world of judgment (Culture). As far as we know, only Reology offers a realistic way to break the anxiety associated with our own judgments and those of other people. These judgments are a product of how we use language. Reology teaches us a new way to use language—a new way to speak to ourselves and to others—that significantly minimizes our anxiety about being judged. It’s called ReSpeak. How often do you experience anxiety in your life? ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ Where and with whom are you best able to relax? ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ Where and with whom are you the most anxious? ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________

Grandparents

Parents Children


This diagram provides a snapshot of how we can overcome The Anxiety Cycle. We’ll explore the solutions in the following pages of this book. And if you wonder why many approaches to overcoming unhappiness don’t work or don’t have lasting effects, it’s because they try to solve problems by operating at the same level at which the problems were created. Most of our problems stem from the way we think, and the way we think is strongly shaped by the way we use language. By changing the way we use language we are able to overcome The Anxiety Cycle. Let’s explore in more detail each of the causes that can contribute to our anxiety, and how Reology specifically addresses them.

Culture Judgment

Nurture Upbringing

Nature Temperament

Self-‐Acceptance Non-‐Judgmental Language

Attachment Theory Provides Nurturance

Differentiation Theory Creates

Maturity

Nurture


We can’t change the way were raised (Nurture), and even if we raise our children more consciously, they too will not have perfect upbringings. However, even though we can’t change our pasts, with Reology we can change our relationships to our pasts. This is done in two primary ways, and because neither method alone is sufficient, we must address both.

First, we must satisfy the needs we have for nurturance to the degree that they can be satisfied. This requires involvement and support from other people.

Second, we must accept that some of our needs will never be satisfied. However, if we go through a process called differentiation, which means that we develop a clear sense of self and learn to maintain our sense of self even while relating with other people, we can form new, mature relationships with those hungry parts of ourselves, and by doing so we free ourselves. We free ourselves from looking to other people to do something for us that only we can do for ourselves.

Take a few minutes to identify which of your needs for nurturance other people must fill and which do you need to fill for yourself. ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ What are some ways that you can nurture yourself? ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ Can you accept that some of your needs for being nurtured may never be satiated? ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________


Turning to others in an effort to satisfy our needs for nurturance When looking to satisfy our needs for nurturance, we can turn to the reliable body of work known as “attachment theory,” which demonstrates that the degree to which we feel attached, and attuned to by our mothers when we are children, has long-‐term implications for our psychological development and capacity for intimate relationships. Growing up with a parent who attunes to us—makes us feel understood— helps us develop the neurological capacity to regulate our own emotions, to soothe ourselves. Unfortunately, many of us didn’t have parents who attuned to us, so we never learned how to regulate our own emotions. As a result, we feel anxious, and we’re more reactive than we want to be, which can cause problems at home and work. To minimize our anxiety we distract ourselves (perhaps with television, alcohol, the internet), we repress that which makes us uncomfortable, we withdraw to avoid perceived conflict, or we create conflict to avoid intimacy. We diminish ourselves by behaving in these ways which make us unhappy. These unconscious ways of coping—which contribute to our unhappiness—limit our potential and prevent us from creating sustainable intimate relationships. Instead of creating healthy romantic partnerships, we’re likely to 1) attract the wrong partners, or 2) become too reliant on our partners to satisfy our needs for nurturance.

Proponents of attachment theory believe that a therapist or group therapy environment can provide some of what our parents didn’t provide—a safe, dependable, empathetic, and attuned connection that enables us to “grow up,” to develop emotional intelligence in ways that we couldn’t when we were young children in unsafe environments. Daniel Siegel, psychiatrist and leading expert on attachment theory, and author of The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, is quoted saying:

I loved the way attachment research showed that fate (having less-‐than-‐perfect parents) isn’t necessarily destiny. If you can make sense of your life story, you can change it.

Siegel was particularly struck by the fact that:

If adults could, through therapy or other reparative life experience, learn to create a reflective, coherent, and emotionally rich story about their own childhoods—no matter how neglectful, abusive, or inadequate—they could ‘earn’ the emotional security they'd missed…1

• Write a one-page narrative about yourself. • Who are you? What’s your story? • Can you write a narrative in which you take responsibility

for yourself?


The emotional security we seek allows us to improve the relationships we have and attract different, healthier people into our lives, people with whom we can more easily build solid, sustainable, loving relationships. Such emotional security makes us better partners and parents who are more patient, less reactive, and better role models. Emotional security can be fostered with certain forms of therapy or while attending a Reology Retreat, because we create a uniquely safe environment in which participants can freely reveal themselves. Part of the safety comes from the fact that group members remain anonymous. In addition, there is no blame or praise. In this safe place, group leaders and other participants witness one another, which means that we take the time to listen and understand. Such an atmosphere invites deep honesty, and individuals are appreciated, with all their complexity, for the unique people they are. At the heart of a Reology Retreat, we create a circle of care and compassion that allows self-‐deception to be replaced with honesty. When this happens, our beauty—not perfection—shines through and we make up for some of what we didn’t have when we were children. The nurturance we receive in such situations can be profoundly healing. In A Brief History of Everything, Ken Wilber writes about the importance of such an environment when he observes that:

In a safe environment, surrounded by empathy, congruence, and acceptance, the individual can begin to tell the truth about his or her interior without fear of retribution. And thus the false self—at whatever level—tends to lose the reason for its existence. The lie—the resistance to

truthfulness—is interpreted, and the concealed pain and terror and anguish disclose themselves, and the false self slowly burns in the fire of truth awareness. The truthful interiors are shared in an intersubjective circle of care and compassion, which releases them from their imprisonment in deception and allows them to join the ongoing growth of consciousness—the beauty of the actual self shines through, and the intrinsic joy of the new depth is its own reward.2

When you encounter your wounded parts, or scared parts, or angry parts—do you know how to give them a mature voice with which to express their feelings? ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ Are there parts of you, or feelings, that insist on expressing themselves in childish ways? ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________

Carla was forty years old when she came to her first Reology Retreat. She lived in the Northwest, ran her own company, and was a part-‐time yoga instructor who had been divorced for seven years. Although she came with her new partner, and she


came because he had previously attended another Reology Retreat without her, she decided to focus mostly on her daughter. In her own words:

I decided upon arrival that I wanted to look at my relationship with my nine-‐year-‐old daughter. I have struggled with this relationship since she was about a year and I have worked with a therapist extensively to help better my interactions with her. But I was still frustrated and feeling guilty. During the retreat—and afterwards—I was amazed at the HUGE shift I had around dealing with her and my lack of patience and acceptance of this little person in my life. This is something I hadn’t been able to do in eight years of therapy.

Part of what happens for people in a Reology Retreat is that they experience being attuned to—understood— which in turn enables them to start attuning to others. This is what happened for Carla. She grew up lacking a certain kind of connection, and this inhibited her ability to give to her daughter that which Carla herself had never received. But very quickly, in the right environment, we can turn on new neural circuits that result in new behaviors. Some of Carla’s needs for nurturance were satiated during the retreat. She left the retreat with a fuller sense of herself—and loving herself—which in turn allowed her to give more love to her daughter.

Yet nurturance alone is not enough Nurturance, however, is not the only solution for people who lacked a nurturing upbringing. Differentiation is the other key element. As we become more differentiated, we develop the ability to manage our own anxiety and not be overwhelmed by the anxiety of others. If we partner with another adult, one who is well along the differentiation path, we can experience a deeply satisfying, healing, and easy partnership. Dr. Ellyn Bader, co-‐founder of The Couples Institute in Menlo Park, California, describes a well-‐differentiated couple:

[Differentiation is] the ability to maintain a clear sense of self in close proximity to a partner. The higher your level of differentiation, the closer you can get to your partner, because you're not afraid of losing yourself. It gives you a solid but permeable self, which allows you to make a decision to be influenced and to change (as opposed to having to change to stay on good terms with your partner). At high levels of differentiation, what your partner wants in his/her life becomes as important to you as what you want.3

Do you lose yourself when you get involved with other people? ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ How can you tell this is happening? ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________

Individuation


One step in the process of differentiating is to emotionally, and sometimes physically, separate—step away—from the people we’ve been dependent upon. This step is known as individuating. We all need to individuate from our parents; it’s a natural part of the process of growing up. In our culture, however, we have few if any rituals or guidelines about how to do this. It’s also usually necessary to individuate from our life partner. This doesn’t mean we have to physically separate, but we do learn to stand separately while being together. We learn how to give a mature voice to the immature, wounded parts of ourselves, so that we stop asking our partners to tolerate our immaturity. As our wounded parts maturely express themselves, they also heal themselves, which directly increases the health of our relationships. This act of individuating from our parents and life partners is a prerequisite to creating a sustainable, loving, and healthy romantic partnership. What follows is a description from a couple who attended a Reology Retreat after being married for twelve years. From his point of view:

I wasn’t really able to listen to my wife before we attended the program because whenever she would tell me she was unhappy or sad or upset, I felt responsible. So, either I stopped listening, which didn’t go over very well, or I listened to her but got defensive. Only after learning ReSpeak was I able to listen to her

without feeling responsible for her. I’m not saying that I didn’t play a part in her being unhappy at times, but this wasn’t solely my responsibility. She’s a very smart lady and when she started speaking to me in this new way, most of the time we had very productive conversations. It’s actually a completely different kind of conversation that we now have.

From her point of view:

The breakthrough for me came when Dave started listening to me instead of reacting to me. I don’t think that I was blaming him for my unhappiness, but I was furious that he had no ability to listen to me. Everything was about him. I remember the moment when this changed for both of us. It was the fourth day of the retreat. I kept asking him to listen and he kept giving me all the examples to prove he was a good listener. Only when the Reology teacher stopped Dave and asked, “Are you listening to her now?” only then did Dave get it. He stopped and said, “I understand that I haven’t been listening to you. Let’s try it again. I’m listening now.” That was an amazing moment. Something shifted for both of us. And what’s fabulous is that when we use ReSpeak we remind ourselves of this different way of communicating, so the change that occurred has been a lasting change.

What happened for this couple? Dave understood very well what happened, and explained it further when he reported that they changed the level of their conversation as a result of learning to use ReSpeak, because ReSpeak helps people focus


on what’s happening right now instead of bickering about what happened in the past. This couple learned to elevate their conversation and their consciousness. As a result, they set their sights on something higher than being right; they set their sights on meaningful connection.

Would you rather be right, or would you rather connect and be happy? Write a little about this choice: ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ How can you tell if you have individuated from your parents or your partner? Ask yourself three questions: 1. Am I inappropriately emotionally reactive? Until we individuate we have a tendency to be inappropriately emotionally reactive. We sort of feel as if we are plugged into other people’s nervous systems so if they get upset, we get upset. If they get anxious, we get anxious. And because we are so deeply affected by other people, we tend to try and control

them. Being controlling manifests in many forms, from acting superior, to intimidating with anger, to manipulating with tears. Also, until we have individuated, we are overly reactive to praise and blame. Until we have a stable sense of self—our own inner compass—we are overly concerned with how other people view us, especially those people closest to us. When they praise us we feel good. When they blame us we feel bad. It’s as if we give them too much access to our nervous systems. This makes it almost impossible to have a healthy, mature relationship. 2. Am I emotionally dependent? Until we individuate we’re more emotionally dependent on other people, especially our parents and partners. Our emotional dependence manifests as an urgency to please other people. In our desire to please we avoid speaking our truth. We withhold, and so the love we may receive is discounted—by us—because we don’t feel truly seen. We continue to feel incomplete, unseen, unknown. This fuels our urgency to please others so that we will gain some confirmation of our goodness. But the process is flawed and our dependence—which is confusion about “Who am I without you?”—drives us in wrong direction. 3. Do I emotionally cut off from other people? Until we individuate we are more likely to emotionally cut ourselves off from other people. If our interactions with other people are too intense we may choose to stop listening to them or find some other way to distance ourselves. This is a


preemptive strategy to avoid being rejected—turning away instead of a turning toward—and highly disruptive to building trust or long-‐term commitment.

How comfortable are you with intimacy? Note your answer on a scale of 1-10 (10 being at ease with continuous intimacy and connection) ______________________________________________________ How about your partner? ______________________________________________________ What would you do like to do increase intimacy with your partner? ______________________________________________________ Successfully individuating opens up new frontiers When we have individuated, which is a process that takes time—and repeated effort—we have accomplished a rite of passage. We have moved ourselves deeply in the direction of being more differentiated. This means that we are more comfortable in our own skins, regardless of the pressures we may feel from those who disagree with us. We no longer need to isolate ourselves as a preemptive strategy to avoid being hurt. Instead, we can negotiate boundaries, we can ask for what we want, we can speak our truth and allow our relationships to evolve in whatever ways they do. We can experience the deeper

intimacy that comes from loving someone for who they are and for being loved for who we are. After we individuate, the process of differentiating doesn’t stop, it accelerates. As we learn to listen to our own voice, instead of other voices we have internalized, we discover what we truly value. And we are no longer overly controlling or overly controlled; instead, we are free to express ourselves as the adult we have become. We begin to experience greater health—physical and emotional—because we release ourselves from the psychological stress associated with lower levels of differentiation. Such stress often manifests as anxiety, depression, alcoholism, or chronic fatigue. While Murray Bowen, an American psychiatrist, developed the idea of differentiation, John Weir, PhD, and his wife Joyce Weir developed the actual process to increase one’s level of differentiation—which can also be understood as emotional maturity. From 1960 to 1998, the Weirs conducted retreats called Self-‐Differentiation Laboratories, in which participants learned to reduce their anxiety by developing emotional maturity. They discovered ways to become less reactive, less concerned with how they were viewed by others, and how to stop getting drawn into other people’s emotional dramas. Participants took pro-‐active steps to individuate and self-‐differentiate, which allowed them to develop deeper intimate connections as well as independence from their family of origin. The Weirs began mentoring us in 1998, and their Self-‐Differentiation Laboratories have evolved into Reology Retreats. The process developed by the Weirs has been refined over forty years, with more than 10,000 participants. We continue to


honor the Weirs’ tradition and emphasis on self-‐differentiation, while making the Weirs’ work more accessible and easier to use in our day-‐to-‐day lives. Not only is self-‐differentiation a model that promotes personal growth for individuals, we consider it the highest source of leverage for creating healthy romantic relationships. David Schnarch is author of Passionate Marriage, and founder of a tough-‐minded, differentiation-‐based approach to couples counseling, who believes that:

. . . relationship failure stems not from lack of emotional connection between partners . . . but too much of the wrong kind. Partners become enmeshed, lose a sense of selfhood, and depend on positive reinforcement and reassurance from each other because they can’t soothe their own anxieties, and then have relationship difficulties when both demand validation from the other but neither will give it. Each partner needs, in effect, to grow up, learn to tolerate anxiety, and take charge of himself or herself before they can fully connect with the other.4

He goes on to say that “genuine intimacy and desire” grow as we differentiate. It is through the “emergence of the adult human self” that we experience the deepest and most profound forms of union with another adult. And this is the underlying focus of a Reology Retreat: “the emergence of the adult human self.”

We need both compassion and wisdom. Compassion comes from being nurtured and nurturing. Wisdom comes as we develop deep understanding and emotional maturity. When we have both—life and relationships are easier. Which is more challenging for you—expressing your compassion or your wisdom? ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________


Finding greater value in two approaches at once Many professionals in the field of psychology are proponents of either attachment theory or differentiation theory. Those who embrace attachment theory rely on nurturance to heal old wounds. Think of this as a form of re-‐parenting. Those who embrace differentiation theory advocate that we must grow ourselves up, and learn to maintain a clear sense of self even while in appropriately dependent relationships. Reology includes both approaches, using attachment theory and differentiation theory to address the deficits from our upbringing. This has proven to be a powerful, holistic approach to spur personal and emotional growth in a lasting way for those who learn and then practice Reology and ReSpeak. The value of experiencing nurturance and meaningful, attuned connections is that we can actually alter our neurobiology so that we are more capable of intimacy. The value of increasing differentiation, which is a lifelong process, is that it allows us to reduce our own anxiety and to create sustainable loving adult partnerships.

Reology Retreats teach a new philosophy, a new way to speak, and interpersonal skills, but equally important, the retreats provide an environment and experiences specifically designed so that each participant will discover their voice and decide for themselves how to live their lives. More than half of our graduates continue to attend these retreats for many years after participating in their first one. They participate in more retreats because they love the environment, the non-‐judgmental nature, the place to immerse themselves in this language with other proponents who are as interested as they are in developing their consciousness of language and how it affects their lives.

Nature


The next step is to recognize and accept our nature—our temperament—and learn to stop fighting ourselves.

All of us begin life with a temperament, a complex combination of genetic tendencies to “approach” or “withdraw,” to be “cheerful” or “stormy,” to be “distractible” or “focused,” to be “overly sensitive” (high-‐reactive) or “less sensitive” (low-‐reactive). Jerome Kagan, a pioneer of developmental psychology who is best known for his work on temperament, refers to temperament as “an inborn predisposition to experience certain feelings and display particular behaviors during the early years.” He and his colleagues discovered that “the temperamental biases of infants are the first conditions contributing to later variation in mood and behavior. They don’t determine a particular personality, but they do limit the traits that a person can acquire.”5

How would you describe your nature? ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ Have you designed your life to support your nature? If not, what changes could you easily make? ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________

Relatively speaking, in many ways life is easier for those of us who are temperamentally less sensitive (low-‐reactive) individuals. Our neurobiology is actually different; we are less excitable than highly sensitive (high-‐reactive) people. However, according to Kagen, “a person’s temperament does not determine his or her later personality but does constrain the possibility of developing the opposite set of traits.”

Showing a high-‐reactive [overly sensitive] temperament in infancy reduces the likelihood that the child will become bold and extroverted; while having a low-‐reactive [less sensitive] temperament limits the possibility that the child will become a fearful, anxious adolescent. It is easier to predict what babies will not become from knowing their temperaments than to predict the specific traits they will develop.6

So the key is to recognize your temperament, and notice what makes you relaxed and happy as compared to what causes you to feel anxious and uncomfortable. Notice what drains your energy and causes you to feel tired versus what you find energizing and invigorating. Notice what you experience as nurturing versus depleting. Notice how you respond to other people’s temperaments. What kinds of people make it easier for you to express yourself and what kinds of people are you most comfortable with?


When we deny our temperaments, our values, our spirituality—we are not being true to ourselves. If we stop listening to ourselves, if we cut off parts of ourselves, we’re likely to find ourselves stuck in jobs we don’t enjoy and relationships that are mostly hard work. We exhaust ourselves, and we limit our potential. Can you identify the parts of yourself that you have neglected? ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ Ken Wilber suggests that our later stages in personal development can be sabotaged by repressions, or what he refers to as “internal civil wars.” This happens when we deny or repress aspects of ourselves. He asks us to imagine that:

. . . the self at birth has 100 units of potential. And say that in its early growth it dissociates a small blob . . . say it splits off 10 units of itself. It arrives at [the next stage of development] with 90 units of its potential . . . So the self is only 90 percent there, as it were. 10 percent of its awareness is stuck at [a lower stage of development],

stuck in this little unconscious blob residing in the basement and using its 10 percent of awareness in an attempt to get the entire organism to act according to its archaic wishes and impulses and interpretations. And so on, as growth and development continues. The point is that, by the time the self reaches adulthood, it might have lost 40 percent of its potential, as split-‐off or dissociated little selves, little blobs, little hidden subjects, and these little subjects tend to remain at the level of development that they had when they were split off. So you have these little “barbarians” running around in the basement, impulsively demanding to be fed, to be catered to, to be the center of the universe, and they get very nasty if they aren’t fed. They scream and yell and bite and claw, and since you don’t even consciously know they are there, you interpret this interior commotion as depression, obsession, anxiety, or any number of neurotic symptoms that are completely baffling. The point is that these dissociated selves—these little hidden subjects that are clinging to lower worldviews—will take up a certain amount of your energy. Not only do they use energy themselves, your defenses against them use energy. And pretty soon, you run out of energy.7

When we resist our temperament by repressing or hiding parts of ourselves, our hidden parts erode our wholeness. They lay dormant, but in moments of great stress they resurface and are often the cause of our inappropriate behaviors and reactivity. For example, you may still harbor the terrifying feeling you had when your mother was late picking you up at school. You still contain the anxiety and fear you felt as you found yourself more and more alone while the other children went home on buses or


in their parents’ cars. As an adult, when your partner arrives late to pick you up prior to a party, you explode, blaming him/her for ruining the evening, accusing him/her of not caring about you. You’ve interpreted your partner’s lateness as abandoning you. When we practice Reology, we accept our individual natures, and this allows us to set appropriate and healthy boundaries for ourselves. We then become less anxious because we are creating our lives in accordance with our temperaments.

Many people aren’t really clear about their own temperament. One of the reasons is because we live in a world where other people feel free to tell us who we are, what we’re good at, what we should do, and what we shouldn’t do. A Reology Retreat provides a stark contrast to this, as you can hear when you listen to this first person account:

This was a bizarre experience for me. Maybe because of my size, or my Bronx accent, all I’ve heard my entire life is that I’m an extrovert, a showman, a loud mouth, and that I take up a lot of room. But what was so strange at the retreat is that for an entire week no one told me anything about me—I mean, nothing.

It’s hard to describe. In some ways it was like being alone with a group of people. But in another way I felt very much part of the group. Mostly what happened is that because no one told me anything about me, I had a chance to really figure myself out, to connect with myself in a way I’d never done before.

The way to work with, not against, our own temperaments is through acceptance. As we look at the final cause of so much anxiety and unhappiness we will, more thoroughly, explore the key tool to increasing acceptance. The last piece in this process is to free ourselves of our own unnecessary value judgments and our fear of being judged by others. For how long have you been working on yourself? ______________________________________________________ Are you getting the results you want? ______________________________________________________ Is it a struggle? ______________________________________________________ What if it were easy to get the results you want? What would that look and feel like? ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________

Culture


We are born into a culture of judgment. Since we are social and civilized creatures, we do need to make judgments based on our shared agreements—cultural rules—and these judgments help us establish boundaries and create order. Judgment occurs every day when we decide to obey the laws, what route to travel to get to work, whether or not to pass the car in front of us, whether and when to speak up, to exercise, to rest, and on and on. Judgment occurs every time we make thoughtful decisions about how to live our lives. But we don’t need to make judgments that diminish or disrespect people, yet that’s what we do when we label people and events too simplistically, as being “good” or “bad” or “right” or “wrong.” When we judge others, we fear others will judge us. Living with fear of judgments results in what’s known as social anxiety, which causes people to withdraw, worry too much about what others think of us, and feel as if we’re not good enough. Social anxiety can be mild or severe. It is a serious problem because it causes us to limit ourselves. Either we hold ourselves back for fear of being judged, or we compensate by acting as if we don’t care what others think. In both cases, we limit the depth of our relationships. We don’t get to be fully seen for who we are. Or we get into relationships based on false ideas about each other—because we didn’t fully show ourselves—and then we feel stuck.

Do you worry about being judged by others? Whose judgments are hardest for you to accept? ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ Do you tend to judge others? Who and about what? ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ Do you hold yourself back because you worry about what others will think? What’s an example or two? ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________


Murray Bowen demonstrated that people who are less differentiated experience more social anxiety. This makes sense in that they give too much power to other people—and usually the wrong people. Because their primary needs are for security, love, approval, and avoidance of conflict, they hesitate to own themselves. So who do they attract into their lives? People who are willing to tell them who they are—people who are willing to control them. Such relationships are highly unlikely to lead to health or growth or intimacy. Being intimate requires being seen. If we give others the power to tell us that we are “good” or “bad,” we are likely to hide from them anything that we think they will disapprove of. In doing so, we limit the possibility for intimacy. Just because it appears that we are successful and we have it all together that doesn’t mean we aren’t susceptible to the judgments of others. What we all need is an opportunity to be witnessed for who we really are. When this happens, the results can be profound, which is what happened when a thirty-‐six-‐year-‐old doctor attended a Reology Retreat.

I know this is funny, but had I known what it was like I probably wouldn’t have gone to the retreat. Yet, this is the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. I don’t usually share with other people. I’m always in charge. I have enormous responsibility in my work. But I also know that something is missing in my life and being very successful—materially successful—isn’t helping me be happy. When the program started I chose to name myself,

“Judgmental,” because I really am very judgmental. I wall myself off and don’t let anything in. But something happened. I think it was just the second day when I changed my name to “Vulnerable.” I explained to the group why I chose that name. I shared my history, but because of the way they taught me to speak, I was talking about myself in a way unlike anything I’d ever done before. How can I explain what happened? This way of talking changed everything. People listened, but didn’t comment. I connected with people in ways like never before. I got clear about myself and my family and my girlfriend. I was vulnerable, but I was totally safe.

Social anxiety keeps us from knowing or expressing what we most deeply care about. We acquiesce to cultural or personal pressures. We allow our dreams and desires to be squelched. We buy into other people’s stories about us, instead of writing our own. Steve Jobs, the founder of the Apple computer, was a man who wrote his own life story. As part of his 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, he said:

Your time is limited; so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.8

The “noise of others’ opinions” can be threatening. When we feel threatened, the primitive part of our brain becomes


activated. Our primitive brain’s objective is to protect us, to insure our survival. When this part of our brain thinks we aren’t safe, it reaches for one of only three tools it has access to—fighting, fleeing, or freezing. Which of these three do you tend to reach for when you feel threatened? ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ Today, in our culture, what is it that makes us feel threatened? It’s not being hunted by a wild lion. It’s words. The words we hear—in our own heads or coming from other people—are what we react to. Yet, for the most part, words don’t truly threaten us, certainly not our physical survival. Instead, what’s threatened is our identity, our narrative, our ideas about who we are. Reology offers us a new way of using words, a new way to communicate. It’s called ReSpeak. This way of speaking quells our primitive brains while stimulating our modern brains, promoting greater curiosity, bringing us into the present moment, and helping us understand that each and every person is only telling us about their individual perceptions—they are not telling us about us.

This is a radical shift in perspective. ReSpeak is the only language we know of that gets away from the “dualistic language” of the primitive brain, meaning language that reduces things to one of two choices in any instance—whether it’s being good or bad, right or wrong, or something else. Within that structure, where people and things are reduced to “right” and “wrong,” we fear being judged. ReSpeak eliminates this fear, allowing us to become more curious, develop a greater sense of humor, and be less reactive. Learning to use ReSpeak is central to addressing all of the problems that contribute to The Anxiety Cycle, because most of these problems are created with language. Using the same language structure that caused the problems will not solve the problems. When we use language to label people as good/bad, or we use our words to control, disempower, or victimize people—then we all suffer the consequences. When we use ReSpeak, we can more easily stay in the present moment, we have an alternative to using praise or blame—because we no longer need to control other people—and we become more aware of the importance of owning our own feelings. ReSpeak provides a structure that allows us to more easily know ourselves, be ourselves and express ourselves in a mature and responsible manner.

Summary


If we desire to grow and live lives of genuine celebration, we must move away from The Anxiety Cycle by empowering ourselves and taking responsibility to create the kind of lives we want. Do you have a daily routine or some kind of practice that engenders kindness? Describe your practice. ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ Do you have a daily routine or practice to keep yourself awake and conscious? Describe this practice. ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ Reology is the most powerful model we know to reduce conflict and anxiety, and to create happiness and easy relationships. You can learn to use ReSpeak to complement whatever personal growth program or spiritual practice you embrace. To change the way you use language requires working at a very deep level. This is why our programs are residential retreats, typically one week long. Because many of our behaviors are longstanding habits, we need to deeply immerse ourselves in a new paradigm before we can break The Anxiety Cycle.

Our retreats are designed with experiences that help participants to integrate this new way of seeing, being, and communicating. When participants leave the programs they take away an actual, daily practice to use every time they speak. That’s part of the power of this work; the practice is not separate from our lives. It’s not like meditating for half an hour and then getting on with the rest of our day. This practice is something we take with us wherever we go, and we use it in the privacy of our own heads as well as every time we speak with others. Reology provides a process that is both comprehensive and deep. This is a path to love, emotional maturity, intimacy, and contentment. With new insights and experiences, a new way to speak—to others and ourselves, we re-‐parent ourselves, we create healthy narratives, we come to recognize and honor our temperaments, and we enjoy the cessation of anxiety related to how we are viewed by other people.

To learn more:

The Reology Institute PO Box 817 -‐ Tesuque -‐ NM 87574

505-‐986-‐3922

[email protected] [email protected] www.reology.org

References


1 Sykes Wylie, Mary, and Lynn Turner. "The Attuned Therapist." Psychotherapy Networker. March/April 2011: 24. Print. 2 Wilber, Ken. A Brief History of Everything. Shambhala, 2000. 156. Print. 3 Cook, Elaine. "The Sexual Crucible & Imago Relationship Therapy: two approaches to marital counseling." 2001: n. page. Print. 4 Sykes Wylie, Mary, and Lynn Turner. “The Attuned Therapist.” Psychotherapy Networker. March/April 2011: 27. Print. 5 Kagan, Jerome. "Bringing Up Baby." Psychotherapy Networker. March/April 2011: 32. Print. 6 Kagan, Jerome. "Temperament—The Dana Guide." Dana Guide to Brain Health. Nov. 2007: n. page. Web. 25 Oct. 2011. 7 Wilber, Ken. A Brief History of Everything. Shambhala, 2000. 140-‐141. Print. 8 Jobs, Steve. "You've got to find what you love." Commencement Address. Stanford University. June 12, 2005. In Person.

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