The Devil We Know

The past can either predict the future or provide the information to free us from it, depending on our perspective.      

What we have become familiar with in our formative years will predict what is familiar to us as adults. The old adage ‘give me a child until he is seven years old and I’ll give you the man,’ is disturbingly true.  What we have come to know in the past is what we come to look for in others in the future.  The devil we know.       

When the parent/child relationship is one of the parent not allowing the child to think or feel differently, or disagree with the parent, the child will grow up and find a partner who doesn’t know how to disagree, or think and feel on their own.  They will always look outside of themselves to find answers, and gauge how others feel before knowing how they feel themselves.

The child who grows up and finds a partner to behave in these ways will do the same, not voicing their thoughts or feelings and usually denying that they don’t know how to resolve conflict, think on their own, and feel however they feel without looking to see how others feel first. 

Familiar seems safe.  Better the devil we know. 

The absence of the familiar causes stress, anxiety and tension. We notice that when we can park in the spot we are familiar with, we don’t have tension.  If our parking spot is taken we experience some level of tension.   

The absence of other familiar and unhealthy traits will also then cause an unconscious level of stress, anxiety and tension.  If abuse was familiar, one will seek it out.  Better the devil we know.  This leads us to unconsciously seek out relationships that repeat our childhood, all the while thinking there will be less stress, tension and anxiety, even if the devil we know is abuse.       

We are most familiar with our families and our history, although much of it lies in the unconscious mind acting on us from moment to moment.  Unless we recognize the patterns that take the life out of our relationships, we are bound to be in relationships that duplicate our early experiences with our parents and siblings.  This leads to a pattern of repeating life rather than living it. 

The familiar and often unconscious parent/child relationship foretells the future unconscious relationships.

IF THE PARENT /CHILD EXPERIENCE IS ONE OF THE PARENT:	THE CHILD WILL GROW UP THE SAME, AND:
·         Appearing unable to care for the child	·         Find a relationship with someone who is unable to care for them
·         Uses fear to gain compliance	·         Find a relationship where fear is used to gain compliance
·         Abuses themselves with drugs, alcohol, food, etc.	·         Find a relationship with someone who abuses themselves with drugs, alcohol, food, TV, etc.
·         Working most of the time	·         Find a relationship with someone who focuses on one aspect of living most of the time
·         Professing love but not showing love	·         Find a relationship with someone who professes but does not show love
·         Never fostering the child’s passions	·         Find a relationship where neither foster their own or the others passions
·         Demonstrates that childcare is a troublesome task	·         Find a relationship with someone who will not be able to help with the childrearing
·         Criticizing the child	·         Find a relationship with someone who criticizes
·         Leaves the family	·         Find a relationship with someone who will leave physically, mentally or emotionally
·         Giving orders rather than making requests	·         Find a relationship with someone who will give orders rather than make requests
·         Has impossible expectations	·         Find a relationship with someone who can never find satisfaction
·         Behaves in a condescending way towards the child	·         Find a relationship with someone who behaves in a condescending manner towards them
·         Bragging to hide low self-esteem	·         Finds a relationship with someone who brags verbally or by buying things worth bragging about without saying a word
·         Disrespecting the child	·         Find a relationship with someone who disrespects them
·         Uses the child as free labor	·         Find a relationship with someone who uses them as free labor
·         Has strong opinions about how others should live their lives	·         Find a relationship with someone who doesn’t know how to support
·         Uses guilt to manipulate	·         Find a relationship with someone who uses guilt to manipulate
·         Uses shame to teach appropriate behaviors	·         Find a relationship with someone who uses shame in the same way
·         Uses embarrassment as a parenting tool	·         Find a relationship with someone who is socially embarrassing and uses embarrassment as a social skill
·         Blames others	·         Find a relationship who is irresponsible and blames others
·         Puts conditions on love	·         Find a relationship with someone who must put conditions on to show love
·         Sees anger as unacceptable	·         Find a relationship with someone who represses anger
·         Gives money in place of love	·         Goes shopping when feeling unloved
·         Withdraws from the child	·         Find a relationship with someone who will withdraw from them mentally, physically or emotionally
·         Relying on the child to replace an absent partner	·         Find a relationship where they can ‘mother’/’father’ their partner rather than be a true partner
·         Insists the child ‘do the right thing’	·         Expect everyone to do things their way
·         Laughs at the child’s misery or missteps	·         Find a relationship in which the partners laugh at, not with, the other
·         Who is always sick	·         Find a partner who is sick, emotionally, mentally or physically

These unconscious behaviors that are hidden in plain sight are what we are drawn to because they are familiar, and we mistakenly think the familiar will cause us less stress.  We live these behaviors ourselves and perceive them in others because they are familiar and therefore, we think, absent of stress and danger, and yet the opposite is true.    

There is another way. 

It is to know that our parents were tiny children and inherited these behaviors in the same way they inherited their mother’s eye color and their father’s nose.  They taught us what they were taught and we are unconsciously teaching our children the same.  The inheritance is a long silent list of ways for people to be in this world that no longer serve us individually or collectively. 

Only when we stop blaming the parent and stop looking for someone else to nurture us, do we begin to nurture and parent ourselves, wisely guiding ourselves as no other can.   

BreakThrough is a way out. 

by Brenda Miller, CBr1

Living With Ourselves

Sometimes life seems too hard to bear.  Decisions feel impossible and it looks as if there is no way out of troubles that seem too big to understand, never mind solve.

When we come up against problems that look like no matter which way we go, we are going to lose, there are some simple techniques we can use to help us with complex issues. 

Firstly, be gentle with yourself.  That means treat yourself as you would treat a hurting friend.  Find ways to relax yourself and assure yourself that no matter what happens, you will work through it.  The evidence of billions of people populating a planet over millions of years all living through times and events, many of them much worse than we could possibly imagine, points to the idea that everything will work out okay no matter how it does work out. 

Fantasize the different possible resolutions to see how they feel a day from now, a week from now, a year from now, five years from now.  Fantasy is a good way to play out what is in the unconscious mind with regard to the issue you are facing.

Keep a journal and write your dreams in detail noting the theme, the feeling during the dream, and what you were doing during the day prior to the dream.  Ask yourself upon waking, what the dream symbolizes.  Dreams are not to be taken literally as the unconscious speaks in symbols, a language that is different than the one we speak on a conscious level.  If you can find a Jungian Analyst to analyze your dreams, it can accelerate understanding.  Before you go to bed at night, ask yourself to give you a dream that will help you out with a difficult issue.  The role of the unconscious mind is to provide compensation for one-sidedness.  A dream is showing the other side of self-perception. 

Find ways to creatively play out whatever you need to.  Sand play, drums, taking pictures, dance, or anything that works.  You can find a Creative Arts Therapist and get some ideas that work for you.  This type of unconscious release value can bring ease to what feels like impossible situations. 

Ask yourself, ‘Is there another way?’  We can look into our past as individuals, as a community, and collectively as humans, and see how people have traditionally handled difficult times and perhaps see what we don’t want.  That may open the way for another way.  We have tools that our parents did not. 

Consider what practical action would look like.  Pretend your best friend has the same problem as you do, and, in your mind, give her/him some sound advice.  Then take it. 

Sit with the dissonance of the secrets you hold or hard decisions you feel you have to make.  Ask yourself what it’s about.  Wait patiently for the answer.  If telling your secrets is the short-cut to absolution, don’t tell.  Sit with them.  Get to know and understand them.  There is gold underneath waiting for discovery.  If it’s glossed over, it may not be found.  The issues, however, will go underground only to resurface on another day in a louder way. 

Consider telling the truth.  The truth does not include blame, nor does it include a statement about the ‘other’.  It is an honest realization of your role in the issue at hand.  This is a new way of speaking to others.  It takes time to understand, and requires practice.  We must adhere to the idea that as soon as we feel ourselves begin to defend or tell a lie, we immediately speak the truth.  As we are always getting what we want, on an unconscious level, you can take a real short-cut across the long road of lies and look at why you want what you are getting.  Step up to your role and tell the other that you’ve recognized it without blaming them.  The blame begins to withdraw and the results from this type of interaction are real and deep and meaningful relationships. 

Accept responsibility and consequences with grace.  It is possible to live more in this state than out of it.   

Make even lists of what is good and bad about what you did.  If you find twenty reasons that support what you did was bad, then don’t stop until you have twenty reasons that are good about what you did.  Don’t use it as an excuse.  Use it as a way to understand. 

Be in nature as much as possible.  Nature extends an irresistible appeal to your own true nature, which is joyful, spontaneous, effortless, and accepting of what is. 

In addition to other ways of healing yourself, learn and commit to regularly doing a technique like BreakThrough to help you gain insight and clarity on your life.  Clarity leads to effortlessness.  It’s a welcome relief in a life filled with effort. 

When complicated issues turn up on your doorstep, invite them in, seat them on your comfiest chair and begin to understand why they’ve come to you.  

By Brenda Miller, CBr1

Conflict Is Asking For Clarity

Conflict, the unwelcome, persistent monster that it appears to be, throws off our enjoyment of minutes, hours, days, weeks or even years.   As BodyTalk practitioners, it affects how we interact with our clients.  It’s nearly impossible to drop into the zone, or be in tune with another person when we’re feeling the confusion and discomfort of conflict. 

As a result of conflict, we react in predictable ways:  find a sympathetic ear to tell our tale of woe to; have a battle with whomever we feel is responsible; attempt to ‘stuff ‘ it, ‘sit’ on it, ‘deny’ it, ‘run’ from it, take it out on someone else, or think of the right comeback too late and have a brilliant conversation in our own heads that the one we’re mad at can’t hear.  It feels impossible to face conflict from a centered place.  That would be like experiencing calmness while watching a tornado touch down nearby.  It happens on rare occasions, but it’s not our usual experience.   In the face of conflict, we are not clear, we are confused and it will show up in our BodyTalk sessions and in our relationships.      

Conflict in the mind is the tension felt when one belief is challenged by the opposite belief.  The opposites are always at play in a never-ending attempt at moving us from the extremes towards the center, on any given issue.  Take the opposites of chaos and control for example.  If you were raised in a chaotic home, and felt unloved because of it, the belief, ‘chaos = not being loved’, then what will play out in your adult life is ‘control = love’ and you’ll set out to control everything and everyone around you in an attempt to find ‘love.’  The opposites are attempting to create a balance and demonstrate that all our beliefs are perceptions only and that if given a minute, we’ll change our mind.  Most of us would agree with the above scenario, but we’d also agree to the opposite: control does not equal love at all.  In this case, chaos and control will continue to support each other and we’ll feel thrown around between them.  When things feel controlled, chaos will appear to balance it.  When things appear chaotic, control will settle it all down again.  The opposites, in all cases, are supporting each other for the purpose of brining us into better balance.  Better balance means being able to better observe a better balance in another during a BodyTalk session.   

Beliefs are driving us around our lives causing turmoil and using up our vital energy.  In the chaos/control example, there will be a belief that works overtime: ‘I am unlovable.’  If you feel you are unlovable, the opposite, ‘I am lovable’ will be pushing for equal time and you may notice, if you look, that you are attempting to be lovable, perhaps by pleasing others.

These are our conflicted points of view and lead to minor or mass confusion.  The ability to do a BodyTalk session largely relies on clarity, not confusion.   

In BreakThrough, conflict, that nasty intruder, becomes a door to discovery.  The secrets on the other side of the door are simple:  conflict is responsible for the ‘aha’ whenever and however we get one; conflict is never avoided, just shuffled around in the mind or body; conflict is a need to prove and that alone is proof of doubt; conflict demonstrates our own personal lists of how life and others should and shouldn’t be; conflict veils an attempt to control and manipulate.     

We are never upset for the reason we think we are.  The state of discomfort we experience is the brick wall that we find we’re facing even though we’ve been dodging the bricks that life has been throwing at us.  There is a deeper meaning waiting to be uncovered, and it seems it must come out, because the bricks get bigger and heavier and harder to dodge as time goes by.      

Applied within the context of BreakThrough, we begin to see that conflict is what brings us to awareness. In step one, you must have a conflict to come to a new awareness by step seven.  The new awareness means you will react /respond differently the next time the situation presents itself because the ‘acquired information’ that is the ego aspect of the self has shifted, so our perceptions must shift as well.  You’ll have to react / respond differently for the same reason you would when you uncover any new information about any issue.  Once you know that the jagged edges on texas gates ruin tires, you can’t unknow it.  You’ll drive with more caution across them.   Once you feel the unbelievable experience of knowing that all human beings are equally acceptable and cannot feel judgment, you can’t unfeel it, so your experiences change.   We will have to react / respond differently because the information base has changed.   

All conflict has ever been trying to show us is that it is one path to clarity and since we can’t seem to avoid conflict no matter what we do, it makes sense to look at it – that’s what BreakThrough does. 

Imagine sitting down to a BodyTalk session and being able to tune in with all your subtle senses to observe what’s happening in the other’s bodymind – it’s like listening to a radio station with perfect sound – no fuzzy static.  What station are you tuned into when you do BodyTalk?  Does your mind relax and allow or do you flit from thought to thought like a fly buzzing against the window pane, thinking about being someplace else?   

Conflict, when it’s looked at through the seven steps process, allows for play – it lightens the load.  Imagine feeling the kind of joy you’ve seen on a child’s face; the pure joy caused by playing with a plain old cardboard box.  Imagine that’s you when BodyTalk becomes joyful, magical, play.       

By Brenda Miller, CBr1, CBI, RMT, ParBP

Interview with Brenda Miller Part 2

Christine.  Yeah. It’s self fulfilling, or mind fulfilling.  Okay one more question: In Breakthrough, beliefs that we are unaware of are revealed and brought into consciousness. How is this process helpful to us as BodyTalkers? as People?

Brenda.  Anything that’s brought into our conscious mind is no longer in the unconscious mind, unconscious driving us. So for instance say you have a belief system: “my life is a struggle”.   At some point you saw that when you struggled you were really well rewarded, then the correlation and the convoluted pathway that the mind takes is:  “struggle is good because it will bring me rewards”.   So we will continue to see life as struggle and then of course the mind will have the opposite, “struggle is bad”, because inside of “struggle” we always feel like that’s not a really good position to be in. And you know therein lies the conflict. So what’s your question again Christine?

Christine.  How is the process of bringing the unconscious belief into consciousness helpful?

Brenda.  Well, simply that awareness, as soon as we have awareness about something we feel different about it don’t we? It is that simple and said another way, if you have a new job and you don’t have a job description, you just show up and you sorta don’t know what you’re doing you’re gonna stand around there wondering what you’re doing. And so the next day you get handed a job description and you read it.  Now you have new awareness. It changes totally how you feel about that job. The day before you were stressing out and hating it because you didn’t know what to do and now you’ve got information that has changed how you feel about it. So awareness, what it does for one thing is always shows us that we are what we accuse the other of.

Christine.  Now how does that relate in a Body Talk session?

Brenda.  How do you mean?

Christine.  Well I think there’s just so much detail in terms of practitioners learning to be practitioners. I mean personally I remember my mind trying to guess what the next links would be and the feeling of total crisis if I didn’t guess right, the feeling of crisis if the outcome for the session wasn’t what I thought it should be, the feeling like we know what’s right for other people in Body Talk sessions, and it even goes into again not staying present and it gets in the way even I think of starting up practices as Body Talkers.

Brenda.  Well really Christine every person on the planet is wounded because their true nature is not at the forefront, they’re not living from that place. They’re living from those wounds we get when we were little. Christine you be a good girl, Christine don’t you be mean, Christine that was selfish, Christine stop being so rude. So we’ve divided energy that is not two. Rude and polite/mean and kind. So this is the way the mind works now in that conflicting state. So we bring our wounded self to everything, to a relationship, to Body Talk. And as we do this work the wound is healed and true nature is revealed. So true nature is revealed to us once we’re healed of these wounds.

Christine.  So that Body Talk and Breakthrough, there’s no separation in terms of who Body Talk helps or who Breakthrough helps. It helps self and others constantly. Or healed maybe is better than help.

Brenda.  Yes that’s true on one level and on another level there’s nothing wrong.

Christine.  This is the thing, there’s a projection in Body Talk, I know a lot of Body Talkers. It’s the idea of being in service, I’ve got it, the idea of helping, of knowing what’s right for other people, and again these sort of scripts that aren’t serving us. It’s interesting it’s one of the things that really comes up when you start to really get into Body Talk, are those scripts.

Brenda.  The less you know the better your sessions are. The less you think you know the more fantastic the healing is. The clearer your mind, it means you’re not projecting your conditioned self onto the other and they therefore are getting a clear mirror and they therefore now, we’re in true service to each other because now I as the patient or client can see what I need to be healing myself with and we’ll get to it. If I’m playing the projection game with you then that’s what we’ll do during the session, and yes there may be some results but do you really want to just settle with that when we’ve got a whole life that could be so fantastic ahead of us? If we do our own work then we bring this to every relationship, not just in the healing realm but to our partners and to our children, and we stop teaching our children the cultural prescription and prolonging the misery of all of humanity.

Christine.  And it shifts the universe on levels that you can’t even describe.

Brenda.  Well the way I see that, and I don’t know if I’m right or wrong it’s just my feeling, is that when one of us becomes clearer, when one of us resolves an issue, then that’s projected to collective consciousness. Collective consciousness changes and collective consciousness is also projecting to us, it’s circular.   And therefore every time one of us does, is able to integrate an unintegrated aspect of our psyche and therefore become whole, then the collective consciousness is one step closer to that and that reflects back to us. It’s evolution in my mind, the most beautiful evolution.

Christine.  This is like matrix building.

Brenda.  Yes and it’s consciousness medicine.

Christine.  Mm hmm.

Brenda.  It is.

Christine Corlett