Inner Empathy Courses and Retreat

Below are questions to determine if the 8 Week Inner Empathy course will be suitable for you:

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1) Do you have areas of your life where you find it difficult to express yourself using NVC

It’s frustrating, isn’t it. You know the model, but can’t use it in certain situations where you are intensely triggered. On top of that, I’m guessing you might subsequently feel embarrassed or ashamed because you really want to be able to rely on your NVC skills. The Inner Empathy work was designed to effectively disclose and heal the pain associated with the core needs these intense triggers represent. Imagine the relief you would feel when you are able to respond without the triggered reaction and you can achieve the connection and resolution you want in those challenging situations. You might also experience an increased sense of peace and ease because you were able to access your NVC skills when you needed them! Even if you are not able to access your NVC skills readily, the Inner Empathy work will inspire you to have patience, understanding and compassion for your high-trigger situations. The nagging layer of embarrassment or shame would have effectively been eliminated.

2) Do you have a deep longing to use NVC to assist you on your spiritual path or deep personal growth efforts?

Maybe you value and hold the intention to live in the here-and-now and you’ve been working diligently for years to establish “being in the present”. If you’re like many seekers, you have experienced the frustration and disappointment of losing connection with what is presently alive in you. Maybe you became identified with a remembrance of the past that superimposed itself onto your present-time experience. Or, maybe you became identified with a hopeful projection of a better time, a more favorable emotional state you might experience in the future, and this is what consumed your present-time experience. Inner Empathy uses NVC to work in the present to inspire you to dis-identify with these past/future aspects of yourself as they present themselves and to return to presence. A deep sense of well-being organically emerges. Feelings of deep contentment, of being home, are present. You’ll learn to be in your body and begin to have a love affair with your present-time experience. You’ll learn to move in the flow of effortless being.

3) Do you often find yourself diagnosing yourself, being critical, or trying to figure out “why” instead of connecting with yourself empathetically?

You want to empathize with yourself like you do with other people, but find you can’t do it or have difficulty staying with it. It’s confusing and disappointing to say the least. A crucial aspect of the Inner Empathy work is identifying and knowing when you have an empathetic connection with yourself and when you do not. If you begin an inquiry without an empathetic connection, it is doomed from the start. You’ll learn to start with and maintain an empathetic connection as you encounter many challenges in your inner world. This will make your inquiries more impactive and transformative. You’ll be amazed at how deeply and efficiently you can connect with deeper aspects of yourself. You’ll experience the power of holding compassionate presence for whatever emerges in your experience.

4) Are you finding yourself experiencing the same need(s) being unfulfilled over and over again in your life?

It is absolutely disheartening to connect with a feeling and need, and make a request, only to find that the need remains in the unfulfilled category. It can be easy for you to slide into feeling hopeless or discouraged because you cannot get this particular need met. You may ultimately abandon attempting to fulfill the need as a way to protect yourself from the pain of it continuing to be unfulfilled. In other words, you stop asking for the need to be met in order to meet your greater need for safety. The Inner Empathy work will help you unpack these layered feelings and needs and uncover the compelling reasons these needs are chronically not met. You’ll experience a deep relief in finally being able to meet these important needs that have elude you for so long and enjoy the fulfillment of those needs.

5) Do you become confused when trying to use NVC internally?

Maybe two or three different feelings/needs come up all at once around an issue and you fall into feeling overwhelmed. You shut down the process to get a sense of safety. Or, maybe you feel helpless or hopeless with multiple feelings/needs and don’t know how to proceed with the self-empathy. Even worse are the stuck feelings that emerge when two aspects of yourself are at odds with each other and begin to argue. How do you hold compassion when you are bouncing back and forth between two aspects of yourself that are vehemently arguing? The Inner Empathy work will help you identify and tease apart these different arguing aspects as they emerge in your experience. You’ll feel confident, know when you are in a loop and will be able to cut right through the tail-chasing energy with compassion and understanding. You’ll enjoy a new level of effectiveness in mediating internal arguments and be inspired to do life-transforming work.

6) Do you find yourself feeling disappointed and discouraged when making self-requests because you don’t follow through with them?

I would guess you want consistency and congruency with what you request of yourself and what you do to fulfill the request. Do you want to trust that you will take action to meet the needs that your self-requests were addressing? This is a source of tension for many people who begin to make self-requests. With the Inner Empathy work, you’ll discover that you are being congruent and consistent when not following though, because there is another need that is outside of conscious awareness that is in conflict with your conscious need and self-request. A huge sense of relief and comfort is stimulated when you learn to bring the unconscious need into conscious awareness and actively make a choice. Tending to the unconscious needs holding you back from fulfilling a conscious need allows your self-request to be effortlessly fulfilled.

7) Do you have a deep yearning to have more ease and flow with your NVC skills?

This is a common experience that occurs when learning NVC: You spend money and time learning NVC skills. You get a taste of the benefits of “need-based” connections with yourself and others. You feel excited and want more! Then, you get frustrated when it doesn’t come easily. It is often a rude awakening for people to realize that internalizing NVC skills is more difficult than they thought. They come to realize that learning NVC is not a function of the intellect, but is emotional learning and a change of consciousness. This is why the Inner Empathy work emphasizes learning to abide in the NVC consciousness and the inside/out approach. You’ll experience more ease and fluidity with the mechanical NVC skills because they will emanate from the NVC consciousness. Cultivating the NVC consciousness creates the conditions for the skills to flourish and to effortlessly roll off your tongue. You’ll be amazed at how internalized your skills become with this inside/out approach.
8) Do you find yourself having strong attachments to having certain needs/wants/values met by others?

You notice you have a need/want/value that contains a lot of “have-to” energy when expressing it to a loved one. The loved one can’t fulfill it and you feel hurt and want to blame the loved one. This could be one of those needs that you are asking to be fulfilled but you are unable or, unwilling to fulfill for yourself. For example, if you are asking another to meet your need for acceptance when you are unable or unwilling to meet your need for self-acceptance, you are holding out a begging bowl desperately expecting the other to fill it. Expressing your needs from such a space of inner lack puts pressure on your requests. The Inner Empathy work will help you identify and connect with how you can partially or fully fulfill your own needs/want/values. The desperation gives way to the calm and centeredness of having the loved one join and support your self-care efforts. You will learn to make requests from a space of inner abundance, equanimity, and balance.

Course Content

1) Getting To Know Our Inner Cast Of Characters
• Deepening And Expanding The Inner Map By Using Parts Psychology
• Becoming Aware Of The Particular Way You Connect With Your Parts
• Gaining An Experiential Understanding Of Empathetic Awareness
• Contrasting “Empathetic Awareness” And “Responding From Our Parts”

2) Cultivating Empathetic Awareness For Our Parts
• The Difference Between Self-Empathy and Inner Empathy
• Speaking For or To Our Parts Instead Of From Our Parts
• Allowing, Acknowledging, And Welcoming Your Parts
• Encountering Difficulties In Welcoming Parts?
• The Form For Practicing Inner Empathy
• Deepening Our Engagement With Parts

3) Becoming Aware Of The Judgments Our Parts Hold
• How To Enter An Inner Empathy Inquiry
• Creating Emotionally Vivid Connections With Parts
• Seeking Permission And Connecting With Multiple Parts
• Asking Parts To Step Aside Or Connecting Empathetically

4) Basic Inner Empathy Session
• Skills For Speakers and Listeners
• Distinctions Between Inner Empathy Session And Forms Of Guided Imagery And Visualization Exercises
• Steps For Doing Solo Inner Empathy Session
• Obstacles In Doing An Effective Solo Inner Empathy Session
• Steps For Being The Supportive Listener In An Inner Empathy Session
• Possible Listener Obstacles To Staying Present During Inner Empathy Session
• Using The Inner Empathy Session Sheets

Group Structure and Fees $325
• 8 two-hour group phone sessions.
• Partner session homework exercises and practice
• Includes 2 one-hour phone Inner Empathy sessions with facilitator ($200 value)
• Incudes Inner Empathy book by Jerry Donoghue (An introduction to the book is available for download
• To Register

The Principles/Assumptions/Presuppositions Guiding The Inner Empathy Work

1) Emphasis Is On Effortless Self-Correction: Our self-corrective mechanisms are awakened when we engage the unsavory aspects of ourselves with empathic awareness, compassion, tolerance, patience, and unconditional regard. This is in contrast to some of our self-improvement parts that inspire inner splitting, polarization, and deep identification when they want to change, fix, and submerge the unsavory aspects of ourselves using anger, shame, pressure, dangling carrots of positive outcomes, or the high motivation to getting to the promised land. Self-corrections are long-lasting, permanent and effortless.

2) The Practice Of No Practice: We will begin the journey inward without the destination of an desired outcome and openly explore the inner terrain. We will proceed from a space of there nothing we have to do. The practice of no practice means we will be doing practices, but we will be doing practices from a different space than some of are practices that want to get from point A to B. Many of our psycho-spiritual practices are co-opted by aspects of ourselves that want to protect us from connecting to deeper aspects of ourselves rather connecting with them.

3) Emphasis On Experiential: The work heavily favors experiential emotional understandings/insights that occur with the connection of aspects of ourselves as they emerge. This is different than “talking about” or “story about” or having an “intellectual understanding about” or “analytical assessments,” all of which, though useful, can actually be ways to disconnect from feelings/needs of aspects of ourselves. For example, instead of talking about your loneliness, recalling a time when you felt lonely, and getting into the feeling and body sensations that were occurring, and doing work from that space in the moment.

4) Emphasis On Working In The Present: For me, there is nothing more powerful than connecting with what might be emerging in present-time consciousness and trusting that is useful in some way. I’ve found whatever is presenting itself and showing up in the present is meaningful and useful in ways we cannot conceive.

5) Emphasis On Self-Directedness: How deep and where to go internally is under the volition of each person’s comfort level of trust and safety. Going beyond comfort levels will be permission-based.

6) Nonpathologizing Regard: Instead of using psychological labels to interpret, describe and understand ourselves and behaviors we can begin using a needs-based process language that doesn’t have the built-in presuppositions of there being something wrong or defective with us.

7) Assumption Of Innate Wisdom: We will operate off the assumption that everything a person needs to change and transform is contained within their own innate wisdom. My role as facilitator, and people in the groups as helpers, is to cultivate the conditions for this self-corrective wisdom to be drawn out.

8) Assumption Of Coherency: We will operate off the assumption that when we engage in behaviors that are not life-serving, it makes perfect sense when the competing unconscious needs are brought to light. In other words, the non-life serving behavior is serving us in some greater way on a unconscious need-based level.

9) Non Prescriptive Contributions: We will learn to work within and honor each person’s own system of meaning. We will not be prescribing what people should or should not be believing or doing. Instruction will be geared towards learning connecting processes instead of addressing content of a person’s experience.

10) Supporting People To Self-Guide: The kind of support we will be practicing is helping a person to access and stabilize their empathetic awareness to connect with whatever is emerging in their experience. We will learn to support others to gently disidentify from various aspects of themselves that emerge so they can connect on deeper levels.

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Learner Experiences