Inner Empathy Process Work

[Limor Wolf]

I truely appreciate this Article by Eve Lorgen:

" I would like to share what I have learned from Inner Empathy in my own experience as well as its precursor, Compassionate Communication.

Inner Empathy as I learned it from Jerry Donoghue of Asheville, NC

Inner Empathy is derived from Non-Violent Communication or Compassionate Communication.(Marshall Rosenberg)

NVC, to summarize is based on four components:

Observations
Feelings
Needs
Requests

These four aspects are important to define clearly for an individual in communication with another person in relationship when wanting to communicate effectively and with compassion. At the root of all feelings are core needs, which may or may not have been met, and the reason for the arising feeling(s). These feelings, if they are based on unmet needs, and if incurred traumatically, may result in beliefs or judgements about life and people which are erroneous. These “false beliefs” function primarily on a subconscious level, and are the driving force which patterns the person’s life and how they create their life. (Positive feelings or even neutral ones based on needs which are met, result in a balanced truthful view of reality, life and do not compete or create conflict within oneself or with others.)

These unconscious beliefs, feelings and core human needs which have not been met are then the inner conflict which are the basis of competing unconscious needs that get in the way of integration and wholeness. One set of needs is held subconsciously and be the basis of behaviors which are acted out, despite holding another set of consciously held beliefs, feelings and needs.

Inner Empathy is a way to communicate with the inner parts of oneself, by being guided by a listener who supports the inner inquiry process of helping the “supported” person discover deep feelings and needs which tend to lurk in the shadow realms of ones consciousness.

Inner Empathy can view the psyche as a system of parts that are held in awareness. To simplify, there are three basic types of parts:

Manager Parts: When we experientially connect with these protective parts, in addition to whatever these parts are protecting, these parts are no longer necessary in their extreme form and can be integrated in the system as allies in practical life matters. These parts are the ones that arrange and run daily life in such a way as to prevent the painful exiled feelings from emerging.

Firefighter Protective Parts: When we experientially connect with these protective parts, in addition to connecting to whatever they are protecting, these parts are no longer necessary in their extreme form and may rise again out of habit until the habit changes. Long time additions can fall away without much effort. These parts are the ones that urgently “take over” the system to extinguish or soothe any painful exile feelings that begin to or have surfaced.

Exiled, Disowned or Vulnerable Parts: These are the core parts representing the nitty gritty of the real, core-self issues. When we experientially connect with the pain, trapped feelings, unmet needs, self-judgements, beliefs and burdens of the core exiled (or dissociated, repressed) parts, something magical happens. This deep connection plays out for each person in different ways and protective parts seem to be less overprotective and defensive. Effortless self-corrections occur.

To get to this place of authentic core-self, we may go through many layers of defenses and levels of awareness, uncovering our triggers, and reactions to these triggers. These reactions and feelings eventually ease off into more equanimity within an ever expanding spacious, compassionate awareness and presence. The manager and firefighter parts can also be viewed as defenses one may act out to protect vulnerable feelings and needs which are still stuck in a time warp of initial trauma. Some people have many layers of defenses, and oftentimes in the inner inquiry process many protective parts may come out simultaneously, acting out a story or drama that may play out on more on a mental level or cycle in anger before the real gut wrenching feelings finally surface.

When we can be fully authentic, and present within our own self, we are more able to extend that compassionate presence for others to explore their own authentic self. This happens through the heart.

In the beginning of an Inner Empathy Process of Authentic Self Discovery, one may have a totality of 4 basic aspects of being that can be represented as:

Manager Parts
Firefighter Parts
Exiled, Disowned and Vulnerable Parts
Empathetic Awareness

Where the manager, firefighter and disowned parts may carry a major portion of the personality. As we process the core feelings and unmet needs with the compassionate presence of our witnessing self, and with others in a supportive role, our own sense of self grows into becoming a greater percentage of Empathetic Awareness, and less identified with the other manager, firefighter or victim parts sill holding strong feelings and unmet needs. A huge part of not getting stuck in unpleasant feelings is to not identify with the feelings as oneself, but instead identify with the compassionate awareness that is aware of these feelings, which do eventually pass.

More can be found about Inner Empathy at: http://www.innerempathy.com/

I believe that cultivating a basic foundation of Inner Empathy and practice of the Non Violent Communication (NVC) interpersonal communication skills, one can then be at a more favorable place to build strong community.

(Reference: Inner Empathy Workbook by Jerry Donoghue, ISBN 978-1-61658-152-7)

The Basic, Ethical Tenets of Non-violent Communication of Compassionate Communication Consciousness:

* living under the assumption that we are all one, experiencing no separation, unitive consciousness
* viewing the world through the lens of needs based consciousness instead of right/wrong or good/bad consciousness
fostering heart-to-heart connections
* holding needs lightly in a way where they are to “have to have” (demanding and pushy)
* holding the intention of wanting to cultivate a quality of connection where we value everyone’s needs and trust they all can be met
* making true requests (not demands)
* deriving strategies from this space of mutual consideration of each other’s needs
* inspiring ourselves to want to contribute to other’s needs out of a sense of love and caring instead of our of a sense of guilt or shame, or being motivated by demand, duty or obligation

Many Blessings ~

Limor

[Marikins]

Timor Wolf, this is fantastic! This is especially interesting:

inspiring ourselves to want to contribute to other’s needs out of a sense of love and caring instead of our of a sense of guilt or shame, or being motivated by demand, duty or obligation

What a shiny contribution it will be. This is just a wonderful resource. Thank you.

[Hym]

Unmet needs often are based on not being heard. It is so important to ask people how they feel about those things they felt were not listened to, things that did not make them feel good. Then it is important to validate those feelings, even if they were based on misunderstanding. They are real and sometimes just having someone really, in context, understand them allows the release of those things that bind them.

Isn't it a waste of time that hurts sustain themselves within the psyche simply because many are not listened to, not heard? Either way, heard or not, we live well when we have developed such a reality of self love, our own inner empathy, that dishonest attacks upon us are quickly understood and resolved, even if the abusive one is not absolved or forgiven, until an apology is received, if ever.

Along with an understanding of self esteem we are wise to understand that those who do not agree with this ethical standard, and who are abusive without cause, often have deep issues concerning their experiences of not being heard or empathized with.

I have a barrier with people who are abusive. They either share the cause of their angry behavior, the one they perceive, or they don't and they stay away. From this openness I have made some unusual friends, ones not like me in many ways.

Usually, if not initially, I am grateful that I have been confronted by anyone with an agenda, as I take it as a confirmation of my character. In most cases, and always in the end, love is the barrier that keeps hate away. And yes, love sometimes has to be assertive in holding it's space in our lives.

[Limor Wolf]

Hym, I so very much appreciate your approach which sounds very healthy, compassionate, 'knows itself' and practical. I do not know your history (and sure would love to hear!), For many of us, and perheps I should speak for myself it's a work and a struggle through trial and error to built this healthy balance when there are not many such examples provided around, but nevertheles it is those few exmples that do ignite the fire and inpire the more healthy opportunities to become the stepping stone.

Inner processing can be done also with regrads to our abusive relationships on both the personal scale and on the global scale that we see around us, it all comes from the same psychology and moreso the energy dynamics that we are not always aware of.

Melanie Tonia Evans very eloquently presents this dynamic

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=eJikSsKLkeE

http://blog.melanietoniaevans.com/ho...-in-your-life/

And those two woman, Melanie tonia Evans and Eve Lorgen who's article is in the OP are all about encouragment for everyone to walk this inner proces and do the work, with plenty of good observations and suggestions of such an accurate understanding to guide the way.

[raregem]

These two posts (1 and 4) are going to be real useful to someone like myself. Bit of homework but am excited to align some of my confusion and aversion to people around me.
Amazing how help and info come when one may be capable of understanding the deeper answers to the questions. Thx

[Limor Wolf]

Thanks for your comment, raregem, No matter how unsolvable a situation seems, there is always a help which comes just at the right time. Good luck ~

[Limor Wolf]

No matter how this beautiful planet of ours is being harvested as a farm for emotions (truth be told), in order to balance and even those emotions to allow a different state of being to emerge as a neutrality and as a creation point, we need to go through those old structured feelings with holding the space of what is and the eyesight of what it is to be without pain in the world

I just found this article by LISA RANKIN and feel it is valuable
http://lissarankin.com/holding-space...one-is-in-pain


HOLDING SPACE WHEN SOMEONE IS IN PAIN

I first heard the term “generous listening” almost ten years ago, when I took a workshop for doctors with Rachel Naomi Remen, MD. She told us that most doctors don’t listen generously. They’re always in their heads, trying to fix someone, rushing to a diagnosis and treatment plan. Or they’re judging what the person is saying—“Do I like what this person is saying? Or do I not like it?” Or they’re comparing—“Am I smarter than this person? Or are they smarter than me?” Or they’re one-upping, thinking of other patients who are in even more pain or have even more dire straits than the person who’s talking. Or they’re interrupting, barely letting the patient get a word in edgewise.

In doctors, these patterns don’t tend to just apply to patients. Most of the doctors I knew, myself included, were so busy thinking and judging and fixing that they didn’t generously listen to anyone, not even their spouses or children or best friends, not even their own bodies, hearts, and souls.

When Rachel taught us how to generously listen, I felt so busted—and so relieved. There were tears everywhere. We were present with each other. We felt safe. I had never felt safe in a room full of doctors before. I even felt loved. I had definitely never felt loved by a room full of doctors.

Rachel and I now teach this exercise at the Whole Health Medicine Institute, a training program about raising consciousness in health care providers and returning to the heart in medicine. Yet it’s not just doctors who have forgotten how to generously listen.

Spiritual Bypassing

Recently, I was attending a spirituality conference, and as I listened to many spiritual leaders, I noticed a similar tendency to employ what Robert Augustus Masters calls “spiritual bypassing,” using complex intellectual and spiritual principles as an attempt to bypass pain, conflict, and other conflicted human emotions. Spiritual bypassing is a common way to diminish the feminine within men and women—the emotional, the irrational, the heartbreak of a sensitive soul, but also the compassion. Lose the ability to be present with someone’s pain. Instead, there’s a tendency in some circles to use abstract spiritual principals to almost invalidate someone’s human pain in this dimension.

—“It’s all an illusion.”
—“You create your own reality.”
—“If you’re in pain, fix your thoughts.”

When did we lose our ability to simply be with what’s true for another hurting human being? When did we forget that our nervous systems go haywire when we go through trauma, and that when this happens, we need love, not fixing and certainly not judgment? When did we stop tending to one another’s hearts, not as a way of coddling old wounds, but as a way of expressing compassion and empathy?

I’m not suggesting that the incisive inquiry intended to question stuck thought patterns can’t be helpful. Sometimes this method is just what the doctor ordered when someone is in a negative spiral of limiting beliefs. But often, simply holding a container of safety and compassion helps someone unravel their own beliefs, tap into Source, and receive healing for their own pain. Empathy helps us learn not to fix, not to compare, not to judge or approve, but simply to be present as a compassionate witness.

It Hurts to Feel

Most of us were not trained how to feel strong emotions, how to let them move through our bodies like pure energy forms—letting anger churn through us, letting grief contract the heart like a labor pain, letting disappointment gut us, sitting with unmet longing as if she were an old friend. Instead, we numb. We shut down. We dissociate from the body. We close the heart.

When we expand our emotional resilience (read 10 tips for how to do this here), we increase our capacity to feel pain, but we also get to feel more euphoria, more ecstatic bliss. You don’t get to choose when it comes to strong emotion. When you cut yourself off from pain, you also cut yourself off from joy. And when you cut yourself off from your own pain, it’s impossible to feel true empathy for someone else who is hurting.

Videos to Ramp up Your Empathy

These three videos about empathy and holding space touch my heart every time I watch them.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=1Evwgu369Jw

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=wEfrj4tqgtU

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=cDDWvj_q-o8

Now Is the Time to Bench Press Our Empathy Muscles


I know it’s hard to really feel what’s happening in our own hearts and on the planet right now. Global warming. Species extinction. Mass genocides. Starving children. Immigrants wrenched from their families. Standing Rock. Blatant disregard for women, minorities, and the LGBT community in our own White House. Hateful, intolerant polarization between people who should be loving, supportive neighbors. The devastation of Mother Earth.

This hurts. This hurts almost more than our tender hearts can bear.

And yet, we must expand the capacity of our hearts to feel the pain of it all. Only then can we have empathy for ourselves and for one another.

Like the Grinch Who Stole Christmas whose heart was too small, let our hearts grow three sizes today.

Holding space for what hurts,

Lisa Rankin, MD