Comment: We have been exploring his felt sense for only a few minutes. I already recognize Unconditional Love as a quality of presence arising in his felt experience. However, at the Depth of Process, he experiences it as a feeling that is separate from who he is and not a way that he feels himself. By inviting him to feel this felt sense as the feeling of himself, I am inviting him to collapse the subject-object duality and to feel what it is like to be this sweet fluffy softness. As he does this, he drops deeper still into the Depth of Presence where he can embody and own this quality of presence as an aspect of who he is. This creates yet another experiential mismatch. At the start of the conversation, George was feeling overwhelmed by needing to support his leaders at work. A part of him was saying, “I can’t do it.” There was a sense of self-deficiency. As we drop into the Depth of Presence, he will feel whole, complete, and sufficient. This time the mismatch is deeper and more complete. He is not just reconsolidating his memories from not being picked for sports teams when he was 7 or 8. Now he is reconsolidating his sense of self. This is the most important outcome of Aletheia Coaching.
George: [long pause] There’s a felt sense of just wanting to lay back in it.
Steve: So that might actually be something that you could do as an integrating experiment. Right after we’re done here, if you can organize it in your life to just go lay down on your bed or something. Something where there’s a way that you can really just sink into support. Release and let go into it.
Comment: We are nearing the end of the conversation and George just named a great micro-practice that he can do within the reconsolidation window. I take the opportunity to name that here.
George: And I’m finding myself even doing that now just on the couch and just like sinking back into it and sinking back into these pillows. And there’s a comfort there.
Steve: It’s such a beautiful antidote to these parts that are working so hard and exhausted and burnt out. These parts have tremendous care. And it’s a care that you can still show up in the world with. It’s a really different expression of care than the rescuer kind of expression. Can you feel that?
Comment: Here is the core mismatch. The rescuer part was expressing care in a way that was tiring. To this part, caring requires taking action, expending energy to do things for other people. It is a lovely and well-intentioned gesture, however, when the needs for care become overwhelming, as they have this past year during COVID, the habitual behavior of this part wears him down. Using Parts Work, we let this pattern be and let it unfold. This allowed him to deepen his self-contact through the Depth of Process and into the Depth of Presence where he landed into an inherent and unconditional kind of care that is an expression of who he is as a human being, without the need to do anything. At this point in the conversation, I am inviting him to feel both and feel the difference.
George: [long pause] Oh, it’s totally different.
Steve: Right!
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