The Web address of this
3-page letter is
http://sfhelp.org/01/letter1.htm
Continued from p. 2
...
If
Subselves are Real, What Does That Mean?
There are personal meanings, and for some, professional
meanings.
Personal Meanings
If you haven't yet, read these for perspective:
Reality check: if someone else asked you to explain the personal
implications of a
could you
do so now?
Explaining it to someone will show you how clear you are.
Professional
Meanings
A thorough answer merits its own Web site. Here are some key
implications...
If
you're a clinician or case worker who works with couples or families, and you're
not routinely (a)
for inner wounds and (b) teaching your clients about
false-self traits,
and
you risk making
surface diagnoses like "you're depressed," vs. "Sad
and/or rageful subselves distrust your resident true Self, and are controlling
your inner family." That may mean your interventions will
have muted, temporary, or no satisfying long-term effects, as judged by
your clients. If you work with
you risk ineffective results.
If
you're a marriage-enrichment facilitator (e.g. PAIRS) and you
don't include some meaningful overview of personality-subselves,
false-self wounds, and implications in your work, you risk seriously diluting the
long-term good your efforts impart. Worst case, you miss a chance to
alert and motivate your couples to heal the root cause of current or
potential major relationship
Restated: effective relationship
skills work less well or not at all with
couples in
If
you're a divorce
mediator,
attorney, or family-court
judge, and you don't offer some
educational materials and explanations on
false-self wounds to those you serve, you (a) miss the chance to help them understand a core reason
for their struggle. You also lower the chance they'll (b) save their
marriage or (c) minimize
stress
and emotional scars. You also (d) miss the chance to
alert your clients to a major risk in potential future re/marriage. Any
of these put their kids
of (more) wounding.
If
you're a
clergyperson who officiates at weddings and/or
provides pastoral counseling, and you don't alert your couples or
clients to false-self wounding and recovery
benefits, options,
and resources - you're
inadvertently raising the chance of their (re)marital problems
and potential psychological or legal (re)divorce. See this for more perspective.
If
you're a classroom or
family-life educator and you omit or downplay
inner-family basics, implications, and wound-recovery concepts and resources,
you're unintentionally contributing to your students' odds of
reproducing
families, and reducing the
long-term value of what you're teaching. This is specially true if you
focus on
skills without
describing (a) the [wounds + unawareness]
and its effects, (b) low
and
high-nurturance families, and (c) how significant caregiver-wounding
and
affects these,
down the generations.
If
you're a
medical practitioner
who doesn't weave possible
psychosomatic effects of serious false-self dominance into diagnosing and
treating chronic maladies, you risk mis-prescribing, treating the
symptom, and not healing (part of) the root wound. That risks (a) symptoms
returning and/or manifesting in a different way, and (b)
in you, your patients,
and your staff.
If
you're an instructor, supervisor, program director, funder, or evaluator
of any of these professionals, and you don't include some basic concepts
about the [wounds + unawareness] cycle and false-self wounding and recovery in your work, you risk
preventing the professionals you work with from being aware of
the above implications and making effective choices with their
employers, clients, students, and patients.
If
you have any professional role like these and don't honestly
for significant false-self wounds, you risk providing
less effective or even harmful human service, and not knowing it.
This is multiplied by the array of clients, cases, or patients of
each professional you affect directly and indirectly.
Finally...
|
Wounded, unaware professionals are at risk of
significant false-self wounds to their descendants via
unintended low-nurturance caregiving.
|
Consider that each person, couple, or family you
work with professionally may affect the
of one or more dependent kids.
That
can affect an invisible fan of hundreds of descendents from those kids over
many future generations. Low and high family
tend to
reproduce, unless low-nurturance
take responsibility to break the
ancestral cycle
via true (vs. pseudo) personal
Notice what your inner voices (subselves) are saying now about these
implications of psychological
wounding. If the subselves were people standing nearby, what
would you guess they feel and need now?
Reflect on what you think and
feel now compared to when you started reading this letter. What
have you learned? Has your attitude about subselves, wounds, health,
parenting, and marriage shifted? If you want to learn more about normal (vs. pathological) false-self wounding and it's effects, I suggest you read any of the
books by Hal and Sidra Stone, Richard
Schwartz, Virginia Satir, and/or John Rowan.
If you're motivated to study normal personality subselves more now, go
here. If your subselves aren't so
motivated, read on...
If
You're Skeptical and Resistant
Premise: human resistance to change or new experience comes from
of
significant discomfort. Your anxieties come
from prior life experience ("Do not put
your hand in boiling water!") So skepticism about or rejection of the concept of false-self wounding and its
impacts probably means some of your subselves fear that accepting these ideas would
cause you some significant discomfort like these:
"Accepting this idea about personality subselves means
something
bad will happen to me." This kind of vague
anxiety is typical of young subselves
controlling your personality. A related option is
that your
(a common
is
in charge. A
would
generate thoughts like "I'm not sure about this idea about
true Self and false self. It's probably worth
more study before I decide whether to believe this or not."
Or...
"Accepting this personality-subselves concept means that
I
and/or someone I care about is sick or crazy." No,
it means that you or they are normal. Or...
"Accepting this false-self idea means that 'someone
else' has been making my life decisions, and
I'd have to mistrust my own perceptions and
judgments." If you feel this, your dilemma becomes: "Do I want to continue
living as a hostage to misguided, protective subselves who don't
trust there's a viable safer/better way for me to live? How will
I feel about this when I'm approaching my death?"
Or...
"Accepting this inner-wounds idea means that
I
would have to blame my parents and grandparents for being
inadequate caregivers, which is intolerable."
|
Parents who co-create
family environments
that foster false-self wounds deserve
compassion, not blame
- partly because their ancestors and society were unable to fill their early
psychological and
needs well enough.
|
