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A primal animal response to perceived danger is "fight or flight." People who "fight" are often locally directed by a passionate, narrow-viewed personality subself who can be called the Warrior or Amazon. What do you associate with each of those ancient terms? Common associations are combat, aggressiveness, zeal, and fighting. Would you agree that warriors and Amazons can range in motivation and behavior from de-struction (offense) to protection (defense)? Zen Buddhists and others propose the paradoxic role of a Peaceful Warrior. The inner-family systems concept proposes that Warrior / Amazon subselves are always defensive, tho they may act aggressively and harshly in specially-threatening situations. The Warrior / Amazon subself is dedicated to protecting one or more upset or vulnerable Inner Children. When this Guardian subself activates, it indicates that s/he doesn't yet trust the Regular subselves - specially the true Self - to adequately protect the young subselves from harm. The Warrior / Amazon may act alone or ally with other well-meaning subselves like the Rebel, Rager, and Controller to estab-lish local safety and comfort. As wounded survivors of low-nurturance childhoods empower their true Self to raise trust, awareness, and teamwork among their group of subselves, typical War-rior / Amazon subselves will be increasingly open to adopting a new personality role. Project 1 in this nonprofit Web site offers effective options for improving sub-selves' (personality) teamwork and harmony over time. more detail / slides / Project-1 guidebook and links / exercise / Q&A / close |
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