Childhood & the Unconscious I

How it informs who we are today
Deeper sense of relationships
Unifying centres
Donald Winnicott (practical/helpful, good/responsive enough), Sue Gerh, Stan Groff
More missed typing down in time
Health note: Only need to go as deep as you feel comfortable, trust in own process
Hope
- not an area I am drawn to naturally, looking forward to adding something new and beneficial for myself, family, other relationships
Fear
- Might feel disbelieving/impatient if I am feeling like it is vulnerable to self-deception, harmful and unconstructive
Early year we don’t have the words, therefore it comes out as feelings
Next - lower unconscious
- Experiential exercise
- Theory
Reflective meditation
- Lower unconscious, the lower part of the iceberg
- What does it mean to you, how do you relate it
Notes:
- Like the engine of a car, it works and I don’t have sight of it
- When opening up the bonnet, I see a job that
  - is to some extent a work of art,
    - and amazing it has been made,
    - triumphs
  - Also a mess
    - I can see areas rushed or unfinished
    - Areas that have been damaged
    - These represent my imperfections
- Questions:
  - Do I want to look?
  - Do I mind how it is?
  - Do I hold a grudge?
  - Do I want to fix?
  - What might be most beneficial?
Lower unconscious theory
- Freud
  - Personality, repression, suppression
  - Bad
- Jung
  - Personal + collective
  - Archetypes
- Psychosynthesis
  - lower=past, middle= present, higher=future
Become aware
- Some information we will never have access to
- Sometimes the essence not the detail as
- Provides choice,
- Subjective
- May change over time, can see as gift
- Middle unconscious can grow
Fractional analysis
- Free the gripped energies
- Hold good and bad together
Sue Gerhardt. book Why love matters
- Why loving relationships are essential to brain development
How brains are built, the core story of brain development
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmVWOe1ky8s
- Some stress is good
- Toxic stress - abuse/neglect, development leads to health problems
- Good
  - Executive functions
  - Help build healthy brains
Gable mate - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Realm-Hungry-Ghosts-Gabor-Mate/dp/0676977413
- Stress in the parental spear
- Stress at work is given over to the child, parents can’t be with the child, body language, baby picks up everything.
- When pregnant release of cortisol
As a parent, it’s important to feel good enough, otherwise pressure. Need to fail.
Khalil Gibran “The Prophet” - children have their own fate, we might be part of the pain / struggles they need to learn.
Form our expectations and behaviours

Meditation

What experience made your heart sing
- Achievement
  - Music
  - Dance
  - Computer
  - Cycling
  - Insight
- Conforming / Belonging
  - Special
  - Team effort
  - Part of a gang
What experience made your heart sink
- Unfairness
  - Things taken
  - Rejected
- Isolation
Overall
- Noticed I was mostly always
  - quite calm,
  - Underwhelmed
  - Generally liked but not a close bond

Exercise

Take a piece of paper
Timeline 0-12
People involved in your experiences
- Early
  - Grandma
  - Siblings
  - Lack of parents
  - Mum encouraging dance, events
  - Lots of self
  - Animals
- Later
  - Neighbours - gang, road games, trees,
  - Friends - cycling, videos
  - School - gang, sports
  - German friends as access to foreign holidays Share
Bring focus to the relationships
Experience and interactions
Unifying external centers
People that helped you for your sense of identity
Bring to mind a handful of people that had impact during 0-12
- Music stars - MJ, MC Hammer, Prince, Suzan Vager, Finnian - being of inspiration
- Grandma - magic, wonder
- Jo Dixon - scatty fun
- Chris Rickard - Budding playful teaming
- Guitar teacher - want to progress
Positive projections, things you see in other people, “if you can spot it, you got it”
If you can see it others, it may be in you too
Interesting to put an “I” in front of the descriptions
Look through one’s needs
If I was my own best friend / caregiver, what would I be offering myself

Poem: A people place - William Crocker

https://synthesiscenter.org https://kennethsorensen.dk/en/psychosynthesis/ Awakening Through Dreams: The Journey Through the Inner Landscape by Nigel Hamilton The Child: Structure and Dynamics of the Nascent Personality by Eric Neumann

Grof - a symptom is a half conscious memory half way out

Exercise 2

Something in my current life I would like to change
- Having meaningful passion
- Something the environment really needs
- Something I have the potentiality to do
Immerse in the thought,
- think of an earlier time,
  - This feels like a new problem, but can explore the opposite
  - Sitting on the hill looking out at bristol with a desire to inform
- feel the sensation,
  - Confident
  - True
- Think of an earlier time with the same sensation
- Immerse in that
- What might it be telling you
- Symbol, cheesy, but is a tree and a trophy
  - Tree - Feeling in the right place
  - Trophy - feeling like a past stage on my life that now holds no meaning
What is the next step in the pattern?
- Form an integration
Think of those words you needed to hear as a child
Eg I love you, I’ll take care of you, You can trust me, I see you I hear you, Its alright to want things, its ok to be sad, It’s fine to be angry, I like you for who you are, just as you are
Imagine your caregiver saying them / not saying them
I’m with you
- Person with total concentration to tackle confusion and orientation
- First the image was male of similar physique, then it was female, not sure gender matters
- It wasn’t becoming one,
- but was loyal, truthful, dedicated, authentic
- Caregiver saying felt unusual,
You are not the only one like you
- Feeling of conformity I was missing
- Again, it is not the sort of statement my caregivers would say
Truth is not certain
- Feeling of disbelief, friction between the speaker listener
You are not in control of someone else’s opinion

Questions

How familiar are these feelings in your life right now? Do you ever say, or want to say these things to your current partner or people in your life?
Do people in your life ever feel or say these things to you? E.g. “you don’t have to look after me”; “I understand your feelings”.
What patterns are you becoming aware of in terms of how your relationships now are affected by your relationship with your primary caregiver?

Autobiography in Five Chapters – Portia Nelson

Chapter one: I walk down the street
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in
I am lost … I am hopeless
It isn’t my fault
It takes forever to find a way out
Chapter two: I walk down the same street
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I pretend I don’t see it
I fall in again
I can’t believe I’m in the same place
But it isn’t my fault
It still takes a long time to get out
Chapter three: I walk down the same street
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I see it is there
I still fall in … it’s a habit
My eyes are open
I know where I am
It is my fault
I get out immediately
Chapter Four: I walk down the same street
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I walk around it
Chapter Five: I walk down another street

Based on the weekend

Chose a quality that can help you right now
Sig person in your life
Positive like love
Dedication - covering my back, researching,
If showered by this quality - What would your physical posture be like
What would your life be like, how would it support you?

Main takeaways

Enough - healthy balance - not too much, not too little
Childhood shame - find curiosity instead of strong will
Need for self compassion, parenting self, instead of focus on lack, invite self-love
- Power of kindness
Need for grievance - through external unified centre -
- Henry James: “Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind, and the third is to be kind.”
Access to visceral body experiences
- follow patterns to connect to hidden experiences
Parent of subpersonalities
Group as a unifying centre
Communication / culture containing lots of meaning that are/need to be simplified and lost translation

Personal Feedback

Which ideas have you found the most helpful, meaningful or challenging? Which exercises?: With regard to my role as a parent of an adolescent, the idea of balancing the level of engagement as a masterful skill struck me as highly significant and salient in my life right now. Too little and you are wasting an opportunity, but too much can become overpowering and not allow others to blossom with participative understanding. The balance is enough! I guess I was coming to a good understanding of this in my own life, but it was great to have listened and engaged in a conversation with people with experience, and feeling deeply in relation to what they were saying.
What has been the high point or major learning of this course for you?: I very much enjoyed stepping stoning though my history, attempting to reach areas I would not easily arrive at without the effort. Although I don’t feel I landed in places that taught me anything significant during the lesson, I became fully aware of the power of this exercise, and will find time to do it again soon.
What has been the quality of the conceptual content? Its organisation? Continuity? Presentation? Clarity?: I felt that other people gained from this weekend in a more meaningful way than I did and came to a hypothesis that perhaps being more feeling receptive would help in this area of inquiry. I wish I understood the unified centre model more clearly as it seemed very important and other students brought it up with importance.
Has there been anything missing from the course or anything you would have liked more of given the time limits? Was there anything which did not work for you or which could have worked more effectively if changed?: No, I felt that the pace was correct for the content and that you couldn’t do more in this time.
What comments do you have about the course trainer(s) and assistants? How was your relationship with the trainer(s)?: Both Fiona and Claudia did exceptionally well. I felt Claudia’s input was really useful as she spoke in a language I was familiar with. I felt Fiona spoke more from the heart and held the space with the correct grace for the content.