Noticing old patterns of behaviour through the model of categorising our behaviours into distinct sub-personalities. This process guides you towards identification and dis-identification with the different modes of behaviour influenced by the various chapters on our lives.

Learning outcomes

• Recognise and describe a core old pattern that influences you now, through exploration of your key subpersonalities
• Recognise and describe the concepts of identification and disidentification through exploration of your key subpersonalities subpersonality
• Recognise and describe the interdependence of your body, feelings and mind through the exploration of your key subpersonalities
• Identify and describe how social categories such as race, gender, sexuality and socioeconomic status may have influenced the formation of your key subpersonalities
• Listen with openness to others who may be having a very different experience, and discuss ideas with curiosity, and without attacking

What we already know about SPs

• This is not the truth…
• However, it is a great model for identification and dis-identification of various behaviours in our lives.
• It also highlights inner conflict. Non-objective truth is relational, so rational decisions or feeling responses are likely to be different and sometime conflicting between the trained behaviours we have developed in various chapters of our lives.

Getting to know a bit more about our own SPs

• Bold
• Careless
• Clumsy
• Cutting
• Inpatient
• Needing for truth
• Needing for equality
• Wanting to connect
• Bond
• Love and be loved
• Be a rock
• Commitment

How SPs develop

• Agent / arena relationship
• Plausible, social validation, application
• Defence mechanisms, diplomacy
• When experiencing trauma, you can experience something that is normally repressed or inappropriate
• Attachment theory
• Fun theory because the need to take it with a pinch of salt, Danger of blame responsibility
• Primal creativity, response to maturity
• All in flux, in stages of development
• Allows the idea freedom of complexity, need to be mindful of flow with snapshots
• With mirroring, there is a connection
• With a lack of mirroring, we start to become agitated
• If we get it wrong, we need to admit and ask what was missed
• The earlier the lack of mirroring the harder it is to discover

Core personality

1. Core personalities
2. Suppressed personalities - shoulds, like the need to exercise and eat healthy
3. Repressed personalities - unconscious like trauma, do anything to avoid, sense of complete loss and existential threat

• Who is in the driving seat? - ordinary response, rage,
• The diplomat knows that rage isn’t going to get very far, allowing anger unfairness extreme reaction disproportionate to the event,
• Subpersonalities helps identify a stage that is triggered, but also displays it not the whole of us, allowing not to be self-shaming.
• Find a balance, between reacting and reflecting
• We get dominated be the unconscious, it can be painful to find and admit and needs a motivation to look
• Process tips into this work. Can feel like an eruption, in psychosynthesis its an awakening
• Disidentify = come into awareness as an observer (confused with being attached)

Activity who I am

• Environmental activist
• productive doer
• longing to relate and be loved
• engineer
• pattern seeker
• teacher

what does it say/need

Environmental activist

• eye
• truth
• stop doing

Relater

• reaching arm
• integration
• loving embrace

Pattern seeker

• joining dots
• truth
• definition

Not really me

• Jealous
• status seeker
• joker
• sport
• equaliser

what does it say/need?

Status seeker

• Trophy
• recognition
• appraisal
• spokes person

Equaliser

• sword
• injustice
• equality

Joker

• relate
• conform
• less serious
• letting go

Reflection

• What is the relationship between what’s inside the circle and outside the circle?
• The inside is my need for differentiation
• The outside is my permission of expression
• Inside protecting the outside
• Optimal grip instead of impulsive

Inner child

Essence of my childhood

• Countryside, Plenty of nature
• Possibly tory values, although not aware of that at the time
• Mum left to be musician
• Dad and a conformist rock
• Older and younger siblings to learn from
• Freedom to explore
• Parents had a simple focus
• Plenty of kids and play on the street
• Adventurous
• Confident
• Music + video
• Open
• Great with maths
• poor reader

Psychosynthesis - Also includes how we are seen by society

Activity

• Meeting myself and seeing if I needed to help the child
• Seeing myself as quite self focused
• Mostly in environments created by my grandma

He

• Need for knowledge of the right thing, but only a little
• Need to explain what is going on from his head
• Interested in exploring
• Not afraid to be what he wants to be, happy/anger and all in between

I

• Don’t know how to relate

• Want to encourage the value of relationships

• Seeing him cope wall with acceptance, exploration, cheekiness

• Seeing a simple life

• On a mountain what does the kid say to how he could benefit from you

  • Watching his confidence as he climbed
  • Be a close friend
  • Expression through making sense of how things are put together

Creative work (mask making)

SPs and polarities

1. Recognition
2. Acceptance
3. Coordination
4. Integration
5. Synthesis

• Currently focus on the first two, it is the early stages where the effort is needed
• Needs discernment and reflection
• Being in relation
• Owning your own strength

My 5 year old appears

• Confidence
• in the head
• Need to put head up
• Find silliness
• Salient for me History is less, but potentiality is greater,
• enjoy being in a mode, but also enjoy changing

Recognition

• You can’t bypass the recognition stage
• Self-deception
• Ego development

Acceptance

• Not reject
• Allow it to be
• Building an empathic relationship with it

Coordination

• Allowing yourself the space to grow
• Training
• Bring things into consciousness, and make more efficient
• What quality is trying to emerge from this personality?
• What is this part of you all about?
• Accepting that to be a geek and to believe is great for widening the dynamic of one way of being,
• but don’t forget to be available for change, and widen your availability
• I have that personality but I am more than it

Recreate a sense of place

• Two sheets of paper on the floor as body location place mats
• One sheet as subpersonality
• Other as the polar opposite
• Outside seeing both as separate

What would it be like to have both parts accessible?

• The achiever is unable to see the anti achiever
• The anti-achiever is a rebel from the achiever and is sick of it
• Outside can see the benefits of each individual

Closing and grounding

3 things you have learnt this weekend

• Enjoy being in a mode,
• but allow for stepping out

How are you practically going to process these insights / make them longer lasting?

Give myself permission to try things out and taste them

Personal Feedback

Which ideas have you found the most helpful, meaningful or challenging? Which exercises?

First off, simply bringing my attention to some of my subpersonality models was a wonderful exercise. However, to then spend time with some leaver extracting the less obvious, and on top of that spending time within them and their opposite was quite insightful. I realised that maybe I have all of the subpersonalities that were displayed throughout the two days, in more or less capacity. I believe my awareness of the subpersonalities could be due to an agent/arena relationship where sometimes the subpersonality is more or less in relation to its arena, which has an influence on how much attention I place on them and in what capacity I allow them to blossom or be suppressed or repressed.

What has been the high point or major learning of this course for you?

I had a great experience visualising the achiever part of me along-side the anti-achiever, feeling the variance they had and the influence they had on my values and thoughts. I realised that both were indispensable in becoming wholesome, wise and mature.

What has been the quality of the conceptual content? Its organisation? Continuity? Presentation? Clarity?

I enjoyed the fun aspect of the two days. I was given permission to let go and play around with the characters, hopefully not offending anyone but simply laughing at the ridiculousness of them.

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?

At the time I wished that there was a bit more time focused on the theory. However, I realised towards the end that this wasn’t so important for the exercises, and that covering the theory in my own time, reflecting on the experiences in the session, was much more beneficial of our time

What comments do you have about the course trainer(s) and assistants? How was your relationship with the trainer(s)?

I felt Dermod and Sonia did an excellent job in provoking fun, and in turn lowering barriers for exploration. They listened well to my questions and I felt blessed that Sonia referred back to earlier questions I had made to deepen my understanding.