Harville Hendrix  IMAGO Therapy .

An excellent video and a great learning format.

Harville suggested that we recreate the original scenes where we were wounded in the selection process with partners and that partners often have qualities that match the deprivations from our original caretakers. For me, it is not just partners but everyone who is close to me could reflect missing pieces in my childhood. If we could stretch and give to others the qualities that we didn’t get, mainly empathic resonance to others in our life then everyone grows, especially ourselves. We learn about real connection rather than disconnection.

I changed the most in my life when I challenged my ongoing fight for survival and learned how to love the people in my life. This required a massive amount of surrender on my part and lots of therapy from empathic therapists. I thought that I enjoyed my independence and it really worked for me in my early career. What I wasn’t aware of was that the people in my life were either missing me or I was missing them or were annoyed at my ongoing independence. I had good people in my life who were growing themselves and they were able to give me feedback. It was often painful but it felt good to surrender the defensive traits especially being overly inflated about my accomplishments.

Being important to people started to become more important than career success.

I am learning to enjoy and receive the feedback that my caring for others is much more important than how successful I have been in my career. I want you to know that I still am continually challenged in this area.

I was really moved by Harville at the end of part two where he had an empathic connection to the family who felt clear enough to want to make a contribution to society by picking up paper along the highway. Harville was crying and I was crying to. Harville’s journey is now a global initiative from the heart and not from the head. I have so much more to say about how the personal influences the social. How do we help through the heart? I felt proud of my work as a psychotherapist when I heard his encouragement to therapists who are out in the landscape fighting for empathic resonance with others.

For me empathic resonance is manna from heaven as it keeps me engaged in the struggle to be empathic and reminds me that the quality of empathy is what moves mountains.

Perseverance

I was able to watch the second portion of the video today. The enormity of "coupledom “really made an impact on me. How the relationship of a couple can affect global social change has stayed with me. Harville Hendrix refers to the "down river" clean up that must be done in so many areas of life as we know it. However, if changes could occur via working through of issues within couples, there would be no clean up needed. The vast expanse of that statement has made me think about so many things that do not need to exist in our social systems if we had done our work within couples.

It is certainly worth contemplating and listening to what he has to say and learning and putting into practice the work to be done in “coupledom"

I have just finished watching the Harville Hendrix Video and have to say that I am impressed on so many different levels.  The quality of the video production, coupled with Heather Lee Kilty's ability to interview and of course Harville's deep insight into relationships has greatly moved me.  One of the concepts which Harville bases his Imago Therapy on was not new to me.  The idea that we choose partners similar to our caretakers and those who wounded us was very familiar to me.  However, what was new and insightful was the need to recreate in our adult lives scenarios which reflect our wounding in childhood in order for that wound to be repaired.  Furthermore, it is our partners and through our relationships with our partners that these wounds are healed.  In some ways it is difficult for me to grasp this concept. My initial reaction to the realization that I have picked the same type of person to be intimate with as my caretaker who wounded me  is one of fear and I want to run and through my hands up in the air and declare it a huge mistake.  According to Harville, this is the exact person that I need in order to bring full healing into my life.  Harville articulates so beautifully what can happen within ourselves and our relationships when we allow this healing to take place.

 I also really took in  Harville’s systemic view of healing that when we grow and change as persons we can have a global impact.  I love Harville’s vision of growing from a violent society to an empathetic society in which the children of our world can grow up to be empathic beings.

 I appreciate this video being made available to us to that we can learn, grow and heal.

The Harville Hendrix video brings the gift of sharing information to heal the world around us.  As Harville quotes leading psychologists of the past he refers to a line that has inspired his work, 'as I grow, you heal'.

From the onset of this interview, the practical approach that Prof. Heather Kilty implements sets the tone for us to take away something valuable right away and apply it to our own relationships.

The question everyone wants an answer to is, 'why do couples fight and how to begin the process of healing?'   Harville explains that often couples experience a disconnection and they want it back so they project that responsibility on each other.  This ends in further disconnection.  He explains that the paradox is that, couples fight in order to get more connected. 

Harville Hendrix's argument develops on the theory that couples unconsciously select a partner that isn't going to meet their needs because of their own early wounds with caregivers. He says, "Incompatibility is the grounds of marriage and compatibility is the basis for boredom".  The unconscious mind wants to be in tension and in contrast (not conflict). We need to recreate in our adult life the scene within which we were wounded in our childhood in order to repair the initial wound.  He says that this means we fall in love with someone who we see as similar to the caretakers that were part of our childhood. Harville goes on to call the partner in our lives, "a parental surrogate". 

The question that precedes the intriguing theory above is: 'how can relationships heal from this?' This is where Harville Hendrix contribution to therapy, specifically couple’s therapy is pioneering a new way of working in the model.  He says, "we marry someone who wants from us what we are least capable of giving them.  But they want it from the part of us the was shut down by our own childhood."

He adds that if we are willing to stretch into a behavior that our partner needs that would heal their childhood, then we actually grow a part of ourselves that got atrophied with our parents.

Harville Hendrix speaks of the lost art of empathic resonance in our society. When we look to our own wounding and resist the patterns of reacting, we not only heal our relationships, we get the chance to finally heal our own lives.

I recommend anyone who wants to understand this practical yet powerful approach, watch the video.  Harville Hendrix is a passionate humanitarian whose message in universal and personal. 

Thank you Heather for setting the tone.  It has made the interview succinct and engaging.

Thank you for your question below

I guess my question is - how do we meet this challenge of privileged people doing privileged work in a world where structural barriers keep some people away from being able to ‘heal’?

For me, It is important that we all work at these issues and make every attempt not to marginalize others or to judge others and that we work on removing barriers in ourselves and in our services so that services are more inclusive.

I have personally felt the pain in both Heather and Harville about power inbalances and a devastation about the lack of empathy for all of our human family.

The more empathic resonance that I learn the more I feel brave to do what every I can around systemic injustices that discourage movement and growth. As a therapist hearing the context of someone's life which often has different cultural reference points can create a point of love and connection and then from connection we can both  act upon actions that moves these issues forward.

I too really appreciate this dialogue and think that it has an extremely important place in our practices as therapists and lives as members of the human race (and members of the planet).

Systemic inequalities are real - and at the same time they are created and sustained by the people and individuals that carry, maintain and sometimes violently enforce the discourses (ideas, beliefs, behaviors that get written on the body) that support the "structures" you refer to.  And we are all the people that live and experience ourselves and our world within these discourses of power. 

As a therapist working with people - some able to pay and some not...I hold that what I do allows for fissures to develop in the "structures" because they can only be maintained by people. Challenging dominant discourses (dominant ways of thinking/believing/ acting) requires a space that feels a sense of freedom and trust in one's own knowing’s...this to me is a big part of therapy - along with the ability to engage deeply and profoundly with another human being - and to challenge the blocks that prevent this.  We all move out into the world from this place....where I learn to trust my knowing’s and feel deeply engaged with others and feel a deep sense of empathy.

Further to this, I also challenge myself to continually engage in questions about my own privilege and power - what are the ways that I help support and promote privilege?  To me this is a part of ethical practice...

I think the saying goes...."The journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step" Lao Tzu

Unconditional love as a way to heal the wounds from our past moves me deeply!  Many of my friendships have provided this for me over the years and I am very grateful!  Working as a psychotherapist is my way to give this back.  I also struggle with unconditional love as a way of being in my friendships particularly when I am triggered by behavior that reminds me of where I was wounded originally. Harville Hendrix's approach to healing relationships is brilliant.  And now on to the WORK!