Hello!

When I was training as a psychotherapist, 20 plus years ago, I heard a phrase that has stayed with me ever since,

“What you are afraid of has already happened.”

I wonder if this resonates with you?

For example, are you wanting to step out into the world with your gifts, but when you get close to doing that, you feel deep fear that you will be judged or hurt?
 

I can think of a really clear example from my childhood. When I was a child, I was often terrified that my parents would die. Sometimes I would go and listen at their doors when they were sleeping to see if they were still breathing.

But that makes perfect sense, because I had lost them in the past. I’d been separated from my Mum for 18 months, and my Dad for 18 months. 

Most, if not all, of the things that our culture would judge as ‘neurotic’ or even ‘mentally ill’ in fact make perfect sense.

Unless we get to express the feelings from a painful situation, and are heard with loving compassion, the feelings from that situation will stay in our bodies.

And they will keep on trying to be expressed whenever we are in a similar situation to the present one.

So, when we go out into the world with our new project, we may be reconnecting with the experience of what happened at other times we came out into the world, like our birth, our first day at school, our first time leaving home, and so on.
 

The second part of this picture is that it’s not just from within that the similarities occur.

The universe seems to provide similar situations for us, over and over again, so that we get to feel AND hear those original experiences, SO THAT THEY CAN BE RELEASED.

My mentor Jana Kingsford shared a quote by Carl Jung the other day. It said, 

“When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.” – Carl Jung.

I love Jung’s work, and I hadn’t realised that he had this part in his work.

I believe that our bodies, our feelings, our families, and Life, are all on our side, and that they will keep on bringing us experiences to help us give unconditional love to parts of us and feelings in us that were not given unconditional love the first time.
 

How can we heal these past experiences?

There are so many options, aren’t there, for healing, and I trust that we will each be called to what really resonates for us.

I’ve been wanting to understand this for many years.

What I loved about my Psychosynthesis psychotherapy training that I did in my twenties, and then from working as a therapist, was that it was all about understanding how our past affects our present, and exploring those past experiences. But I was looking for more.

In learning and practicing Aware Parenting, I’ve seen first hand how babies and children express feelings and heal from stress and trauma, through crying with compassionate responses, and also laughing and playing. But I was looking for more.

Through studying and applying Nonviolent Communication for many years, I learnt about the profound power of empathy. And several times I saw Marshall Rosenberg, in person, stand in for a more compassionate version of the mother or father of someone, and hear what that person has been longing to say to them for many years. But I was looking for more.

In training and qualifying with the Field Project for many years, I learnt about how our core beliefs get out-pictured in the outside world. For many years I had seen how Life is constantly giving us messages and communicating to us through life experiences, and my training with the FP helped me learn how to understand those and receive even more. But I was looking for more. 

Basically, my Inner Loving Presence Process brings together elements of Psychosynthesis, Aware Parenting, Nonviolent Communication and the Field Project work.
 

So what are the key elements of the Inner Loving Presence Process?

1. The concept that we internalise our experiences with our parents, friends and partners, and they become how we respond to our needs and feelings and our inner dialogue.

2. The healing power of empathy – that thoughts, feelings, needs and words need to be simply heard with complete loving compassion. 

3. The idea that when we receive compassion and empathy from those outside us, we can internalise it and give ourselves that compassion and empathy, and replace our harsh inner dialogue with a compassionate one.

4. The concept that whenever we experience something in the present that reminds us of the past, the original feelings that haven’t been heard will come up to be heard and healed this time.

5.  The healing power of listening to our needs, giving empathy to our feelings, and celebrating our desires and passions.

6. Seeing how Life will keep bringing us situations that help us connect with feelings that haven’t yet been heard with loving compassion.
 

For me, it wasn’t enough just to cry when I connected with feelings from the past. The key element in the healing was ALSO a compassionate response – whether that was from outside, in the form of another person, or inside, in the form of my own loving crew.

For me, it also wasn’t enough just to listen to feelings. The old, internalised ways of thinking kept on creating new pain. So a new and compassionate inner dialogue clearly became important.

And just having a new way of thinking wasn’t enough either – I found in myself and my clients that intending new beliefs often didn’t stay stable, because there were all these old internalised voices that got in the way. New, real, felt-from-the-inside dialogue needed to form in order to be able to CHOOSE when to set loving limits with harsh thoughts, for example.
 

That’s why I came to combine all the different approaches.

The ILPP has different elements:

1. Our Inner Loving Crew listening to our feelings and needs in the present moment, so that we increasingly act in ways that care for our needs, honour our feelings, and value our passions.

2. The process part – that’s when we are feeling a big feeling response in the present, and our ILC go in and go back to a specific situation and the related feelings that are trying to be heard.

3. Regularly connecting with our Inner Loving Crew, so that the compassionate dialogue begins to replace the old, harsh, judgmental internal dialogue, and eventually becomes the new default dialogue.

4. Using the process when situations keep coming from ‘the outside’ – that ‘fate’ that Jung talked about – which point to a younger part of us calling out to be heard.

The ILPP is still evolving, and the participants in the course are part of that evolving process.
 

So, I’d love to ask you; 

Is there something that you really want to do but feel fear when you get close to doing it?

And if so, what do they remind you of from your past?
 

The Inner Loving Presence Process Course isn’t for everyone. But if it calls you, then I’d love to see you there.