*Definition of Terms

Act Out

Ultimately we act out to communicate and make connections.  However, because of hardwiring, we cycle back and forth between acting out and getting attention.  Attention is only temporary and must be repeated.  If the behavior works, we get what we desire.  If the behavior does not work, we accelerate the acting out to heighten the attention we receive.  Either way, we seldom achieve our Core Intentions: to be seen, understood, accepted, chosen and valued. The bottom line of why we ACT OUT then is to feel SEEN, UNDERSTOOD, ACCEPTED, CHOSEN AND VALUED from others.

Attention

Ultimately we seek attention to be seen and understood. This seldom happens because of the protective stance of our hardwiring.  The purpose of hardwiring is to protect us from being seen, understood, etc., when it would threaten our feeling of what is ‘normal.’

Addictive-Compulsive Behavior
“A pathological relationship to any mood-altering experience that has life damaging consequences to our relationships.” 

There is a sense of being driven to act out. Driven by the belief that we are flawed, defective and a mistake. It is about the wounded self. It is an attempt at intimacy with others. Mood-alteration is repeated to avoid feelings of loneliness, hurt, being a mistake, failure that points to deep feelings of shame. Acting out creates more life damaging consequences, which creates more shame.

New shame fuels the compulsive-addictive cycle.

Humans by nature are addictive-compulsive. We are addicted (uncomfortable if the addiction is removed) to drugs, food, work, fun, misery, pain, joy, success, failure, religion and sex. We are compulsive (will prefer the drug of choice over relationships) when we work late, eat without being hungry, talk, laugh or remain silent when inappropriate. 

Our “drugs of choice” are unique to how we were wired. This explains why no one drug has the same effect on all users. We may love or hate our work, however both ways can be positive or negative depending on the person. 

Addictive-Compulsive Cycles 


Four stages make up the addictive-compulsive cycle. 

Obsessing about a problem, we must mood-alter & let our thinking mode take us away from our emotions and feelings.

Rituals are followed to make habitual the mood-alteration. We do this by drinking with the boys, eating in secret, cruising for sex, gambling, or working excessive hours.

Acting out is done in through drunkenness, bulimia, spending excessive amounts of money, orgasm, anger, abuse, lying or burnout.

Feelings of remorse and shame over our addictive-compulsive behaviors . We manifest our remorse & shame through behaviors such as hangovers, infidelity, demeaning sex, empty pocketbook, loss of job and divorce.

Byproduct: Toxic shame fuels the addiction and continues to regenerate itself. 

Addictive Personality

Balance

  • Balance is about being conscious of and monitoring boundaries.
  • To remain balanced, learn to edit, challenge, and simplify boundaries. 
  • Edit life.  Edit thoughts, writing, meetings, actions and words to be sure of doing essential meaningful things.
  • Understand that stress is a stop sign.  Stop and find out how imbalanced started.
  • There are only so many slices in a pie.  It gets real messy if you pile more on top.
  • There are more payoffs in being happy rather than right.
  • You don't have to swing at every ball pitched to you.

Behavior vs. Intentions

When language that includes both intention and behavior is used during a conversation, people are automatically opened into a conversation with mutual success as the outcome.

  • Good Intentions are conditional.
  • Core Intentions are unconditional.

    Commonalities

  • A sense of a within (consciousness, unconsciousness, shadow, primitive).
  • A sense of a body that I live in.
  • A sense of continuation beyond death.
  • A sense of connection to something greater than myself.

Conflict Resolution

Core Intentions

 We feel open to a conversation when we hear and see verbal or non-verbal messages that give us a feeling of being seen, understood, accepted, chosen and valued. By using Core Intentional language, all participants leave with a sense of what to do next to be successful and a feeling of their value to the organization.

Death

  • Think often about your eventual death.  Befriend death.
  • Take life one moment at a time.  Each moment is a birth and death.  Each moment is full of power.

Dysfunction: Family, Corporate, National & Global 

Early Conditioning

Early childhood conditioning involves our psyche being wounded as well as nurtured.  This happened when caregivers forced belief and behavior restrictions to socialize our acting out.  These wounds left permanent scars that are sensitive to specific behaviors acted out by people in our adult lives, as well as our own children.  We may experience feeling hurt, shamed, anger or depression, simply by hearing someone yelling, crying or just looking dissatisfied with us.  As adults there is little in our relationship model that connects our current adult feelings with the natural wounding experiences in childhood

Inner Child Work 

Golem

The Golem is one half (with the Survival Child) of the split that results from the extreme tension created in early childhood conditioning. Its personality is invisible, underdeveloped, and has default authority to turn off consciousness. When you say, “This is the right way to act, think or speak,” even when repeated, negative consequences result, the Golem is present. The Golem will continue to assert its authority beyond all logic or proof.

Hardwiring

Hardwiring is the early childhood/adolescent conditioning we receive from parents, guardians, and other authority figures.  Hardwiring is well established by 3 years of age.  It is most easily observed as adults in our personal preferences, habits and reactions during stress and mood swings.

Our HARDWIRING, our early childhood conditioning & our default relationship model, were created to allow us to survive our powerlessness as children in familial and social environments.  In those environments, others regulated our behavior, beliefs and feelings, thus creating our hardwiring.

Parents and authority figures, projecting what’s missing in themselves onto their children, creates hardwiring. Hardwiring is identified by the shadow. The shadow contains the survival child, the Golem and a set of behaviors that we are hypersensitive and reactive to (rather than respond) when acted out by others. 

Our hardwiring is the primary default behavior we act out when stressed and feeling threatened. Hardwiring will over-ride morality, laws, allegiances, vows, free-will, beliefs, commitments, contracts, ethics, obligations, children’s needs and good intentions. Hardwiring explains the reason for the saying, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” The Golem aspect of our psyche is responsible for this.

Hardwiring is the reason marriages end, children & spouses are abused, jobs are lost, and substance abuse is so difficult to overcome. Theft, bribery, assault, murder, forgery, bigotry, embezzlement, lying, rage, gangs, get rich schemes, depression, getting high, and cheating all have their genesis in hardwiring. 

Naming the Primary Stressor

The primary stressor at home, work or in the community is a person who is acting out their default shadow behavior whenever they are feeling uncomfortable, out of control or victimized. Their behavior makes everyone around them go on survival alert. The other family members, co-workers, neighbors, etc., regulate their day according to the primary stressors moods.

Primary stressors always have accomplices; those who have an investment in the primary stressor continuing the abusive shadow behavior. Accomplices are spouses, bosses, employees, neighbors and friends who “put up” with the person’s outbursts or abusive behavior. 

It is important to understand who the primary stressors were in families of origin and those in our current family situation, at work and in our community.   

Negative Characteristic List

This list of hypersensitive behaviors is stored in each person’s psyche, hidden as it were, from conscious awareness.  As with all aspects of the psyche, this list represents potential energy that builds up and then seeks release.  Being in relationship activates this release with people who are doing one or more of the specific behaviors on your Top 10 list. We have an investment in finding these people each day in order to release this energy.  We marry them, hire and work for them. 

To stay conscious of these behaviors, carry this list to one-on-one or group meetings with co-workers. Have it near your phone when talking to people who are difficult to communicate with, yet are important people in your life.  The quickest way to stop someone from acting out a specific behavior is to identify with it and tell the person how you are like him or her.

No Blame Rule

Adults in our earlier life (parents, siblings & authority figures) are not to be blamed for what they did not know. We know that shame causes shaming, abuse leads to more abuse in an endless cycle passed on from generation to generation. This is a most painful inheritance. As we find out more about how our childhood shadow was really created, we can affix responsibility for inappropriate behavior on these adults. It is important to the recovery of healthy emotions that we know who was responsible (parents, siblings & authority figures). However, in order to be healthy we must choose to let go of being victims completely. We must pull back our shadow projection from the caregivers and own them. This will take time as well as a deep and authentic effort.

Personal Growth

  • All that we love and hate will eventually track us down and envelop us.
  • All people seek truth regardless of family, custom, prejudice or tradition.
  • Do something for yourself and keep it a secret.  Do something for another and keep it a secret.
  • Getting healthy requires doing the things that are often uncomfortable, but leave a positive residue.
  • We push our own buttons.
  • Live life with a Purpose that is bigger than your desires.
  • Don't be in a hurry for anything to be over.
  • Notice where others don't look or go, then make that place your own.
  • Live by example, by appreciation, and for a purpose that will take more than one lifetime to fulfill.
  • Empty out a closet or drawer and resist re-filling it again.

Presenting System

Most of us live our whole lives some distance behind our eyeballs. Depending on a variety of internal and external factors, we automatically move back and forth on a continuum from consciously projecting our thoughts beyond our physical boundaries to retreating deep into layered less conscious states of awareness within ourselves. 

Furthermore, depending on our inner beliefs, values, principles and health there is a tendency to lose conscious awareness of the physical world and retreat into the habitual/addictive patterns of our mind during times of stress, fear or shame. 

Lastly, as circumstances internally or externally change so does our face, tone of voice, posture and gestures. Very often we unknowingly give contradictory and confusing messages to others. 

Pressure, Stress and Tension

Pressure can come from external or internal sources. Pressure to act, think or speak in ways contrary to our beliefs. Spousal, boss, cultural, peer pressure can alter a reasonable choice. If the pressure is continuous, it becomes stress. Stress is what brings us to the edge of our physical, mental or emotional limits. Stress can harm; stress can kill. 

Tension is normal. 

Tension keeps the muscular-skeletal system erect. 

Tension is healthy when we are pushing our limits and we succeed. 

Tension exists in problem solving and in music. 

Tension between partners can balance out the hardwiring of both people. 

Primary Stressor

Current behavior is driven by unknown, underlying reactions to major stressors in our early childhood experience. In order to survive, to make our world normal, we all had to use childhood magic. This magic made us bad and authority figures right. This magic made us cover over, black out, deny what really happened to most of us by parents and authority who themselves were mistreated. From survival beliefs, to choices made at school, to majors chosen in college, to partners chosen to create families, to the type of organization we joined, to the rewards and promotions accepted, and even to the extracurricular activities we enjoy. All are controlled somewhat by primary compulsive-addictive behavior and fears learned from parents and other authorities as our role models.

Problems

  • A radical and permanent resolution of problems only comes when we are 100% responsible for choosing and creating a rich and fulfilling life.
  • What we don't understand we fear.  What we fear we destroy.
  • Only when awake can anger transform into laughter.
  • It's better to make a mistake with full force of your being than to avoid mistakes with a trembling spirit.
  • People are either paying attention, paying for attention or praying for attention.

Projection  

 Projection is defined as the release from the psyche (shadow) of a characteristic, a behavior we don’t want others to see in us, on to another person, who is in fact acting out that behavior. 

This has two polar aspects connected by a large continuum. On one side is the positive, natural function of projection. This allows us to see and receive feedback about our ideas and behavior. It consciously and unconsciously tells us we exist. We can see our selves mirrored in others.

On the other end of the continuum, the negative or blaming projection. This is mostly an unconscious projection of less than helpful nature on to another person, a group, an organization, an ideology, or even a country. The core reason for all of these projections is a fear in the individual of someone seeing in them- selves the same thing they are projecting onto another. The need to protect and project the deep pain inside, out weighs even concrete, rational facts before our eyes. Underlying all projection is the need to mood alter away from something.

Reaction and Response

We are in a REACTIVE mode (hardwiring) when we are focused solely on and reacting to behavior. We see evidence of this reactive mode when we get other’s ATTENTION, but not the results we wanted.

We are in a RESPONSIVE mode when we alternate between speaking to the other person’s behavior and their Core Intentions.  We see evidence of the responsive mode when expected RESULTS are achieve. 

We only have a choice to react or respond to others behavior if we are able to feel our boundaries. To feel our boundaries we need to interrupt input from the environment and the spontaneous feelings that arise in us. Default feeling are reactive and hardwired. We react instead of respond when an authority figures approaches. We find ourselves confused when confronted with relationships. 

Neither reaction nor responding will go away. They are natural and permanent parts of our communication process; how we compare choices. In order to have a choice whether to react or respond we must learn to hold two feeling at one time. One feeling is reactive (Hardwired) and the other is responsive (Intentional). This is contrary to our nature, however if learned, it will transform your relationship with anyone. 

We only have a choice in our behavior if we are able to feel our boundaries and the effects that the environment has on them. This effect or feedback is essential for life itself. If our early childhood experiences have required us to shut off feeling and emotions, then we have no sense of the qualities of self. No sense of where our boundaries begin and end when an authority figures approaches.

Everything is more or less enmeshed. We find ourselves confused when confronted with interrelationships. This is all the "hard wired" programming from childhood. We must learn about the self and the healthy boundaries that separate us from others and learn how to respond from clarity rather than react from fear.

Relating to Others

Our partners, co-workers, bosses, friends and even strangers make us feel anxious by stirring up the hidden roots of our original pain. They also seem to display the same negative traits as our parents - that is what makes them so valuable to our recovery.

Relationships with others usually contains a mixture of three factors - Transference, Projection and Denial. Transference This is done consciously or unconsciously when we transfer the feelings we had/have for our parents onto others. Projection When hidden emotions reach a threshold they are projected onto another person who has similar characteristics as our parents. Denial The pain and anguish caused by parents is denied and re-channeled into acceptable compulsive behavior.

All relationships have a hidden purpose - the revealing of and the healing of childhood wounds

We need to: 

Re-create, continuously, a more and more accurate image of others. Take reasonability for communicating our need and desires to others. Be more consciously intentional in interactions with others. Learn to value others needs and dedres as wt value our own. Contain our projections and find their source in our Shadow. Continually learn new skills to satisfy new levels of our needs and desires. Open ourselves to identify abilities we are lacking. Become aware and nurture your desire to have and be connected to all of life.

Creative Tension vs. Emotional Tension Creative or emotional tension is created by the gap between one's vision (dreams. illusions) and current reality. It h an energy potential and it exists as a tension seeking release. Emotional tension results from inner survival beliefs in conflict and threatened by the external environment. Create tension is releases by moving towards fulfillment of a vision. Emotional tension can be released by lessening one's vision. Goals erode because of our lo v tolerance for emotional tension. Eroding of goals, visions, morals, or principles is a ~ud process. We a110er our goals to erode ~when we choose not to live with tension that vrhich allows an active force to be present.

Failure Is a shortfall, temporary or fatal, that makes evident the gap between vision and current reality. Provides an opportunity for learning a more accurate picture of clarity reality. It is about things that didn't/don't work. It is about the clarity of the vision. Is the pathway work under your feet as you move forward.

Relationship

  • The Purpose of Life is Relationship.
  • Relationship is about being and becoming.
  • Relationship implies wholeness and intimacy, both intra-personally and inter-personally.
  • The function of interpersonal Relationship is to mirror the conscious and the unconscious continuum.
  • Healthy Relationship requires renewed skills and an ever expanding meta-perspective of life.
  • A healthy intimate Relationship is simultaneously an intimacy with all beings.
  • The best and worst of each person are mirrored in each Relationship. 
  • We are linked to all humankind by the air we breathe.  We are each other’s breath.

Relationship Anomaly

“The chronic, unproductive communication, which remain frustrating & unresolved with specific people, around certain topics, during and after the interaction.”

Residue

Reactive residue can be felt as a lump in the stomach, a pressure, an ache, heaviness, frustration, anger, the need to sleep, feelings of worthlessness or the desire for revenge that is unresolved.

Responsibility For Our Feelings-100% 
One hundred percent responsibility for the feelings we react to and respond to.  There is no faster way to personal and professional success than the acceptance of all of the successes and setbacks that we have experienced in our life. We include those that will come tomorrow.  

Not that we had a choice in our early childhood development. 
Not that we were taught communication/relationship models that were healthy and success proven.  However, we must today, start moving beyond our wiring and take a philosophical stand. 
All future relationships and success depend on being 100% responsible for our behavior.   

We can learn new models and skills to learn what it means to be free, responsible, and accountable for our life.  Anything less is to except a "victims" role for which there are then no solutions to life's problems.   We cannot change people or events; we can only consciously or less consciously participate. 

Results and Residue

When in communication there are two polar states that can be felt – results & residue. Conversations ending in results leave a feeling that I was seen, understood and valued. I feel energized and clear that both parties received what they were looking for from the other. I also have a high level of conviction that what I was requesting will be completed. 

When residue is the feeling left during or after a conversation, I feel it in my gut. I feel like something was left inside me or incomplete between us. I may feel my more powerful position will make the other comply, I still feel that something is missing, something is draining or will have to be made up later. 

The Receiving System 

What is true for the Presenting System is also true for the Receiving System both operate some distance behind their roles, personality and beliefs (eyeballs). What the presenter does not see is rarely entered into his or her total communication formula. A great deal of clarity is lost and information misunderstood when the receiver is not focused on the presenter. The skilled presenter knows that the receiver is showing constant changes in facial muscles, breathing rate, eye movement and other physical gestures and postures white listening. If we do not possess the skills to continually focus receiver’s attention on what is being said while we speak, we will pay for their lack of attention and misunderstandings in the long run. 

Roles

First Child - Responsible 

Second Child - Emotional 

Third Child - Invisible 

Forth Child - Mascot

Seen, Understood, Accepted & Chosen & Valued

Being seen and understood is a specific feeling of satisfaction and proof positive that we exist as unique people who contribute by adding value to others.  When we are accepted & chosen to participate, join in, become a member, or answer questions, this feeling of value is obvious.  In relationship, we feel seen, understood, accepted & chosen when the other person asks us questions about ourselves, our families and/or our work.

Being valued is a ‘filling up’ with worth and self-confidence. A filling of the emptiness inside that undermines our sense of unique contribution to others.  Remember, to the degree we have the skills to be seen, understood, accepted, chosen and valued from others, is in direct proportion to our ability to see, understand, accept, choose and value others.

Shadow 
SHADOW is defined as an aspect of the unconscious mind that acts as a dynamic repository. A repository for behaviors that we were either punished for or there was some other emotional trauma associated with the acting out. These specific behaviors were relegated to the shadow and then only acknowledged in other people. 

This is the beginning of PROJECTION (see the developing shadow above).
The filling of the shadow repository begins at birth.  As an infant we repeat this cycle endlessly.  With each cycle, minute family behaviors take on import. They determine how to survive in this family.  Later as adults, they show up most obviously in our preferences.  Even on the job we must work at fitting in, to behave correctly.


The UNKNOWN aspect of the unconscious is created and strengthened when the search-to-find pattern is altered. It registers as "my search must have been wrong."  If mother did not come when I whimpered, I accelerate the search with a scream. This acceleration of searching behavior continues into adult life as the way to get seen.
Our patterns of relaxing, sleeping, waking and searching begin to alter as we instinctually try to survive disruptions in simple attention getting patterns. This is the conditioning process every child goes through.
As we mature into adolescence the shadow takes on a dominant role in how we interact with others. As can be seen above, the survival child, and the two wounds become obscured, though no less powerful. The shadow makes it’s influence known to us through our strong reactions, opinions, and preferences for what is "right and wrong" in other peoples behavior. 

Shadow Work 

Suffering 

The unconscious anticipation of fear inducing, painful events causes in us that which we call suffering. The fear-laden, painful anticipation of the past. Suffering exposes us to our latent, unconscious vigilance.

Survival Beliefs and Behaviors 

An individual’s set of belief and acceptable behaviors learned from parents, caregivers and other authority figures. They are acceptable beliefs & behaviors according to the parent’s sense of normal and based on their relationship & communication model.

Our current behavior is driven by known and unknown reactions to major stressors from our early childhood experience. In order to survive, to make our world "normal", we all had to use childhood magic. This magic made us seem bad to adults and authority figures. They saw themselves as good and right. This magic made us cover over, block out, deny what really happened to most of us by parents and authorities who themselves were lacking a healthy model. 

From survival beliefs, to choices made at school, to majors chosen in collage, to partners chosen to create families, to the type of organization we joined, to the rewards and promotions accepted, and even to the extracurricular activities we enjoy. All are controlled somewhat by hardwired behavior and fears learned from parents and other authorities as our role models.

Survival Child 

The Survival Child is one half (with the Golem) of the split that results from the extreme tension created in early childhood conditioning. Its personality is invisible, underdeveloped, and has default authority to turn off consciousness. When you say, “Others do not understand who I really am and how I really feel,” even when others assure you they do, the survival child is present. The Survival Child will continue to assert its authority beyond all logic or proof.

Systemic Thinking (Strategic Thinking) 

Systemic Planning (Strategic Planning)

Team Development 

Without understand our hard wiring and its effect on others, team development become an exercise of frustration. 

Unconditional Attributes of All People 

There is no exception. 
These five tie us all together as a species.
Human Being- Gender- Connection- Meaningfulness- Exist

Work

  • Work is about relationships first, then products and services.
  • The total resources available are limited only to your vision, commitment, experience and political skills.
  • Promise a lot and then deliver more.
  • Provide services more valuable than the rewards received.
  • Taking time to relax, have fun and reflect are signs that the work is going well.  Those who are not healthy will see you as lazy and unproductive.
  • Always take time to love those who have no love to give in return right now.

Working with Clients

  • Consciousness instantly links itself to the person being counseled.
  • Engage the client in terms appropriate for their highest good.
  • Caring and compassion are at the heart of service.
  • Become a channel of active love and be clear in your purpose when giving counsel.
  • Call people to a fuller life in their presentrelationships and environments.
  • Undo the burial wrappings of deadened thought-forms.
  • In truth, no evaluation from anyone is needed.  Each must find the answer within.   Options can be offered, suggestions, overlooked consequences, support, and guidance on awakening the sleeping knowledge within.  The responsibility is always theirs.
  • Learn to listen to love when it restrains your speech, and says, "Listen unconditionally."
  • The element of caring deeply shapes each encounter.  What I find in you must also be in me.
  • Each one of us can grow towards a working connection so strong, so steady, and so clean, that we could become channels of resources from beyond our own reserves.

“Who we are and how successful we are in life depends on the breadth of the people we can productively relate to & generate with, without feeling debilitating residue.”


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© Scott Taylor 2020