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Are you entangled in difficult
relationships or painful emotions? Do you suffer from childhood trauma?
Do you suffer from your parents' drama, your partner's demands, your
boss's moods? Soulwork can help you untangle
your life, and you can help others reclaim their freedom.
Are you bonded?
What do you HAVE to believe to remain in your
job? What MUST you believe to stay in your marriage? What do you HAVE to believe to
be a good citizen of your
country?
Relationship bonds can be described as bundles of emotions and
beliefs that allow you to stay in difficult relationships. Relationship bonds are
often substitutes for truth and substitutes for identity.
If you were neglected or
abused as a child, or were victim of
emotional incest or
mentor damage, you may now suffer severe limiting
beliefs and automatic dysfunctional behaviors that impact your family, work and social life.
You may suffer from identity loss
that manifests as relationship bonds.
If you have identity loss, you may behave strangely during times of
stress (work or family problems, etc), when symptoms prevent normal functioning.
If you are bonded to ineffective or dysfunctional people, you may
be unable to live a happy life. Your relationship bonds define what feels
right.
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Some Signs of Identity Loss |
- cannot describe emotions or feelings
- cannot describe thoughts or images
- cannot define specific goals
- endless abstract complaints
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- cannot build happy relationships
- impulsive - poor impulse control
- autoimmune
disease symptoms
- chronic
fatigue syndrome (CFS)
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The consequences of relationship stress
- such as abandonment, abuse and betrayal - include fixed beliefs that compensate for perceived injustice or
relationship damage. Many people are damaged during relationships with teachers
and mentors and well-meaning but irresponsible therapists.
[
Training Abuse . Mentor Damage . Client Abuse by Therapists ]
Identity Loss
In systemic diagnosis, chronic dissociated behavior (imagine a math professor pondering a difficult
problem) is called Lost Identity, the long-term expression of another person's personality (think of
popular ideas of possession) is called Identification, and long-term bipolar behavior or mood swings (think of popular
ideas of split personality) is called Identity Conflict.
Descriptions of Lost Identity, Identification and
Identity Conflict are described at Identity Loss.
You can learn systemic solutions for identity loss in Soulwork 4 training, and solutions for relationship bonds. See our
training calendar for locations etc.
Relationship Bonds & Identity Beliefs
Relationship bonds help people (especially children) continue difficult
relationships. For example, a child may perceive that
a parent is stupid or crazy, and compensate for this perception by
creating a limiting identity belief that he or she (the child) is stupid
or crazy. (Some intelligent women take care not to be perceived as more
intelligent than their partners).
You may cling to limiting identity beliefs
throughout your life, yet avoid becoming aware of them. Relationship bonds
are often taboo - you avoid acknowledging them. If your awareness of a bond can damage an
important relationship, you may (unconsciously) avoid
this awareness.
Existential or Contextual Bonds
Relationship bonds can be differentiated as existential
(all of life) or
contextual (part of life), in the areas of identity,
relationships and humanity. Global relationship bonds (often at
the level of humanity) are associated with mentor
damage and spiritual abuse. This table shows how
identity bonds support dysfunctional behavior (in this table
bad can be any limiting concept).
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Identity |
Relationships |
Humanity |
Existential
(All of life) |
I am bad, and I cannot not be bad.
Bad is who I am. |
I only associate with people
whose lives reflect my or the world's badness. |
Everybody
is bad and
everybody will always be bad. |
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Contextual (In contexts) |
I am bad only when X happens or if
Y is present. |
Sometimes I need
to be with people who know how bad I am or how bad the world is. |
The world is only bad when X
happens or if Y is present. |
Although bonded beliefs and behaviors feel comfortable
and familiar, a relationship bond forms a false identity, or compensation
for identity. Any change to relationship bonds may change sense of life.
Existential relationship bonds may indicate chronic
identification, lost identity or identity conflict,
while contextual relationship bonds may be activated by internal or
external stimuli. Both existential and contextual relationship
bonds can trigger severe and recurring dysfunction:
- apathy, depression, anxiety or anger
- destructive or toxic relationship habits
- incompetent or inadequate performance
- obsessions, compulsions or addictions
Origin of Relationship Bonds
Relationship bonds originate in relationship
disturbances, often during childhood. These may be single
high-intensity experiences (e.g. a child witnesses an event
that the child can neither understand nor assimilate), or repeated
unpleasant relationship experiences (e.g. a parent often communicates that a
child is bad). Relationship bonds are a
common consequence of abuse, trauma and mentor damage.
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My wife and I are psychologists and our son has
muscular dystrophy. We attended a workshop by a popular German family
therapist. He told us, in front of an audience, following his intuition,
that we were "sucking the life from our son's body". We felt
devastated for weeks. Your systemic coaching helped us dissolve this mess,
and we better understand how therapists abuse clients. |
Maintain Relationship Bonds
People strengthen and maintain relationship bonds by...
- age regressed or traumatized behavior (PTSD) in
the context of the bond
- dysfunctional relationships that perpetuate the
bond through transference
- seeking and exaggerating experiences that support
or confirm the bond
- ignoring,
minimizing or denying information that contradicts the bond
If a relationship bond to one person (e.g. father)
is transferred onto another person (e.g. husband), then aberrant bonded behaviors
may then be activated by the substitute. Also, a bond to one person
(e.g. ex-wife) may be transferred onto many people
(e.g. all women).
Taboo Relationship Bonds
As unpleasant emotions often accompany relationship bonds,
people not only avoid acknowledging their bonds - they may avoid anything
that reminds them of their bonds. The bonds become taboo.
People avoid or sabotage life experiences that may invalidate their bonds.
Bonded people may:
- use drugs to dull their emotions (alcohol
& nicotine are common)
- avoid situations or circumstances that
might trigger painful bonds
- attempt to block thoughts or
images that might trigger the bond
- dissociate all emotions to avoid feeling
anger, sadness, or anxiety
- physically hurt themselves as a distraction from emotional pain
- avoid career success and/or relationship happiness
If a taboo bond is activated, a person may
retreat into dissociation, irritation or confusion (E.g. "I
forget what we were talking about" or "I don’t want to
think about it".) Some people blame esoteric entities. Others blame their parents.
Few people take responsibility to find solutions for healing their bonds.
Trained systemic coaches can help people explore their
relationship bonds, educate
people about them, discuss their origin and extent and help people dissolve
their bonds with systemic coaching.
[ Autoimmune
Disease .
Personality Disorders ]
Consult your physician about any opinions or recommendations
about medical symptoms or other medical questions.
Do you want relationship coaching or systemic coach training?
We can train you to coach individuals, partners and teams to resolve a wide
range of emotional, educational and relationship challenges. Soulwork 5
training trains you to recognize and heal relationship bonds.
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