Connection To The Self Through Connection To Others

This session introduces you to the fifth of the 8 C’s of Internal Family Systems: Connection, exploring how connecting deeply with others can help you strengthen your connection to the Self. By experiencing empathy, unconditional positive regard, and genuine presence in relationships, you learn to reflect that same kindness inward, building trust, safety, and belonging within yourself. This session invites you to practice both receiving and offering authentic connection as a bridge to your inner wholeness. This track is taken from the course Sitting in the Self: Exploring the 8 C’s of Internal Family Systems.

Transcript

Hello, And welcome to the session, I invite you to take a seat or lay down and get yourself comfortable, You can close down the eyes if you wish, And take some slow, Calm breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth, And with each breath allow yourself to acknowledge and release any physical, Mental or energetic blockages along with anything else that may distract you from this session, For the next few minutes all you need to do is breathe and be here to receive the session, Now as your body calms and your mind begins to settle, Take a moment to set an intention for this session, May this session ground me in presence, Focus my mind and open me to the guidance, Clarity and insight this practice holds for me today, May it bring me closer to embodying my highest self, Okay well done, So in today's session we are going to be looking at the internal family systems quality of connection, Now connection is a little bit of an anomaly within this course, Because it doesn't quite involve a direct practice, But rather more of a reframe, A thought experiment, A bit of a guided insight so to speak, Connection by definition is you connecting to another person, It's about us putting down the barriers, About opening ourselves up and about joining with another person, We'll look at the principle of playfulness, Of freedom, Of flow, And the way we're going to reframe this connection is to sort of draw upon what we've looked at previously, Let's get calm together, Let's take a breath, Slow breath, In through the nose and out through the mouth, And just settle ourselves down for a little bit, Just as we are getting calmer, As we're things arising in your mind, Become mindful, Become curious of what's arising, Have some compassion for whatever you discover, Connection involves joining with another, But it involves more than that, It's more than just being in another's presence, It's about holding that other person in their totality, In their truth, Or at least allowing space for it to arise, I don't like to go about it this way but sometimes approaching things from the opposite or the makes you feel constrained or restricted or unable to just sort of be yourself, Sort of forced to act or hold back, There's this inattention, They weren't connecting with you, They put you out of the sense of self, And in turn you weren't connecting with them, There was no connection, There's a term that I've learnt in counseling and it's called unconditional positive regard, The idea is that when you're sitting with someone, This works in the therapy room as well as it works with friends and family and colleagues, You hold the person in unconditional positive regard, You believe them, You believe that what they're saying, What they're expressing is their truth and that they're doing their best to live their life, You hold them in a state of subjective truth, And you do your best to sort of deploy, For lack of a better expression, Tactical empathy, You want to know truly what it is to see the world from their perspective, And if they were to come to you asking for support or guidance or clarity, It wouldn't be at least initially the best thing to offer them advice, The best thing to do really would be to connect into your sense of self, Calm yourself down, Help them to calm down, And then to get curious, To connect with them and help them to uncover their truth, Their totality, What they believe, Their solution, The idea is that they are the experts of their own story, Of their own life, And the solution is within them, Now the reason I'm sharing this with you, With the idea of connection, Is because I'm trying to give you different ways to connect, Different ways to connect to others in your life, After this session, If you find yourself in the company of others, Rather than trying to, I guess, Lead or impose yourself upon the situation or the dynamic, Just step back, Just sit, Just listen, Just watch, Just be there for and to receive them, Realise in your mind that the depth of self that you feel with inside you, The complexity, The wealth of thoughts, Emotions, Memory, All of that stuff, The history, Everything that makes you, You, Is also in them, They are just as complex, Just as deep, Just as nuanced as you are, Their inner world is different to yours, But it's just as expansive, These are different ways that we can come to connect to one another, And for the remainder of the session, I invite you to open yourself up to connect with me in this state, By this stage, You've had five, Six sessions with me in this course, You've heard me talking, You've heard my cadence, My rhythms, You've got an idea of what I believe and how I believe it, And you know, Have a feel of who and what I am, So before you practice this with someone in real time, I encourage you to connect with me, As I'm attempting to connect with you, Now of course we are not in the same place, We're broken up by time and space and across digital connections, But you can still connect with people, When you listen to the music, When you read their poetry or their writing, There's still a connection to be felt, When you try to open yourself, You know, With that loving kindness, But more, More so to their truth, It's almost like this connection is like you're trying to see them, Or see their sense of self within them, They have a sense of self, You have a sense of self, And it's like self seeing self, So from that sense of a self seeing a self, Let's sit in a state of connection, You and I together for one minute, And just be together, Just breathe, Just offering each other loving kindness, Just being curious as to whatever arises, Let's be in the sense of self together for one minute, Okay, So how'd you go, I encourage you to try that practice as you go out into the rest of your day, Try and see and evoke and connect to the sense of self with anyone else you meet, With one person at least, And I invite you now to open your eyes and return back to your body, And as this session comes to the end, I want to remind you that you can ask any questions about connection, Or about internal family systems, Or the sense of the self, Seeing the self in the classroom, And I'll see you in the next session. This track was taken from the course, Sitting in the self, Exploring the eight C's of internal family systems, It's out now and available on my insight timer profile, I encourage you to check it out, See you there.