4) Relationships are Our Perfect Classrooms
We attract to us those whom we need to heal and grow
Relationships are our perfect classrooms for personal growth and deepening into the richness of life's experiences. We choose our partners for the synergistic potential we offer each other and we are eager to explore and grow together when we can find an enjoyable, accessible, and meaningful vehicle to carry us along our journey together. Often the very aspects that drew us together can tear us apart unless we are intentional and conscious in our relationship journey. Facilitating and nurturing relationship with self and other is one of our most noble life purposes.
An example of a profound and highly successful form of couples' work is Imago Relationship Therapy, a creation of Harville Hendrix and his wife Helen Hunt. Imago Relationship Therapy is founded on the notion that we choose our partners to heal our childhood hurts and thus relationships become our perfect classrooms for increasing consciousness.
Couples’ work within the Imago Therapy approach begins with client and/or workshop participant exposure to the basic premise that “individual healing comes about through the process of relationship and not through individual understanding” (Beeton, 2007, p. 9). To further prepare couples of working together in new healing ways, Hendrix introduces the concept of the unconscious to clients and workshop participants and “defines the three phases of relationship as romantic love, power struggle, and conscious relationship” (Beeton, 2007, p. 9). During the first two phases, behavior and feelings are motivated primarily from the unconscious.
Imago Therapy recognizes the power of these unconscious drives and attempts to utilize processes to manage them and increase the consciousness of relations between partners via development of a skill called ‘couple’s dialogue’ or ‘intentional dialogue’ (Beeton, 2007).
"Just" Blank Cards work expands the term "dialogue" to include and focus on work with images and the messages they can convey to us. Images are powerful means of connecting with self for communication from deep within our psyches and for connecting with others to express ourselves fully.
We appreciate the work of Harville Hendrix and Helen Hunt, Imago Relationship Therapy. Imago work is a primary contemporary example of deep transformative couples' work that recognizes and teaches couples to facilitate within their relationships the inherent healing potential that resides within each individual and the relationship itself.
For more information on Imago Relationship Therapy Please Visit:
http://gettingtheloveyouwant.com/