A good Helper is also a good Worker. We use the same tools with our Workers that we use in our own lives. As Helpers, we’re listening for the moment when something beneath the surface begins to reveal itself. One of the most important things we listen for is a duality.
Uncovering dualities
Duality is the illusion that we can have one side of life without the other.
So in our work, we want to help the Worker see what they are running from. What is the duality they are caught in? What are they trying to escape?
Worker: I am so completely exhausted. I have been filling my life with adventures and working to keep busy. I go from one thing to the next. But I can’t keep going.
Helper: Because if I stop, then what?…
Worker: If I stop, then I will be bored. I hate being bored. I was so bored when I was a kid. Just sitting here right now, doing nothing, I can feel it coming up. I hate this feeling.
Helper: Let’s make some space for this feeling. Where do you notice it?
Worker: (moving hand up and down in front of her chest) Right here. Up to my head and down to here (her stomach).
Helper: Let’s breathe into that area in front of your body. Give it some attention.
As the Worker sits with this feeling, she starts to describe it.
Worker: This feels so flat and barren, so dead. There is nothing here. This goes on forever.
Helper: Keep breathing into it. (pause) This goes on forever. (pause) What else can you tell me?
Worker: My parents were involved in this church. There were all these problems, like my parents had no money. But they still did whatever the leader said. They prayed for hours. They would make me pray with them.
Helper: (pause) Stay with this.
Worker: My parents always just told me what to do. They never asked what I wanted. There was no point to any of it. I was so bored, all the time.
I couldn’t wait to leave. In my twenties, I wanted to try everything. I travelled to other countries, was with every kind of woman. I wanted excitement. I didn’t want to feel this.
Helper: (pause) Breathe.
Worker: But none of it filled this hole inside me. I still feel empty. And now I am exhausted.
In this duality, the Worker has chosen excitement to avoid boredom. One side leads toward the pain of boredom, the other toward exhaustion.
The way out of a duality is to face both sides of it.
Worker: I really don’t like this.
Helper: Let’s keep tolerating this. Just be with it. Not to fix it or change it. Just get to know it.
Worker: It never ends.
Helper: All the activities, the excitement, everything you are doing to avoid this feeling, it’s not working. It’s all exhausting you.
The psyche creates an impossible either/or. We then spend our lives trying to win one side of the split while avoiding the other. Neither side can bring freedom because the split itself is the problem.
The Worker may state their image, or mistaken belief, with such matter-of-fact conviction that it sound like a hard-wired fact of life.
Uncovering images and splits
As we stay with the feeling, we listen for something else: the hidden conclusion underneath it.
The Worker may state this mistaken belief with such matter-of-fact conviction that it sounds like a hardwired fact of life.
We call this an image.
Worker: (after sitting with the feeling) It’s a little less intense now.
Helper: What does this part believe?
Worker: I don’t know.
Helper: Keep being with it and giving it space. Breathe into your hand (over her stomach). There seems to be a connection between feeling bored and feeling dead.
Worker: (pause) I hate this feeling. I would rather die than feel this. I don’t want to keep feeling like this all the time.
Helper: I would rather die than feel this.
In another session, the Worker said she hated receiving money from clients. At first, this sounded like a straightforward problem with money. But as we followed the feeling into the body, childhood material emerged: there was never enough.
Worker: There isn’t enough.
Eventually the deeper split emerged: if they didn’t receive money, they felt deprived. But if they did receive it, they felt they were depriving someone else.
There was no way to win.
Worker: (feeling the pain of deprivation) This feels overwhelming.
Helper: Stay with this.
Worker: I always feel like this. And then if I get money from someone, I feel like they are being deprived. So then I feel guilty. I hate this feeling.
Helper: (pause) So if you don’t get it from someone else, you feel deprived. But if you get it, then they are deprived.
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