DO-HAVE-BE

We live in a cultural paradigm rooted in doing and having in order to be happy:  by working harder, working elsewhere, getting that raise, finding that partner, etc. we will be happier.  We all have experienced the fallacy of this way of thinking.  We’ve all succeeded in one way or another but eventually discover that we don’t, in fact, experience the happiness that we thought the job or the paycheck would bring us.

Anchor demonstrates that research now shows that “90% of long-term happiness is predicted not by the external world, but by the way your brain processes this world.  If we change it, if we change our formula for happiness and success, we can change the way we affect reality.”  Another way of saying this is that if happiness is where you come from, you don’t need to go out and look for it; in fact, it comes to you.

Dopamine: The Happiness Neurotransmitter

From a scientific standpoint, when we’re happy, the neurotransmitter, dopamine is released in the brain.  By the way, research has shown that acupuncture’s main effects in the body are to release dopamine.  Dopamine not only affects an overall sense of wellbeing, but it increases our capacity to learn, be creative, and experience increased levels of vibrancy.  In fact, “Your brain at positive is 31% more productive than your brain at negative, neutral, or stressed.”

Practicing Happiness

The good news is that it doesn’t take a whole lot to develop the knack of optimism, positivity, and happiness. Anchor sites research that has found that the brain can be rewired within 21 days doing the following three practices:

1. 3 Gratitudes:  Writing three things you’re grateful for.  This results in the brain “starting to scan the world not for the negative, but for the positive.”
2. Journaling about one positive experience you’ve had over the last 24 hours. “This exercise teaches your brain that your behavior matters.”
3. Meditation “allows your brain to get over the cultural ADHD that we’ve been creating by trying to do multiple things at once, allowing us to focus on the task at hand.”
4. Random acts of kindness: Praising someone in your social support network.

What’s exciting about Anchor’s message is that science is demonstrating what yogis, meditators, and mystics have been saying forever, happiness is right here and right now, and it doesn’t take much to recognize it, just simple daily practice.  My hunch and hope is that as scientific findings start to show up in mainstream media, we’ll all experience a cultural paradigm shift from trying to fix what’s wrong with ourselves and one another to appreciating each of our unique gifts.

Let me just start by saying, “No, that’s not enough.”  The honest truth is that we need to know that we are cherished.  We need to know that we’re treasured by those people around us.  I’m about to get a puppy, and so I’ve been doing all sorts of reading about how to train and interact with her. What’s clear to me is that we’re a whole lot like puppies.  While we don’t thrive from being rewarded with kibble, we do thrive when our essence is recognized.

Open-Hearted Seeing

Our essence is who we essentially are at the depth of our being.  Merriam-Webster defines essence as “ the individual, real, or ultimate nature of a thing.” When we value another’s essence, we’re not just acknowledging the qualities of an individual that are unique to that individual, we’re acknowledging who they elementally are to us in that moment.

To detect essence, requires a quality of open-hearted seeing.  We need to be able to look with appreciative eyes. Noticing essence is distinct from noticing something that that person has done or that they have.  Being appreciated for doing a job well-done feels good.  Being acknowledged for who we are essentially feels amazing!

Emotional Intelligent Behavior

So my client showed him how she wanted to be acknowledged.  So often we ask our significant others to just guess how we want it.  We ask them to be mind readers, to just know.  Most of us need to be taught this.  As advanced as our culture is scientifically, we have some catching up to do when it comes to emotional intelligent behavior.  In order to show him, she looked at him for a second or two, connected with his essence and said, “You are a deep, sensitive, and sexy man.”  When she did, she said that she saw him melt, that all of his defenses came down.

Why?  Because he was seen.  When we share our appreciation for  another, we’re basically saying, “I see you, and I love what I see.”  So rarely do each of us have the experience of truly being seen or known.  When it happens, it’s like a healing balm.  Truly being known, being seen, is what each of us longs for.

Timing is Everything

Once people learn how to acknowledge, they start to see how powerful it is.  It’s powerful because it creates a sense of connectedness.  People around us feel connected to us when they know that they are seen.  And when they do, their best comes out.  But there’s a timing to it. I know people who acknowledge so much that it loses its potency.

In addition, there are times when it should and should not be used.  The bottom line is that it has to come from an authentic place.  We all can sense an authentic boiling up of love, care, or affinity for another.  It’s in those moments when we feel or sense that that acknowledgement can and does create connection.  When it’s used in the form of manipulation, it feels saccharine and manipulative.

And there are recipients, who no matter how authentic our words of appreciation are, have a hard time receiving.  Some people just have a hard time being admired.  To receive words of appreciation are seen as prideful.  When that’s the case, no matter how authentic our words, they will never land.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Each of us must develop the capacity to express our care for one another.  It has to come from an authentic place.  And, at the same time, that care must be backed with acts that represent that care.  The two have to occur, not necessarily simultaneously, but without action, words are just that, words.  When our word and action are one and the same, our expressions of love and care for one another are powerful and transformative for all to see.  The very few relationships that I’ve seen that express a depth of caring consistently marry both words and deeds.  At the heart of their expression is care.

The Basics: How to Share Appreciation

1. Start to pay attention to those moments when you sense love, care, or affinity for another.  That’s often the best time to acknowledge them.  If you’re not habituated to noticing this sense of love and care, make that your practice for a week.  Notice each time it arises.
2. Once you notice it, give expression to the feeling.  You might say, “I feel love for you,” or “You make me feel warm inside,” or “My life feels whole with you in it,” or “I really appreciate the joy you bring to my life.”
3. Next, take a moment to look in the direction of the person.  When you look, you’re looking with a different set of eyes.  You might say that these are the eyes of appreciation.  You want to notice, in the moment, what you deeply and profoundly appreciate about the other person.  Remember, it’s just a moment.  Don’t take too long.  Essence is obvious.  If you keep looking for something, you will totally miss the mark.
4. Next, offer your appreciation in a “You are…” statement. For example, “You are a bright light who brings warmth wherever you go,”  or “You are deep soul,” or “You are gorgeous.” Because essence has a poetic quality, metaphor can be a powerful form of acknowledgement.
5. Once you’ve offered a “You are…” statement, don’t keep talking.  Pause and notice how your words landed.  Were they received?  Were they blocked or deflected?  And if they landed, notice what’s present between you and the person your acknowledging.  Is there more love and affinity?I

Another client is trying to get a new business off the ground, one that really excites him.  His current job is “soul crushing,” but his wife offers him no support whatsoever; in fact, she’s sabotaging his every move by criticizing him and laughing at his ideas as if they were the antics of a juvenile.  No matter how much he wants to switch gears and how many times he starts and stops the movement in a positive direction, he can’t really get traction.  He knows his wife doesn’t support his ideas, but he can’t seem to connect the dots in terms of why he’s stuck.  Like my client above, he’s hoping for that tool, that shift in perspective, that stroke of magic that will get him out of his current job and into the career of his dreams.

Loving Yourself is Bullshit

Both of these clients have something in common. They’re both doing it alone. Neither of them realize that we can’t.  I’ll say it again.  We can’t do it on our own.  This thought is so contrary to the New Age concept that we have to love ourselves first before anyone else can love us or the all-American “Lone Ranger,” pull yourself up by your bootstraps mythos.  Either way, there’s a hardcore ideal within American culture of self-reliance, but really, that’s just a bunch of bullshit.

A lot of the heroes we read about in history books are individuals who overcame odds to create great change, people like Martin Luther King Jr. or Nelson Mandela.  But nobody speaks about all the love and support they had along the way.  These men had people who believed in them, who offered them their energy, their resources, and sometimes even their lives in support of their goals.  What’s discussed is the greatness that these men achieved.  Very little is mentioned about their collaborators.

Collaboration

Certain relationships come into our lives to remind us that we are brilliant, creative, capable, and beautiful.  These are the relationships that feed us.  And if each of us looks closely at whatever excellence we’ve accomplished or created, we will never find us and us alone in the creation of it.  We will always find collaborators, people who believed in us and/or people who shared a common goal.  Either way, we didn’t–and by the way, can’t–do it alone.

The Magic of Partnership

The magic my clients are looking for can be found right in the relationships that they’re currently in.  Sure there’s always more soul searching we all could do to establish a deeper accord with ourselves, but we are social creatures. Even if we could do it alone, why would we want to?

Any project, any experience is so much more vibrant when we have a partner, a friend, and collaborator to share the adventure with.  Our relationships are what give a quality of richness to the experience.  In addition, our partners see to it that not only do we not fail, but they support our success just as we support theirs.

Creating Conscious Relationships

The magic my clients are looking for is right in front of them, but where can they start?  How do they transform the relationships that they’re in from relationships that aren’t supportive enough or even antagonistic into ones that are collaborative?  The first step is building on the foundation of their relationships: trust and respect.  Without these two, collaboration doesn’t happen.  I’ve written a whole blog series on recreating trust in relationship.  Check it out.

Once trust has been reestablished, the next move is to consciously design the relationship, which I’ve written about as well.

If you have a story about a collaborative relationship that might inspire others, please share in the comments.

Recently a coaching client had been complaining about the various partners that showed up in her life.  Mostly she felt a maternal instinct for them, and more often than not, they turned out to be people she had to take care of.  She’d become jaded by the various people that’d show up on her online dating service.  She’d say, “I know this’ll just turn out to be another one of those ‘energy suckers,’ so why bother?”

Default Relationships

Sound familiar?  It’s pretty common in the dating world to keep ending up with the same partner.  Sure they have a different face and address, but after awhile thy all start looking the same.  These are what I call “default relationships.”  These are the relationships that show up in our lives when we’re on autopilot, when we’re not really doing the work necessary to continue to grow and evolve.  We often seem to get a mirror image of what we won’t look at in ourselves.  The universe is magnificent in its capacity to give us just what we need.  If we won’t learn the lesson by ourselves, we’re sure to learn it in relationship with another.

But in this conversation, I decided to ask her what she thought about soul mates.  She didn’t have much of an opinion one way or another about whether they existed or not.  She’d never had the experience, herself.  So I described my own experience of meeting my soulmate, who happens to be my wife, now.

The Source of Aliveness

Melissa, my wife, says that she knew I was her mate right away.  It was clear as day to her right from the get go.  I, on the other hand, didn’t have an inkling at all that she was my soul mate.  Part of the reason is that I’d just completed a pretty significant relationship of five years with someone and also, I just wasn’t open to the experience.  Then one night after being friends for about three months, we went out.  Nothing happened.  I didn’t notice anything that night, but the next morning, I felt lit up.  It was as if I had stuck my hand in a light socket and had this incredible sense of aliveness.  And I knew it was because of her.  She was the source of that beauty, that magnificence.  At that moment, I was open to the possibility that she was my soulmate.  And that was the beginning of something that continues to be quite a magical ride.

Magic Exists

After I shared this story with my client, she seemed pretty open.  And that’s where the story ended for me last month. About a week ago, she came in looking and sounding noticeably different.  She said that the moment after she’d left our meeting she’d gone to her dating site and came across the face of someone she’d found attractive.  That person had noticed that she was looking at her page and contacted my client.  One thing led to another, and they ended up speaking for about eight hours that night.  What became clear to both of them that evening was that they’d come across the one that they’d been waiting for all of their lives.  That was how my client reported it.  She said that she didn’t even know she was waiting, but when she met her soulmate, it clarified all sorts of struggles and confusions that she’d battled her whole life.  And it felt like the culmination and completion of a portion of her life and the birth of a new one.  Previously she’d known herself simply as an individual who happened to have partnerships with people.  Now she wanted to know herself as a member of something greater than herself.

I share this story not just because it’s a good one, but because I hope–as does my client– that her story can open the possibility that one of my readers finds their soul mate.  If you have a soulmate story that you’d like to share, I’d love to hear it.  I think these stories remind us that love can be an access point to the magic of life, and magic does exist!!!

Overvaluing the Intellect

I hesitated to walk into that discussion because looking for the answer to “why” she’s stuck is a lot like going down a rat hole. Instead of offering her solutions, looking for the “why” really only deepens the potential that she stays in the rut she’s currently in. Even if she found the reason for why she’s not progressing that reason would just keep her locked in a particular way of relating to her situation. It might offer her some perspective, but it wouldn’t offer her solution.

In addition, our reasons and justification are intellect-based. Her “stuck-ness” is non-intellectual. We have a culture that’s overvalued the power of the intellect. It values “knowing” rather than “experiencing.” We live in a culture that would rather have us relate to ourselves as some entity that exists somewhere behind the eyes rather than the whole, which includes body, emotions, heart, spirit, soul, etc. And yoga practice is all about the direct experience. It’s all about noticing what’s occurring in the body and mind from moment-to-moment. Looking for “why” she is experiencing a particular sensation takes her off on a wild goose hunt, far, far away from her capacity to be with the experience.

What You Resist Persists

One of my favorite quotes from the famous psychiatrist, Carl Jung, is, “What you resist persists.”   Looking for why is just another way to avoid the direct experience of suffering that showing up both physically and emotionally.  The antidote to Jung’s statement is: “what you will be with completely causes it to disappear.”  In other words, when you can experience whatever pain or suffering that’s arising, directly, using the body and feeling sense as your lens, transformation naturally happens.  Sometimes it happens quickly and instantaneously and other times it’s slow-going.  Either way, by staying with whatever shows up, we grow.

20/20 Hindsight

The “why” of situations that show up for us usually only shows up once we’ve passed difficult or challenging situation. The reason or reasons we are in them, however, don’t, in fact, reveal themselves to us until we have long passed the situation we’re struggling with. When I look today at the chronic digestive problems I experienced throughout my 20s, the “why” is obvious. Now that I am in my late 30s, I can see clearly that not only was I grieving the loss of my brother to suicide, but so was my gut…20/20 hindsight.

So, essentially, I advocated that she stay with her experience, which included not just the lack of progress, but the feeling of frustration that accompanied that lack of progress. I asked her to find it in her body, to locate it, to feel it, and to compassionately stay in connection to it. The point, as I saw it, wasn’t to get rid of it or to overcome it, but to have a direct experience of it. Her search for “why’ was just another opportunity to avoid the direct experience. It’s really when we stop resisting what we’re feeling, discomfort especially, that it no longer has a hold on us. But when we’re busy trying to understand or justify it, we don’t have to feel, and, as a result, it just keeps us stuck in it.

Expressing the File

It is evident that being accusatory, yelling, finger-pointing, and attacking would be nonproductive. Instead, you are speaking to another person.  You need to handle them with both respect and care.

Also, be open and honest and say exactly what you need to say without sugar-coating it. Listeners find it annoying if they feel the speaker is trying to protect their feelings by being “nice.” Some of the things you learned as children keep you stuck. One of these childhood messages is that if you do not have something good to say, you should not say anything. If you took this instruction literally, you would never communicate your upsets and disappointments and your files would grow and grow. Obviously, that old childhood message is not very useful here.

At the same time, it is critical that you not be righteous.  If you become righteous, the listener will feel you are “wronging them,” then they will want to justify and defend themselves, which would defeat the purpose of the exercise.

At this point many people ask, “but why would I want to say it at all, especially the things I do not want to confront?” Only when the file is completely empty can there be 100% openness, intimacy, and trust.  If you leave anything in the file, it becomes like a cancer that can only grow and eventually cause another upset.

How to Listen:  The Art of Grocking

Most us don’t actually listen to what the other person is saying.  We tend to listen from a place of judgment, of whether we agree or disagree? Is what they are saying right or wrong? We listen from a guarded reality.  Unless we are really able to appreciate the other person’s stance or position, all communications continue to break down.  What often passes for communication is just human beings manipulating one another in order to defend and maintain their world-view.  If we are not manipulating, we are looking in the world for agreement about the rightness of our perspective.  To communicate, we have to grasp the other’s reality, and we have to be willing to not take their communication personally. The words other people say rarely have anything to do with us.  They’re just words. We seem to feel the need to defend and protect ourselves from others’ words, but other people’s reactions to us have to do with where they are coming from.  We simply represent something to them.  We are rarely the thing itself.

If communication is ever going to happen we have to be more committed to being connected with the person we are listening to than we are about being right about our perspective.  We have to be willing to see the way in which our pride is poisoning our relating to one another.  In other words, it has to be more important to be connected to the other person than it is to being right.  Likewise, we have to be willing to see the way in which our pride is damaging not only our relationship, but ourselves.  The pride is like a poison that seeps its way into every aspect of our lives.

We can engage in our relationships from an entirely different paradigm.  Within this paradigm, we have the space to heal any and all relationships that are broken.  At the essence of this stance is listening for respect.  Ultimately, this is what we all seek.  We seek other human beings to reflect us and to hold the space for us.  In order to heal a relationship, it requires an act of generosity.

Listening from a place of generosity can heal any relationship. All it takes to restore a relationship that has been stuck for minutes, hours, days, or even years, is to understand what the other person is saying exactly, with nothing added and nothing changed, just getting their experience, the background of the experience, and listening form a place of respect.  When what they are saying is totally grocked–which means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed–conflict disappears and connections can reappear.

Getting in the other person’s world is listening from their reality or seeing their words in relationship to their lives, not ours. In order to grock, we have to hear what is going on, both on the surface and below.  We have to hear what is not being said, including body language, facial expressions, and the subtleties that arise in language. In addition, we have to be willing to listen for the emotion present.  Rarely do we hold space for our own emotions, much less another’s emotions. Often times we fear someone else’s anger, hurt, jealousy, and sadness for fear that it will destroy us.  However, if we listen from the place that emotions are not personal, we can just feel without needing to defend what the other person’s world is like.

Curiosity and Compassion

If someone is going to tell you everything in her file, how would you listen to it? The way to listen is to listen with curiosity and compassion. Listen by getting your attention off yourself, getting over there with the other person is, and get how it is for her or him.

Thank You, Go Deeper, and Say More

Also, encourage the other person to say everything, and say nothing in response other than “thank you.” Do not react, do not listen as if you you’re being wronged, and do not take anything the other person says personally, even though it is personal.

If you sense that there is something more that needs to be said that will create more intimacy, you can say, “Go deeper”  or “Say More.”  You are the one who is in the driver’s seat.  You are responsible for lifting the veil that’s blocking intimacy between you and your partner.  If you’re willing to hear more, in fact, all of it, by requesting more or go deeper, then you have the power to recreate intimacy.  If you hold back because you’re afraid of hearing it all, then you, once again, will be passing up an opportunity to create intimacy with you and another human being.

Recreating Trust Series

Learning how to create and recreate trust is the most critical step to being intimately connected with others.  This is one part in a six-part series that explores how trust and intimacy breaks down in relationships and how to recreate it. And, by the way, if you’ve been in a relationship romantically or non-romantically for longer than two months, then you’re probably inadvertently experiencing breakdown.

• Part 1—The Honeymooon
• Part 2—The Letdown
• Part 3—Storing Our Resentments
• Part 4—File Emptying
• Part 5—Take an Inventory
• Part 6—Expressing the File and Listening

Consider: When the process of making entries into the file started, at some level you knew you contributed something to this breakdown, and you knew you should have communicated your feelings to the other person. But you did not.

The number one requirement for cleaning up the messes you’ve made in your relationships is that you have to be willing to go back in time and cleanup the trash. You must be willing to let go of it, not get even or dump, but to let go. This restores the intimacy, openness, and trust.

Step One: Take Inventory

Letting go is a simple two-step process.  Step one requires that you get honest by noticing where you’re withholding in that relationship, where you’re not telling the truth.  Notice any assumptions you have about that other person.  How you’re either protecting yourself or manipulating the other person. Notice any unfulfilled expectations, thwarted intentions, disappointments, withholds, and assumptions.

Write down in your journal the file you have on the other person:

• What I’m withhold or not saying to you is…
• The things I am assuming about you are…
• My expectations of you that are unfulfilled are…
• My intentions for you that have been thwarted are…
• I am disappointed with you/our relationship in that…

Recreating Trust Series

Learning how to create and recreate trust is the most critical step to being intimately connected with others.  This is one part in a six-part series that explores how trust and intimacy breaks down in relationships and how to recreate it. And, by the way, if you’ve been in a relationship romantically or non-romantically for longer than two months, then you’re probably inadvertently experiencing breakdown.

• Part 1—The Honeymooon
• Part 2—The Letdown
• Part 3—Storing Our Resentments
• Part 4—File Emptying
• Part 5—Take an Inventory
• Part 6—Expressing the File and Listening

This is called ‘file emptying.’  In file emptying we do not react just to what was said or done at the moment; we react with all the fury that exists in a cumulative file. Given that the reaction is totally out of proportion to what just happened, the recipient of the file emptying is caught off guard in the wilderness, almost guaranteeing that he or she will take the communication personally, get defensive, and attack back.

Sometimes, instead of the file emptying, the other person becomes the enemy. You drift apart and fight about everything. The file becomes evidence of something negative about the other person, you start to use the file against him and make him wrong. And, of course, the payoff is that we get to be right and avoid being wrong; we get to dominate and avoid being dominated.

So instead of leaning into that relationship knowing without a shadow of doubt that they have your best interest at heart, you start making all sorts of assumptions about them.  You start subtly and not-so-subtly manipulating them.  You start controlling.  You start avoiding.  You think you’re “protecting” them from the truth.  You basically withhold from the relationship.  Withholding is actively not telling the truth.  If you want to kill a relationship, just withhold the truth from them.

We have all experienced this occurring in many forms sometimes people are polite with each other, but we can feel the underlying tension. Everybody knows it is there, but nobody is willing to confront it. Two people become like strangers, exchanging pleasantries and doing the best they can to make the most of that situation and get on with what they have to do.  This is definitely not a formula for a great relationship.  Sometimes it is worse. Sometimes people climb into their foxholes, arm themselves, and dare anyone to walk into their space. It can get ugly.

Recreating Trust Series

Learning how to create and recreate trust is the most critical step to being intimately connected with others.  This is one part in a six-part series that explores how trust and intimacy breaks down in relationships and how to recreate it. And, by the way, if you’ve been in a relationship romantically or non-romantically for longer than two months, then you’re probably inadvertently experiencing breakdown.

• Part 1—The Honeymooon
• Part 2—The Letdown
• Part 3—Storing Our Resentments
• Part 4—File Emptying
• Part 5—Take an Inventory
• Part 6—Expressing the File and Listening

But every entry put in the file displaced the possibility of 100% openness, intimacy, and trust. Think of it like a glass of water that fills to the brim. The water represents openness, intimacy, and trust. If we start pouring sand into the glass, where the sand represents the undelivered communication, then it is evident that the water will soon start spilling out.

So one day you have 100% openness, intimacy, trust, and you feel wonderful about the other person. But before you know it, you are down to 90%. 90% isn’t all that bad, but it does not feel quite as good as 100%. You are not quite as eager to be open with the other person, but it is not too bad.

However, the sand keeps going into the glass, the disappointments keep going into the file, and now you’re down to 80% on the scale of openness, intimacy, and trust. You are starting to suffer a bit. It is getting harder and harder to be with the other person to talk openly and honestly. You start avoiding, maybe being a bit sarcastic, but you continue on.

You can see where this is going. Eventually you get to the point where you will not put up with it any further. This is when your mind starts playing very interesting games with us. As the file gets bigger and bigger you lose all sense of the responsibility, and you become convinced that the source of your increasing distrust really is the other person.

Recreating Trust Series

Learning how to create and recreate trust is the most critical step to being intimately connected with others.  This is one part in a six-part series that explores how trust and intimacy breaks down in relationships and how to recreate it. And, by the way, if you’ve been in a relationship romantically or non-romantically for longer than two months, then you’re probably inadvertently experiencing breakdown.

part in a six-part series that explores how trust and intimacy breaks down in relationships and how to recreate it.

• Part 1—The Honeymooon
• Part 2—The Letdown
• Part 3—Storing Our Resentments
• Part 4—File Emptying
• Part 5—Take an Inventory
• Part 6—Expressing the File and Listening

But here is where you get yourself into trouble. Rarely are you honest enough to communicate your disappointments to the other person. You have a number of valid reasons for this, and they all center around fear. You fear that communicating will threaten a relationship with that person.  Your past experiences in communicating disappointments are usually negative, so you certainly do not want to rock the boat. You assume your communication will trigger an upset. Perhaps the biggest reason you do not communicate is that you can almost expect them to launch into a defense and counterattack.  More often than not, it seems better to not say anything and stuff it.

Instead of communicating, you go into a metaphorical file room in your mind, find an empty file folder with the other person’s name on the folder, and deposit the undelivered communication into the file. You then file it away for the time being. The next disappointment occurs, or the same one repeats itself, and you make another entry into the file… and then another, and another.

Recreating Trust Series

Learning how to create and recreate trust is the most critical step to being intimately connected with others.  This is one part in a six-part series that explores how trust and intimacy breaks down in relationships and how to recreate it. And, by the way, if you’ve been in a relationship romantically or non-romantically for longer than two months, then you’re probably inadvertently experiencing breakdown.

• Part 1—The Honeymooon
• Part 2—The Letdown
• Part 3—Storing Our Resentments
• Part 4—File Emptying
• Part 5—Take an Inventory
• Part 6—Expressing the File and Listening