“The Self”

Today I want to share with you about “The Self’.  I’ve come to understand through my own transformation and while working with my clients that “The Self” is a core aspect of lasting change. In my experience it is the most import thing to living a happier, more connected and fulfilling life there is.  Deep lasting change can come to you without understanding of “The Self” but bringing awareness to it can give you a leg up in your growth.

Today I am doing things differently and will start with an experience and then I will speak about “The Self”.

I will make the experience available in MP3 format if you want to download it, then you can listen while lying down. It’s not necessary to lie down for the experience but I find it can be more immersive if you do.

(See the end of this post for the Video version of this post)

Here is a link to download a MP3 of this experience.

The Self – Why will having a better relationship with it improve your life

Welcome back from your experience. I encourage you to come back to the experience whenever you feel drawn to it. It’s a short experience where you can connect to yourself in different ways each time you do it.

So, what is “The Self” and why is it important? Put simply “The Self” is us at the deepest level, the aspect of ourselves that is eternal. It is the loving, caring and calm part of us that has always been with us, even if we haven’t been aware of it. Its why no matter how old we are, we still feel like us.  It is the overarching part of us that allows us to love ourselves and others, that connects with others beyond a surface level. It allows us to deeply know others and have them know us. It’s the calm, confident guidance that is there, when we make room for it. 

For many good reasons we have built up defenses around our connection with “The Self”. I will talk more about our defenses, or the parts of us that have taken on the role of protector in another article. For many of us we have built barriers around “The Self”, around the tender hearts we all came into this world with.  As we access and trust “Our Self” the more it can assist us in bringing down those barriers, which allows us to feel safer in the world and more connected to others in our lives. It also works in reverse. As we feel safer and bring our defenses down, we are able to access “The Self” more and feel more loving, loved and peaceful.

A little more about “The Self”

As I mention “The Self” is the part of us that has always been with us.  Many people experience it as the part of themselves that transcends or is greater than all their struggles, worries and difficulties. Something that holds all aspects of us, that is almost beyond our mental understanding. Some will relate it as their Soul, their spirit, their god-spark or their essence. If you do that is wonderful way to experience it; but it’s not necessary if it doesn’t feel right.  With clients I generally describe it as the aspect of us that can love us and love others, the aspect that is brave and courageous, that cares deeply and has compassion for others. It is the part of us that knows things without understanding why or how we know them.  The aspect of us that will never leave us, even if we haven’t been connected to it for a long time.

It seems that many of the therapeutic approaches, or ways I work as I counsellor have their own way to describe “The Self”. In her “The Change Triangle” emotional health guide Hilary Jacobs Hendel a prominent AEDP psychotherapist, author and teacher describes the “The Self” as the “Open hearted State of the Authentic Self”. She describes this state with the words “calm, curious, connected, compassionate, confident, courageous and clear” which is exactly how I and my clients experience “The Self”. I can’t help but notice the similarities in the 8 C’s of Self from Richard Schwartz’s Internal Family System therapeutic modality.  The 8C’s are “curiosity, calm, clarity, connectedness, confidence, courage, creativity and compassion”, creativity being the additional C. The core focus of the IFS modality is helping clients reconnect or gain more access to their “Self”. 

Helping clients to empower themselves through a secure relationship with this innate aspect of themselves. “The Self” knows how to navigate life, take care of us and soothe the fears of our defense systems.   Peter Levine describes his Somatic Experiencing modality as “A naturalistic, and neurobiological, body-oriented approach to healing trauma and other stress-related disorders; restoring the authentic self with self-regulation, relaxation, wholeness, and aliveness.”. Somatic work aims to bring clients the skills to self-regulate, which brings our nervous systems back into an open and relaxed state, and restoring our relationship and ability to access our most authentic self.   The polyvagal theory or sometimes described as “The Polyvagal Defense Hierarchy” helps us to understand and navigate the different states our nervous systems move between. Our nervous systems can be fight/flight (attack or run away) mode when we believe we are in danger, “Social Engagement” mode when we are calm, open and connected to others, or the freeze or immobilization mode for when we feel so threated that our nervous system shutdowns down as if we are “playing dead” in the eyes of the threat.  When we are in the Social Engagement state we are connected to “The Self” state or energy. I also want to mention here that the Person-Centered Therapy (or Rogerian Therapy) approach also embraces building of “The Self” in that its less authoritative by encouraging clients to take the lead in sessions and discover their own solutions. This is empowering clients to find their own solutions to their challenges by accessing their innate knowing or “The Self”. Further; at the core of Transpersonal therapy is this idea that there is an aspect of us that holds everything in our lives, a container for it all. Transpersonal therapy also works with altered states of consciousness which allows some to access more of “The Self”.

So why does this matter

When we have more access to “The Self’ or Self-energy it enables us to take care of and calm our defensive parts.   It is the part of us that can handle the challenges we face in daily life with less anger, frustration, sadness, loneliness and anything else that doesn’t feel good to us. As our reliance on our defenses diminishes it allows us to handle more emotions, troubling thoughts and scary feelings in our bodies.  The more we can let our guard down, the more we can access many of our greatest abilities, the more we can vulnerably connect to others. When we have more Self-energy we aren’t as reactive as we were before, we aren’t as easily overwhelmed by challenging situations or challenging people. Essentially, we aren’t at the mercy of our defenses to the same the same degree, which allows us to be more present, and more available to life.

For most of us we have this dance between our defenses and “The Self” and our defenses have taken the lead, but it doesn’t have to be that way. We can take the steps necessary to bring the momentum back the other way and let ourselves be led or guided by “The Self” more and more. We can create an empowering cycling for ourselves, as we calm our defenses and nervous system, we gain access to more Self-energy which allows us to regulate (or calm) our nervous systems more. When this happens, we find we are less stressed, less overwhelmed and more able to focus on having the things in life we do want.

So how do we access more of our “Self”?

There are ways that we can access more “Self” on our own and of course there are ways we can do it with the help others. For most people the fastest way to access more “Self” energy is working with a professional Therapist or Counsellor. Working with any of the six modalities I mentioned will help you in accessing “The Self” in different ways. These aren’t the only therapeutic modalities that will help you access more self-energy, they are the ones that I am familiar with, I know they are helping people transform their lives all over the world. Many Counsellors will use a combination of these modalities, these modalities tend to share the same core principles of transformation but use them in different ways.

The Modalities mentioned are:

• AEDP (Accelerated experiential-dynamic psychotherapy)
• IFS (Internal Family Systems)
• Somatic Experiencing (SE)
• Polyvagal Theory
• Transpersonal Theory
• Person-Centered Theory

We can also access more “Self Energy” on our own by doing or practicing things that allow us to feel safe. Often this is safety for our bodies, as we calm and take care for our nervous systems.  Practices like Mindfulness, Yoga, exercise classes, and breathwork along with many forms of mediation.  We can also build more safety in our bodies by spending time with those that nurture us, by cuddling loved ones or pets, sleeping with a weighted blanket, taking hot bathes or saunas. Others activities like walking, spending time in nature or time in or by the sea can also be very nurturing. We nurture ourselves by eating healthy fresh foods that make our bodies feel good and by getting the right amount of quality sleep when we can. To finish off I will share two of my favorite ways to access self and feel safer. One is practicing Yoga Nidra meditation; I have been practicing it since 2010 and it’s helped me to calm my nervous system immensely. The other way is to have someone you trust deeply or yourself stroke your belly softly.  Just lie on your back and gently stroke your stomach. You may be very surprised how spending 5-10 minutes doing this alone can settle your system.

Notes and Credit:

“The Self” in the way that I am using it in this article was created through Richard’s Schwartz’s work.

IFS or Internal Family Systems was developed by Dr Richard Schwartz now through his IFS Institute .

AEDP or Advanced Experiential Dynamic Psychology – Is developed and founded by Diana Fosha, Phd – Someof the material for this article is taken from “Undoing Aloneness & the Transformation of Suffering Into Flourishing: AEDP 2.0” by Diana Fosha

Somatic Experiencing or SE was founded and Developed by Peter Levine. Find out more at Somatic Experiencing International.

The Polyvagal Theory was developed by Dr Stephen Porges

Person-Centered Therapy (or Rogerian Theory) was developed by Carl Rogers.

Yoga Nidra – My experience with Yoga Nidra has come through the Amrit Yoga Nidra method developed by Yogi Amrit Desai. This is one of a number of ways of practicing Yoga Nidra