|
LifeCourse Institute of Adlerian Psychology
|
|
LifeCourse Institute of Adlerian Psychology
|
| email: bobhk@aol.com - Phone: 860-345-3204 - Mail: LifeCourse Institute, 3 Mario Drive, Higganum CT 06441 |
| Is LEAP right for you? |
Use the following sections to
see if LEAP is what you need right now:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Look at your LifeCourse Patterns! Compare "you as you are now" with "you as a child."
(The
patterns themselves are explained at LifeCourse Patterns --
the chart below helps you compare your patterns as a child and now.) |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Pattern and you as a child |
The pattern and you as a grown-up today |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Background -- What was your family like: Quiet? Happy? Curious? Angry? Isolated? Social? (Use one word to describe your family atmosphere. This would become how you and your siblings would think of your childhood family. "Our family was like this: __________ when we were kids." Did you go along with it? Resist it? | Do you repeat your childhood family atmosphere in your family today, or do you consciously try to have a different atmosphere for your family now? What was your partner's family like? How were they like yours, and how were they different? Do you and your partner agree on your family's atmosphere? If you disagree...what do you do about it? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Beginning -- Your parents played various roles in your childhood home: parents, partners, male and female, and so on. What did you think of them in their roles? Did you want to be like them? NOT like them? A mix? (For example, did you think to yourself, "I will never be like that when I'm a parent!") What did you like and dislike about how they played their roles? What did you accept? Reject? Change? | You observed your parents as mother and father, and played being them as a child. Today part of how you play the role of parent with children is based on your parents' examples. Do you accept or reject their role-behaviors today? Do you adopt or adapt them for your self? Are you aware of your Ideal Image of a Parent, the perfection on which you base actuality? What about your partner? Does he/she satisfy your definitions of a parent? If not, what do you do? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Basic --By the accident of birth, you were a first-born child, or a second-born/middle child, or a last-born child, or an only child. Each has its plusses and minuses. First is a leader; second is a negotiator; last is charming and cute. Other factors affected your position: Boy or girl? Sickness/handicap? Special ability? How was it to be in your sibling position? What did you accept, and what did you resist? Why? | Sibling positions last throughout the lives of the siblings. You are still the first-born, or the cute baby, or whatever. And chances are, after several decades, not much has changed! There is still the one-upping, the comparing, the pushing and shoving (psychological if not physical), and the other ways you learned back then. Have you discussed your sibling positions with your siblings, and ways you are like your childhood, and ways you could change or "grow up"? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Boy-/Girlhood -- By first grade you'd experienced over two million events: play and playmates, favorite stories and characters, movies and TV shows (perhaps even radio programs!), an imaginary friend, and much more! What was it like, being you during your first five years of life? What is the one thing or one word that describes you as a child? What was the Problem you had as a child, one you couldn't solve? | So much happened in your first five years that would shape who you'd be for the rest of your life. In what ways are you like that child back then? IN what ways are you different? What about the Problem you had as a child...have you solved it yet, or are you still working on it? What one thing or one word describes you as you are today...and how is that similar to, or different from, your description of yourself as a child? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Belonging -- You needed to Belong in your family, to feel significant, important. There are six basic things children do to Belong: Seek affection, attention, approval, control, fairness, and help. Which was most important for you? What did you do to get it? How did you feel when you didn't get enough and so didn't feel you Belonged? (We speak of a child as "encouraged" or "discouraged" in their attempts to Belong.) |
We never outgrow our need to Belong. We seek it today and use the same methods we did as kids. How are your efforts going? How is success or failure like when you were a child? Are you encouraged or discouraged? What place is most important for you to Belong today: Your marriage? Family? Work? Friends? Religious group? Social club or program? Other ________________? What will it mean for you when you succeed? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Behaving -- LEAP outlines the Event/Belief/Action Cycle as a way to understand the process by which we think about things and take actions. It is an extremely important process to know about and be able to use in real life. Here we simply ask, "What do you do when you are put in a social position where you have to lie or tell the truth? Which do you do? (LEAP speaks of "excuses" vs. "reasons," for example.) | When you take LEAP On-Line you learn practical ways to deal with your unwelcome thoughts. You will also learn Adler's distinction between "Common Sense" and "Private Logic," the first being "socially useful" and the latter being "socially useless." To lie instead of tell the truth is self-protecting and socially useless. Ask yourself here, Do you still use the same ways to let yourself off the hook as you did when you were a kid? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Believing -- As children, out of over 2.1 million events, we remember half a dozen that were especially important. We call them "Early Recollections," specific events that stand for many similar events. From them we learned something concrete and foundational (our core beliefs) about Self, Love, Others, Work, the World, and Mystery/Limits. | As adults, we continue to believe what we learned to believe as children from six specific ERs. We say that we are our Patterns, much as we are our bodies: skin, flesh, organs, bones, etc. And in the same way we can say that we are our core beliefs, and that we would not be who we are without them. Can you find ways you've e changed your core beliefs since you were a kid? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Bewildering -- LEAP says we tend to "go astray" on the journey of life, wandering into the forest and getting lost. (That's what "bewildering" means.) We do this in several ways. One that's important is what Adler called the fictional final goal(and which LEAP calls the Mistaken Mission). Childhood is constructed in such a way that at least one thing becomes a Problem the child cannot solve, and passes along to the eventual adult. | Today you are the adult who has received The Problem the child could not solve. (Adler, at age 4, nearly died of pneumonia; this led him to his Problem (the problem of death) and his solution,(to become a doctor). The adult is distracted by the need to solve The Problem of a child, but by now it's too late: the child has already set the goal the adult must seek and the way to get there (called "the line of movement). This is the Adlerian Life Style. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Being -- Childhood is when we create mental portraits involving Ideals, such as the perfect husband/wife, the perfect son or daughter, the Ideal Self as a perfect husband or wife, worker, parent, etc.. Adler included the concept of Ideal Self to help explain his theory of personality and of inferiority. Freud liked the idea so much that he adopted it as his own. (This was not unusual. Freud took a number of Adler's ideas as his own, including "masculine protest" and "the aggression instinct.") | LEAP combines several ideas here: ideal self- image, ideal images of others, comparisons, expectations-and-disappointments, etc. (As a husband I have a IMage of The Perfect Wife. I compare my present wife with my ideal image of a wife. Since my real-life wife isn't perfect (by definition), I'd do well never to say anything out loud! (I've met men who say they stay with their present partner "until someone better comes along." The Ideal Image at work! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Becoming -- As kids we had to learn to deal with what life threw at us. We had to learn how to make decisions, solve problems, set and seek goals, manage crisis- events, and so on. Things get sticky here! Having learned ways to manage major life events, and having those ways work . . . we tended not to want to leave them behind when we grew older, but instead to keep and use them the rest of our lives. | As adults we continue to manage life's major issues using our childhood ways...or at least ways that are based on childhood's ways! We may not throw a complete tantrum when we don't get our way...but we may produce a pretty good imitation when we raise our voice, get physically active (perhaps jumping around, waving our arms), and say things we'd regret later (like casting blame, using rough language, etc.) Not a tantrum, but close enough! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| If you think LEAP On-Line is for you . . . go to the Enroll page now | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| email: bobhk@aol.com - Phone: 860-345-3204 - Mail: LifeCourse Institute, 3 Mario Drive, Higganum CT 06441 [rev. 1-20-2010] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
