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Are you entangled in bonded
relationships ? Do you suffer from childhood trauma?
Do you suffer from your parents' drama, your partner's demands, your
boss's moods? Do you want to untangle
your own relationships, or coach other people to reclaim their freedom? Contact
us.
We developed our innovative systemic coaching to help
people define and achieve both personal success and relationship goals.
Relationship goals can be a desire for friendship, partnership or parenthood,
etc, or can be the shared goals of partners, families and teams.
Success in personal and relationship goals is strongly influenced by other people ...
we refer to these influences as relationship bonds.
Relationship bonds (also called relational bonds, emotional bonds
and psychological bonds) refer to behaviors motivated by relationship events.
Bonded relationship behavior can be on a spectrum from ambivalent commitment to
total obedience. Relationship bonds motivate compliance and loyalty, and also
obsessions, compulsions and limiting beliefs.
Relationship bonds are not limited to people. We can
show a spectrum of bond types:
- Bonds to possessions, things, places, buildings, parts
of town
- Bonds to activities, games, ritual movements, cultural
activities
- Bonds to capabilities - educational establishments and
professional organizations
- Bonds to beliefs - fixed ideas about certain people or
things
- Bonds to values - fixations that our values are
better than their values
- Bonds to identity - fixed ideas about the nature of
self - "I am X"
- Bonds to the world/universe/cosmos - "The world is
Y"
We coach people to evaluate bonded beliefs and behavior as an
integral part of our systemic coaching. We coach people to explore
what prevents or support success, and to change unwanted influences on their thoughts,
emotions and behavior. These unwanted influences often show up as fixations,
obsessions and compulsions.
Who is Conscious of Relationship Bonds?
Few people seem to be aware of who really influences
their behavior, apart from some figures such as a parent, boss or president, so we
designate bonds as conscious, knowable and taboo. We
coach people to evaluate and change unwanted bonds to people in families,
schools and religions, etc, and to reject unwanted marketing and other
influences.
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Children bond to people who meet their needs.
Bonding is likely by six months; and almost certain by one year, unless the
relationship system is severely disturbed. Trauma results if a bonded relationship
is threatened or severed.
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As family members seem to be the most influential people in
our early lives, we coach people to discover if they have accepted limiting beliefs as
truth. We also coach people to discover who they have accepted as substitutes for
parents, siblings, partners
and children etc.
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Assess Relationship Bonds
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- Observe relationship behavior
- Observe nonverbal signals
- Evaluate body sensations
- Evaluate emotional reality
- Evaluate metaphoric reality
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- Explore relationship history
- Explore the origin of limiting beliefs
- Explore blocks to goals and plans
- Explore psychosomatic symptoms
- Explore obsessions or compulsions
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Information from these sources can be correlated and integrated to
evaluate the cause and consequences of relationship connections, bonds, transferences,
entanglements and attachments.
In practice, we focus on relationships that the client
wants to improve or end, an on relationships that somehow prevent or delay a
person's success achieving their chosen goal. (Bonded relationships need not be current, not
with living people. Often, people want to clarify relationships with past
partners and relationships with people who have died.)
1. Observe external behavior:
People who are pleasantly bonded to other people usually
appear relaxed, happy, and enthusiastic while with those people. People who are
unpleasantly bonded may express verbal and nonverbal tension and
depression when together. You can observe human bonding behavior:
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Observe Bonded Behavior |
- Time and place together
- Behavior when together
- Reciprocal attachment
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- Excuses, blame, complaints
- Nonverbal signals
- Inclusion into systems
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By nonverbal signals we refer to unconscious body movements
and vocal changes. Common nonverbal indicators are that the client's voice
become quieter and the tonality becomes childish. Note a person's gestures when
talking about the relationship - gestures often indicate specific locations
affected by bonds.
Behavior such as
forced laughing and limited responses are more likely in conflicted
relationships. You can observe people's ability to recognize and respond
to each others' non-verbal cues (e.g., eye contact, smiling, touching,
voice tonality etc.).
- How and how often do the people touch?
- Do they seek comfort and guidance from each
other?
- Do they make eye contact and smile at
each other?
- How do they respond to each other's signs of
hunger, thirst, or tiredness?
You can assess how a relationship is viewed by
a human system such as a community (school, work, friends, neighbors
or extended family). This can include:
- Does a person identify self as a member of the system?
- Do other system members consider a person to be a member?
- Does a person rely upon and trust the system while in
their care?
- Is a person perceived to be a system member by the
larger community?
2. Explore Relationship History
The best predictor of future behavior is prior behavior.
Relationship history
provides important information when assessing bonds. As we explore relationship
history, we make a relationship timeline of pregnancies, births,
parental conflicts,
partnerships, parenthood and deaths, etc.
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Example of Relationship History Timeline |
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Image: Relationship Timeline |
3. Evaluate Descriptions of Subjective Experience
The closest relationships in a person's life are likely with
the parents, siblings, intimate partners and children, and with people who are
perceived as substitutes for these relationships. Our
systemic diagnosis helps us assess the closeness and type of
relationships.
Bonding can be conceptualized as reciprocal attachment,
which people want and expect to continue, and which, if interrupted or terminated,
may affect the behavior of both people.
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Examples of Subjective Descriptions of Relationship Bonds |
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Known bonds (e.g. I feel connected to my
ex-partner) are often easily visualized as colored, dark or gray
connections to another person. Some New Age therapists recommend cutting
these connections - and we absolutely don't. At risk is your ability to bond
to people.
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I took a NLP training and the
trainer suggested that we cut bonds with every person every day. I
started doing this and felt great at first, but I have since divorced
and find I am totally unmotivated to visit my family or even my
children. Is this a consequence of that exercise? I don't know for sure
but that trainer had an ugly divorce after affairs with students. |
If you have done something like this, imagine
how your "feelings of connection" would feel and look!
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We
joined the Amway organization and followed the normal instructions to
recruit our family and friends. After a year we had no friends, just
business associates, and our family were cautious about us. I can't
blame them; we had become evangelical about it. After we quit it took
about two years to recreate a new circle of friends, who we now
treasure. That business opportunity now feels like a ton of black coal
on our shoulders! |
Taboo bonds are usually perceived as dark or
grey shapes, within or close to the body. They are sometimes described as
esoteric entities, as they may be spontaneously visualized as geometric shapes,
clouds, weapons, instruments of torture or (often unpleasant) living things.
Some may be called evidence of black magic or even demons.
Incompetent therapists try to make bonds go away, and may succeed
in dissociating or fragmenting the bonds. A common
consequence is
that associated emotions and beliefs become diffuse - and much more difficult to
identify and resolve.
Continued in Assess Relationship
Bonds Part 2
Summary
Loyalty and commitment to products, people
or political agendas; and to obsessions, compulsions and limiting beliefs, are
relationship bonds that you can change. If you want to understand and change
your own motivations or obsessions, or learn how to coach others, contact us.
We welcome friendly people who are motivated and
emotionally stable. Enhance your career with life relationship coaching skills.
Coach people to gain clarity, dissolve success and relationship issues. Coach people
to build success and quality relationships. Coach people to fulfill their dreams.
Copyright © Martyn Carruthers 2005, 2008 All rights reserved.
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or telephone: +4 860 275 8295 or +38 591 881 2682