Relationship Mentoring Is A Non-Directive, Co-Creational Approach To Human Suffering: Psychology Essay, UCD, Ireland

 Kevin 1  What is it and the Unconscious

 Relationship Mentoring

Relationship Mentoring is a non-directive, co-creational approach to human suffering where the primary focus is on what happens within rather than between individuals. It is an approach that is underpinned in philosophy and psychology from Socrates to Freud, Jung, Assagioli, Rogers, Lake, Winnicott, Bowlby, and supported by contemporary theorists and practitioners such as John Welwood and James Hollis. But the Relationship Mentoring approach has the added fundamental concept of the Self as Creator – creator of unconscious protective strategies – which can begin in utero – and which come from the innate loving wisdom and creativity of individuals in the face of experiences of conditional relating, fear, hurt, trauma, violations, neglect.  What emerges in the relationship is the co-creational outcome of what the Client reveals and shares of her or his inner world, and the holding and responsiveness that the Mentor brings to those revelations.

Why was it brought about

In the co-creational approach, emphasis is placed on the understanding and the raising of consciousness in relation to what we have suffered and in how we managed that suffering is the CORE PROCESS of the approach.  An understanding that the UNCONSCIOUS JOURNEY from emerging to hiding and the consciousness journey from hiding to emerging in times of psychological safety are each in a grunt a HEROES Journey. The unconscious repression of the suffering experienced is a powerfully creative way of dulling the pain.

Humphreys explains that unconsciously we realize that, to survive the trauma, we fit around the significant adults in our lives, and we consciously know that it is best for us to conform to other protected views of us arising from their protected view of themselves. Humphreys claims that we will lovingly create Hiding strategies that are kept in the unconscious to protect us until the time comes when we have psychological safety within ourselves to consciously uphold the truth. Consciousness is essential for relationships to shift from being defensive to being open. Consciousness brings choice, freedom, strength, and expansiveness.

Hollis Finding Meaning) states “That of which we are not aware, owns us”. Crucially, an understanding of the meaning and purpose of the protective/defensive behaviors presented is sought and the creation of safety for the person(s) to bring to consciousness what lies hidden – the unmet needs, the fears, the losses, the suffering that to this time have had to stay in the unconscious, unnamed and unacknowledged. James Hollis states that “our own psyche knows what is right for us, knows what is developmentally demanded”.

Recent additions to clinical theory clearly suggest that the unconscious contains defensively repressed dysregulated emotional memories and defensively dissociated traumatic emotional memories (Shore, 2012). Thus, early experiences of attachment trauma and the defense against early overwhelming trauma – dissociation – s stored in unconscious implicit procedural memory. Furthermore, because of the incorporation of neuroscience and neurophysiology, psychoanalytic theory is now being transformed from a theory of the unconscious mind into a theory of brain/mind/body: unconscious systems operating beneath levels of conscious awareness are inextricably linked into the body.

Humphreys tells us that our Self always has a KNOWINGNESS of the degree of Psychological Safety present. The SELF, in its LOVING WISDOM, will create the necessary UNCONSCIOUS PROTECTORS when it feels the presence of threat, and when it knows it’s too dangerous to act opening. It is wise that we would act from an unconscious place until we find the safety to express our suppressed emotions. – initially in a relationship with another such as a mentor and ultimately within ourselves. To bring into conscious awareness our painful felt experiences in threatening situations.

The art of Relationship Mentoring

The Mentoring Relationship emphasizes the importance of individual story as the context which gives meaning to the experience of threat and the consequent unconscious protective strategies wisely and ingeniously created by the individual in the face of threat.

An understanding that at our core is a Self whose energy is love and which acts as the wise and loving knower, witness, manager, overseer of everything that turns up in our lives. This Self-expresses itself through the channels of physicality, intelligence, emotions, behavior, sociability, sexuality, creativity. The Self operates through these expressions but is not identifiable with any of them. The Self is inviolable in its wholeness and is neither damaged by dark and painful experiences nor added to by bright and joyful experiences

The uniqueness of RM is that it requires all mentoring starts with the Mentor. Rogers stated that “the degree to which I can create relationships, which facilitates the growth of others as separate persons, is a measure of the growth I have achieved in myself.