Research tells us that our autonomic nervous system scans our body four times per second asking “am I safe?, am I safe? am I safe? am I safe?”

If the answer is ‘yes’, we stay neurobiologically in our prefrontal cortex, the most mature part of our brain, our wise adult self, the part of us that is here and now that can observe, reason and decide. However, if the answer is ‘no, I don’t feel safe’, more primitive parts of our neurology get activated. The wise adult self shuts down and the more primitive reactive automatic parts of our nervous system take over. We find ourselves, despite our best intentions, repeating the same dysfunctional moves in relationships that we first learned in our childhood. The sense of the whole of US, disappears and we move into a you and me, win or lose adversarial contest.

The spiritual teacher, Krishnamurti, once said “True liberation is freedom from our own automatic responses.” This workshop teaches the skill of ‘relational mindfulness’, the cultivation of our wise adult selves even in heated moments. Trauma pulls us into immature behaviors in our relationships and learning mature relational skills has the power to heal our deepest injuries.

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Terrence Real is an internationally recognized family therapist, speaker, and author. He founded the Relational Life Institute, offering workshops for couples, individuals, and parents along with a professional training program for clinicians to learn his Relational Life Therapy methodology. He is the bestselling author of “I Don’t Want to Talk About It”, “How Can I Get Through to You?”, and “The New Rules of Marriage”. You can check more of his work at https://terryreal.com

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