I haven’t found any other process that allows us to so thoroughly disentangle the deeply patterned emotional responses and sabotage we enact on ourselves.

 

Untangling unconscious contracts is deeply powerful work, and is the focus of my new year-long course, Integrating the Shadow: a 12-month Journey to Meet the Unconscious

What are Unconscious Contracts?

In this video, I explore the contracts we unconsciously make with ourselves, often when we are very young, that end up becoming self-destructive behaviors, which I call Unconscious Contracts. Through acknowledging the truth of what these contracts are trying to serve, while also holding that they are coming at a cost to our well-being, we can begin to transform the self-defeating patterns.

In order to address and overcome traumas, we first have to understand and name them. By four months old, we learn to restrict our emotional expression to only the faces that our primary caregiver can accurately reflect back to us. In other words: we learn to make ourselves fit into a box that is determined by our primary caregiver.

Understanding this piece of relational neuroscience helps us begin to have compassion as we encounter the roots of our unconscious contracts. You can watch more videos about unconscious contracts here, or join my 2024 year-long Unconscious Contracts learning and practice group (we’ll be meeting throughout 2024, you can join anytime and receive recordings to catch up!)