The Development of Inner Empathy Work

Below are brief references to the main systems and models I have incorporated into the Inner Empathy work. I would like to be clear that what I incorporate and present of others’ work is my interpretation of their work and is in no way meant to be a comprehensive or complete representation of their work. I cherry picked methods, ideas and concepts as I saw fit to create a powerful container to support awareness practices. Please refer to their work if you wish to know it in its original form.

Nonduality A huge influence on what I developed comes from my lifelong studies in non-duality. More recently I’ve been inspired by the Buddhist Madyamika philosophy and Dzogchen texts and traditional Advaita Vendanta. Peter Fenner’s non-dual group work and deconstructive dialogues have inspired me with the gift of actualizing deep emptiness of self, which has informed the development of Inner Empathy work. He also inspired me with the Dzogchen orientation of “starting from the results level” where nothing needs to be done, understood or accomplished, and allowing that to be the disclosive space in which learning can take place.

The Nonviolent Communication (NVC) model developed by its founder, Marshall B. Rosenberg, PhD, is an experiential process language that teaches people how to connect with themselves and others on a feeling and need based level. NVC operates out of a different paradigm, which can be best understood when contrasted with the right/wrong paradigm. Instead of holding the intention to be right and make the other person wrong, the intention in using NVC is to connect with oneself and the other on a feeling/need-based level in order to create a quality of connection where we trust that everyone’s needs can be fulfilled. NVC aspires toward a heart-to-heart connection. NVC gives people a language of feelings, needs, desires, values to understand and work with whatever is emerging in their present-time experience. It also trains people to begin to view what happens with themselves and others in non judgmental ways. A cornerstone of the NVC practice is the ability to have empathy with one’s self and others.

I also draw heavily from Richard Schwartz’s parts psychology work called Internal Family Systems (IFS). His work validated and supported the work I was doing in mapping out how inner voices talk and respond to each other. I use his mature systems model framework to facilitate depth and bring more clarity to how we view the inner landscape. Integrating his parts work with NVC while remembering the empty nature of these models, I believe, allows greater depth than is otherwise possible. Parts systems work also allows more ease in disidentifying with aspects of ourselves, an ability which I believe also supports deeper empathetic connections. Establishing deep empathetic connections is a prime value of Inner Empathy work. This first volume relies particularly on the IFS model and lays a conceptual foundation for the other two volumes.

Additionally, there is the Constructivist Psychology work of Bruce Ecker and Laurel Hulley. Their work gave me many important components which I used in the more advanced Inner Empathy inquiry work. They developed a meta psychological framework with methods of accessing unconsciously held positions valuable in doing deep work. Their work on coherency supports and expands the NVC notion of competing needs strategies, so it deepened my understanding of competing need strategies. It allowed me to see how a strategy to fulfill a need is often acted on unconsciously, and is yet acted upon against a consciously held strategy to fulfill another need. Their work also helped me develop methods of inquiry and ways of supporting others that were noninvasive. Ecker and Hulley point out how the person in a supporting role can subtly “contaminate” the inquirer’s meaningful self-discovery, reliance upon inner resources and self-correction process. The supporter can consciously or unconsciously superimpose their system of meaning and operate from the position of thinking they know what is best for the person doing inquiry work. This knowledge resulted in my contributions that allow space for inquirers to create and work within their own constructions of meaning.

I’ve also drawn from Byron Brown’s version of A. H. Almaas’ Diamond Heart work. I reviewed Byron Brown’s work with the inner critic and how it expresses itself externally and adopted it as a template for how the critic expresses itself in our inner worlds. I’ve found that any experiential inner work has to account for and find useful ways to engage the inner critic. Otherwise the inquiry will be co-opted by the inner critic.

There are also threads of what I call Shadow Work running through Inner Empathy work. There are too many authors supporting Shadow Work to mention here, but suffice it to say that much of the Shadow Work I incorporated comes from my own experiences of doing Shadow Work, the essence of which is to follow and be with my intense reactions to triggers. Becoming aware of how we bounce our light and dark shadows off others is a useful discipline for accessing deeply held unconscious positions and beliefs.

I would also like to acknowledge Kedar Brown who, many years ago, inspired and renewed my interest in experiential psychology when I observed him using his Hakomi therapeutic skills in group work. I particularly resonated with the surprising way in which the non-directive flow of his engagements with people supported deep work.

And more recently, I’ve been introduced to and have been incorporating some of Ann Weiser Cornell’s version of Eugene Gendlin’s Focusing work. It was a delight to recently discover her work and to see how she uses language to access a person’s inner world, much as I do.