Inner Empathy Inquiry Sessions Are
A Different Kind Of Contribution

An Inner Empathy inquiry session is not a therapy session. Inner Empathy is a coaching method of inquiry where you learn to hold empathetic and compassionate presence for whatever emerges in your experience. In an Inner Empathy session, there is no need to diagnose, analyze or label you according to some theoretical ideal of what is and is not psychologically healthy or to use diagnostic labels. You will feel a sense of comfort and ease from the facilitator’s non-judgmental care and acceptance of whatever emerges.

Inner Empathy is nonpathologizing because it is not based upon the premise that something is wrong with you that needs to be fixed. Inner Empathy is based upon the premise that empathetic awareness is available to you now to hold presence and connect with all aspects of yourself on a feeling/need-based level. Holding such empathetic presence for the various conscious/unconscious aspects of your inner world can inspire natural, self-corrective shifts. Your well-being will be self-defined and based upon the choices you make based upon your unique set of needs and values.

Harmonizing Deep Conflicting Strategies to Fulfill Needs
Where One Set Of Needs Is Unconscious

Have you ever taken the initiative to fulfill a need but something deep and strong within you held you back and you didn’t know what that was? Often people are challenged with competing needs strategies where one strategy is at odds with another need strategy that is unconscious. For example, suppose you said you were experiencing conflict around wanting to follow your passion at this stage of your life. You want to live your passion, but there is something holding you back.

An Inner Empathy inquiry would help you to connect to the need that is being met by not doing your passion. Sometimes this inquiry into what is holding you back is easy and sometimes this unacknowledged need is deeply embedded beneath protective layers. Accessing it requires patience, diligence, and a skillful empathetic presence. Bringing the previously unacknowledged need that is holding you back into empathetic awareness is the first step to experiencing the possibility of moving towards doing your passion. Harmonizing deep conflicting need strategies like these in your life can make a meaningful difference in your life.

Working In The Present With The Innate
Wisdom Of Your Body/Mind System

Working in the present means we engage and empathetically hold presence for whatever is organically emerging in your experience during the session. You may have a particular issue you want to explore or maybe even engage some unsavory aspect of yourself that troubles you. You will learn to trust that the particular feelings and needs surrounding this issue that emerge in the present are what seek your empathetic awareness. You also will learn to support others and operate from the premise that the other people’s body/mind system knows what is best for them and give them a type of support that honors their innate wisdom.

Working in the present also discourages you from being preoccupied and totally identified with past memories or future projections. These past/future excursions can be endless, disconnecting, and can represent a subtle way of protecting ourselves from feeling feelings and connecting to needs/beliefs that long for empathetic presence. Present-time work will include connecting to how you believe you are, in totality, these past memories and future projections as they are happening. The Inner Empathy work will help you get separation from these memories or projections and support you in staying present to whatever is occurring in the moment. A trust in a calm centeredness emerges. This serves as a foundation upon which to do your inquiries.

Support That Cultivates Your Own Self-Presence And Guidance

During and Inner Empathy session, the guiding principle the facilitator will operate under is to support you in connecting with your own empathetic awareness to hold presence for whatever challenging aspects of yourself emerge. This kind of support builds your own inner resources to continue to connect deeply with yourself. This follows the principle of teaching you to fish instead of feeding you a fish for the day. Also, cultivating your self-presence is a hedge against getting lost in your inquiry. It is very easy to become identified with your core feelings/needs and believe these feelings/needs represent your identity. Cultivating the capacity of your empathetic awareness to stay present and hold these deeper aspects of yourself becomes essential. The more capacity you develop to hold empathetic awareness, the deeper you can go into your inner world to hold presence for your core feelings/needs and associated beliefs. Learning this skill can open the way for ongoing self-support throughout your life.

Experientially Working With Deep Core Needs,
Feelings, And Beliefs Allows Something Useful To Happen

Inner Empathy inquiry work was specifically designed to efficiently navigate your inner world for the purpose of connecting with core unconscious feelings/needs/beliefs that are deeply embedded in your being. The presupposition in this work is that these unconscious core feelings/needs/beliefs are largely responsible for the quality of the life we lead and express themselves in our daily life in many ways. In my experience, chronic troubles with relationships, career, parenting, etc, all find their inspiration in unconscious core feelings/needs and associated beliefs.

This inquiry work acknowledges that the way you access your core feelings/needs and associated beliefs is a critical factor in whether such connection is useful. Do you emotionally and experientially connect with these deeper aspects, or does your intellectual part take over the inquiry and hold these feelings/needs and beliefs in an intellectual way? A lot of personal growth falls prey to the intellectual parts of us that keeps us disconnected from deeper core needs/feelings/beliefs. This is why people who think they have connected with their core beliefs do not see any change in their lives.

Inner Empathy work was designed to support people in directly accessing these core feelings/needs and associated beliefs experientially and emotionally. The overriding assumption and intention contained in Inner Empathy work is that such deep empathetic connections with core feelings/needs and beliefs will create a quality of connection where we can trust that something useful will occur. Useful will be self-defined as you connect with the unique expressions of your core feelings/needs.

What Type of People Flourish Doing Inner Empathy Work?

The people who seem to thrive in doing Inner Empathy work have been on a spiritual path, have meditation experience, and/or have already done a lot of personal growth work. It supports people to untangle the subtle ways they confound themselves with their own brilliance, knowledge and personal growth practices. A page was create with a more thorough profile of people who thrive doing Inner Empathy work.
 
To find out more about Inner empathy work read the first chapter of the Inner Empathy book or visit one-to-one session page to learn more about private work.