Unravelling the Survival Map

I’m joined by Hedy Schleifer, an internationally renowned relationship builder and motivational speaker who guides, counsels and teaches couples, partners, business associates, therapists and families about relational maturity. 

Hedy is the founder of the Encounter-centered Couples Transformation approach (EcCT). An integrative and interdisciplinary model that lies at the intersection of philosophy, clinical theory, organizational methodology, and relational neurobiology and memory reconsolidation.

Hedy guides partners through what she calls the “Art of Connection,” teaching them how to turn their relationship into a living laboratory for the development of relational intelligence: how to fill their partnership with creativity, wisdom and generosity of spirit. Relational intelligence puts partners on the path to relational maturity and is at the core of having successful relationships both personally and professionally.

Hedy believes that world peace begins with the human family, and she teaches how to honor the sacred relational space between us. The philosophy behind her approach is based on a saying by Martin Buber, “your relationship lives in the space between you.” When we don’t know how to hold the relational space as sacred, we pollute it. And so, this is what we dive into throughout this two part interview: how to make conscious, intentional steps towards creating sacred relational space, and how to remember (to become a member again) of the human family.

As we begin, Hedy mentions that in his book “The Tipping Point,” Malcolm Gladwell says when 3% of the population does something it can become an epidemic. Hedy proposes that if 3% of the population around the world knows how to hold the space between us as sacred in a conscious intentional way it will become a positive epidemic, and our planet becomes covered with sacred space. 

The guiding principle to Hedy’s teachings is this, every couple has a survival dance and the survival dance will always disconnect you. It doesn’t matter who’s right, you know the saying, “you can either be right or married.” The survival dance will always disconnect you.

What will connect you are three invisible connectors: 

The 1st invisible connector is the consciousness that we are responsible, each one of us, for the sanctity of the space between us. Hedy says “the space between the couple is the playground for the child”. Knowing how to honor and sanctify the space between. 

The 2nd invisible connector is the bridge between the couple. “Only incompatible people fall in love with each other.” We see those parts of ourselves that we’ve disconnected from and we fall in love with those parts in our partners to fall back in love with our own wholeness. Getting to know one another’s worlds. One partner hosts, the other visits. As we learn each other’s language we can come back to our potential and our wholeness. The bridge helps couples become bilingual and learn each other’s languages. 

The 3rd invisible connector is a deep presence, a being with, the zone of the encounter between the host and the visitor. It’s through these three invisible connectors that Hedy teaches when you honor the space and you cross the bridge you create the conditions for the encounter in an intentional manner so you’re not an accidental tourist.

Hedy has an exceptionally playful way of teaching couples the distinction between process and content so they can step out of the content and observe their survival dance. And in this way, they develop the relational muscle that says STOP to the survival dance.

Through humor and adventure, Hedy guides couples into curiosity while simultaneously setting boundaries in their work. As Hedy says, “partnership is not a problem to be solved, it’s an adventure to be lived!” And this is what she shows us how to do using 3 metaphors:

The Art of Hosting: It’s taking someone into your world and being transparent and truthful. Often we don’t know our own truth, in hosting we explore our truth in the most vulnerable way, it’s a contradiction to how we’ve learned to be in the world: I can be myself with you and I can learn who my Self is with you. I can explore and find myself with you. As a host, you explore your truth as needed and eventually express your truth in 5 words or less. It’s challenging and you’ll get better at this with practice.

The Art of Visiting: Visiting requires leaving the world you know, crossing the bridge as a new person in the NOW. Learning to be truly present in the present and allow your own world to be the past once you cross the bridge. Visiting requires one to learn to be truly present in the present and allowing your own world to disappear. 

Neighborhoods: Each person is like a big, big world that’s expanding — our world is filled with neighborhoods that we can host and visit with our partners.

This episode is infused with Hedy’s story of how she’s both taught and used these techniques in her work and personal life.

Unraveling the survival knot occurs when couples already know how to visit each other’s various neighborhoods, only then can they go to each other’s toughest neighborhoods. In the toughest neighborhood you are most triggered by each other. The unraveling is a 6 hour process of memory reconsolidation. Hedy’s purpose is for the couple to show up with a completely new brain at the end of that journey. A reconsolidated brain in which the old beliefs have actually been erased and a new understanding of “who I am,” “who you are,” and “what relationship is” is actually wired into the brain. But Hedy doesn’t do the unraveling with every couple, because it takes a certain foundation. As Hedy says “every couple is capable but not ever couple is ready — the readiness is what we’re working on.”

Hedy begins guiding her couples into their precious neighborhoods, and then into a neighborhood of challenge. It’s harder to visit a neighborhood of challenge than a precious neighborhood. So Hedy is watching how ready couples are to go into the unraveling while they explore their first 2 neighborhoods. “If being witness is still challenging, if I don’t yet explore the depth of my truth, if I don’t let yet let in completely, if you can’t… then we need to continue and visit other neighborhoods.”

Hedy also shares with us how she guides couples to visit neighborhoods of childhood —using a 21st century time machine— and it’s profoundly moving. A consciously created sacred relational encounter full of archetypal story medicine in where partners become the heros the champions “and say the very things that have lived inside their partner, the partner that’s a child, for such a long time and has never been able to be pronounced.” It changes the narrative from one of isolation and walls towards one of intimacy, in-to-me-you-see…

In part 2 we’ll talk about how to create the encounter zone in the toughest neighborhood, stay tuned!

After listening, we invite you to deepen into the discussion with us on instagram. Support the show by sharing and reviewing the episode.

Resources: 

Find Hedy online at: hedyschleifer.com

While these discussions will guide you into the Connectfulness Practice, the podcast is not meant to be a substitute for counseling from a licensed provider. Reach out. Initiate the ripple. Learn more about my connectfulness counseling practice and our collective for therapists in private practice at connectfulness.com/work-with-me.

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Mentioned in this episode:

WDMP Integrating Heart+Mind

WDMP Integrating Heart+Mind