May 20, 2021,  Family, Life, Love, Relationship, Script, Sex  No comments

Let’s apply this notion to the concept of being a couple. Your script for life, which influences your values, beliefs, and attitudes (and consequently, what you think, feel, say, and do), also contains rules, or guidelines, about being a couple in a relationship.

Because your script (and therefore your rules for being a couple) was first given to you by your family, you will most likely grow up and live out their relationship rules accordingly.

The relationship rules in your script tell you how to communicate with your partner, how to express love to each other, and how to interact with each other sexually.

So, if your parents showed you that it was OK to put each other down, then you will have that in your scripting as well – either as the person who puts others down or as...

April 21, 2021,  Family, Fundamental Human Needs, Life, Love, Relationship, Script  No comments

Here’s an example from my own life story. My father grew up in a very large family during a difficult time in history. He was born in Europe just after the First World War and was the second youngest of eight children.

Needless to say, he would have had to make his presence known fairly loudly to have any of his needs met, which probably included having to speak very loudly to be heard over all the other people in his family.

I also know that my grandfather was a very successful businessman before the First World War, but that it was very difficult for him to continue to provide for his family afterward. I can only imagine how difficult and frustrating it must have been for my father’s parents at that time to raise their children while struggling with the aftermath of war.

March 19, 2021,  Counselling, Family, Fundamental Human Needs, Life, Love, Relationship, Script  No comments

So, if Dad got mad when something went wrong, you might get mad and respond in the same way he did. Or, maybe your mother got sad when something went wrong, and depending on your personality and your closeness to each of your parents, you might respond that way instead.

It could be worth noting here that your personality is already there at your birth. This phenomenon subsequently influences how you respond to events in your later life, and it also influences which parent, if any, you are most likely to imitate in your behaviors, thoughts, and feelings when confronted with a particular situation.

The way you choose to respond to circumstances could be the topic for a whole other book, but suffice it to say here that your personality, your gender, the environment you grew up in, ...

February 17, 2021,  Family, Life, Script  No comments

We also know the power of the subconscious mind, since every day we do so many things without even thinking. We shower, get dressed, brush our teeth, have breakfast, and get ourselves to work and home again without even giving it a second thought. We just trust our unconscious mind to take care of these things, and it does.

How Did I Get Here?

If you’re skeptical, let me ask you this question: have you ever driven your car or taken a walk and suddenly realized you didn’t remember how you got where you were?

Your subconscious mind got you there, and you can trust it. If you had come across a stop sign or something happened that needed your attention, your conscious mind would’ve taken control in an instant.

This ability is really very helpful: it means that you don’t ...

January 25, 2021,  Family, Life, Relationship, Script  No comments

Family and Cultural Scripts

When you were born into your family, you were presented with your script for life. The script is the programming you undergo that defines how your life will be lived out—it’s not much different from a computer program, really. It contains the set of instructions for how to be a girl or a boy, a son or a daughter, a woman or a man, a wife or a husband, a parent, or even a member of your family, workplace, or your community. The set of instructions contains the values, beliefs, and attitudes that will flavor everything you think, say, and do in your life until you replace it.

Your script’s values, beliefs, and attitudes symbolize your fundamental needs: your physical, safety, feeling, love and belonging, and spiritual needs, as described earlier.

November 12, 2020,  Fundamental Human Needs, Life, Love, Relationship  No comments

“Spiritual needs” refers to the highest-order needs, those on the top rung of the ladder. While present in the child, these needs may actually lie hidden until the needs further down the ladder are met and satisfied. This is simply because the Spiritual Needs take you out of the realm of the physical world and into that of the metaphysical which requires, in the first instance, a capacity to think outside of the self, a skill that generally develops through time.

As an adult in a happy and fulfilling relationship, feeling happy and content in your own life, your spiritual needs consist of the certainty that your spiritual journey, however you define it, is supported by your partner, and by others who are important to you, without judgment or criticism.

Some people think that...

September 24, 2020,  Family, Fundamental Human Needs, Life, Love, Relationship  No comments

The fulfillment of this need offers you peace of mind in the knowledge that you are not alone and that the struggle of life is not yours alone to bear. You are one of many. You are a member of your immediate family, your extended family, your community, and all the nations of the world.

Every one of you, from the day your parents first dropped you off at child care or preschool to the day you became an adult and left home to make a life of your own, are learning to fit into a social group and do so even when it is uncomfortable. The reason for this is simply that you have a need to love and belong.

Therefore, for you as an adult, your love and belonging needs have to do with all the things that bring other people into your life, together with the shared enjoyment of that...

August 20, 2020,  Fundamental Human Needs  No comments

Children, as any of you who are parents will know, feel everything intensely. And whether they like something or dislike something, you will most often get the message loud and clear.

But while children feel their feelings, they don’t know how to name them or how to express them appropriately until they learn these things from their carers, in the first instance normally their parents. They take very careful note of how their parents express things and how they respond to the child’s own expressions of feelings.

It’s important, then, that parents help a child understand what he or she is feeling when sad or mad or glad by naming the feelings accurately when they are observed...

July 16, 2020,  Family, Fundamental Human Needs, Life, Love, Relationship  No comments

As a child grows and has its physical needs met, there is also a fundamental need to feel safe from harm – bodily and emotionally. As with all of these fundamental needs, this need remains the same throughout life.

“Safety” here means the knowledge that someone—your parents when you were a child, and your partner when you are in an adult relationship—will always be there for you. You need to feel that this person will always be a “soft place” on whom to fall when you need someone the most, but also in good times as well as in times of distress.

For Beth and Roger, it’s about knowing that they are always there for each other, whether as someone offering greetings as the other comes home late from a day’s outing, or someone to be a d...

May 1, 2020,  Fundamental Human Needs  No comments

As a new-born baby, your very existence depended on your parents touching you in a loving way. It might surprise you to know that this was just as important as the food they gave you.

In the first few days after a baby is born, and before the mother’s milk “comes in,” the baby discovers the mother through touch. The baby may suck from the breast not for food, but for the pleasure of the physical closeness that activity gives the baby.

The colostrum that the mother produces during this time is simply for boosting the baby’s immune system. It has very little food value, which is why in the first few days after birth, most babies tend to lose weight before they start putting it on.

Mutual bonding is also important for the mother at this time...