Transcribed by Moira E. Haagen;
Edited by Steve Bentheim, Jesse Carlock and Angela Mandzuk From Teachings of Virginia Satir: The Crested Butte, Colorado Process Community Videotape Series
In 1987, Virginia Satir was videotaped at the Avanta sponsored Virginia Satir International Summer Institute in Crested Butte, Colorado. In this human learning laboratory, Virginia and her training staff worked for four weeks with 90 people from around the world. This tape is one of a series that contains specially selected teaching units from the last process community that Virginia taught.
The Seed Model
I believe that we are in another evolution in humankind. In fact, I know it. And when I look back in history and I read some of the people who looked like they were way ahead of their time, I think what was happening is that they were at the edge of something new. Maybe it’s not really new, but new as far as the large majority of people were concerned. I’ve always been a student of history. I love history.
We have moved through much that we keep on looking at the continuing layers of what human beings are like, what the world is like. And we always start out simplistically, which is different from being simple. What do you suppose life was like for your mother when she was 14, or your grandmother when she was 12, or your grandfather when he was 8, or his grandfather? What kinds of things did people look at? What did they feel they had to pay attention to? As far as I can tell, until relatively recently, until this century, people paid most of their attention to the outer things and not much to the inner. It started back in the late 1880s or so, and we have been looking at that. Now we know that the inside has something to do with what happens in our behaviour. We are in the place where we are there to amplify, to clarify, to deepen and to broaden how the inside and the outside of people work. Freud’s findings were very important because Freud said something that had never been as clearly said - that we have the seeds of our construction as well as our destruction within. Before that, everything was without and the way you helped people was to try to get rid of “whatever….” Either the devil crept in or, or you were tainted, or you had bad blood. The people who live in this time are now the creators of a new approach and a new way of looking at people.
We are living in a world in which we are literally categorized down to the last toenail—too fat, too thin, too white, too green, too “I don’t know what!” And then the other thing is this business of putting ourselves into pigeonholes. Women are like this, men are like that, six year olds are like this, and all the rest of that kind of stuff. I’ve had to forgive myself many, many times for assuming something about a group of people and then discovering the assumption did not hold. I will give you one little example. When I first started going abroad, I went into countries where the people didn’t have white skins and they would say to me, “Stay so many feet away from ‘an Arab’.” “When you meet somebody who is oriental, don’t look directly at them.” “When you meet an Indian person, don’t expect them to look at you.” I was full of that stuff, but there was something special about me which I’ve always appreciated. Whenever I find something that I find doesn’t fit the book, I throw the book away. I love it.
So, we’re full. I know you are full as I am full of ideas, based on experience, based on hearsay and so on. I am going to come with what I have but if I find that what I have doesn’t seem to fit, I will be free not to insist. Now, what we are dealing with is the need for security, the security of hanging on or the security of being able to move ahead when you are in a process of transition.
I call what I do, “Ways of Viewing the World.” One thing that I notice as I worked with people, all kinds of people, was that there were four basic things to observe. If I understood what I observed, I could read almost anything these people were doing. The first one had to do with how people perceived a relationship or pairing. How they looked at pairing which is the “me/you.” The second one was how they defined a person, the definition of a person. Who is a person?
The third one was the explanation of an event. Why did that happen? What is the reason for it? And the fourth one was the attitude toward change. Now, I all of these as neutral but basic to all human life:
1. the definition of a pair, which is the same as a relationship,
2. the definition of a person.
3. the explanation of an event, and
4. the attitude toward change.
Now what I found was that with very, very, very few exceptions, as I looked at all the different symptoms, as I looked at all the different problems, in all the different colors, pairing always had the same look. And that meant somebody on the top and somebody on the bottom. Now, that model was made up of somebody who was the caretaker and the child was the victim. Victim or the victimizer was some form of dominance and submission, malevolent or benevolent.
If you are a female, you can only be with another female or a male. These are the only possibilities you can have in life. There isn’t anything else. If you are a male, you are with another male or a female. This is all there is. Now we can color them with different skins, we can put different languages in their mouth, or we can have them eat different food. Basically that’s all there is. So that means that we are working with a universe of three. Three possibilities. That’s all. Why does it seem like it’s so much? Well, because we have roles and we have designations. Now, pairing means two. And that’s by the way all you can do with anyone else at any moment in time. You can’t look at two at the same time. Now, let’s take the first role designations we get. Here are two males. Let’s put them in a family context and they would be brothers. Two sisters. And here is a father and a mother, a husband and a wife we could say. Here is a father and a son. There is a mother and a daughter. Here is a father and a daughter, a mother and a son. A grandmother and a granddaughter. And a grandfather and a grandson. Grandmother and grandson. You see the genitals don’t change, but we have acted as though they have, that’s how we get all these funny ideas. And no matter what role we put on top of their head, it doesn’t change their heart and it doesn’t change the way they breathe. All the role does is change the way they look at themselves or others which is very powerful because that’s how they think. We now know that our thoughts can even change our heart rate. The role we play affects us powerfully. However, our basic needs are still the same.
Now, I’ll go into the workplace. There’s a president and a vice-president. There’s the president and the secretary. There’s a vicar in the church and the deacon. It doesn’t matter. In a school, there is a principal and there’s one of the teachers. There’s a board of education and a guy in the legislature who is the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. Let’s try to understand that together. I have a funny hunch that when we really understand that we will always know where to go. Now we can do it with friends. We can talk with nations. It doesn’t really matter. Just look at it. Alright, now I am going to show these people that regardless of their labels, regardless of their roles, they are in the dominance and submissive positions. One will be A and one will be B. Now, since this is a position that has been known for all time, it’s pretty much entrenched in us. So now what I am going to do is to begin the communication. I want all the A’s to be in front of B - on one toe, one knee and one toe, down. Just do it sideways. Okay? One toe, one knee, one toe. Now put your right hand on your heart and take your left hand and swoop it up as though you were warding off something and then put it kind of behind your shoulder and look up and your mouth will automatically hang open so whatever could drop in it will drop in it. Now relax that. Do you recognize this position? This is a position, which says, I’m little, I’m frightened, I’m powerless. I gave that the name Placating. Some of you may even have pictures of yourselves as children in some of these positions. This is a position of powerlessness, of inability and because there is no opportunity to see what the world looks like, the most comfortable position in this place is to look at the floor. And you get a highly developed skill of knowing what the floor looks like and not very much about anything else.
Now let’s look now at B. One of the things B does is in this position. Put your hand on your hip. Put one foot forward. That’s the malevolent position. Now what you do is you keep patting him on the head. That’s benevolent. And what you do is you stand upright. This is worship. These three positions have dominated human relationships. This we call teaching. This we call love and that we call respect.
Now, in a relationship, what do we learn? I’m going to find out.
I had a wonderful opportunity at one time. I was with three physicians. This is long ago. I was still in Chicago so it had to be in the 1950’s. They asked me to see all of their patients. At that time, I didn’t know about the stances, but I began to watch. I saw patients with all kinds of diseases. This is because one of the physicians was an internist, and I think one was a gynecologist and the other one was a bone person, an orthopedist. I saw all these people and then I began to look at them, and watched what happened. And I began to put a voice together, the whiny voice with this hump kind of body and with the body being off balance. Then I saw the people with a stride in their voices, and I saw how their muscles were tight. I listened to the voices and I began to become aware of what the price these people were paying for what was happening to them. But more than that, I could see. I just exaggerated what I saw. That’s how I created the four stances and then I could understand a whole lot of things.
Many therapies are based on an outcome to stop being bad and be nice. One of the things I hope will happen here, is that nice and bad are not worth talking about. It is to be real and whole. These are the words I’m looking for. Now, if you go into teeter totter, up and down. Let’s do up and down now. That’s how you do your life. [Moving her arms up and down] Up and down. Now what I want you to really understand is that the time at which you go from up to down you can feel you’ve made progress. And that’s what’s been happening to people. I can’t stand the blaming anymore so I do the placating and if that’s all I know, then that’s what I do and this is for me, the important piece that we have to look at. Changing who is doing what is not what’s going to change you. We have a whole new consciousness to do it, but within this older framework, there isn’t anything else.
The only way we have known how to cope with life was simply to change our position. That’s all, and then we never go into wholeness. The point is, we are always doing the best we can, and if these are the only options that we have, this is what is going to insure life. This is for survival, so one of the things we have to do is respect where people are, because that’s the best they know. Misshapen, tense and out of balance, watch people and you will see very similar things. Alright, so here you are. Making the greatest effort to do the best you can, which is to take the position you have and to hold it.
Now, the part that I will add to this is that we are going to stop the business of trying to get somebody else to do what we want them to do. We are going to move inside. I’m going to let you be enlightened. So what you do is you start to breathe. Say:
“I am a manifestation of life, I am of value.”
As you do that and breathe, let your body stand on its own feet and be aware of yourself. Now notice what happens. When you are on your own feet, feeling centered, then open your eyes, look at your partner and see what you want to do and do it. [Each pair hugs.] Now you saw something that embodied everything I wanted to do: To go from that stance to here. Now did you notice something? I didn’t say to anybody go put your arms around anybody. That didn’t happen that way.
I want to show you something about arms. You know how much easier it is to move your arms this way [moves arms out and up] than that way [moves arms out and back]. And when you’re balanced, your arms want to do that [moves arms up and out]. So just see how your arms want to move out. Yes, don’t they want to move out when you’re all centered?
Now, you have moved from where society has been for thousands of years. The nice people were benevolent in their dominance/submission. The nasty people were malevolent and so what we were busy trying to do was to change malevolence to benevolence. And we hoped that would happen so we had fewer murderers and the like.
What is so important for me is that these shifts do come about, and we won’t need to take hours and hours to work on a problem.
V.: Why don’t you come over here, Sue, because I want everyone to hear.
S.: “When Don was down looking at me in the placating stance and I was patting him on the head, I was thinking of my children and I felt very sad and also disgusted in wanting them to be up and then I, I looked again and when Virginia asked us to come up and just be centered and breathe in, I really got in touch with here in the moment and my body relaxed and it was like I let go of them and just allowed them to be who they are and be more in me and see. Because when I said I was looking down there, all I saw was there and not the world that I’m in. In going inside, I realize that it’s my responsibility to stand on my own two feet and just breathe in and be aware of who I am. And that’s a really wonderful person and I feel really good.”
V.: That’s what I call empowerment.
A.: “I feel very centered, very peaceful, very whole in myself and I recognize the placating position from my childhood and it felt so good to take a shift to feel totally responsible for my own everything, my own wholeness, and also to face Mary Alice and to feel that there was a wholeness between us too. The whole energy just changed and I felt my body just shift. I feel really grounded right now, and you know, here I am and here she is. It felt so good to connect with her as two beautiful people.”
V.: I am very glad because I know this happens. It has happened with me over and over again. I get a family and they’re in terrible places. All I do is get them to work on their structures, their stances, and there they are. See that’s the body; it’s a misshapen and constricted experience for the body to not be standing on its own feet and flowing. Thank you.
V.: Well, Mary-Alice, what about you, love?
M-A: “It feels much better to be able to let go of the tension. I mean I realized when I had to stand and be very rigid, it didn’t feel good. I also had an awareness that came in that I was disgusted with Alice while I was blaming her. I wanted her to get up off the ground, and what occurred to me was if I would just take my hand down and quit blaming her for being down there, it would feel a whole lot better.”
V.: [To the whole group] —We’ll learn a lot more on that because one of the things I would love for you to remember is that you have been subject to these things all your life.
How many of you right now know how to placate? How many of you know how to blame? Wonderful. Not that you blame but wonderful that you know it because if you know it, then you will be able to catch it sometimes and then decide, Do I want to continue the blaming? How many of you know how to be rigid and what I call “super-reasonable?” And how many of you know how to become distracting to others, the thing that I call “irrelevant”? Any one of those stances is telling you that your body is off-balance.
We are so used to being in these coping stances, that it’s not going to be an easy thing for you to say, ‘Well, I won’t do that anymore’. What we first need to work on is our awareness. This is the idea that I would like for you to get into your heads. To be able to substitute ‘Oh my God, ain’t it awful!’ for “Hey, I’m beginning to be in touch with what’s happening!’ That’s the part that saves us. I’m interested in what the police departments in California are doing now, helping people to be aware so that they don’t act without awareness. It’s been very interesting. They are devoted to becoming aware. Now the first goal is to become aware of how you feel in your body. Then, close your eyes, take a breath and now let your body expand so that it is comfortable and you are on your own feet. When you are on your own feet, you are following your own choice making. But how many people tell me, “Well I can’t do that because they won’t let me.” But the rewards are magnificent and what we are doing is living through thousands of years of acculturation about how we move with each other, certainly in western culture, and that we have been putting our energies into making the nasty a little bit less nasty, instead of going where we need to move, which is a completely new place of being in touch and of valuing.
Virginia now summaries the “Threat and Reward” way of defining a relationship.
When I experienced the many things I did with people all over the world, what I saw was that people basically come from two approaches: The “Threat and the Reward” approach speaks to the dominant and submission way of looking at relationship, and the feelings of feeling angry, fearful and isolated. There is no way we can feel whole when we have this kind of interaction. We can’t because we always have to worry about being knocked off, we always have to worry about the threat and the reward. That is the biggest anxiety of this world, the threat and the reward. Look anywhere around at international relations, national relations, the inner city, whatever it is, threat is always there and behind threat is fear, and to get rid of fear and threat, people capitulate most of the time. And it never works because that’s more fear. As far as I could see, the whole world was dominated, with some exceptions, especially the Western World, by this way of managing relationship.
Now, if I know how a relationship is lived, I can make absolutely good predictions about what’s going to happen. I can make predictions about the physical, I can make predictions about the psychological, and within moments that I am with people, I know exactly where they are because their body position will tell me where they are in their self-esteem. These are all self-esteem positions. What you are seeing and what I’m seeing is the defense against the awful feeling of low self-esteem, feeling I’m really not any good. There’s a poison in our world that people feel that they are not any good, they are not as good as that one, they should be better etc. And that’s something I hope that you will never ask again: “Am I… Am I Okay?” You will know you are okay. You won’t ever have to ask again.
Now we come to the next part, what’s the definition of a person? For people who hold the threat and reward approach, the definition of a person is someone who should conform and obey. And the symbol I use for that one is a box. Have you found yourself saying, “I’m too much of this and I should be something of that”? Okay, those are the two “should” twins. I’m too much of what I am and I should be something else. Now, to conform means that I have to make myself in the way that somebody else wants and to do that means then I have to cut myself off.
When we’re little, nobody says to us, “What do we want?” We just do. So it is going to be better to do this, or so we think. We do it. And if it’s better to do that, we do it. And then, after a while the relationship is if I do what you want, I will have life and I will pretend that everything is just fine. Now if we can put enough defenses on [she puts sweaters on herself]. These are all defenses. And then we watch her try, try to be graceful. And we give her an “A” for trying, but you know very soon, she is going to have to collapse. This is the kind of stuff we have been working against. Now, in this seminar, let’s get acquainted with how we know about ourselves. Let’s get acquainted with that. Let’s get acquainted with this, all this stuff. [Pinches a sweater] I call these defenses. Let’s get acquainted. Ahhh, I see that I have something inside me I don’t feel good about [removes one sweater] so I make believe like I don’t have it. Now, let’s look! This is a tricky business. If this is what I need to be loved, what am I going to do when I give this up? How am I going to feel, because pretty soon, if I take this all off, she’ll feel naked. So, I can’t take all this off. I take one little bit off and then I can start, I can be connected with it and I can ask her how she feels. “How do you feel?”
We can let go of these defenses only when we no longer feel scared. Many people come along and want to strip them off. You want to strip them. Don’t do that. Do it a little at a time. We don’t have to do everything at once. Thank you.
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