1. HURT FEELINGS Wounded States of Consciousness and
Unconscious Use of Power in Relationships
Bogna Szymkiewicz, Ph.D.

2. MARTIN BUBER I and THOU
Persons appear by entering into relationship to other persons.
Through the Thou a person becomes I.
All actual life is encounter.

3. IT REALLY HURTS
The research shows that social rejection hurts: hurt feelings affect exactly the same region of the brain as a physical injury.
Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D.,
& Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt?
An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302

4. WHEN FEELINGS GET HURT
“the perception of relational devaluation – the perception that another individual does not regard his or her relationship with the person to be as important, close or valuable as the person desires”
(Leary, M.R., Springer, C., Negel, L. , Ansell, E., Evans, K. (1998) The Causes, Phenomenology, and Consequences of Hurt Feelings. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Vol.74, No.5 )
„the perception that one is being excluded from desired relationships or threatened to be excluded”
(MacDonald, G., Shaw S. (2005) Adding Insult to Injury: Social Pain Theory and Response to Social Exclusion. W: K. Williams, J. Forgas, W. von Hippel (Ed.) The Social Outcast: Ostracism, Social Exclusion, Rejection & Bullying. New York: Psychology Press)
perceived violation of the norms accepted within the relationship
(Vangelisti, A. L. (1994) Messages that Hurt. W: W. R. Cupach, B. H. Spitzberg (Ed.) The Dark Side of Interpersonal Communication. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

5. RELATIONSHIP Two Different Worlds Meet

6. GROUP Hope for belonging

7. SHARED REALITY

8. DREAM OF UNITY AND MARGINALIZATION
This perceived „togetherness” or „shared reality" is based on partial perception: some experiences and ideas are taken to account while the others are disavowed.
In the dream of unity we often marginalize:
Power and rank differences
Minority/majority issues
Our high and low dreams
Secondary dreamfigures

9. Primary identities and marginalized experiences

10. HURTFUL EVENTS criticism betrayal depreciation ingratitude
active disassociation
passive disassociation
„Participants’ ratings of how hurt they felt correlated with how rejected (vs. accepted) they felt.”
„They felt most rejected when hurt by romantic or dating partners.”
Leary, M.R., Springer, C., Negel, L. , Ansell, E., Evans, K. (1998) The Causes, Phenomenology, and Consequences of Hurt Feelings.

11. Hurt destroys perceived shared reality

12. Wounded state of consciousness gets activated
A person feels „crossed out”
The world falls into pieces
Out of these pieces separate „particles” are created
The wall appears between persons
Wounded state of consciousness is constellated

13. Dreamfigures take over

14. ALTERED STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Dimensions of ASC
(From Amy Mindell, Alternative to Therapy)
Ability
to metacommunicate
vs.
identification with one part
of the experience
Consensual
non-consensual
experiences
Time (duration)

15. WOUNDED STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS FROM INSIDE
Feeling trapped, blocked, isolated
Entanglement, emotional and cognitive chaos
Pain, helplessness, anger and frustration mixed together
„Broken record” – repeated thoughts and feelings
Having no control over one’s experience

16. Entanglement Feeling trapped
Drawings representing subjective experience of wounded states

17. Separation of two sides
We perceive the boundary as solid „when we image its two sides to be separated and unrelated; that is, when we acknowledge the outer difference of two opposites but ignore their inner unity.”
Ken Wilber

18. Archetypal roles in the field
Terrorist
Perpetrator
Victim
Avenger
Savior
Western culture teaches us to bring coherence to a wounded state experience by offering the myth of polarization between the victim and the oppressor.
There are also some other archetypal roles that are involved in this basic conflict.

19. The Victim and the Perpetrator
cannot defend herself
experiences pain, fear, helplessness
perceives all the power as coming from outside
PERPETRATOR
one who has chosen the „dark side of the Force”
a person of authority who subjects others to undue pressures
imposes one point of view without taking to account the others

20. The Terrorist , the Avenger, the Savior
perceives herself/himself as
a victim; feels forced to take
radical measures
aims at destroying the whole
system rather then just
the „wrongdoer”
AVENGER
re-establish justice
by punishing the wrongdoer
takes vengeance for himself/herself
or on behalf of somebody
his/her action is a re-action to the perceived harm or injustice
SAVIOR
one that saves from danger
or destruction
one who brings salvation

21. Roles are mixed
Victim
Terrorist
Avenger
Savior
Oppressor

22. COMMUNICATION PATTERNS
Communication between the roles or dreamfigures, rather than between persons
Dreamfigures looking for/ constellating
the complementary role
No feedback loop or accusing the other side of a wrong feedback
No interest in the intentions of the other person
Taking things personally; blaming, accusations; emotional outbursts, „silent treatment”

23. THE OBSERVER
„Something must be developed in consciousness that reminds outside the identifications and mechanical actions and experiences of the moment.”
Charles Tart
“If you have an overview and realize that there are various states of consciousness, various frames of reference, you can “metacommunicate” about them.” Arnold Mindell

24. DREAMFIGURES AND THE OBSERVER
Dreamfigures often perceive their reality as the only reality.
In wounded states of consciousness, dreamfigures feel that their reality is not seen or/and threaten by the other side.
They are not interested in the observer position because they are afraid they may become annihilated.

25. WAYS OUT
In order to heal and transform the wounded states of consciousness we need:
personal and interpersonal awareness work
social and political changes
new ways of looking at reality and new myths that would help us to stay in touch with the basic interconnectedness, the Dreaming, the flow.

26. APPROACHING WOUNDED STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Metaskills:
compassion
loving detachment
When working with client’s hurt feelings it is important to remember that he/she may be in a subtly altered states of consciousness: he/she identifies with the part of experience and becomes a dreamfigure – victim, avenger, child etc.

27. Some ways of working with emotional aspects of wounded states
Accompanying a person in her world
Completing emotional state (non-judgmental attitude; staying temporarily with the person’s inner experience and emotional truth without comparing it with ‘objective’ truth)
Working in different channels (ex. drawing or dancing out the emotional state)

28. Working with “dreamfigures”
Helping the dreamfigure to express her story (encouraging a person to speak from the point of view of a child, warrior, avenger etc. until all the emotions are expressed and some resolution is found) 
Creating a puppet or a mask of a ‘hurt part’, and giving her/him a chance to speak and act (see Amy Mindell Dreaming Source of Creativity) 
Facilitating the conflict between a dreamfigure activated by the hurt feelings and a complementary role (a ‘hurting spirit’) through a role-play (discovering the repeated pattern that is acted out in different conflicts with different people)

29. Rank and power differences
Rank and power differences play an important role in evoking hurt feelings. Unconscious use of power often leads to hurt feelings. Some basic interventions include:
Pointing out and discussing the areas were the partner has higher rank or more power and discussing client’s emotional reactions to it
Searching for the clients areas of higher rank and developing conscious ways of using it for the benefit of the whole relationship

30. Little I on the journey
Little I identifies with different experiences, one after the other; each time having the perception structured by the activated identity.
„Just as the river flows along until it meets an obstacle like a fallen tree, a branch, or a rock, the flow of our perception is blocked at edges.
(…) The more encompassing are our identities, the fewer obstructions to the river of experience.”
Arnold Mindell

31. BIG U
Big U doesn't identify with any of the experiences but reflect them all like a mirror. It is able to embrace the one who is wounding and the one who is wounded while staying in touch with the basic Unity, the Dreaming, Tao.

32. INTO THE FLOW