What is your worst fear about coronavirus? You’ll get sick and die? You’ll be wiped out financially? You won’t be able to provide for your family? Food-crazed homeless people will break into your home?
What?
Everyone has fears, and our worst ones are called “catastrophic expectations.” If we face them and make a plan, we put a floor under ourselves and our lives, because our worst fears are unlikely to come to pass, but if they do, we have a plan. Then anything else that might happen is much easier to deal with.
Integral Deep Listening approaches persistent dread by encouraging you to name your fear and give it a shape – turn it into something. For example, if your worst fear was an animal, what animal comes to mind?
Now, if you have an animal, you have a personification of your fear that you can interview to access a perspective that can provide you with a broader, more helpful way to approach your fear.
Here is the Integral Deep Listening Interviewing Protocol. Answer from your character’s perspective, not from yours!
Ask your animal (or other personification of your coronavirus-related fear) the following:
(Character), would you please tell me about yourself and what you are doing?
(Character), what do you like most about yourself? What are your strengths?
(Character), what do you dislike most about yourself? Do you have weaknesses? What are they?
(Character), what aspect of _____ do you represent or most closely personify?
(Character), if you could be anywhere you wanted to be and take any form you desired, would you change? If so, how?
(Continue, answering as the transformed object, if it chose to change.)
(Character), how would you score yourself 0-10, in each of the following six qualities: confidence, empathy, wisdom, acceptance, inner peace, and witnessing? Why?
Confidence, 0-10. Why?
Empathy, 0-10. Why?
Wisdom, 0-10. Why?
Acceptance, 0-10. Why?
Inner Peace, 0-10. Why?
Witnessing, 0-10. Why?
(Character), if you scored tens in all six of these qualities, would you be different? If so, how?
(Character), how would _______’s life be different if he/she naturally scored like you do in all six of these qualities all the time?
(Character), if you could live _____’s life for him/her, how would you live it differently?
(Character),if you could live _____’s waking life for him/her today, would you handle ____’s three life issues differently? If so, how?
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2
3
(Character), what life issues would you focus on if you were in charge of ______’s life?
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(Character), in what life situations would it be most beneficial for ____ to imagine that he/she is you and act as you would?
(Character), do you do drama? Do you get into playing the Victim, Persecutor, or Rescuer? If not, why not?
(Character), What is your secret for staying out of drama?
(Character), you are imaginary. Why should ______ pay attention to anything you say?
(Character), how is _______ most likely to ignore what you are saying to him/her?
(Character), what would you recommend that he/she do about that?
Thank you, (Character!) Now here are a couple of questions for _______:
If this experience were a wake-up call from your life compass, what do you think
it would be saying to you?
Look back over the interview and list the specific recommendations that were made:
You can learn more about Integral Deep Listening at IntegralDeepListening.Com and DreamYoga.Com or from Waking Up or Dream Sociometry or other books by Joseph Dillard.
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For information about on-line seminars, coaching, counseling, as well as workshops, write joseph.dillard@gmail.com.
