Love and Power - the workshop
1. Where do you have power, and how do you use it?
2. How much quality do you have in your your connections with others?
Power involves strategy, control, influence, and goal focus.
Love involves connection, warmth, openness, and mutuality.
This workshop explores two fundamental areas: Strategic skills and Intimate skills.
When Power trumps Love, you might be successful, but the price is loss of relationship quality.
We examine how these domains can co-exist and add up to a greater synergy.
Transformational questions that will be explored include:
- What is my power style
- What is the shadow of my power
- How can I exercise power but not over-power
- Where do I avoid using the power I have?
- What did I learn about power in my family
- What are my Unvirtues
Overview of the workshop
In our personal lives
We are drawn to relationship because of intimacy - warmth, connection and belonging.
Yet the practicalities of life involve achieving goals, getting places on time, and exerting influence - the business of life.
We seek love, yet frequently depart from the experience of mutuality, angrily telling the other person what to do, or shutting down because of feeling pushed or manipulated.
We will examine the question of how love and power can be reconciled successfully in personal relationship. How can you remain loving and keep the connection, despite your shadowy self waiting to pounce?
In our work lives
Work is about productivity, achievement and making hard decisions. It usually involves a power differential.
Yet without enough quality of relationship in the work setting, the result can be a weariness of the soul.
We will explore how your personal power style gets in the way of quality of connection, and what you can do about it.
This workshop will develop the skills involved in both strategy and intimacy, introducing ways to achieve an integration of love and power.
‘But this is the exalted melancholy of our fate, that every Thou in our world must become an It‘
-Martin Buber
The content
We will draw on insights and techniques from Gestalt therapy, including Martin Buber’s I-thou philosophy. By learning the skills of mutuality and connection, we can enhance the experience of intimacy.
We will explore the experience of shame - how it arises, and what can be done to ensure it doesn't become a destructive of connection. By learning about how we move from belonging to isolation, we can understand how dynamics of power in relationship work. We learn how to use support to build a bridge to wholeness, even amidst differences in capacity or authority.
We will learn about the ‘unvirtues’ - the shadow side of our good intentions, where we can end up being hurtful without realising it. This insight into the dynamics of your power can make a big difference as to whether it enhances connection or destroys it.
We will look at how you can repair conflict in ways which allow you to stay connected. Being able to read and articulate difficult emotional states gives you the skills to build bridges.
We will find how ‘existential responsibility’ can help free you from the blame game, both ways. By acknowledging ‘what is’, we can bring awareness and healing to the places where power can hurt.
We will use creative processes - art and psychodrama - to explore and understand how to can make a difference, and bring together love and power in our hearts, our relationships, and the day to day practicalities of relationship.
We will explore strategic and intimate skills, identifying where and how we use them, and where they conflict. We will look at the context for the use of strategy, where that is effective, and where it becomes damaging. By recognising which skills need to be enhanced, a practical way forward becomes clear.