Episode 8: Just add water
The 5 Cs Recap - Just add water
The 5 Cs need “water” added to be “nutritious and tasty”, just like dehydrated foods, otherwise they’re just another “dry” formula that you’ll grow tired of and give up on. Here’s what I mean by “water”. Water for me represents life giving action, or flow. To add “water” to the 5 Cs is to choose to explore, embrace, move toward freedom from the automatics at every opportunity. So believing that a reminder of the process will help it stay “hydrated”, in this blog, I’ve decided to provide an abridged version of the 5 Cs process to serve as a summary located in one blog for easy reference:
The Pencil Exercise
The pencil exercise in the 5 C introductory blog demonstrates that our human tendency is to be efficient with our emotional resources by finding practiced ways to react automatically. That way in an “emergency”, we don’t have to “think”, just “react”. And like using our dominant hand, it’s practiced and we end up ignoring the option of our other hand.
When we operate out of our automatic, we are typically in the past or future, not the present. But when we try something new, like our “left hand”, it may be awkward at first but it requires being present. Our automatics start young and may not fit all situations in our adult life, but they often get instant results. We must get present to concentrate and try something new, which provides more choice.
Marble Cake Analogy
In the Marble Cake blog, my goal was to show how the 5 C process is not necessarily linear, but more of a circulating movement throughout life: Catching our automatics, having Compassion for humanity, being Curious about the “automatics” origins, Challenging Belief Systems formed in those original events, and letting Choice arise. Sometimes the process is in that order, but more often it’s random in a back and forth “pendulating” fashion. Basically it looks like a marble cake which has no distinct layers. And the necessary setting for making that cake can illustrate the setting of the 5 Cs where intense emotional reactions to life stressors (the oven heat) need a safe relationship for exploring their origins (the pan), and time, the universal requirement for all healing and growth.
Catching the Automatic
The 1st C is Catch the shame or automatic reactions because until we recognize we're reacting, we won't have a choice of how to respond in new situations. In other words automatic (dominant hand) vs intentional (other hand). Catching the automatic is tricky, but necessary for Choice. (And catching the automatic is easier when we are living in the present rather than the past or future.) Some might resist the idea of shame as their automatic, so consider self-criticism or self-judgment. Shame is tricky, and one of the best clues that we are shaming ourselves is when we criticize others. What’s inside comes out under pressure!
Compassion For Our Humanity
Once we've caught the automatic reaction like shame, it's very important to have Compassion for our humanity so we can relax our automatic judgments and begin to explore the origins of our self-judgments. Having compassion for ourselves relaxes us and allows us to have compassion for others, too. In fact, when our criticism of others relaxes, it is a sign we are having more compassion for ourselves. Compassion for our humanity makes space for the next C, Curiosity.
Curiosity
The most enlightening exercise in this 5 C process is Curiosity. My sessions with clients focus the most on Curiosity. This is the ability to look inside ourselves (introspection) and do a treasure hunt to locate where our automatics began and connect some dots. Once they are located we have more power over our reactions, power to respond rather than react.
Challenging Belief Systems
Part of that power provides confidence for the 4th C, Challenging belief systems that may not be true anymore, even if it was true at one time in our youth. Our belief systems start young and if they are never brought to our conscious to be challenged, they will unconsciously drive our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors automatically. It’s scary to challenge a belief system, in fact belief systems feel true, and not like a belief system at all. But we will not have a choice in responding until we realize we are operating off of a childhood motivation. The best question I’ve found for challenging a belief system is asking, without shame and fear, “Is my belief still true today?”
Choice
Once we do discover the young belief system that drives our shame and challenge them to see if they are true for us today or not, the 5th C rises up, Choice. Choice in responding vs reacting. We even have the choice of whether to continue that automatic and watch it play out OR try a new conscious response, like we talked about in the pencil exercise. Choice gives us freedom.