Transformational Teachings from Counselor Jane Ilene Cohen

It’s just a huge burden. And if the man doesn’t do those things a man is supposed to do, he’s not considered a man, and he doesn’t feel good about himself.

The group is a different kind of social situation, in which instead of people going along with your defense systems or skirting around them, they are putting in the picture their own experience…

We think that it’s our manipulations and our fudgings and our organizing things this way and that way, from our limited perspective, that is somehow making life work.

there’s an energetic goal of feeling a certain way, and then that becomes symbolic for you getting something. But it is not the real thing.

…holding in place a whole frame-of-reference that you’re sure is true and not allowing a space to actually find out what is true.

You’re wanting to defend yourself because you’re feeling powerless. The only reason someone comes out so strongly is because they’re feeling powerless.

…the defense system is holding in place an impossibility. It is hiding the gold that is the person. It’s keeping people away from loving you.

“…there’s a decision inside that you don’t have what you need, or a decision, in some form that boils down to that life is not meant to work. That’s what needs to be changed.”

People start out as inherently a part of the larger reality. But when they make limiting decisions (such as they are stupid, or unlovable, or not safe) they create an alternate and defended self that tries to create its own reality.

“…”This work situation seems ripe for some shift that could make it livable, rather than ‘Now this is work and I have to cut off my feelings….”