From Netflix documentary, article, website
“Why are you here?”
We go to a traditional wester therapist and they listen. We go to our friends and they give advice. Stutz takes a very active approach and proposes Tools as a part of that: hand drawn cards that summarize complicated ideas and into manageable, emotionally connected Tools that turn problems into possibilities.
The Life Force
In Stutz’s Life Force model, there are three levels to what make you, you:
- The bottom, most primal level is your relationship with your physical body
- Diet
- Exercise
- Sleep
- The second level is your relationship with other people (Outliers - extended families, better health outcomes)
- Initiative is important
- Pull back into life using relationships
- Any interaction is positive
- At the top of the pyramid is your relationship with yourself
- Build a relationship with the unconscious by writing, acts like a mirror
Stutz says that when we don’t know where we are going or what to work on, we always have our life force - let go, don’t try to figure it out; take care of your body, take care of your people, take care of yourself.
The layers and advice is quite similar to the advice of yogis from Dr K’s Guide - Meditation.
Part X
Within the framework of the Life Force, Part X is like the child safety lock or the sippy cup capping our growth. It’s the aspect of ourselves that we recognize as a fixed limitation.
Part X wants to block evolution, change, growth, potential. It’s the voice of impossibility.
And it will never go away, we will have to live with it and deal with it in our ways.
3 Aspects of Reality
Stutz identifies three aspects of reality:
- Pain
- Uncertainty
- Constant work
No matter how much mental gymnastics you try to construct, there is no escaping these facts.
Moreover it is a prerequisite to growth, without the aspects, there would be no story/process/growth.
Highest expression
To him, the “highest form of expression is to create something new in the face of adversity”
The Tool of Intimacy
As long as you utilize intimacy and vulnerability as a tool to present your authentic self, the result will serve you.
Failure, weakness, vulnerability is like a connector to the rest of the world; like a signal that says “I need all of you to move forward”, and we all do need others to move forward.
The worse it is the better it is, actually.
String of Pearls
Stutz uses a metaphor of the pearls to address the fact that “there is shit in life.” Self-work, as Stutz described, is like a string of pearls, one in front of the other, continuously moving. But in Stutz’ illustration, each pearl also contains a turd. For every effort you put into something, there will be that possibility of a turd. Every step, every decision, can contain the good pearl or the bad turd.
Important part is to just keep putting the pearls forward, to keep moving (similar to how any kind of action - good or bad - is what makes something alive from Corporeal Mime - GUILLAUME PIGÉ) and let go of perfection, there is and will be shit in every action.
The Shadow
Related to Carl Jung’s idea of the shadow.
We often spend a great deal of energy throwing shade at these pieces of ourselves that feel less than ideal. Objectively, however, they are all richly-colored pieces of a neurodivergent mind.
To confront the shadow and work with it, you need a visual: imagine a time when you felt inferior, embarrassed, rejected, despondent, ashamed; the part of you that you wished you were not but are and can’t get rid of.
By personifying the shadow as a sort of friend or acquaintance, it’s no wonder that our shadows create so much friction in our lives. If a friend were constantly calling me annoying or resenting me, I’d act out also.
The Maze
The Maze involves other people, it’s the product of Part X, because Part X wants fairness.
The Maze is a lot like what we understand regret or remorse to be. While part X is that piece of ourselves that feels “other”, it’s also the piece of ourselves that wants justice.
Mazes are detours from the progress of life, that distract us from growth, that waste time dwelling on the past, finding resolutions in the past that can not be changed after the fact anyway.
Active Love
Rather than focus on the past that deepens the maze, active love is a meditation of sorts. After closing your eyes and imagining the concentrated power of all the love in the universe enveloped into your core, you send it out to the person or situation of conflict in your life.
If you can visualize this love - your love hitting so forcefully that the two of you become the shared energy of that love - you accomplished it.
Active loving is not ignorant acceptance, but rather an intentional rising above divisiveness.
Radical Acceptance
Radical acceptance is much more than a passive tolerance of reality. It means seeking out the kernels of meaning within even those less-than-ideal moments or days.
His rule of thumb is that you actively have to have faith that there is some value in what you are doing.
No one will ever figure it out, all we can do is accept that.
Grateful Flow
We encounter a lot of what Stutz illustrates as “Black Clouds” in life.
But he reminds us that it’s our Part X that wants to keep this negative flow and that if we penetrate through the cloud, there are other pieces and other energy that we can’t see. To more easily access this. He offers up the “Grateful Flow.”
“Close your eyes and slowly say three things that you are grateful for. Say them slowly, focusing not on the things themselves, but on the process of calling forth gratitude for those things. Then begin to list more silently. After several more, begin to create a grateful thought, but don’t actually think about it. Instead, just notice the force that would create that grateful thought and harness that.”
(Related to “If this isn’t nice then I don’t know what is from What is the most fulfilling way a human can spend their life”)
Loss Processing
What comes, must go.
Imagine falling while saying “I’m willing to lose everything.” Taking a sort of comfort in landing in this sun world in the midst of the inevitability of loss, we can acknowledge that while still giving fully and wholly. He emphasizes that this isn’t about becoming nonattached to everything, but about being comfortable with our attachments/pursuits of connection, family, and love while becoming okay with that fall.