Recently I’ve been working with my local hospital to become part of their mentoring program for newly diagnosed cancer patients. During one of the orientation sessions they walked me through how to engage with mentees. While I was familiar with some of the relationship tools they covered, some were new to me. This is the first I heard about the “Imago Dialogue”, for example, which has become a fairly common technique used in couples therapy. I then realized I’ve probably not invested enough energy in learning techniques to better relate to everyone around me, since I’ve been too engrossed in just figuring out how to relate to myself!
The essence of Imago, at least to me, is that you need to meet people where they are at this moment in their lives. That’s easy to say, but difficult to do. It’s natural for us to frame our relationships based on what’s happening in our own life. When we’re sad, we expect the world to grieve with us. Or when we’re happy, we expect everyone to celebrate our success. Of course, that’s not the way things work. Assuming we can get ourselves properly oriented to this reality using tools like ACT, then it’s time to start applying our newly developed sense of self-empathy towards those around us.
“So what’s up with wormholes and radios?” you ask. I’m reminded of the movie “Frequency” with Dennis Quaid, where a grown son – thanks to a mysterious warp in the fabric of space-time! – finds a way to communicate in real time with the father from his youth over an old radio. Father and son are each in their own separate time and space, but still able to connect: much like what needs to happen in an Imago Dialogue, but using empathy instead of a space-time warp. We needn’t ask the other person to enter our time and space in order to connect; rather, we’ll find a way to step into theirs, and try to appreciate what they’re experiencing in their own moment.
Now where’s that radio?! 🙂