Questions about combining age regression with forgiveness work.

Answered by Calvin D. Banyan, MA, CI, BCH

This one is from Espahbad, one of our newest Banyan Online Supervision Meetings members.

Just did a FOO session with a client. She had so much stuff with Mom and Dad that she immediately put both of them into the chair. I asked her who she wanted to work with first. Said she couldn’t decide. I asked her to hang out with her feelings for a few moments to see who she felt most strongly about and we’d deal with the other one later. She selected Dad. I proceeded to do a lot of good work with Dad and she expressed lots of emotions. Dad couldn’t say he was sorry until feeling the pain in his afterlife, but that worked like a charm. When it came to forgiveness, she forgave most things he did but there were a few basic things she had difficulty forgiving. We had to leave it there, unfinished because we ran out of time for the session.

First of all, would there have been a smoother way to handle the chair thing? Next session, do we go back to AR with Dad using affect bridge (as I suspect) or do we continue with FOO. Client’s first AR was fundamentally with Mom’s anger and abandonment. Anger at Dad is not having defended her.

Espahbad, thanks for emailing in the question in advance. That really gives me some time to mull it over and give you the best answer I can. So, here goes!

I think that you did a great job of handling this session. I get so excited when I hear about our grads doing good forgiveness work. I'm also glad to hear that taking the offender/Dad into the afterlife worked well for you. So far it has worked wonderfully for me as well.
I think that the way that you handled the problem of having a client who wants to put two people in the chair at one time was handled very well. I have heard from other grads that have actually been successful by working with two simultaneously. But I would not advise that kind of approach. If it were me, you know how I like to keep things moving along, I probably would have just said something like, "Let's start of with Dad and we will get to Mom next," or vise versa. I would have made that selection by thinking about, from what I knew from the AR which person had caused the most pain and started with that one.
There may not be a need to do AR with Dad. I will generally just move into FOO and as my client expresses to him by saying, "You hurt me when" and "You made me think" or "You made me feel," I would probably uncover all of the information that I need. If for some reason, the client did not have enough information to express how he or she felt, then I would do some AR.
I think that as you deal with Dad in the FOO Chair you may find that there are other issues, but not necessarily. Just let the process unfold.