The Skills Needed for a Healthy, Adult Relationship

by Steven Kessler, MFT, EFT Expert & Trainer

This list is designed to give you a general map of the territory covered on this journey. It is not exhaustive. The order is indicative only of a general sense of direction, as there is a great deal of overlap. Especially in the second group, many of these things will be happening at the same time.

Self-awareness skills

1. develop the Inner Witness

2. learn to track your own inner state

3. discover that your reactivity is an opportunity to learn about yourself

4. shift your relationship with your Inner Critic

   a. recognize that it as not your own voice

   b. learn to recognize it's attacks

   c. learn to defend yourself from it's attacks

   d. reclaim for yourself the energy that has been feeding it

5. make the Turn from avoiding pain to seeking truth

6. learn to accept your current inner state and inquire into it with lighthearted curiosity

7. practice being deeply intimate with your own experience, no matter what it is

Healing the past and growing up

1. develop basic energetic skills: ground, core, edge, me/not me

2. develop healthy psychological boundaries

3. learn to self-reference without self-judgement

4. recognize your own patterns and conditioning and heal what drives them. This means healing the core traumas that have shaped and organized you.

5. recognize your shifts from adult to child states

6. develop a relationship with the child within yourself, listen to it's needs, and be the parent who arranges to get those needs met

7. learn the skills for healthy communication, disagreement, inquiry, and joint decision making