Awaken Your Authentic Self
A Five-Week Online Course
Are you sacrificing yourself in your relationships?
Are you always trying to keep everyone else happy?
Do you do the endless emotional labor that includes:
- maintaining your relationships
- ensuring everyone’s emotional state
- managing the responsibilities of child and home care
Are you exhausted? Resentful? Depressed?
Have you lost your self-trust and confidence in your inner knowing?
Self-sacrifice (or people-pleasing) is not only tiresome work, it’s also dangerous for our emotional, mental, and physical well-being.
Stop People-Pleasing & Start Living Authentically
If you want to stop people-pleasing but aren’t sure how or where to start, this course is for you.
The Authentic Self is womanhood in her power. She’s the opposite of the codependent “I need you to like me so that I can feel okay” version of you.
The Authentic Self is complex and deep.
She has many different parts of her personality and layers of depth in her psyche.
To stop people-pleasing we have to get in touch with the lost aspects of our personalities.
Those aspects are symbolized by four key archetypes or “parts” of ourselves.
Getting in touch with these unconscious forces within will support you to develop authenticity, or become the truest version of you.
The Four Archetypes
The Girl Child
Vulnerable and tender. Playful, spontaneous, creative. Sensitive and silly.
The Inner Critic
Detail-oriented and vigilant. Critical and strives for perfection.
The Rebel
Risk-taker, ready to change the rules to suit her needs or desires. Fearless and in her power.
The Goddess
Spiritual and intuitive. Sensual, creative, compassionate and loving.
The group was well-structured and organized and the content presented was very relevant. It was clear a lot of thought was given and work put into coming up with the structure for the class as a whole as well as each individual session. I appreciated the way Rachael kept everything on schedule and moving. She fit a lot into our time together.
The guided imagery exercises we’ve done have been so enriching. Finding them has been a real gift to me. I have learned so much and was able to get to those more vulnerable places thanks to the space Rachael held for it.
Wonderfully skilled, empathetic, and depth-oriented trauma therapist, LGBTQIA+ ally, and incredible human who is sure to offer consistent and grounded support for your well-being. Highly recommend!
Working with Rachael has helped me bring conscious awareness to my Inner Critic. I’ve been able to catch myself in my negative self-talk and replace some of those messages with a much kinder inner voice. Realizing how much I’ve been people-pleasing with my partner has been eye-opening!
Have We Just Been Trying to Live Up to Patriarchal Ideals…??
Women have lost contact with our authenticity as we’ve tried to live up to the cultural standards set forth by the patriarchal system. That system has promoted the following messages:
- Women’s bodies should be small and their value is their physical beauty
- Women’s work is in the home, not in positions of power outside the home
- Women should be obedient and submissive to men
- Only women can do the emotional labor of raising children and managing a household
These messages have prevented women from living fulfilled lives, kept us in toxic relationship dynamics, and created chronic, sometimes debilitating health conditions.
Ladies, Let’s Get Crafty
Challenging the status quo can be hard to do alone, which is why I have created this course for women to come together and heal.
We can reclaim our voices, our freedom, and our power.
We do that by bringing curiosity, creativity, compassion, and community together.
Using Sacred Self-Care practices from spiritual psychology, we’ll integrate some of the different aspects of your psyche, or soul, so you can live in alignment with your values and gifts.
This course is designed to support you on your journey of self-discovery.
Let me guide you to the truth and beauty that are inherent within.
Together, we’ll explore these Sacred Self-Care Practices
Mindful Self-Awareness + Self-Compassion
Cultivating self-awareness is a key component in personal growth. In this course I’ll teach you how to get curious about your mind, body, and spiritual self in ways that support living authentically. Each week includes mindfulness exercises designed to support you as you come to know yourself better. I’ll also teach you how to replace self-criticism and other negative self-talk with a kind and loving inner voice using self-compassion meditation.
Guided Imagery / Visualization
Also known as visualization, guided imagery is a holistic technique designed to take participants on a journey using both your mind’s eye and the five senses. In this course, I’ll teach you how to utilize the power of your imagination to access your Girl Child and your Goddess. Using imagery, you can fully connect with each of these powerful parts and access their key qualities.
Journaling / Writing
Using prompts designed to help you reflect on your life’s journey and the places where the four archetypes show up for you will help you clarify your personal history. Writing a new narrative about who you are and who you are in the process of becoming will help you set intentions for the ways you want to show up in your life and your relationships. You’ll be amazed at how freeing it can be when you stop people-pleasing.
Archetypal Symbol Appreciation
Archetypal symbols are shapes and images that convey meaningful ideas. They are consistent across different cultures and their meaning remains the same over time. These symbols contain power and, through connecting with them, you can evoke the power and meaning of each symbol. The butterfly, for example, is a symbol of transformation. For each archetype, I have chosen a symbol that embodies that quality. In this course, we’ll play with how these symbols capture the essence of each archetype.
Active Imagination
A technique that originated with the Swiss Psychologist Carl Jung, active imagination is a way to connect to the parts of yourself that may be unconscious. In this course, I’ll teach you how to bridge the gap between your persona (or how you project yourself out in the world) and your shadow parts, specifically the four archetypes, that operate below your conscious awareness. Once you’ve made contact with these aspects of yourself, you’ll develop a greater sense of depth and self-trust.
Course Description
Online group meetings will be 90 minutes from 3 – 4:30 each Thursday in October. We’ll meet weekly for five weeks.
Several days before each week’s meeting, I will send out a PDF on that week’s archetype. It will include information about that specific archetype, including special qualities of that part and what it needs to thrive. I will also share an archetypal symbol that relates to that aspect for you to consider and experiment with in your life.
During the group meeting, we’ll review what resonated for you about that part, and explore individual perspectives about the role that archetype plays in your life.
We’ll also take time in each meeting for experiential exercises which will include mindful self-awareness, guided imagery, writing prompts, and active imagination. Following the exercises, we’ll have a group discussion about what came up for you during the exercise. Participation is optional and you only have to share what you choose to share.
Week 1: Introduction
- How people-pleasing and caregiving have set you up for a lack of self-trust
- Mindful Self-Awareness Practice
- Group Discussion on the impact of self-sacrifice
- Meet the Four Archetypes
Week 2: The Inner Critic
- The Inner Critic: an archetype that refuses to be ignored
- Visualization + Active Imagination with The Inner Critic
- Group Discussion
- Self-compassion meditation
Week 3: The Girl Child
- The Girl Child: the light and dark sides of your inner child
- Guided Imagery with The Girl Child
- Journal about exercise
- Group Discussion
Week 4: The Rebel
- Meditation on Anger
- Writing prompt “My relationship with rebellion”
- Group Discussion on healthy and unhealthy communication
- Practices to assert yourself and your needs
Week 5: The Goddess
- Wise Woman Imagery
- Group Discussion: the differences between people-pleasing harnessing loving Goddess energy
- Developing intuition through Asking the Body A Yes or No Question
- Conclusion: bringing these parts together and moving forward
A quiet and comfortable, distraction-free space for each of the group meetings.
Someplace to take down any notes for the writing prompts and exercises. Your computer works just fine, or you may choose to use a journal or notepad.
An open mind. I may be introducing you to practices or concepts that are new to you. I want to encourage you to try everything and see what best serves you to connect with the many different aspects of you.
The five-week group will be $250, or $50 per 90-minute group.
To reserve your spot, a $50 downpayment is required. The remainder will be due a week before the course starts this fall.
Course Format Options
Asheville, NC
Weekly in-person meetings.
To be determined.
Online
Weekly meetings on Zoom.
Thursdays from 3 – 4:30
October 3 – October 31
Are you ready to learn about yourself and get out of the people-pleasing rut?
Ready to find your voice, power, creativity and tenderness?
This is your opportunity.
I’d love to have you join me on this journey.
Reach out today and claim your sacred space.