relational swiss army knife
Yours Truly Case Study
One of my longest-running stories about myself is that I don’t belong. Whatever environment or
situation I’m in–the workplace, a relationship, home for the holidays, or a group outing–I tend to
focus on all of the ways I don’t feel like I fit in. I knew that this orientation to the world wasn’t
helping me experience the kind of connection I wanted, but despite lots of journaling, many
courses and workshops offering personal transformation, and one-on-one therapy, I hadn’t
figured out how to change it.
Over the years I’d developed a bunch of strategies for navigating the sadness and discomfort I
had around this feeling of being an outsider. At work I learned how to keep busy because
producing great results was a way to get attention and praise, which was almost like feeling a
sense of connection. Plus, perpetually having a lot to do was an easy way to make sure that I
never appeared to be waiting around for someone to include me in something. My personal
relationships felt alternately rock solid or precarious depending on how aligned the other person
and I were in our feelings and experiences. I was always tailoring what I shared about myself
depending on who I was with and how I imagined they would connect with various aspects of
my life.
When I heard about Yours Truly, I wasn’t at a breaking point, but I was exhausted from feeling a
little bit broken all the time. In the very first module of Yours Truly I learned that I’d grown up
believing that in order to be loved and accepted by others I needed to be like them; a worldview
in which intimacy looked like sameness. Any time I felt, thought, or wanted something different
from people I wanted to experience connection with, I feared that if I expressed it, I would no
longer be loved or accepted.
I’d been walking around for years thinking that I needed to work harder or change in just the
right way to get people to like me. Yours Truly turned that idea on its head by asking me what it
would look like if I stopped trying to get other people to like me and focused on learning how to
like who I was when I was with other people.
I’ve had major insights in other courses, but Yours Truly was different in two important ways.
First, I got to witness and receive coaching on how to put what I was learning into action in my
life and the lives of the other participants. Seeing how the material worked, where we got stuck,
how they could get unstuck, made the concepts, and their potential to transform my life, tangible.
About halfway through the course I noticed that I was getting my needs met more often in all
areas of my life whether it was speaking up about my feelings begin hurt by something my dad
said during a visit with my parents, asking my doctor to explain something to me for the third
time, or doing some clean up with my husband the day after we had a conversation that left me
feeling funny. Sure, I was a bit nervous in those interactions, but I also felt confident that I could
navigate them because I’d seen similar conversations modeled during live coaching sessions.
The second way that Yours Truly is different from other programs is that it taught me how to use
my bodily experiences–sensations, posture, overall energy level–to help me assess my needs
when I’m relating with others. By the end of the course, the concepts I learned felt fully
integrated because in understanding them, I can also connect with them through my body. This
has been a game-changer in high-stress situations like when a big project went sideways at work
and I was able to ask for the support I needed, and tell the people around me that they needed to
speak slower because I wasn’t able to process information as quickly as usual under stress.
I’m so grateful to Jay for creating Yours Truly. As a result of taking this course, I feel more
prepared for everyday life because my body is now like a relational Swiss Army Knife that I can
reach for at any time to help me in setting boundaries, building connection, and making repairs in
my relationships.
Sasha