In today’s world, emotions are not understood.

Fear goes on much longer than it needs to and its adrenaline has been appropriated to sell products. Anger is misunderstood and has a bad reputation, leading to insufficient safety in the world. Sorrow is widely judged as weakness and its incredible renewal power is lost to many people. Joy is considered an optional luxury and therefore often experienced as an addiction.
We may have forgotten what human emotions are and why we have them.

Tim Westfeldt has been working to remember what these tools are meant to be, and restore their place as part of the original human design so that we can once again use them for a thriving, happy, successful human life.

In this 3 hour workshop you will:

• Learn about emotions as safety tools

• Learn what the good reason we have each primary emotion is

• Learn how well yours are working

• Begin the process of mastering them

Tim will share through lecture and participatory conversation about what emotions are and how to use them. After we have presented a theory of emotions in ways you haven’t heard before, we will pair off into partners and experiment with these ideas to learn about our own emotions, including how they are running now, and how to grow them into well operating tools.

You will walk away with a new understanding of the value of all your emotions, increased ability to recognize your own and others emotions when they are present, embodied understanding of the way they increase your safety, and experiential knowledge about using them effectively.

The Westfeldt Institute for Emotional Hygiene Presents:

A Workshop on Constructive Conflict

This three hour workshop will consist of education about conflict followed by three series of paired partner exercises to give you an evaluation of what shape your conflict skills are at right now, leaving you with a skillset to discover where they can grow. Our final exercise will give you the opportunity to practice conflict in a way that creates safety while effectively delivering a charge. We will demonstrate what conflict is, how it arises, and how healthy conflict can add peace, stability, and even increased love and connection to your relationships.

Our Take on Conflict:

Conflict is an unavoidable part of our lives. It ends up being required for human happiness - especially when done well. Conflict’s job is to create safety, and when it is allowed to unfold successfully as it arises, it has the side effect of fostering persistent peace. It also is one the most powerful ways we express love - in families, communities, or intimate partnerships!

Through paired partner exercises participants will learn:

• What conscious or unconscious boundary strategies you currently operate with

• How safe it currently is for you to use varying levels of conflict

• How to safely take charge in situations when safety options are few

• How to safely express triggered anger in a way that people can safely hear and receive so that conflict is consistently constructive

• How to take responsibility for our triggers

Many modern relationships are settling on one major strategy for survival: Codependency. Well-meaning adults across the country who were unable to develop secure attachment are getting their relationship needs met through the best techniques they can muster. What happens to people who are born into very controlling environments? They learn to relinquish control as a way to stay safe. What happens to people who are born into families where control (and regulation) are lacking? They learn that the more control they exert the safer they are. These two kinds of people will be naturally drawn to each other because there is backassward fit between them. The draw will be powerful, largely out of awareness, and will drive how attraction works for them. This is what codependency is about.

During our two hour workshop in the cozy Jackson Wellsprings Community Room participants will learn from our local expert and founder of the Westfeldt Institute, Tim Westfeldt, through education and partnered exercises.

Participants can expect to:

-Learn about their own relationship with control
-Learn how that affects who they attract and are attracted to, and how it places them in defined roles in relationships that they are largely not in charge of and also mostly unaware of.
-Learn how control can be managed in a functional relationship, compared to how it currently works for them.

Once this comes into awareness, it will be impossible for it to remain the same.

We, at the Westfeldt Institute for Emotional Hygiene, are looking forward to sharing this two hour workshop on developing boundary skills.

In our modern world we are living in a hurricane of boundary confusion. Through lineages of well meaning, ancestrally inherited boundary erosion we are living in an age where boundaries are undefined, misunderstood, and often left to develop haphazardly, leading to a general lack of safety and frequent self sabotage.

In this workshop we are providing knowledge and experiential learning about:
-What human boundaries are
-How we are currently using them
-How to avoid common misconceptions and ineffective boundary practices that support patterns of people pleasing, codependency, manipulation, and wasted years of relationship maneuvering
-How to get boundaries working effectively leading to pervasive safety and persistent happiness

Through partnered demonstrations you will gain an understanding of how your boundaries are operating now, how it feels when they are working effectively, and you will experience lasting and permanent change for the better.