ABSTRACT
Stage 4 of the Breakthrough Conversations process draws on the emotional steadiness and insights gained at earlier stages and supports clients to view their conversational tendencies from a larger perspective. This change of perspective allows them to embrace broader aspects of their internal and relational experience, holding tensions between parts of the self, and between self and others and, by noticing potential triggers rather than reacting to them, they begin to integrate fundamental shifts in mental and emotional agility. Three aspects of agility are emphasised, disidentifying, attunement and both-and-thinking. The development of these qualities provides the basis for supporting clients to make significant, vertical shifts in their ways of making sense of their interior, and their conversational dynamics. A further technique for fostering vertical shifts and for Seeing the Dance from the Balcony is to support clients to identify distinct interactive cycles in conversations, tracking the cycle of ACES (Actions, Cognitions, Emotions and Sensations) in RED or AMBER cycles, and showing how these are driven by underlying needs, emotions and sensations. When the describing of a RED or AMBER cycle includes those underlying aspects, it has the potential to be experienced, simultaneously, as a GREEN cycle, where the body–brain circuitry supports broader awareness, responsiveness and insight.
